They revamped quite a few skills, and added a lot more elemental focus on some runes to the classes.
Following a specific element might be viable with some item affixes boosting that specific element damage. If you stack say, 150% extra fire damage (by having it in almost every slot), then all your Fire Skills (and there's a lot more of those now for Wizard) will benefit from it. It's a huge bonus. We just need to figure out if it's worth giving up something like All-Res or Armor in those slots.
Are we dropping EHP stats or other stats such as Crit? I thought offensive stats were balanced so it didn't really matter which one you took or was that just in the Paragon Points
Mostly only paragon points. CHD backed up by crit is still sadly king of the hill and i see nothing ATM to remove it from that position i would love to see other stats be more competitive. Will make for much better itemization.
my guess is that only a select few build will run something other then CHD and CC i want to be proven wrong.
The whole new empasise on Elemental damage and cooldown reduction is something i want to be competitive.
That's actually one of the big changes in itemization I'm really enjoying, even just on the PTR. Sure, if people want JUST straight damage, then fine...Crit Chance and Crit Damage. Makes a whole lot of mathematical sense. But reducing the Cooldown on blasting skills like Fetish Army, Earthquake, and others...reducing resource cost on commonly used skills like Wave of Light, Elemental Arrow, Spirit Barrage...those things aren't reflected in a details sheet's "damage" number. Honestly, your damage could go DOWN 20-30k, but because you're able to use particular skills more often, you could still be 10x more effective in battle because problems such as cooldowns and running out of resource are mitigated.
But again...those are things not reflected by your "damage" number going up or down. Crit Chance procs certain skills, which is why it was nerfed a bit in Paragon Points, but Crit Damage is just damage. And when you look at how a lot of legendaries WILL cause people to make SOME sacrifices in damage for better builds...
I think straight damage builds are going to have a TON of competition.
Quote from Vomica»
The sense of personal progression again!
Getting that legendary so that i can switch up my Build again for the N:th time
More achievements to hunt to keep me going for a long while longer.
level more characters trying out different skills at different levels, just having fun
Collecting all Transmogs, patterns, ect.
Precisely my reasoning. I would like to add that in the PTR my WD stumbled across a Ren'ho Flayer. Its special affix, without spoiling anything, was clever and enticing. To me it is at least. As a preface to that discovery I had funnel vision that precluded me from venturing from my comfort zone. Same build, same result, same ennui. That one item made me rework my skill set. For ten or so levels I thoroughly enjoyed that knife. Until... I outgrew it. But! I still look for it, even on the PTR, that means nothing in the long run. That one item has me excited for other possible finds that challenge me to change how I play.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"We", "Everyone" - Argumentum ad populum. "You people" - Argumentum ad hominem. "Your dumb" - Contractionem absum.
The most important thing is the new Itemization. With the removal of the AH and a new level cap, we can forget the whole mess that D3V was, both economically and its lack of rewards.
Secondly, Adventure mode and Rifts are a good addition to the game and lasty new skill balance.
Absolutely this too.
Games like D2 were really fun, but players made it so that things like Meph Runs and Baal Runs and Bloody Runs and Pindle Runs were even a "thing." I'm glad that Adventure Mode makes a formal place where there's 1) randomized objectives, 2) more reasons to explore, 3) farther along tiers of randomization in the form of Rifts for even bigger rewards. Plus they added that nifty feature that resets quests in Campaign Mode, so if anyone particularly wants to run the Campaign over from the beginning, they can. I think that's really cool.
And yeah, the skill balancing has been tremendous. I'm actually having a hard time finding smartly assembled skill combos that don't work to even some small degree. With some more Paragon Points, and Enchanting gear...players have a lot more freedom to customize builds how they want...but without the AH, ya gotta play for it. :-D
A major issue I have with that is that you can't decide what you want to be. You're at the mercy of what legendaries you find.
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
A major issue I have with that is that you can't decide what you want to be. You're at the mercy of what legendaries you find.
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
You can always decide to not change your build even if you have a Legendary that changes the behaviour of a skill you don't want to use. Orange items has higher stat values compared to rares, so they are an upgrade regardless of the special property they give you, which will roll as a secondary stat, so it won't take place of a primary stat.
They revamped quite a few skills, and added a lot more elemental focus on some runes to the classes.
Following a specific element might be viable with some item affixes boosting that specific element damage. If you stack say, 150% extra fire damage (by having it in almost every slot), then all your Fire Skills (and there's a lot more of those now for Wizard) will benefit from it. It's a huge bonus. We just need to figure out if it's worth giving up something like All-Res or Armor in those slots.
Of course it is. The only non-legendary areas elemental damage can roll are bracers and amulet. You'd be a fool not to stack elemental damage in those two slots.
A major issue I have with that is that you can't decide what you want to be. You're at the mercy of what legendaries you find.
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
Yes, because that's exactly what we asked for. "What gear do I need for it, and how much is it on the AH" is what we had in D3V. "What gear did I find, and how can I use it" is exactly what the playerbase asked for, what makes you feel attached to your character (because you earned it), and it's btw also how it worked in D2 for many people.
Your desperate attempts to bash Diablo just show how biased you are. You're simply trying to find stuff to bash about RoS and advertising PoE. Signing up on this website, using a PoE logo as avatar and creating troll threads... 1/10. It's really tiring to argue with people that complain about features that are ONE TO ONE implementations the majority of the D3V playerbase asked for.
I'm excited for the new act, as well as being able to kill new monsters
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
A major issue I have with that is that you can't decide what you want to be. You're at the mercy of what legendaries you find.
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
Yes, because that's exactly what we asked for. "What gear do I need for it, and how much is it on the AH" is what we had in D3V. "What gear did I find, and how can I use it" is exactly what the playerbase asked for, what makes you feel attached to your character (because you earned it), and it's btw also how it worked in D2 for many people.
Your desperate attempts to bash Diablo just show how biased you are. You're simply trying to find stuff to bash about RoS and advertising PoE. Signing up on this website, using a PoE logo as avatar and creating troll threads... 1/10. It's really tiring to argue with people that complain about features that are ONE TO ONE implementations the majority of the D3V playerbase asked for.
I'm really not trying to offend anyone. You getting offended over a discussion topic because someone has a different view only shows your insecurities. I have every right to be here and discuss this game, and I am in no way trolling or searching for things to bash D3 on. If you see it as that, I'm sorry, but you have a predisposition to attack anyone who doesn't agree with your views. This discussion is completely on topic, and you are trying to derail it.
Why are you upset that I'm asking D3 fans what they are excited for in the new expansion? I've already learned some things I didn't know about RoS like the changes to elemental damage. Thats what I'm here for.
Anyway, back on topic, I understand wanting to earn your items. Finding an item yourself feels a lot better than buying it off someone else. Still, I think not having the ability to choose the items you need to support your ability/skill choice somewhat defeats the purpose of having so many builds available.
If I find a high lightning damage weapon, I'm going to respec to lightning abilities if it helps me farm faster. I dont really like that concept personally. I would rather plan my character from the start and work towards that end goal, instead of reacting to what items I find to try and make the most of them until I can finally find the complete set of Fire damage gear that i originally hoped for.
You can do that to some extent, by aiming for specific legendary sets acquired through crafting. Those can be farmed by searching for the raw materials (rare drops from fixed mobs). Besides, over time you'll have acquired so many legendary items that you can actually choose which way to go. It's not like you'll only find one item in your life time and you'll be limited to one particular build; not at all. I've found the Frost Hydra helm on beta, found it to be underwhelming, didn't use it, still farm Torment 1-3.
I understand that you want to plan your character and have absolute freedom, but Diablo is built to foster long-term enjoyment. Over time, people just get tired searching for new stuff, and soon "cookie cutter builds" emerge. This was the case in all Diablo games so far, btw, and it's something that RoS will limit. You can still choose among many different builds, and you will not be restricted to one particular build just because of some legendaries. However, there might be builds that you can't access (or at least can't play on higher difficulty levels) unless you've earned them by finding the legendary. This is what builds up the long-term enjoyment. For me personally this works better than knowing "I have to kill Baal 500 more times to get to my desired end-game build". It's one of the many reasons why I think even D2 was worse than D3 in that regard; there was no shortcut to your "game plan".
I'm not trying to derail your thread, I'm trying to tell you why for me this exact feature that you dislike is something I'm very excited about. (Besides that, I'm really excited about many things in RoS - the new gameplay feels absolutely smooth, rifts are amazing because you'll never play the exact same rift twice, gambling is back, enchanting is a perfect addition, and BoA is something that - in my opinion, after playing the beta - will ensure at least my long-term motivation).
A major issue I have with that is that you can't decide what you want to be. You're at the mercy of what legendaries you find.
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
I don't understand the problem, because the last two quoted sentences you used mean the exact same thing. You make it seem like the latter is different or better, but it equals "Ok I want to play X, and I need Y gear for it". That's the same as "Ok I have Y gear, and that means I can make the most out of X builds".
Personally I love being 'at the mercy' of what legendaries drop. There's absolutely builds I want to try, but I know it might take awhile for me to find the gear, and that's awesome, it's a long term goal. If we had, for example, the AH still running and no BoA, it would turn back into "Why wait for the drop, I'll just buy all the gear I need", and that just feels lame.
A major issue I have with that is that you can't decide what you want to be. You're at the mercy of what legendaries you find.
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
I don't understand the problem, because the last two quoted sentences you used mean the exact same thing. You make it seem like the latter is different or better, but it equals "Ok I want to play X, and I need Y gear for it". That's the same as "Ok I have Y gear, and that means I can make the most out of X builds".
Personally I love being 'at the mercy' of what legendaries drop. There's absolutely builds I want to try, but I know it might take awhile for me to find the gear, and that's awesome, it's a long term goal. If we had, for example, the AH still running and no BoA, it would turn back into "Why wait for the drop, I'll just buy all the gear I need", and that just feels lame.
I dont know, I never had a problem with the AH. RMAH yes, AH no. To buy a great item on the AH, you still needed to have the gold which was no easy task. You had to farm for it and sell an item of equal value to the one you actually wanted, or a bunch that would add up to it. I had a very good feeling of satisfaction when I was able to buy my first multi million gold item.
But now you're at the mercy of RNG. The crafting system is something I didn't think about earlier in this thread, and that may have some cool mechanics that help with my problem. I play these games to create characters that are fun to play. I like making decisions and designing characters. I hope RoS turns out to be great and have some meaningful decisions, but I just don't see it yet.
A major issue I have with that is that you can't decide what you want to be. You're at the mercy of what legendaries you find.
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
I don't understand the problem, because the last two quoted sentences you used mean the exact same thing. You make it seem like the latter is different or better, but it equals "Ok I want to play X, and I need Y gear for it". That's the same as "Ok I have Y gear, and that means I can make the most out of X builds".
Personally I love being 'at the mercy' of what legendaries drop. There's absolutely builds I want to try, but I know it might take awhile for me to find the gear, and that's awesome, it's a long term goal. If we had, for example, the AH still running and no BoA, it would turn back into "Why wait for the drop, I'll just buy all the gear I need", and that just feels lame.
I dont know, I never had a problem with the AH. RMAH yes, AH no. To buy a great item on the AH, you still needed to have the gold which was no easy task. You had to farm for it and sell an item of equal value to the one you actually wanted, or a bunch that would add up to it. I had a very good feeling of satisfaction when I was able to buy my first multi million gold item.
But now you're at the mercy of RNG. The crafting system is something I didn't think about earlier in this thread, and that may have some cool mechanics that help with my problem. I play these games to create characters that are fun to play. I like making decisions and designing characters. I hope RoS turns out to be great and have some meaningful decisions, but I just don't see it yet.
I can see where you're coming from although I definitely like to believe that RoS will better in the way gear is earned rather than bought. Sure you do get satisfaction when you earn X amount of gold to buy a particular item of the AH, but I think that's the kind of gameplay the devs don't want the game to be primarily focused on. Farming gold to buy gear.
While there is a level of satisfaction in gaining gear in either of the ways (farming for it or farming for the gold to buy it) I think you'll find a lot more people are after the self-found way of earning gear.
I'm not attacking your or anything but looking at your posts you seem to be all for working the auction house rather than grinding for you gear, very much like a path of least resistance kind of deal. This would explain why you're not looking forward to RoS. You're not alone though, there's heaps of other players not planning on buying RoS for the same reason. They either can't make money off the game or don't want to play the way Diablo is meant to be played.
EDIT: I keep adding crap to my post, okay I'm done now.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
I'm actually looking forward to future content patches. We received crafting and ubers which were awesome additions patch wise. So I am eager to see what type of patches RoS will receive down the road.
I hope we see a lot more builds. I think they've done a nice job balancing classes, and hope that spawns more interesting play styles than what we've had for so long. Whether it pans out that way, we'll have to see, but this is what I anticipate the most.
Adventure mode is nice too. And enchanting. Transmog is even kind of nice to have. Crusader looks fresh, but not exactly dying to play him. Too biased toward Wizard.
What I look forward to the most, is that I can finally play the game to get nice loot. Instead of playing the AH or be super lucky. More build diversity, especially when you consider certain legendary effects.
Just curious what you guys are looking forward to the most.
New class and new act are the biggies, but also things like adventure mode and the level cap bump to just generally shake up the game that has given me many hundreds of hours of fantastic entertainment.
A new act that has everything I like in a Diablo game: death, darkness and corpse blankets. Glorious! Loot 2.0 is most excellent as well, I can actually find gear that I won't immediately salvage and legendarys that are actually good with fun/unique properties.
Also, I love the followers, I'm really looking forward to their side quests and new dialogue.
Edit: omg I forgot about transmog. I'm gonna make my DH look so fancy
But again...those are things not reflected by your "damage" number going up or down. Crit Chance procs certain skills, which is why it was nerfed a bit in Paragon Points, but Crit Damage is just damage. And when you look at how a lot of legendaries WILL cause people to make SOME sacrifices in damage for better builds...
I think straight damage builds are going to have a TON of competition.
"We", "Everyone" - Argumentum ad populum. "You people" - Argumentum ad hominem. "Your dumb" - Contractionem absum.
Games like D2 were really fun, but players made it so that things like Meph Runs and Baal Runs and Bloody Runs and Pindle Runs were even a "thing." I'm glad that Adventure Mode makes a formal place where there's 1) randomized objectives, 2) more reasons to explore, 3) farther along tiers of randomization in the form of Rifts for even bigger rewards. Plus they added that nifty feature that resets quests in Campaign Mode, so if anyone particularly wants to run the Campaign over from the beginning, they can. I think that's really cool.
And yeah, the skill balancing has been tremendous. I'm actually having a hard time finding smartly assembled skill combos that don't work to even some small degree. With some more Paragon Points, and Enchanting gear...players have a lot more freedom to customize builds how they want...but without the AH, ya gotta play for it. :-D
Its going to be more a game of "how can i make the most of the gear I found" instead of "what kind of build do i want to play, and what gear do I need for it?"
Your desperate attempts to bash Diablo just show how biased you are. You're simply trying to find stuff to bash about RoS and advertising PoE. Signing up on this website, using a PoE logo as avatar and creating troll threads... 1/10. It's really tiring to argue with people that complain about features that are ONE TO ONE implementations the majority of the D3V playerbase asked for.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Why are you upset that I'm asking D3 fans what they are excited for in the new expansion? I've already learned some things I didn't know about RoS like the changes to elemental damage. Thats what I'm here for.
Anyway, back on topic, I understand wanting to earn your items. Finding an item yourself feels a lot better than buying it off someone else. Still, I think not having the ability to choose the items you need to support your ability/skill choice somewhat defeats the purpose of having so many builds available.
If I find a high lightning damage weapon, I'm going to respec to lightning abilities if it helps me farm faster. I dont really like that concept personally. I would rather plan my character from the start and work towards that end goal, instead of reacting to what items I find to try and make the most of them until I can finally find the complete set of Fire damage gear that i originally hoped for.
I understand that you want to plan your character and have absolute freedom, but Diablo is built to foster long-term enjoyment. Over time, people just get tired searching for new stuff, and soon "cookie cutter builds" emerge. This was the case in all Diablo games so far, btw, and it's something that RoS will limit. You can still choose among many different builds, and you will not be restricted to one particular build just because of some legendaries. However, there might be builds that you can't access (or at least can't play on higher difficulty levels) unless you've earned them by finding the legendary. This is what builds up the long-term enjoyment. For me personally this works better than knowing "I have to kill Baal 500 more times to get to my desired end-game build". It's one of the many reasons why I think even D2 was worse than D3 in that regard; there was no shortcut to your "game plan".
I'm not trying to derail your thread, I'm trying to tell you why for me this exact feature that you dislike is something I'm very excited about. (Besides that, I'm really excited about many things in RoS - the new gameplay feels absolutely smooth, rifts are amazing because you'll never play the exact same rift twice, gambling is back, enchanting is a perfect addition, and BoA is something that - in my opinion, after playing the beta - will ensure at least my long-term motivation).
I don't understand the problem, because the last two quoted sentences you used mean the exact same thing. You make it seem like the latter is different or better, but it equals "Ok I want to play X, and I need Y gear for it". That's the same as "Ok I have Y gear, and that means I can make the most out of X builds".
Personally I love being 'at the mercy' of what legendaries drop. There's absolutely builds I want to try, but I know it might take awhile for me to find the gear, and that's awesome, it's a long term goal. If we had, for example, the AH still running and no BoA, it would turn back into "Why wait for the drop, I'll just buy all the gear I need", and that just feels lame.
But now you're at the mercy of RNG. The crafting system is something I didn't think about earlier in this thread, and that may have some cool mechanics that help with my problem. I play these games to create characters that are fun to play. I like making decisions and designing characters. I hope RoS turns out to be great and have some meaningful decisions, but I just don't see it yet.
While there is a level of satisfaction in gaining gear in either of the ways (farming for it or farming for the gold to buy it) I think you'll find a lot more people are after the self-found way of earning gear.
I'm not attacking your or anything but looking at your posts you seem to be all for working the auction house rather than grinding for you gear, very much like a path of least resistance kind of deal. This would explain why you're not looking forward to RoS. You're not alone though, there's heaps of other players not planning on buying RoS for the same reason. They either can't make money off the game or don't want to play the way Diablo is meant to be played.
EDIT: I keep adding crap to my post, okay I'm done now.
Bashiok - Blizzard Representative - 08/01/2011 -"So how many skill combinations are there now? Well taking into account 6 active skills, all the rune combinations, and 3 passives we currently expect each class to have roughly 2,285,814,795,264 different build combinations."
"Hey, I thought you'd like the witty irony of grub-on-glowie violence!"
Adventure mode is nice too. And enchanting. Transmog is even kind of nice to have. Crusader looks fresh, but not exactly dying to play him. Too biased toward Wizard.
More build diversity, especially when you consider certain legendary effects.
What seems like much better skill balance (and therefore build diversity).
Interaction between gear and skills leading to players changing builds based on gear they find.
Also, I love the followers, I'm really looking forward to their side quests and new dialogue.
Edit: omg I forgot about transmog. I'm gonna make my DH look so fancy