Just posted my first blog about the beta if anyone wanted to read a little bit about it through the eyes of an extreme D1/D2 veteran. Feel free to shoot me any questions if you have them.
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I've been playing with Snared04Drummer, so I'll add my addendum.
Demon Hunter: Summed up, it lacks DPS and is too resource hungry, a bad combo. It could be really good, but right now it just kinda sucks. I really want to like this class. I tried to make myself feel relevant with bolo, but I really wasn't. Sadly it's that simple, too little dps for too much resource cost.
Monk: I don't know if he can compete with Barb DPS, but I love how he plays. Crippling wave is a great skill, it outshines fist of thunder and exploding palm in the beta. The fact you can generate your own spirit is a huge advantage. Crippling wave is an awesome skill. Great DPS combined with healing, great class. This was one of my favorites from the beginning, and most likely my first class to roll come launch.
Witch Doctor: It gets better as you level. At lower levels he kinda sucks. Once you reach fire bats, he kind of comes into his own. Before that you might find yourself relying on grasp of the dead. As far as mana regen, you don't really have to worry about it at this point. Overall I found the skills awkward to use, especially plague of toads and zombie charger.
I have to agree that dual wielding just isn't as good as a quality 2h weapon. I tried to make it work, but the numbers were against me. So far crafting is awesome.
Witch Doctor: It gets better as you level. At lower levels he kinda sucks. Once you reach fire bats, he kind of comes into his own. Before that you might find yourself relying on grasp of the dead. As far as mana regen, you don't really have to worry about it at this point. Overall I found the skills awkward to use, especially plague of toads and zombie charger.
Quick question regarding the WD (as I was planning on making that my first char): do you feel that the 'akwardness' of the class and the few skills you mentioned would be overcome or even adjusted to after a period of time playinf around and getting used to them or do you think it is actually a restriction or constraint to fight against? Or, even more extreme, is it something that needs to be changed by Blizz?
Also, am I just being a muppet or is there no link to the blog?!
You can polish a turd with enough work, but of all the classes, it felt the least useful from start to finish. The barbarian, wizard, and monk were just awesome from the word "go" especially once you got electrocute with the wizard, and a 2h weapon on the monk and barbarian. Like I said in my "Class Impressions" blog entry, I think it will get better as it goes, but it definitely seems to be the weakest early game class by far, barring some kind of future adjustment to the Demon Hunter.
Witch Doctor: It gets better as you level. At lower levels he kinda sucks. Once you reach fire bats, he kind of comes into his own. Before that you might find yourself relying on grasp of the dead. As far as mana regen, you don't really have to worry about it at this point. Overall I found the skills awkward to use, especially plague of toads and zombie charger.
Quick question regarding the WD (as I was planning on making that my first char): do you feel that the 'akwardness' of the class and the few skills you mentioned would be overcome or even adjusted to after a period of time playinf around and getting used to them or do you think it is actually a restriction or constraint to fight against? Or, even more extreme, is it something that needs to be changed by Blizz?
Also, am I just being a muppet or is there no link to the blog?!
You can polish a turd with enough work, but of all the classes, it felt the least useful from start to finish. The barbarian, wizard, and monk were just awesome from the word "go" especially once you got electrocute with the wizard, and a 2h weapon on the monk and barbarian. Like I said in my "Class Impressions" blog entry, I think it will get better as it goes, but it definitely seems to be the weakest early game class by far, barring some kind of future adjustment to the Demon Hunter.
Weird, from all the streams I've watched, the Monk seems the most dull and boring of all the classes, by FAR. WD seems to be the most versatile and has the most unique builds when you look at the talent calculator.
I was TOTALLY unimpressed with the footage of the Monk and his talent calculator.
I wouldn't worry too much about the WD feeling weak or whatever. This is just one guys opinion. Different strokes for different folks.
Very much enjoyed your play through video. Awesome stuff and love the commentary. Hopefully you can do a DH next.. After the skill changes of course. =D
I'd like to point out that your game volume was a bit too loud, and sometimes I couldn't quite hear what you were saying.
I have to say snare, watching your videos was one of the first where I felt I was watching a Diablo player play. Clicking on every bookshelf, breaking every urn. You can definitely tell the difference and it feels so much better watching someone play D3 the way Diablo is meant to be played. So, thank you.
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I have to say snare, watching your videos was one of the first where I felt I was watching a Diablo player play. Clicking on every bookshelf, breaking every urn. You can definitely tell the difference and it feels so much better watching someone play D3 the way Diablo is meant to be played. So, thank you.
I completely agree with this statement. The videos were probably the most enjoyable I've watched since the Beta started and got me very excited about the game (as if there was any room left for more excitement). Very informative and very pleasant.
You can say and think what you want about the Witch Doctor, I'm just relaying what I've seen and experienced. The skills feel very cumbersome and hard to target with, and don't hit very hard. The zombie dogs are good pets; have decent health and damage, but you can't even see their damage (?). Which is odd because you can see the Templar's damage. Not sure why followers would display that sort of information when your own minions don't.
Plague of toads has pretty much a melee range, and they tend to run around willy nilly rather than aggressively towards an enemy target. Compound that with the fact that they're quite weak and you do the math.
Grasp of the dead does ignorable damage. The slow is nice, but if you're playing coop with a dps class, they'll be dead long before they get to you anyway. And if not, your pets tend to draw aggro anyway, so the slow isn't really that helpful.
Haunt is a very Warlock-like dot, and is a cool mechanic, but suffers from weakness and the fact that while you're casting it, you could be doing a lot more damage with other skills. If it were stronger, it would be great for bosses and large targets.
Zombie "charger" is more of a shambling corpse that falls apart after a couple of seconds, and costs an inordinate amount of damage for how much mana it takes.
Hex could be interesting except the fallen shaman pops out, hexes one enemy, and then sits there until it dissapears. It can hex champions, etc. but you can't really control what it decides to hex (and it can't hex major bosses like the Skelton King), so it's not really an effective or reliable large target skill like the DH's Marked for Death skill is.
Corpse spiders is fun to watch and can be spammed, but they don't do much damage and go away quickly.
Horrify is a good CC mechanic, and will be even better when runed, but is obviously not a DPS skill, and doesn't really help improve that situation for the WD.
Firebats and Firebomb are the only damage skills that I've seen that are worth mentioning. However Firebats is a melee range skill, and puts you in direct line of fire, and eats through mana fairly quickly.
The problem, other than a lack of damage and cumbersome skill mechanics, is that this class is very much presented as a pet/ranged dps class, but doesn't really play that way. Unlike the Wizard, whose weapons are ranged by default, the WD is stuck with daggers, etc. and can't fall back on ranged attacks if he/she is out of mana. To me that's a design issue that needs to be dealt with. Combine that with the fact that half your skills are melee ranged spells, and you come to the conclusion that this class needs some more ranged damage skills, or at least some moderate buffs to the ones it has.
You can be unimpressed with the Monk if you want, but I'll tell you that he actually accomplishes his classes' focus: he can move in and kill large groups of enemies, very quickly.
Witch Doctor sounds perfect by your description then. Like the necromancer, it will rely on pets early to perform as it's innate nuking power will be pathetic. However, as the game progresses you can use a build like: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#VZTYgc!ZYd!ZaZabb to shift your focus off summons into a build that focuses more on raw damage as you build up your follower to tank for you.
In fact, witch doctors look like one of the best scaling classes with all the percentage modifiers it can obtain (20% + 50% + 20% + 120% + whatever atk bonus soul harvest gives you).
You can say and think what you want about the Witch Doctor, I'm just relaying what I've seen and experienced. The skills feel very cumbersome and hard to target with, and don't hit very hard. The zombie dogs are good pets; have decent health and damage, but you can't even see their damage (?). Which is odd because you can see the Templar's damage. Not sure why followers would display that sort of information when your own minions don't.
Plague of toads has pretty much a melee range, and they tend to run around willy nilly rather than aggressively towards an enemy target. Compound that with the fact that they're quite weak and you do the math.
Grasp of the dead does ignorable damage. The slow is nice, but if you're playing coop with a dps class, they'll be dead long before they get to you anyway. And if not, your pets tend to draw aggro anyway, so the slow isn't really that helpful.
Haunt is a very Warlock-like dot, and is a cool mechanic, but suffers from weakness and the fact that while you're casting it, you could be doing a lot more damage with other skills. If it were stronger, it would be great for bosses and large targets.
Zombie "charger" is more of a shambling corpse that falls apart after a couple of seconds, and costs an inordinate amount of damage for how much mana it takes.
Hex could be interesting except the fallen shaman pops out, hexes one enemy, and then sits there until it dissapears. It can hex champions, etc. but you can't really control what it decides to hex (and it can't hex major bosses like the Skelton King), so it's not really an effective or reliable large target skill like the DH's Marked for Death skill is.
Corpse spiders is fun to watch and can be spammed, but they don't do much damage and go away quickly.
Horrify is a good CC mechanic, and will be even better when runed, but is obviously not a DPS skill, and doesn't really help improve that situation for the WD.
Firebats and Firebomb are the only damage skills that I've seen that are worth mentioning. However Firebats is a melee range skill, and puts you in direct line of fire, and eats through mana fairly quickly.
The problem, other than a lack of damage and cumbersome skill mechanics, is that this class is very much presented as a pet/ranged dps class, but doesn't really play that way. Unlike the Wizard, whose weapons are ranged by default, the WD is stuck with daggers, etc. and can't fall back on ranged attacks if he/she is out of mana. To me that's a design issue that needs to be dealt with. Combine that with the fact that half your skills are melee ranged spells, and you come to the conclusion that this class needs some more ranged damage skills, or at least some moderate buffs to the ones it has.
You can be unimpressed with the Monk if you want, but I'll tell you that he actually accomplishes his classes' focus: he can move in and kill large groups of enemies, very quickly.
I was gonna pretty much write this. His skills are awkward overall and the cooldowns suck. Not a fan of the melee range caster play.
In addition to the screenshots of blacksmith recipes added earlier, there is also three new videos of Wizard gameplay, the last of which features some coop action.
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Mod-Edit: to read his "blog" click on his nickname (profile) and go to the "blogs" tab.
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In all seriousness though. Excellent post. Please, keep them coming.
Ha. Bagstone.
Demon Hunter: Summed up, it lacks DPS and is too resource hungry, a bad combo. It could be really good, but right now it just kinda sucks. I really want to like this class. I tried to make myself feel relevant with bolo, but I really wasn't. Sadly it's that simple, too little dps for too much resource cost.
Monk: I don't know if he can compete with Barb DPS, but I love how he plays. Crippling wave is a great skill, it outshines fist of thunder and exploding palm in the beta. The fact you can generate your own spirit is a huge advantage. Crippling wave is an awesome skill. Great DPS combined with healing, great class. This was one of my favorites from the beginning, and most likely my first class to roll come launch.
Witch Doctor: It gets better as you level. At lower levels he kinda sucks. Once you reach fire bats, he kind of comes into his own. Before that you might find yourself relying on grasp of the dead. As far as mana regen, you don't really have to worry about it at this point. Overall I found the skills awkward to use, especially plague of toads and zombie charger.
I have to agree that dual wielding just isn't as good as a quality 2h weapon. I tried to make it work, but the numbers were against me. So far crafting is awesome.
EDIT: That wasn't sarcasm btw. In case it sounded like it.
Ha. Bagstone.
Thanks for your impressions by the way, really well written.
You can polish a turd with enough work, but of all the classes, it felt the least useful from start to finish. The barbarian, wizard, and monk were just awesome from the word "go" especially once you got electrocute with the wizard, and a 2h weapon on the monk and barbarian. Like I said in my "Class Impressions" blog entry, I think it will get better as it goes, but it definitely seems to be the weakest early game class by far, barring some kind of future adjustment to the Demon Hunter.
... and I almost thought he might be the reincarnation of Lois Lane, because he just didn't take the hint, but he fooled us all.
Weird, from all the streams I've watched, the Monk seems the most dull and boring of all the classes, by FAR. WD seems to be the most versatile and has the most unique builds when you look at the talent calculator.
I was TOTALLY unimpressed with the footage of the Monk and his talent calculator.
I wouldn't worry too much about the WD feeling weak or whatever. This is just one guys opinion. Different strokes for different folks.
I'd like to point out that your game volume was a bit too loud, and sometimes I couldn't quite hear what you were saying.
Also, I just added a gallery with EVERY available crafting recipe in the beta. Some good stuff in there, make sure you check it out.
Find any Diablo news? Contact me or anyone else on the News team
Ha. Bagstone.
Plague of toads has pretty much a melee range, and they tend to run around willy nilly rather than aggressively towards an enemy target. Compound that with the fact that they're quite weak and you do the math.
Grasp of the dead does ignorable damage. The slow is nice, but if you're playing coop with a dps class, they'll be dead long before they get to you anyway. And if not, your pets tend to draw aggro anyway, so the slow isn't really that helpful.
Haunt is a very Warlock-like dot, and is a cool mechanic, but suffers from weakness and the fact that while you're casting it, you could be doing a lot more damage with other skills. If it were stronger, it would be great for bosses and large targets.
Zombie "charger" is more of a shambling corpse that falls apart after a couple of seconds, and costs an inordinate amount of damage for how much mana it takes.
Hex could be interesting except the fallen shaman pops out, hexes one enemy, and then sits there until it dissapears. It can hex champions, etc. but you can't really control what it decides to hex (and it can't hex major bosses like the Skelton King), so it's not really an effective or reliable large target skill like the DH's Marked for Death skill is.
Corpse spiders is fun to watch and can be spammed, but they don't do much damage and go away quickly.
Horrify is a good CC mechanic, and will be even better when runed, but is obviously not a DPS skill, and doesn't really help improve that situation for the WD.
Firebats and Firebomb are the only damage skills that I've seen that are worth mentioning. However Firebats is a melee range skill, and puts you in direct line of fire, and eats through mana fairly quickly.
The problem, other than a lack of damage and cumbersome skill mechanics, is that this class is very much presented as a pet/ranged dps class, but doesn't really play that way. Unlike the Wizard, whose weapons are ranged by default, the WD is stuck with daggers, etc. and can't fall back on ranged attacks if he/she is out of mana. To me that's a design issue that needs to be dealt with. Combine that with the fact that half your skills are melee ranged spells, and you come to the conclusion that this class needs some more ranged damage skills, or at least some moderate buffs to the ones it has.
You can be unimpressed with the Monk if you want, but I'll tell you that he actually accomplishes his classes' focus: he can move in and kill large groups of enemies, very quickly.
In fact, witch doctors look like one of the best scaling classes with all the percentage modifiers it can obtain (20% + 50% + 20% + 120% + whatever atk bonus soul harvest gives you).
I was gonna pretty much write this. His skills are awkward overall and the cooldowns suck. Not a fan of the melee range caster play.
I'll just reiterate the monk is the shit.