This is an issue that I haven't seen many people touch on but I've felt this since beta. Does anyone else feel the general skills and runes of d3 are incredibly unexciting as I do? This might be one of my biggest gripes on d3 actually.
I guess this is a bit of a complicated issue for me to explain and put into words but I feel that d3's classes, runes, and skills are very generic and bland. I feel it's difficult to create any kind of a special character, not even going into the itemization and lack of skilltree/stat points and such.
For example, my favorite class on d2 was the Necro. When I compare the necro's skills to the WD I see:
Necro:
-Revive (ressurect monsters to follow you for 3minutes)
-Summon (melee) skeleton warrior
-Summon (ranged) skele mage with a random element attached to his magic
-Summon Golem
(Fire golem: deals fire damage, gets healed from fire magic) (Iron Golem: created from an item) (Blood Golem: Shares hp-leech and damage with you)
And then you can buff your minions with cursing support
Then I look at the Witch Doctor:
-Gargantuan (has 1 interesting rune which enrages him, the rest are just generic aoe dps)
-Zombie Dogs (gotta gimp yourself to get 4. Life link could be interesting but it's only 10%, life leech forces you to go a high dps build to make use of it instead of a defensive build, and by the time you have enough dps you don't need defense) The other 2 runes just dont really seem noticeable, and the health orb one is just lame.
And that's it basically. The only other two things remotely close are summon fetish army which has a massive cooldown and they die very fast, and the summon sycophant skill that has a 5% chance to proc, but it's just gimp.
After this, almost every WD skill is hyper-generic aoe damage with only graphical and mana differences.
Another example is a "poison" WD versus a Poison Necro. There's basically no such thing as a poison status effect for the WD.
I could go on and compare the assassin to the DH etc, but in general I just feel that:
-you are very forced to gimp yourself for no apparent reason in d3 to go a slightly interesting build because of the way the runes and talents are set up
-the skills themselves are not very exciting
-almost every rune of every skill does the same thing
-damage is too inflated and dominant in d3 on all the skills, defensive and supportiveness barely exists or has use
If I were to continue I would talk about items and skill/stat points etc, but there's no point since blizz wrote those out.
I partially feel the addition of a 'filler' left click skill to all classes is to blame or atleast help blame.
The Monk had potential to be awesome, but Jay Wilson designed it to forever live in the Barbarian's shadow. I like my Demon Hunter but I would much rather have the Assassin from D2 replace it. A lot of D3 is copy pasta from WoW, why didn't Wilson add the cool classes from it as well?
The Monk had potential to be awesome, but Jay Wilson designed it to forever live in the Barbarian's shadow. I like my Demon Hunter but I would much rather have the Assassin from D2 replace it. A lot of D3 is copy pasta from WoW, why didn't Wilson add the cool classes from it as well?
Yes unfortunately there are many direct skillports from WoW for example Ignore Pain (shield wall),
Many names were directly copied too
I feel it's too hard to make a character that excels at just a few things very much and has large weaknesses. Runes across the board are all extremely similar. Most of them just add a moderate chance for a small effect, or a minor dps change.
Talents are mostly very badly designed and very limiting in all the wrong ways.
They started off nicely with the wiz and barb being the more interesting of the classes, having some cool skills like leap and slow time,, but they didn't take them and make their skills niche and useful, and then the next 3 classes were utter garbage. I feel it could've been much different.
High CC builds, utility builds, defensive and supportive builds all seem to lack a place in the game. Many skills, runes, and talents and are very very similar and don't add anything to the game at all. I would rate the witch doctor as the most garbage class ever invented.
Elements being meaningful were scratched out from all resist, too.
Builds with things like reflect/thorns or high mobility seem to be very much a joke build with no real point. The only niche is damage. Boss design and not overinflating damage on items and weapons could have changed this.
If the classes are this boring to you, go play WoW or D2...unless you're bored with those games too. If that's the case, go outside and play or somthing.
I disagree that D3 classes are boring. I can't speak for all classes, as I've only actively played two in D3 (wizard and barb), and about 4 in D2 (paladin, barb, necro, and sorc). In both games, I was/am active as casual, but long-time player - I did not or will never belong to the high-end crazy gamers that top any ranking in any of these games (I've been there with WoW and decided it's too much time and I can't call it "entertainment" anymore for me, personally). So my observations might be different to those people who play 24/7 for years and have all classes at level 99/paragon 100.
I remember that in D2 the way to go with a barb was whirlwind. Sure, there were other fancy builds that were possibly and maybe even worked in endgame, but they needed either loads of gear or a specific item or some weird skill setting and lots of practice etc - in the end, all barbs that I leveled up ended up being WW barbs. In D3, this feels different. Due to the game mechanics, my DH friends were happy that I went for a pure tanking barb in the beginning, having an EHP monster with almost no damage. It sort of worked (the only annoying thing is that there's no real aggro mechanics, therefore I switched to stunlock with CMWW wiz). My barb now serves as a playground to test other builds; obviously WW, but also other popular builds as well as fun builds using some of the spells I personally like (ME LIKES TO SMASH!). The flawed item mechanics (with the exception of IAS, almost all required stats are exactly the same for every build) and the fact that there is no skill tree or status points you have to allocate and reset you can just play around and switch your build a lot. All the complaints from many people here come from endgame 24/7 players with hundreds of hours playtime; I can totally understand this, but for my casual barb with only some low-three-digit hours of playtime D3 works more than fine.
My wizard has more playtime on his account, and so had my sorc in D2. I have to say that most spells in D2 felt the same: sure, there was a different element, but in the end it was all about "click" - some lightning/ice/fire bolt goes off - "bam". And of course AoE, where you had a "click" - wait for meteor/blizzard impact - "boom". Some absolutely required spells along the way (Warmth), some spells that were requirements in the skill tree but useless and a waste of points, so you gimped your gameplay for a few days just to have more skill points for Blizzard... don't get me wrong. The game was fun, and if D2 had a working high-res patch, I would still play the hell out of it even today. But in D3, Blizzard did exactly what they said they wanted to do: make all skills feel unique. I mean, the way Disintegrate, Arcane Orb, or Electrocute work, the way they feel is totally different. I can only "blame" them for the fact that two of their skills became way too powerful (Archon and CM), making them a "requirement" to the game, and that the armor skills are poorly designed. Even though I love Archon and my friends love CMWW stunlock, I would be totally fine if these two skills would be nerfed - because then the other 3 billion combinations of (yes, it's that many) spells and runes could become viable alternatives for wizard gameplay. I also don't get why you can get total damage reduction by only one spell+rune (Energy Armor and Prismatic Armor), why not make each of the Armor spells have a EHP part as main effect (armor, allres, life for Energy, Storm, Ice Armor) and the rune gives a nice bonus effect (damage, movement speed, whatever). Right now it's all about maxing out damage and efficiency, therefore you either go Archon or you have fun and try out the other 3 billion builds.
TL;DR: nerf the overpowered spells and, despite the shitstorm, the game would blow many people's minds.
I seriously believe D3 is halfway on the road to become a game with many classes that all feel very un-boring. But it's a bumpy road... and many (rightfully) curse the way. We don't even know when we're getting there. But I don't think simply going back to D2 will ever get us there.
Right now it's all about maxing out damage and efficiency, therefore you either go Archon or you have fun and try out the other 3 billion builds.
No offense, I normally dont take ppl serious that say this, they're usually simpletons that get bedazzled by number combinations with slightly altered graphics from the blizz team. There are a select few things that cause real variation amongst builds, and no matter how many numbers you throw at them, they don't change. Blizzard did not do great with them.
Barb and wizard are okay classes, not amazing but playable and somewhat fun.
Monk and WD are atrocious to play, it's hard to even log on to them. Don't know how anyone stands it.
Never played DH but it seems like it's between the two.
Afaik, the number doesn't come from Blizzard but was mentioned in a D3 fan blog, along with their own calculation, so I assumed it's not coming from Blizzard.
Anyways: Of course there aren't 3 billion *useful* combinations, but there are certainly more than 2, once they fix the imbalance of some spells and make other neglected spells more viable. It's by the way what they're doing for 15 years now, every patch tries to nerf overpowered or buff underpowered spells (in WoW or D2) to some extent.
Afaik, the number doesn't come from Blizzard but was mentioned in a D3 fan blog, along with their own calculation, so I assumed it's not coming from Blizzard.
Anyways: Of course there aren't 3 billion *useful* combinations, but there are certainly more than 2, once they fix the imbalance of some spells and make other neglected spells more viable. It's by the way what they're doing for 15 years now, every patch tries to nerf overpowered or buff underpowered spells (in WoW or D2) to some extent.
Ah, there's a huge problem here and it's the illusion of combinations.
Whenever you need a guide on creating strong variety and flavor in games, just look no further than Dota 2 or League of Legends style MOBA games.
The key is to create a limited number of choices in skills, but a high variety of situations and complexity.
For example if I was forced between taking a healing skill and a passive skill which reduced damage, I would call this two different skill builds. If I encountered a boss that silenced me, or drained my mana, I might rather have the passive skill that reduced damage. If there was a boss that only dealt huge, one shotting attacks, I might abandon both the heal and the passive and take a damage skill.
I call this variety.
The problem in diablo 3 is that there are too many generic damaging abilities, but many of them cannot be used at the same time. Other skills have too large of a CD or are only useful when coupled with passives that gimp a build too much. Many skills have stuns which are not useful in PvE, and some other strange skills which have no purpose in the game. Again, adding this to bad mechanic designs like armor reducing all types of damage, or all resist being a stat, or elemental damage having no place in the game, or being able to dodge spells.. you've got a bad game there.
Furthermore, many classes have large staples that need to be taken, like huge self-buffs and big cooldowns.
No one ever said dota 2 or League of Legends said "there's not enough variety in these heroes" or "these heroes are too permanent, I need to be able to swap skills on the fly."
It's about layers of permanence and limits, and skills that have their place and use. That's how enjoyable classes and characters are made.
If the classes are this boring to you, go play WoW or D2...unless you're bored with those games too. If that's the case, go outside and play or somthing.
how about shut up
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If the classes are this boring to you, go play WoW or D2...unless you're bored with those games too. If that's the case, go outside and play or somthing.
To quote Darth Vader,
"You are a part of the RMAH Alliance and a traitor! Take her away!"
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I guess this is a bit of a complicated issue for me to explain and put into words but I feel that d3's classes, runes, and skills are very generic and bland. I feel it's difficult to create any kind of a special character, not even going into the itemization and lack of skilltree/stat points and such.
For example, my favorite class on d2 was the Necro. When I compare the necro's skills to the WD I see:
Necro:
-Revive (ressurect monsters to follow you for 3minutes)
-Summon (melee) skeleton warrior
-Summon (ranged) skele mage with a random element attached to his magic
-Summon Golem
(Fire golem: deals fire damage, gets healed from fire magic) (Iron Golem: created from an item) (Blood Golem: Shares hp-leech and damage with you)
And then you can buff your minions with cursing support
Then I look at the Witch Doctor:
-Gargantuan (has 1 interesting rune which enrages him, the rest are just generic aoe dps)
-Zombie Dogs (gotta gimp yourself to get 4. Life link could be interesting but it's only 10%, life leech forces you to go a high dps build to make use of it instead of a defensive build, and by the time you have enough dps you don't need defense) The other 2 runes just dont really seem noticeable, and the health orb one is just lame.
And that's it basically. The only other two things remotely close are summon fetish army which has a massive cooldown and they die very fast, and the summon sycophant skill that has a 5% chance to proc, but it's just gimp.
After this, almost every WD skill is hyper-generic aoe damage with only graphical and mana differences.
Another example is a "poison" WD versus a Poison Necro. There's basically no such thing as a poison status effect for the WD.
I could go on and compare the assassin to the DH etc, but in general I just feel that:
-you are very forced to gimp yourself for no apparent reason in d3 to go a slightly interesting build because of the way the runes and talents are set up
-the skills themselves are not very exciting
-almost every rune of every skill does the same thing
-damage is too inflated and dominant in d3 on all the skills, defensive and supportiveness barely exists or has use
If I were to continue I would talk about items and skill/stat points etc, but there's no point since blizz wrote those out.
I partially feel the addition of a 'filler' left click skill to all classes is to blame or atleast help blame.
Yes unfortunately there are many direct skillports from WoW for example Ignore Pain (shield wall),
Many names were directly copied too
I feel it's too hard to make a character that excels at just a few things very much and has large weaknesses. Runes across the board are all extremely similar. Most of them just add a moderate chance for a small effect, or a minor dps change.
Talents are mostly very badly designed and very limiting in all the wrong ways.
They started off nicely with the wiz and barb being the more interesting of the classes, having some cool skills like leap and slow time,, but they didn't take them and make their skills niche and useful, and then the next 3 classes were utter garbage. I feel it could've been much different.
High CC builds, utility builds, defensive and supportive builds all seem to lack a place in the game. Many skills, runes, and talents and are very very similar and don't add anything to the game at all. I would rate the witch doctor as the most garbage class ever invented.
Elements being meaningful were scratched out from all resist, too.
Builds with things like reflect/thorns or high mobility seem to be very much a joke build with no real point. The only niche is damage. Boss design and not overinflating damage on items and weapons could have changed this.
I remember that in D2 the way to go with a barb was whirlwind. Sure, there were other fancy builds that were possibly and maybe even worked in endgame, but they needed either loads of gear or a specific item or some weird skill setting and lots of practice etc - in the end, all barbs that I leveled up ended up being WW barbs. In D3, this feels different. Due to the game mechanics, my DH friends were happy that I went for a pure tanking barb in the beginning, having an EHP monster with almost no damage. It sort of worked (the only annoying thing is that there's no real aggro mechanics, therefore I switched to stunlock with CMWW wiz). My barb now serves as a playground to test other builds; obviously WW, but also other popular builds as well as fun builds using some of the spells I personally like (ME LIKES TO SMASH!). The flawed item mechanics (with the exception of IAS, almost all required stats are exactly the same for every build) and the fact that there is no skill tree or status points you have to allocate and reset you can just play around and switch your build a lot. All the complaints from many people here come from endgame 24/7 players with hundreds of hours playtime; I can totally understand this, but for my casual barb with only some low-three-digit hours of playtime D3 works more than fine.
My wizard has more playtime on his account, and so had my sorc in D2. I have to say that most spells in D2 felt the same: sure, there was a different element, but in the end it was all about "click" - some lightning/ice/fire bolt goes off - "bam". And of course AoE, where you had a "click" - wait for meteor/blizzard impact - "boom". Some absolutely required spells along the way (Warmth), some spells that were requirements in the skill tree but useless and a waste of points, so you gimped your gameplay for a few days just to have more skill points for Blizzard... don't get me wrong. The game was fun, and if D2 had a working high-res patch, I would still play the hell out of it even today. But in D3, Blizzard did exactly what they said they wanted to do: make all skills feel unique. I mean, the way Disintegrate, Arcane Orb, or Electrocute work, the way they feel is totally different. I can only "blame" them for the fact that two of their skills became way too powerful (Archon and CM), making them a "requirement" to the game, and that the armor skills are poorly designed. Even though I love Archon and my friends love CMWW stunlock, I would be totally fine if these two skills would be nerfed - because then the other 3 billion combinations of (yes, it's that many) spells and runes could become viable alternatives for wizard gameplay. I also don't get why you can get total damage reduction by only one spell+rune (Energy Armor and Prismatic Armor), why not make each of the Armor spells have a EHP part as main effect (armor, allres, life for Energy, Storm, Ice Armor) and the rune gives a nice bonus effect (damage, movement speed, whatever). Right now it's all about maxing out damage and efficiency, therefore you either go Archon or you have fun and try out the other 3 billion builds.
TL;DR: nerf the overpowered spells and, despite the shitstorm, the game would blow many people's minds.
I seriously believe D3 is halfway on the road to become a game with many classes that all feel very un-boring. But it's a bumpy road... and many (rightfully) curse the way. We don't even know when we're getting there. But I don't think simply going back to D2 will ever get us there.
Barb and wizard are okay classes, not amazing but playable and somewhat fun.
Monk and WD are atrocious to play, it's hard to even log on to them. Don't know how anyone stands it.
Never played DH but it seems like it's between the two.
Anyways: Of course there aren't 3 billion *useful* combinations, but there are certainly more than 2, once they fix the imbalance of some spells and make other neglected spells more viable. It's by the way what they're doing for 15 years now, every patch tries to nerf overpowered or buff underpowered spells (in WoW or D2) to some extent.
Ah, there's a huge problem here and it's the illusion of combinations.
Whenever you need a guide on creating strong variety and flavor in games, just look no further than Dota 2 or League of Legends style MOBA games.
The key is to create a limited number of choices in skills, but a high variety of situations and complexity.
For example if I was forced between taking a healing skill and a passive skill which reduced damage, I would call this two different skill builds. If I encountered a boss that silenced me, or drained my mana, I might rather have the passive skill that reduced damage. If there was a boss that only dealt huge, one shotting attacks, I might abandon both the heal and the passive and take a damage skill.
I call this variety.
The problem in diablo 3 is that there are too many generic damaging abilities, but many of them cannot be used at the same time. Other skills have too large of a CD or are only useful when coupled with passives that gimp a build too much. Many skills have stuns which are not useful in PvE, and some other strange skills which have no purpose in the game. Again, adding this to bad mechanic designs like armor reducing all types of damage, or all resist being a stat, or elemental damage having no place in the game, or being able to dodge spells.. you've got a bad game there.
Furthermore, many classes have large staples that need to be taken, like huge self-buffs and big cooldowns.
No one ever said dota 2 or League of Legends said "there's not enough variety in these heroes" or "these heroes are too permanent, I need to be able to swap skills on the fly."
It's about layers of permanence and limits, and skills that have their place and use. That's how enjoyable classes and characters are made.
how about shut up
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
To quote Darth Vader,
"You are a part of the RMAH Alliance and a traitor! Take her away!"