DiabloFans

The Diablo 3 community is full of passionate individuals, from podcasters to video content creators. Let's take a look at some of their recent creations below! If you have a cool piece of Diablo content you'd like to see on the front page, you can submit it here.

 

ZOMBS.io is a free-to-play browser game with zombies and tower defense! You can play it now here.

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Westmarch Workshop

On episode 117 of the Westmarch Workshop, hosts Neinball and Leviathan discuss the new Necromancer changes and items.

 

 

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Crusader Cosplay

Kat over at Valkyrie Studios has shared her Crusader cosplay that she took to Comikaze and BlizzCon last year. The design took her five months to complete, and she spent over 500 hours finishing the nearly 400 individual pieces! You can view her website here and see her recent Reddit post on the cosplay here.

 

 

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Rhykker Unity Fail

 Rhykker has once again graced us with a clip of a forgotten ring. One that resulted in his death!

 

 

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Bluddshed Set Dungeon Locations

In this video, Bluddshed shares the locations of all four Necromancer Set dungeons.

 

 

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Bigdaddyden76 Necromancer Legendary Items Showcase

Join Bigdaddyden76 as he takes a look at the new Necromancer legendaries.

 

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Brad is a freelance writer and capture artist who has loved video games since his first console at the age of five. He has since been at the forefront of managing npc population growth, simply from his love of sweet pixely loot.

Necromancer Q&A - Live Updates

Today, starting at 4:00 pm PDT, Senior Game Designer Travis Day and Lead VFX Artist Julian Love will be participating in a live developer Q&A. You can watch the Q&A below, and we'll also be updating this post throughout the broadcast.

 

 

• The Necromancer Q&A is now starting!
• Two character slots, two stash tabs, a pennant, banner, pet, wings, and a portrait frame will be included with the Necromancer pack. 
• There will be four class sets and set dungeons.
• The majority of the Necro kit will be physical, with two other minor damage types- Cold and Poison.
• There wasn't much debate internally about the execution mechanic - they feel it's similar to just having another skill that does more damage. 
• The sets will be as open ended as possible; the pet set was kind of the exception, but pets are one of the core fantasy roles of the Necromancer.
• The saint set focuses more on the Meleemancer playstyle.
• Xbox and PC will not share the Necromancer DLC. You will need to purchase both separately.
• The team went back and looked at D2 for curses, but also wanted interesting choices rather than just having a bunch that just increase damage in slightly different ways.
• The team didn't necessarily want to make a thorns build with a set built around it, but decided to add little ways to hook into that playstyle if players wanted it.
• Resource Cost Reduction will not affect health for Necromancers. They were close to making that change, but it was too risky considering all the extra legendary item interactions that would be affected.   
• There are currently no items that increase timers for pets or that will increase the caps. However, there are items coming up that will allow you to more quickly reach that cap or to further buff the pets.
• Plague set has some really powerful legendary items on the way. Major synergy coming next week.
• The team didn't go into designing the Necromancer with 2-3-4 person rifts in mind. They just went with what you would expect to find from the Necromancer: curses, pets, blood, and bone! They want it to be flexible. 
• Travis Day has kept a close eye in particular on streamers in higher GRs. The team noticed that Necromancers are squishy at these levels, but have some more legendary items on the way, along with small skill changes, including Bone Armor.
• Blood is Power is going to be redesigned. Players broke the skill, allowing invincibility and massive damage output. It will maintain the same theme however, just in a less broken and abusable way. The Bone Armor - Invulnerability rune allowing you to become invincible will also be fixed, making the CD start after the skill ends.
• Decay Golem currently has no plan to have a tracker on how many corpses he consumes.
• Necromancers will have scythes and phylacteries, but no unique armor piece.
• Necromancer sets won't have seven or more pieces. Sets are meant to feel powerful on their own, and when you combine them, they just blur together.
• Internally, automatically regenerating essence caused gameplay to break down, and it didn't feel great. They just decided to make the generator skills more efficient.
• Next Tuesday, all of the new legendary items should be available to play with.
• The Blood set will be tweaked, and they're going to make healing mechanics not drain the stacks as quickly. It should just end up with more healing overall and maintain the ebb-and-flow playstyle.
• All of the two minute cooldown skills will be made to feel really powerful, but they wanted to leave it open at the moment just to see how they all interact with sets and legendary items.
• There are 1,100+ monsters in the game right now, and it was one of the challenges to making Revive work.
• While it would be interesting to revive your allies, there are no current plans to implement it.
• There will be no Iron Golem from D2. It would have been a big challenge, taken player interaction away from gameplay, and have players focused on items. It just didn't feel like a good fit.
• Necromancers have white hair, and it's explained by lore. It will be in other media somewhere down the road.
• For some classes, the damage type is the fantasy, but for the Necromancer, they didn't feel like Poison was a core theme. Putting Poison on a dagger and stabbing enemies one by one just didn't feel cool.
• Instead they felt blood and bone, as well as curses and pets, felt more appropriate. They also wanted to differentiate the Necromancer from the Witch Doctor. They design around chasing the fantasy first.
• Rewards for set dungeons will be two pennants. The Necromancer won't interact with old achievements for set dungeons. You won't have to complete Necromancer dungeons for the wings. 

Necromancer Developer Q&A

 An upcoming Q&A was announced for this Wednesday, May 3.

 

Originally posted by Blizzard (Official Forums)

Join us live on Wednesday, May 3, at 4:00 p.m. PDT as we sit down with Senior Game Designer Travis Day and Lead VFX Artist Julian Love for our next live developer Q&A. You can tune in live at:

• Facebook
• Twitch

Got a question? Submit it by posting in this forum thread or tweeting at us using the hashtag #D3QA.

In order for us to get to as many questions as possible, we ask that you keep your questions short (no longer than 50 words). ((And don't ask for a beta key; we'll be moderating appropriately for spam. You've been warned.))

Edit: Adding in this information as posted below.

We're not ready to announce price or date information. Instead, please focus on questions about the Necromancer class, its mechanics, or the development process behind it. We'd love to talk about philosophy and iteration, because there's a lot more we can share in that regard.

Thanks, and we hope to see you Wednesday, May 3 at 4:00 p.m. PDT!

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Necromancer Fail

In this clip, Rhykker shows us an unintended skill interaction on his part. As it turns out, the Necromancer sometimes decides he just doesn't want his health anymore.

 

 

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Westmarch Workshop

On episode 116 of the Westmarch Workshop, hosts Neinball and Leviathan go over many of the new and revamped Necromancer changes!

 

 

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Seasonal GR 117 Clear

Reddit user Turgor and party cleared a seasonal GR 117 using a support Barbarian and Monk along with an impale Demon Hunter and a firebat Witch Doctor. Congratulations to them! You can check out the Twitch VOD below or see the Reddit thread here.

 

 

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Necromancer Item Insight

The awesome Nevalistis popped over to Reddit to give a little bit of insight into the Necromancer's potential items.

  

Originally posted by Blizzard (Diablo Subreddit)

Are there any plans for an item that increases the raw amount of summons that the Necromancer can possess?

I can’t say there isn’t; I’ve actually not seen the planned set of Legendary powers myself, as they aren’t fully implemented into the game and we usually see game changes after they’ve been fully committed.

However, I do know we’re using Witch Doctor summons as a basis for comparison, because we did a ton of testing and optimization around the Witch Doctor to figure out just how many pets run well in Diablo III. That makes it a good baseline to ensure we keep the game in a playable state for both us and for our players (especially when you start looking at games with three other Summon-mancers, or a mix of Witch Doctors and Necros).

 

Necromancer OP Beta Damage

With PTR Patch 2.6.0 going live last week, many players received Necromancer Beta access and got some long-awaited play time with the upcoming class. While we're still waiting to see how legendaries and sets will impact the the Necromancer, the community is currently vibrant with Necro-related discussions. One of the biggest talking points has been the crazy amount of damage that the Necros are capable of inflicting.

 

As seen in a recent Reddit post, the Necromancer is a bit OP right now. The Twitch clips below from Quin69 shows Hamelin and Agnidox being absolutely incinerated.

 

 

We've seen several streamers and content creators encounter these massive damage spikes. Revealed in this tweet, Leviathan stated that his Necromancer's Frailty skill is what was inflicting the massive damage occasionally appearing on screen. You can view his initial reaction to the damage in the clip below. Additionally, Bludshedd eliminated a Rift Guardian in an insanely short time. You can view the kill in the second clip below.

 

 

 

Update: 58 Quadrillion

Desolacer was able to inflict approximately 58 quadrillion damage on stream. You can view the damage in the first second of the Twitch clip below.

 

 

Blizzard's Response

Blizzard did end up responding on Reddit, reminding players that not all of the tech and balancing is in the Beta right now. 

 

Originally posted by Blizzard (Diablo Subreddit)

There are a few things that could be happening here, but the culprit is most likely Revive (though I imagine Frailty (Scent of Blood) is also playing a part here).

The reason why, and this information is available to all Beta Testers in our private forums, is because Revive is legitimately broken at the moment. Revive is a beastly skill from a technical standpoint, and not all the tech required to make it work (and more importantly, actively balance it) is in the Beta yet. So while we're happy folks are having fun with Revive, testing or comparing the balance of the Necromancer class around it doesn't help us very much right now.

Just, you know, clarification here.

 

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Gearing Quickly for Season 10

Are you just now jumping into the new season? Do you have friends that are interested in jumping back into the game? Frequ has created a guide for gearing quickly and efficiently for Season 10, and it's a great read for those looking to jump start their season experience.