Weapons, Pick Your Poison



With the next installment of Diablo, comes a whole new host of weapons. Weapons to stab, weapons to bludgeon, weapons to cut, and weapons to pierce. Back in Diablo II, we had all of the above. But, you were often limited in your choice of weapons.

Rarely would you see a DiabloWiki.com - Necromancer Necromancer wielding a maul, and even more uncommon would be a Barbarian sending arrows towards his foes. Often, character classes were restricted to two, sometimes three weapon types that really worked for them. You could experiment, sure, but would often fall short of what was possible when using the "preferred weapons."

Luckily, this seems to be changing with Diablo III, as indicated by a recent post by Bashiok.


Official Blizzard Quote:



I talked to Jay a bit more about weapon restrictions last Friday and there are actually going to be some changes over all the classes to increase the weapon types usable by each by a small bit. Reason being that it looks like we probably have the bandwidth to handle it, and people just really like being able to use a lot of different weapon types to experiment with. One example he gave of an addition people were asking for (and someone here mentioned) was 2h swords for wizards, which is planned to be added now. Work hasn't really begun on these changes so its not set in stone, but it's likely this will affect the monk most substantially.


While this does mean that characters will have an increased amount of weapons to play around with, it means nothing since we have no idea what to base this on. We do not know the current amount of weapons each character can use, which makes guesswork and speculation very inaccurate.

Which, is why the first post by Bashiok on this matter must be taken into consideration, to provide insight. While it does only talk about the monk, we can compare this to the other character by looking at the wording used. Attention should be directed to the parts I have bolded.


Official Blizzard Quote:



Currently our list of weapons the monk class can use is one handed swords, polearms, combat staves, and fist weapons. That could potentially change, but its probably pretty likely those will be the weapons the monk can equip.

The flavor of the monk we're working on now is a very strong connection between a small and focused group of weapon types, and the skills that use them.

So, if this means that 4 categories of weapons constitutes a "small and focused" description, then what does this mean for the other characters?

I can easily see the others being able to use 6-8 weapon types each. This is because obviously, it would not be described as "small" if it were not for some pre-existing norm to base this on. Thus, we can reason out that this is considered small because the other characters are able to utilize a much larger range of weaponry.

However, this also raises the question of how effective these weapons will be. Sure, in Diablo II, a DiabloWiki.com - Sorceress Sorceress could use a Scythe, but did it actually work well? Rarely.

While a larger range of weaponry will be great for aesthetics and customization, it will mean nothing if said weaponry does not add anything to our current build. For example, I do not want to equip a 2H sword on my wizard (Which, is possible now) just to say that it's different. I actually want it to do something for my class, and not just serve as eye candy, and to set me apart.

With some additional speculation based on this....


Official Blizzard Quote:




Which isn't to say everyone can use everything, there are still some fairly specific restrictions. Most restrictions with this new plan would be for 'flavor' reasons. Wands will probably be wizard only because they're very 'magicy' feeling, and their projectile component is somewhat unique. Wizards probably won't be lugging around 2h maces because it just doesn't feel like they should be smashy-smashy characters. etc.

... we can assume that since such restrictions will be placed, that the weaponry that is left open to a character class, will actually be able to benefit said class.

It would be odd for Blizzard to give us the ability to equip a certain weapon type with a character, without actually giving us any incentive to do so. Which, makes me think that we may be seeing more generic skill bonus items, instead of the class specific items we had back in Diablo II, or the wands for Necromancers, Staves for Sorceresses, ect.

So, even though it's a lot of speculation, it does have sound logic backing it, and I can definitely see most weapons having skill bonuses for the characters that can use them. Of course, this would mean two-handers with wizard skills.

So, ditch that staff and hoist your claymore, all the cool kids are doing it.

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