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I think it's a great idea. Some people think making D3 "easier" makes it less fun. All this does is make understanding the inner workings of the game easier, not the game itself. I see no reason why making wizards use attack power should be something to get angry about.

In WoW I was one of those min/max people, always doing all this math crap on every little thing, which I loved to do... but when I was playing the Diablo III beta and looked at the character sheet and saw how simple everything seemed to be, it made me happy. I guess to me it felt the game made more sense without me having to figure everything out, which makes it feel more fun to me. It's straightforward, and I like it. I guess I've seen what a mess WoW has become having to balance a thousand stats on a character in that game.

I like the new system though, and how on your character sheet the DPS number takes into account all your attributes - attack, crit, crit damage bonus, etc.

And I completely agree with MCMXCIX, making it clearer how the game actually works makes it more fun. Or else you're spending all your time trying to figure out numbers, and less time out killing stuff!

I like it. Less time crunching numbers and more time killing monsters is nothing but a good thing.

So will orbs and wands have increased attack damage? Rather than puny specs? or will there be something to make up for their lower attack damage - like faster cast rate? Either way, their vital stats will probably need to pumped a bit to make them viable - as in, attack might need to only have a few points less than a sword, and then a faster cast rate to even it out.
I think that is what I have been hearing - that cast rate is the main value of orbs and wands/staffs....but like I say - the attack damage will need to be upped cos starve's are generally puny weapons where even in Act 3 of D2 if you hit something you are doing like 5 damage heh
I think the issue is that most of us can't make any serious criticisms because we haven't played yet!!

Quote from maka

I couldn't disagree more. With everything. But since any negative opinion is apparently "crying", I'll refrain from giving out more details.

Maka: I didn't mean for that statement to be negative, and now that I look at it it could have been phrased better. You can remove QQ from that sentence and that's what I meant.

Anyway, I'd love to hear your argument.

Quote from fluffylittlebunny

So will orbs and wands have increased attack damage? Rather than puny specs? or will there be something to make up for their lower attack damage - like faster cast rate? Either way, their vital stats will probably need to pumped a bit to make them viable - as in, attack might need to only have a few points less than a sword, and then a faster cast rate to even it out.
I think that is what I have been hearing - that cast rate is the main value of orbs and wands/staffs....but like I say - the attack damage will need to be upped cos starve's are generally puny weapons where even in Act 3 of D2 if you hit something you are doing like 5 damage heh
I think the issue is that most of us can't make any serious criticisms because we haven't played yet!!

Orbs are offhand, so they aren't weapons. They just have a bunch of killer mods on them. Wands don't have increased damage (I don't think), but they do allow for much higher FCR, like you said. FCR is determined by weapon speed now, just like spell damage is determined by weapon damage.

So I love this change to patch 5. It made playing the wizard and witch doctor so much more awesome for me! Also, blizzard was telling the truth about having a single handed weapon along with an off hand orb/voodoo doll is much better than carrying a big two handed weapon. I found that a crafted wand and a rare orb did by far the most DPS and the added attributes from the orb (ie plus damage, +1 to all attributes, +9% magic find, +8 from health orbs) really makes it more worth while than just for the DPS. Loving the change. I always felt put out in D2 when I'd find a sweet weapon and the only thing that mattered was if it was going to increase a certain skills points. This is good.

Ok yes, but after playing the patch, I can say that I'm more than a little weirded out when I find myself throwing on a javelin to make my sorc better... it's just strange. I liked that they had their own specific weapons, aka wands, that were good for them. Now, I can totally see situations similar to Diablo II vanilla where classes just used the weapons with the correct mods on them. Obviously for different reasons, but with the same result.

good write up

Honestly, I think it more of a case of not wanting to create another delay.

I sure as hell know that even if I was in beta, I wouldnt point out anything that I thought was going to create a delay. Simple put, Im tired of waiting. Tired of going over the skills on paper and have stopped with that until I get the final copy in my hands. I could care less if every single class only used ATT as the only stat in game as long I get to play it before the end of this decade.

what concerns me is that i don't get why skills would work this way (in the game world), and that makes it sound really un-diablo-like to me. why does this belong in the diablo universe all of a sudden? maybe i'll play it and they'll have figured out some way to make it seem natural and appropriate, but i've gotta say i'm worried. maybe it's just me, but i don't care if the game has a simple and scaleable skill system anywhere near as much as i care about the whole thing feeling like a diablo game. i know they've tried to have the same philosophy, but there are a few things about their approach that have me a little concerned and this is among them.

I take Battlefield 3 as an example, its got many issues, little bugs, but its a great amount of fun too. Its playable no question. We know there will be things that are going to be fixed and patched along the way.

If Diablo 3 has little problems that need balancing, Im sure they could be done after release. So, if blizz is happy with the current system, Im happy. Can patch later if need be.

The above image sums this whole issue up quite simply.

Honestly I think a Witch-doctor wielding a giant battle axe or poleaxe might look quite BA.

I wouldn't go so far to say there has been no QQing over the subject. A few people here and there haven't seemed entirely happy about this entire affair, mako included.

Personally, I feel it adds cohesion to the classes. In D2 and some other games, physical and spellcaster classes feel disjointed, almost as if they form part from a separate game altogether. The worst part is that sometimes it means that one will function better than the other.

Sure, some might say that it adds diversity, but I'd disagree. I see it as poor choice for developers to create separate systems just to make classes feel different. Blizzard has made an attempt here to build classes that function diversely all on their own merits without resorting to an divergent mess, MF is a good example thereof.

Yeah, some will disagree with me, saying that all classes are the same now, or that Blizzard is unimaginative for not finding a better solution. No, this is the best solution, working from the same system, an item driven system, is still a very Diablo system. Class skills and gameplay set them apart, not how you use their items. Besides, if Blizzard pulls this off just right, it would mean orbs are comparable and in some cases more desirable than melee items, which would still make the popular melee wizard build viable and practical.
Good job Blizzard.

Personally, at first I was a little put off by the change, since it really didn't make sense for the witch doctor and wizard. After the knee-jerk reaction though, I'm starting to like it. It means your caster classes won't be "forced" to use the standard caster type weapons, and you can branch out and use something a bit more unorthodox.

As far as stat balancing goes, I agree that a lot of games seem to be really different between caster and melee stats. Vanilla WoW was pretty bad, especially at lower levels, with almost nothing aside from spell rank and talents contributing to caster damage; you almost never saw anything with +spell damage, +crit, etc until Molten Core. Even after vanilla though, things were still different until they changed Int to give spell power (before Cataclysm, Strength or Agility were key stats for melee, while the Intelligence stat was nothing but a slightly bigger mana pool and a little crit for casters, not something that increased damage by very much). League of Legends also has this problem, with physical classes/builds getting attack damage, attack speed, crit, life leech, and cooldown reduction, while ability power classes/builds getting ability power, cooldown reduction, and sometimes mana/mana regen, if they actually used mana.

Quote from Sethala

unorthodox.

There is little that be considered unorthodox or special when everything becomes too homogeneous.

I've seen a stream (WD or Wiz from H1pnotiQ if memory serves) where you could clearly see how a more powerful weapon actually was way less effective than a weaker but faster one.

And just looking at the tooltip of the skill while swapping weapon clearly showed the difference.

I liked it a lot.

Yes, we all are accustomed to the idea that a wizard wield staves and not a huge two handed hammer but I trust Blizzard is making both viable.

edit: almost forgot: thanks CherubDown, nice writeup!

I truly believe that there is room in the vast world of Diablo for magical axes and high damage staves, hopefully Blizzard does not rule out the possibilities for such weapons. One of the most important aspects of a game to most players is the ability to feel unique. The developers seem to have done right in this department with this new style of skill and talent allocation but I really hope they don't overlook the ideas that maybe there are some players who want their Wizard to wield a 2h sword and look like a samurai or maybe name their Barbarian Donatello, dye his armor green and wield a staff... Options like these will allow for a more diverse and interesting community.


Btw, Monks with daggers = Ninjas

There's nothing stopping Blizzard from limiting casters to only wands/staffs. They are letting us wield additional weapon types because there's technically no harm in it. For those who don't like this change, you are free to refuse to use melee weapons for your RP (or whatever) reasons.

hm... The attack power change is good.

But,

I still find it strange for a caster to be wielding an axe though. hehe. (Is it strange to think that different classes should have different weapons? @.@)

I am guessing that eventually they will limit people to using items for their own class, eventually.

Why?

No good reason really. Just a hunch.

-ZTZaorish