Itemization Changes, Blue Posts, Sword of Justice Interview, Jay Wilson Speaks to Korea

UPDATE: Bashiok on patch 10.


Official Blizzard Quote:



is tomorrow still looking good for #Diablo3 Patch 10?
Depends on how testing goes today.



Itemization Reduced?
With the recent announcement of the system changes, a couple of users have voiced some concern with the changes to the core attributes. Many worry about the amount of itemization being reduced by the attributes affecting different stats now. Bashiok has commented to help further explain the ideology behind these changes and how the itemization is not reduced at all.


Official Blizzard Quote:



Core attributes are important. They're your core attributes! But they have never been and continue not to be the primary driving force behind your itemization choices. At all times you're going to need to keep doing and avoiding more damage. Enemies get tougher, they hit harder, and take more hits. No matter who you are you have to counter those inevitable truths. No character would ever say "I can ignore defensive stats because I am a glass cannon!" no, you get to Inferno and you'll die. You can be a glass cannon, but it's going to be a balance between offense and defense, not an all-in decision. There is an inevitable requirement to have a variety of the core stats, offensive and defensive. It's the balance that's important.

Ok, so, core stats are super great, but they're still just four of all the bonuses that items can roll and provide your character. Four. And for most builds they're never going to be where you're focusing your attention. The other things that can roll up (which still include +armor, +dodge, +health globe, +crit chance, +crit damage, by the way) have always been the more important decision. It's your choice between doing more damage or being more defensive, but that's a forgone conclusion. That's not where true build diversity ever comes from, it's too broad a plateau.

Are you taking Attack (before) or your classes' core damage stat (now)? Are you taking Armor (now) or Defense (before)? Are you taking Precision (before) or +crit (now)? These are the same things.

For example, a Barbarian gets both "resist-all" armor and Attack-like damage from "Strength", so why would he ever choose Dexterity's dodge over that?

Barbarian's will always want Strength now just like they always wanted Attack before. Armor is a damage reduction. Dodge completely negates damage. They're extremely different in practice and your survivability, and at high difficulty play barbarians will absolutely want +dodge. And they don't have to take Dexterity to get it. Ideally a barbarian would find an item with +Stength and +Dodge on it. It would be devalued for the barb if it had +Dexterity on it. (tah dah itemization diversity)

Also, would he truly ever choose to go after a stat that increases health globe benefits, over strength?

Up to that player and their build. Would he ever want crit over flat damage increases? Would he take an increase to the damage of cleave over a crit damage increase? These are the choices you'll have to make and what makes building characters fun.

Now, obviously the class stats are the top priority, but each stat has equal value, simply because it can be used by somebody.

What this guy said.

It's also about item comparison, and that's simply not an issue in the beta. You're not getting enough drops or enough tough decisions to make item comparisons a problem for you.

What was happening for us at high levels is that the stats we had required you to think about the item for at least a couple seconds just to realize it's not a good item for your character. By having a single damage stat now you're focusing on, it reduces the number of failed comparisons that quickly add up at later levels. The tough decisions are still really tough and you'll be comparing items for a long time to try to figure out which one is better, but all of the less meaningful drops take less time to realize that the item is not for you and quickly move on. Again that's something that you just can't get a good sense of in the beta, but Diablo II players should sympathize with what this change does to resolve item comparison headaches.

Now we are going back to the mathematically correct ways of going after core attributes.

I think there may be a confusion that +dodge is tied to Dexterity now. Or +health globe is tied to Intellect. That's not the way it works, those stats are and still roll as their own affixes on items.

Also I sort of misspoke in that this change doesn't really affect build diversity, of course, all the same stats exist for people to stack or do whatever they want with. But it greatly increases item diversity.

You have your reasons for removing stat distribution, but to argue it was to prevent players for sucking in inferno is something I'll never comprehend.

I never said and it's absolutely not to help people "not suck". The same "I don't have enough defense to survive" exists now as it did before. If you're saying that a player would be playing and not realize the numbers on his items going higher was to give him more damage and/or defense then that's just not a valid assessment of what makes a player skilled.

Is there still a +attack affix or is that one actually gone?

Your damage is increased by your core class stat, but there are many other affixes that can improve your damage in various ways. It's the same. When you wanted Attack before you just want your class stat now instead. (Tracker/Official Forums)




Blue Posts

Official Blizzard Quote:



Legendary items in the beta in patch 10
I don't think so. And less magical items actually. We're rebalancing some item distribution rates. (source)

white items(being useless) does that mean there will be a better drop rate for magic items?
I don't think so. And less magical items actually. We're rebalancing some item distribution rates. (source)

With removing the ability to salvage white items what will u do with common scrap.
Common salvaging materials are being removed and crafting recipes are being balanced. (source)

Why Include White Items?
Diablo is about loot explosions. We can't realistically have loot explosions without a bunch of confetti and glitter that makes it all look exciting, but has no value except to make the explosions more satisfying. Gold still did this to a degree, but we were missing the "arrows and bolts" of yesteryear. White items were worth something and we really didn't have any junk we could just throw out with no limit. Now we do. (Blizz Tracker/Official Forums)




IGN Interview with Aaron Williams
IGN recently posted an interview they had with Aaron Williams, author of the Sword of Justice. In case you missed our interview with him, you can check it out here.


IGN Comics: What led you to take on this assignment? Are you a big fan of the games?

Aaron Williams: I have to thank former DC/WildStorm editor Scott Peterson for giving me the opportunity to try my hand at it. We'd worked together before on another comic called North 40, and he'd read some of my indie work on a comic called Nodwick, which is a fantasy spoof. And I'm definitely a fan of the Diablo franchise. Had I known how much my index finger was going to be needed for mousing around in the game, I would have stuck with piano lessons for a few more years.


IGN: How much freedom did you have as far as developing the story? Was it an intentional decision to distance the book from the characters and locales of the games?

Williams: I had quite a lot of freedom, so long as I didn't contradict or run into game content that Diablo III was going to establish. That is, I had to make sure my wizard character, Shanar, used the spells at her disposal in the game, especially in combat. I also had a scene that was going to take place at the Forgotten Tower, but that area is, shall we say, "spoken for" and we didn't want to either spoil it or have the player think, "but this comic says two people came here and trashed the place already. How come it's not a smoking crater?" This wasn't as restrictive as it sounds, really, as most of the story takes place in an unexplored area of the Dreadlands. (Full Interview)




Jay Wilson Speaks to Korea
Jay Wilson speaks to Korean gamers via YouTube about the long awaited Diablo 3.

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