Ever wonder what builds some of the developers use while playing Diablo III? PCgamer was able to talk to five developers and have them share some information about the builds they uses while playing! Check out the article to see what they have to say about each build.
- Wizard build: Zaven Haroutunian, Associate Level Designer
- Witch Doctor build: Henry Ho, Senior Software Engineer
- Barbarian build: Ken Lamb, Software Engineer
- Monk build: Stephen Wong, Senior Software Engineer
- Demon Hunter build: Matthew Ryan, 3D Artist
Character Profiles Coming "Soon"
Back in May, before Diablo III was even released, we got information on character profiles coming to Diablo III "soon". This Information was followed by a blue post in June saying they were aiming for June or early this month (though the date was not set in stone).
However today, the same blog post (minus a few changes) has gone up on the EU battle.net site as well as a blue post by Bashiok on the profiles. For anyone who started following Diablo news after it was released, you can find the information on character profiles below.
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’ll soon be adding a new feature to our official Diablo III site. Profiles will let you review all of your character information at a glance, share it with others, and check out the accomplishments of the other heroes out there.
You’ll be able to look at your heroes (or your friends’ heroes) from any page on the Diablo III site through our personalized menu. If you’re curious about the exploits of your fellow forum posters, it’ll be a simple matter to click over to their profiles and feel envious of their gear or how long they’ve managed to keep their Hardcore characters alive.
Our first profiles release will include these two elements:
See you in Sanctuary!
- Blizzard Web Team
You’ll be able to look at your heroes (or your friends’ heroes) from any page on the Diablo III site through our personalized menu. If you’re curious about the exploits of your fellow forum posters, it’ll be a simple matter to click over to their profiles and feel envious of their gear or how long they’ve managed to keep their Hardcore characters alive.
Our first profiles release will include these two elements:
- A career tab that displays all of your heroes, how far you’ve progressed in the Diablo III campaign, how many foes you’ve slain, the names and playtimes of your fallen Hardcore heroes, and more.
- A heroes tab that shows off your equipment (including dyes, socketed gems, all equipment bonuses, etc.), your attributes and skills, the skills and equipment of your Followers, and more.
See you in Sanctuary!
- Blizzard Web Team
Bashiok on Legendaries and More
Bashiok hits the forums again today giving so more info on random topics, such as the legendary buffs, repair costs, skill swapping, and more!
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Will we, at some point in the near future, be seeing a reworking of affixes, SPECIFICALLY mechanical affixes (ctc on hit, on struck, ignore monster d, prevent monster heal which would be AWESOME for elites) and whatnot as I inquired here:
As you may be aware we're working on pumping up Legendary items, and that includes a few different changes, one of which is some proc effects. That isn't to say it'll be the specific proc effects you're listing, though. We'll be sharing a few sneak peeks at some of what we are adding in the nearish future. As far as non-Legendary items, it's something we're considering but there's no concrete plans.
To give a little background: The skill system in Diablo III adds a ton of options and variety to what your character can do. At any time you can completely switch things around and be doing something completely different. So the idea was really embracing the new skill system, and taking those procs and seeing which ones would fit into skills. Granted, there's some tweaking to do there to try to make some more of the skill options viable, but that's the intent. Obviously now we're also looking to expand that to Legendary items, but in addition to skill changes that are coming I think we'll be interested to see how we effect builds and items before we take any further steps.
I like how he answers all the questions about achievements and stuff but avoids the big questions like why are the repair costs not being addressed or what are they going to do in the future patches
We're fine with repair costs where they are for the moment. They're doing what they need to do. People playing where they should and dying moderate amounts while progressing are keeping their income up just fine.
We've said quite a bit about what we'll be doing in future patches, but we'll share specifics as we get closer to their release.
One thing you haven't commented on yet are the web profiles which was hinted at back in May. Are they still being worked on and expected soon? Will we be able to participate in the AH using these? Can we inspect all our heroes and review our achievements?
We're still working on character profiles. I don't have a timeline I can provide unfortunately, but there's a lot of people working to get them out as soon as possible.
A web-based and mobile Auction House interface for Diablo III is something we've said we think makes a lot of sense, but we've made no formal announcement of plans to implement one yet.
Honestly if crit damage is a good as I think it will be, we'll be one shotting each other in the PvP arena. All the +AR won't mean much.
Maybe! We'll see. It's team death match, so you keep respawning after each death. Just that fact alone we kind of expect it to be a bit of a meat grinder.
Irony is that Bashiok won't respond... at all. If he will it will merely be a trolls answer or a half made promise that won't show up again for a few years. Great job Bash!
lolreadthethread
Except when you have 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor huh?
You can still switch them. You just lose your stacks.
Isn't any fun changing skills when you want to if you lose your stacks of NV. You've got to understand that, right?
Being able to experiment with skills and try out different things is not the same as min/maxing builds against enemies by being able to swap skills mid-fight. When we say build variety, we mean there are many options to choose from, not that you should literally be swapping between tons of builds in a single session.
Before release there was a huge outcry that there was no permanence to characters. You essentially had all skills at all times. We agreed, and when we added the NV system we discouraged skill swaps (by removing stacks) to encourage character permanence. The system and solution were almost unanimously applauded as a system hitting multiple issues in an elegant way.
Now, in practice, some people really want to be able to swap around skills whenever they want so they can have a better chance at different encounters and types of fights. That's understandable, of course. Everyone wants to be optimal at all times all of the time. That's not the opposite of viable build options, though. So we have a situation where we agree with all those pre-release voices and do like there being some build permanence, finding that build that can deal with a lot of situations is more compelling and difficult than just swapping out to different builds to deal with each situation. On the opposite end there's a lot of people now that think that min/maxing sounds like a lot of fun, and the little bit of character identity it adds be damned.
I don't really have much to add at the moment except we understand the situation, we're aware of what people want to be able to do, and considering all the factors we don't have a consensus except that the system is working well enough right now that we're not going to rush to change it.
This worries me. A lot. I will not find pvp fun at all if all it is will be; run in, get 1 shot, respawn, 1 shot etc. You absolutelyMUST have some resillience-esque system in the game, I hit over 100k with impale and grevious wounds, and I only have 30k health. That would just be stupid and not fun at all.
Well if you keep losing then you'll be knocked down in rating and fight people you have an equal chance against.
We agree it could potentially be an issue though, and something we're actively looking at when it comes to PvP, but we're not going to be heavy handed and nerf crit just because it's overpowered in PvP
An idea to solve the problem for people who want to switch skills while they have NV is losing two stacks on the first skill change and one for each after that. I see that as fair and simple enough to understand. Even maybe capping it at a loss of 4? haha
The issue there is removing stacks can really kill co-op games. I want to switch a skill to try something out, I lose two stacks (or whatever) and ask the rest of my group to help farm another two elites before we get to the boss. Even in the best case scenario the other group members are probably a bit pissed.
I play Co-op because I think it's fun to play with others, regardless of difficulty :I
Yeah, a lot of people like to play with their friends. We think there's probably some ways we could make co-op more enticing for everyone, but as it is the amount of co-op games happening is pretty decent. We want to make co-op more appealing, not less.
excpet that 1.03b was supposed to have alot of fixes etc.. but all it did was make changes to the ah.. quit make changes to things no players care about...
Where did people get that expectation? We had some changes in 1.0.3b which we pulled out and made into hotfixes, as detailed in the 1.0.3b Delayed post. What other fixes did you believe would be included?
PLEASE FIX WITCH DOCTORS PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Will do.
Which is getting people like me and all of my friends to stop playing the game. Exactly what needs to be done it seems.
You and all of your friends are going to stop playing because of repair costs? I'm not sure what advice to give all of you as I don't know what you're doing wrong, but maybe hit up a couple streams on Twitch and see how others are playing. Might help you guys.
As you may be aware we're working on pumping up Legendary items, and that includes a few different changes, one of which is some proc effects. That isn't to say it'll be the specific proc effects you're listing, though. We'll be sharing a few sneak peeks at some of what we are adding in the nearish future. As far as non-Legendary items, it's something we're considering but there's no concrete plans.
To give a little background: The skill system in Diablo III adds a ton of options and variety to what your character can do. At any time you can completely switch things around and be doing something completely different. So the idea was really embracing the new skill system, and taking those procs and seeing which ones would fit into skills. Granted, there's some tweaking to do there to try to make some more of the skill options viable, but that's the intent. Obviously now we're also looking to expand that to Legendary items, but in addition to skill changes that are coming I think we'll be interested to see how we effect builds and items before we take any further steps.
I like how he answers all the questions about achievements and stuff but avoids the big questions like why are the repair costs not being addressed or what are they going to do in the future patches
We're fine with repair costs where they are for the moment. They're doing what they need to do. People playing where they should and dying moderate amounts while progressing are keeping their income up just fine.
We've said quite a bit about what we'll be doing in future patches, but we'll share specifics as we get closer to their release.
One thing you haven't commented on yet are the web profiles which was hinted at back in May. Are they still being worked on and expected soon? Will we be able to participate in the AH using these? Can we inspect all our heroes and review our achievements?
We're still working on character profiles. I don't have a timeline I can provide unfortunately, but there's a lot of people working to get them out as soon as possible.
A web-based and mobile Auction House interface for Diablo III is something we've said we think makes a lot of sense, but we've made no formal announcement of plans to implement one yet.
Honestly if crit damage is a good as I think it will be, we'll be one shotting each other in the PvP arena. All the +AR won't mean much.
Maybe! We'll see. It's team death match, so you keep respawning after each death. Just that fact alone we kind of expect it to be a bit of a meat grinder.
Irony is that Bashiok won't respond... at all. If he will it will merely be a trolls answer or a half made promise that won't show up again for a few years. Great job Bash!
lolreadthethread
Except when you have 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor huh?
You can still switch them. You just lose your stacks.
Isn't any fun changing skills when you want to if you lose your stacks of NV. You've got to understand that, right?
Being able to experiment with skills and try out different things is not the same as min/maxing builds against enemies by being able to swap skills mid-fight. When we say build variety, we mean there are many options to choose from, not that you should literally be swapping between tons of builds in a single session.
Before release there was a huge outcry that there was no permanence to characters. You essentially had all skills at all times. We agreed, and when we added the NV system we discouraged skill swaps (by removing stacks) to encourage character permanence. The system and solution were almost unanimously applauded as a system hitting multiple issues in an elegant way.
Now, in practice, some people really want to be able to swap around skills whenever they want so they can have a better chance at different encounters and types of fights. That's understandable, of course. Everyone wants to be optimal at all times all of the time. That's not the opposite of viable build options, though. So we have a situation where we agree with all those pre-release voices and do like there being some build permanence, finding that build that can deal with a lot of situations is more compelling and difficult than just swapping out to different builds to deal with each situation. On the opposite end there's a lot of people now that think that min/maxing sounds like a lot of fun, and the little bit of character identity it adds be damned.
I don't really have much to add at the moment except we understand the situation, we're aware of what people want to be able to do, and considering all the factors we don't have a consensus except that the system is working well enough right now that we're not going to rush to change it.
This worries me. A lot. I will not find pvp fun at all if all it is will be; run in, get 1 shot, respawn, 1 shot etc. You absolutelyMUST have some resillience-esque system in the game, I hit over 100k with impale and grevious wounds, and I only have 30k health. That would just be stupid and not fun at all.
Well if you keep losing then you'll be knocked down in rating and fight people you have an equal chance against.
We agree it could potentially be an issue though, and something we're actively looking at when it comes to PvP, but we're not going to be heavy handed and nerf crit just because it's overpowered in PvP
An idea to solve the problem for people who want to switch skills while they have NV is losing two stacks on the first skill change and one for each after that. I see that as fair and simple enough to understand. Even maybe capping it at a loss of 4? haha
The issue there is removing stacks can really kill co-op games. I want to switch a skill to try something out, I lose two stacks (or whatever) and ask the rest of my group to help farm another two elites before we get to the boss. Even in the best case scenario the other group members are probably a bit pissed.
I play Co-op because I think it's fun to play with others, regardless of difficulty :I
Yeah, a lot of people like to play with their friends. We think there's probably some ways we could make co-op more enticing for everyone, but as it is the amount of co-op games happening is pretty decent. We want to make co-op more appealing, not less.
excpet that 1.03b was supposed to have alot of fixes etc.. but all it did was make changes to the ah.. quit make changes to things no players care about...
Where did people get that expectation? We had some changes in 1.0.3b which we pulled out and made into hotfixes, as detailed in the 1.0.3b Delayed post. What other fixes did you believe would be included?
PLEASE FIX WITCH DOCTORS PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Will do.
Which is getting people like me and all of my friends to stop playing the game. Exactly what needs to be done it seems.
You and all of your friends are going to stop playing because of repair costs? I'm not sure what advice to give all of you as I don't know what you're doing wrong, but maybe hit up a couple streams on Twitch and see how others are playing. Might help you guys.
Blizzard Entertainment Storms San Diego Comic-Con 2012
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Going to Comic-Con this week? Here is the full line-up of where you can find our licensed products!
Blizzard Entertainment Product Showcase
Thursday, July 12
Room 6BCF
2:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Love Diablo, World of Warcraft and StarCraft? Join Chris Metzen (Blizzard Entertainment SVP Story and Franchise Development) and a team of esteemed guests as we reveal never-before-seen licensed products and plans for 2012/2013! Talk to the creative minds behind the Blizzard product lineup, including the Mega Bloks sets, novels, comics, statues and more! Panel and Q&A session moderated by Kat Hunter (host of BlizzCon coverage on DIRECTV).
Blizzard Entertainment Autograph Signings
Insight Editions Booth (#1035)
Book of Cain -- Friday 10:00-11:30 a.m.
Micky Neilson, Flint Dille, Matt Burns
Art of Blizzard -- Friday 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Chris Metzen and Sam Didier
Christie Golden Autograph Signings
Thursday from 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Cryptozoic Store
411 Market Street, San Diego CA
Thursday from 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Mysterious Galaxy Booth (#1119)
Our licensing partners will also be showing off new and upcoming Blizzard products.
Insight Editions: Stop by for a sneak peek at the upcoming The Art of Blizzard book, which offers an exclusive look at the ideas and imagery that have defined Blizzard games. Booth #1035
Brady Games: Drop in for a discount code towards the upcoming Mists of Pandaria strategy guide from Brady Games. Booth #2913
Sideshow Collectibles: Check out sculptures featuring characters from the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises, including the latest terrifying figure from Diablo III, to be revealed during the Blizzard Product Showcase panel. Booth #1929
Cryptozoic: Check out the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game at the Cryptozoic store in the San Diego Gas Lamp district. 411 Market Street
Blizzard Entertainment Product Showcase
Thursday, July 12
Room 6BCF
2:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
Love Diablo, World of Warcraft and StarCraft? Join Chris Metzen (Blizzard Entertainment SVP Story and Franchise Development) and a team of esteemed guests as we reveal never-before-seen licensed products and plans for 2012/2013! Talk to the creative minds behind the Blizzard product lineup, including the Mega Bloks sets, novels, comics, statues and more! Panel and Q&A session moderated by Kat Hunter (host of BlizzCon coverage on DIRECTV).
Blizzard Entertainment Autograph Signings
Insight Editions Booth (#1035)
Book of Cain -- Friday 10:00-11:30 a.m.
Micky Neilson, Flint Dille, Matt Burns
Art of Blizzard -- Friday 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Chris Metzen and Sam Didier
Christie Golden Autograph Signings
Thursday from 7:00-8:00 p.m.
Cryptozoic Store
411 Market Street, San Diego CA
Thursday from 4:00-5:00 p.m.
Mysterious Galaxy Booth (#1119)
Our licensing partners will also be showing off new and upcoming Blizzard products.
Insight Editions: Stop by for a sneak peek at the upcoming The Art of Blizzard book, which offers an exclusive look at the ideas and imagery that have defined Blizzard games. Booth #1035
Brady Games: Drop in for a discount code towards the upcoming Mists of Pandaria strategy guide from Brady Games. Booth #2913
Sideshow Collectibles: Check out sculptures featuring characters from the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises, including the latest terrifying figure from Diablo III, to be revealed during the Blizzard Product Showcase panel. Booth #1929
Cryptozoic: Check out the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game at the Cryptozoic store in the San Diego Gas Lamp district. 411 Market Street
Curse Weekly Roundup
Scrolls is not far from release, Assassin's Creed 3 gets a brand new trailer, BioWare has confirmed player suspicions, professional gamers get a loft, The Secret World gives Curse a high-five, and new Mists of Pandaria content is always lurking -- All on this weeks Curse Weekly Roundup.
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Posted Jul 11, 2012I guess I was a bit too ignorant. Of course it couldn't be a solo build. My bad.
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Posted Jul 11, 2012It is so frustratinging to have to tab in and out of the game just to see if a piece someone is selling on the forums is an upgrade or not, not to mention all of the cool gear and damage calculators that the geniuses are creating in the theorycrafting forums (thanks guys).
Now we can just go to our profile and copy over the gear info needed, or maybe these guys can figure out how to upload the info from he diablo profiles the same way some gear tool makers do from WoW's armory pages, so excited, so I know the theory crafters are even moreso.
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Posted Jul 11, 2012They just trying to prove this diversity crap of thier builds, so we can't say "See blizz uses the same cookie cutter as most of us"
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Posted Jul 11, 2012Wait a minute? can I be this fail?
You mean to tell me that Scoundrels and Enchantress' can use offhands??
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Posted Jul 12, 2012You realize those screenshots were taken early in development and some things changed since then right? Scoundrel/Enchantress cant use offhands just like we cant have double gems in our weapons.
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Posted Jul 12, 2012this.... so much this
I was about to post exactly the same^^
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Posted Jul 12, 2012"Last updated 5/11/2012"
internal diablo is just more awesome i guess
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Posted Jul 12, 2012i dont think you understand...No.. its obvious you dont understand what everyone else sees here. How do you post pictures that i'm guessing are MONTHS old of diablo (when it was probably at a better state) as current information, It's like a minor slap in the face to the community that BEGGED for a good but we didn't get that. We got a sub par game and proof that the makers of that game are almost no longer fit to manage the game...
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Posted Jul 12, 2012I think people got excited about barb stacking dex.
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Posted Jul 12, 2012* Gems have changed, Green very well could have been strength prior to launch but then felt red better suited it, who knows it could have been pure crit or Atk Power before they made stats the prime (Look at his damage compared to his items, it is clear that it is being enhanced by something else and it isn't magic find)
* The picture was taken a month before release and as we know they removed alkot of stuff in that last month, not sure why they changed the socketed weapons though, I would like 2socket weapons.
* Stephen Wong right clicks his main attack...ewwwww.
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Posted Jul 12, 2012