BlizzCon 2014 America Regionals Deck Lists
Skin Spotlight: Master Tyrande, Town Hall: Heroes #34 - The Return of the Alpha
New Character Model Previews, Blue Tweets, Dev Interview Sunday
Saya's Suggestions
Last week we featured some end-game suggestions from Edriel. The reception seemed to be mostly positive, specially for those who want more interaction between players when it comes to end-game competition, even if that interaction is indirect and has to go through an environment. Other players seem to be more interested in more pure hand-crafted PvE content. This week, we feature a small preview of the ideas from Saya, the other member mentioned there.
His suggestions include a survival focused Army Event, that is somewhat rare and can happen at most 2 or 3 times a day per player. He ties the rewards of this event to paragon-improving Talismans, and to War Plans, an item that activates a mini PvP mode. The encounter could be exciting if implemented similarly to the Nemesis feature on consoles, with drums and tense music before the Nemesis arrives. Players' choice in the War Plans mode influences a Karma System, similar to Mass Effect's Paragon and Renegade system, which has rewards like custom portraits, player titles (similar to what we had in Diablo 2) and exclusive transmogrification sets.
Read the preview below, and definitely check the full thread.
ARMY EVENT:
Explanation of Event:
With random effect Nephalem engaged in combat in sanctuary (no rift), may be forced to deal with gathered demonic armies. As stated on the title should be a medium rare event with a frequency of 2-3 times a day per player.
Composition of an army could be something like this:
- 30 common monsters of different category. More melee and more ranged. Some fast, some slow and strong.
- 2/3 pack of Elite/Champion
- 1 Avatar of Evil
The Avatar is the general of demonic army. Could be of a dark color (like dark brown or something near black) with red shades of fire. It has features typical of standard monsters, but very large (equal to the last elite with avenger ability) and is slightly modified in appearance to be more terrifying. (for obvious reasons I could not add more to the diversification of the avatar sprite, but I wanted to give an idea of the color and size).
TALISMANS
Here are the talismans you can find after the defeat of the Avatar of Evil. Percentages on talismans are just indicative so pls, dont worry about numbers. They can be socketed inside the PARAGON SKILL’S BONUSES window, and so, they can be of four different types, related to the 4 paragon’s bonuses sub-windows: Base, Offense, Defense, Utility.
BASE
Item 1: Increase total bonus amount in primary offense statistic by (10-33% varies).
Item 2: Increase total bonus amount in vitality by (10-33%).
Item 3: Increase total bonus amount in movement speed by (10-33%) .
Item 4: Increase the amount of resource points bonus by (10-50%).
Talismans can be socketed in paragon bonus window. And it’s possible to use 4 of this talismans for every sub-famility of bonuses. For Example …. 3 to attack speed and 1 in Critical Chance, or 1 in every Offense Skill bonus. But I cant put 3 in Critical Chance and 3 in Critical Hit Damage, because we have 6 bonuses in same family bonuses.
ATTACK PLANS:
Again, in addition to Talismans, when you kill and Avatar of Evil you will drop (for sure) an Attack Plan.
These plans contains detailed instructions about an upcoming battle that will take place on eternal battlefields. The demonic hordes will try to take possession of the territory in order to have a decisive advantage on enemy and launch a strong attack at the gates of paradise.
On the other hand, a band of heroes will defend the gates of heaven in order to fight and destroy forever the demons army.
THE MAP
- The maps of the battle must have a symmetrical aspect not to favor any of two teams of attackers and defenders.
- On sides of the map (or up and down) will be placed gates that will be destructible only killing the last demon / angel of the opposing army.
- Nephalem Attackers and Nephalem defenders cannot hit each other.
Purpose of this event will be to advance through the map by killing all the enemies of the opposite camp: demons or angels. And could me implemented with many of suggestions you could find in battleground wrote by my friend Edriel is in his post Here.
- The map will be populated in equal number of elite, champions and 3 Avatar per side.
- Must be created damageable and killable angels warriors.
I know. Probably the concept of killable angels is a little bit strong …..
But if you look behind you in the Diablo story you will find examples of nephalem who believed demons and angels were just invaders and not friends.
Look at Uldyssan or Kulle. They are different examples but they are united by a common point of view: angels are not friends and must be fought as demons are.
On same table we have some nephalem attracted by demonic power. For example the cultists …..
We have many reason to believe not all humans are happy to stay on angel side
Map Sample:
KARMA (POINT SYSTEM, CHOOSE YOUR SIDE)
The human race has in it roots of ancestors: Order and Chaos.
Thanks to this bivalence, angels and demons have tried several times to gain their favour.
Doing so man has known violence and war, but also acts of heroism and sacrifice.
And while some of them are elevated, rising in defense against the armies of demons, others have conspired against their own race, enthralled by the idea of power promised by evil forces.
Karma, indicates the attitude of a player to act in favor of the forces of good or evil. The indication of membership is specified in a separate screen of karma.
DH's Sentry Breakpoints Resources
The Marauder build for DHs is probably one of the more popular builds nowadays. With that in mind, Rhykker has made a noob-friendly video explaining how breakpoints influence Demon Hunter Sentries, and pointing to some useful resources that can help you achieve optimal DPS with your M6 setup. Check it out!
Well, I'm more than open for debate of what is front-page worthy or not. It's good to see some feedback on that for a change.
But from my perspective, there haven't been a lot of news-worthy material lately. Almost nothing juicy from Blizzard for what, a good month or so? No blue comments on important subjects, no tweets from devs/CMs, not even enough hype for Blizzcon if you ask me...
In the past, these "dry periods" were usually filled with a lot more fan-made suggestions. And as was said on the previous news, a LOT of what the game is today (I'd bet on 60-70%.. the Bounties and Ladder interface is almost equal, there's a lot of loot 2.0 on the game as well) is based on those suggestions. Mind that the random "make dota in D3" suggestions are hardly news material because they're simply not fleshed out, it's hard to visualize them, and those kind of suggestions are much less likely to get implemented than say, the ones made by MrMonstrosity.
We usually strive for a good balance of useful community guides (material that might help players progress and know the game), 4-fun stuff (like fanart, parodies, cosplay) and developer info. Since the last one is pretty scarce lately, we have to make do with what is available currently.
So this hiatus is a great time for the community to show the devs what's the next big thing they want. Crazy class suggestions (who knows, maybe they have one ready and end up implementing two if the ideas given are solid), crazy gameplay suggestions (new elite affixes, etc.), actually fleshed out PvP (or PvPvE) modes (and not generic ideas), more legendary/set suggestions. Anything.
Also completely disagree that "x is too complicated". That's not what matters in these, what matters is how players feel towards them. Is there merit in having a Karma system in D3? If there is, then they will make it work in a simpler manner. Compare Vanilla to Bounties with exclusive Legendaries and the way Rifts, Trials and GRs work right now (and add Seasons and Ladders, which took a good 3-month+ testing) - there's quite a few new complex systems there (chance to upgrade gems, how they interact, map and density generation, boss balance) and that didn't make them shy away from it.
mehh. it's a nice way to see how creative people (Diablo fans) can be, especially with this much detail.
we can see a lot of suggestions here and in the official forums that are just not at clear as this.
I feel it's too complex. If you can't boil it down to 2-3 sentences in a paragraph, it's not going to happen - nor would I want it to. D3 is a hack and slash, not a strategy game. No one's trying to turn Civ5 into D3, so why would you go the other way around? GRifts are the most complex thing ever implemented in D3 and that's just "Get a key, open a portal, kill some stuff". The fact that there was complexity on the developer end (with balance testing into density and difficulty as you mentioned) is wholly irrelevant. All that matters is what the player sees. And what the player sees is very simple in regards to every single idea implemented in D3. Not so at all with the idea suggested here.