My friend Melkor and I are at BlizzCon testing out the wizard class, amongst other features available in Reaper of Souls.
This is a messy post that we've put together on the official forum, but this is what we've found out so far:
Written from Melkor's perspective:
So disclaimer first: I'm doing this all from memory. If I say that someone said something, you can't turn around and count that as gospel. Sure, I know what I heard, but that doesn't mean I haven't made an error AND we all know how rapidly the intent of a statement can change based on the utilization of a single word. I promise you all to tell the truth- but I'm NOT a blizzard employee and I'm NOT the press. Also, the quotations used in these posts are for separating who said what, not to be used as a word for word quotation. I'M PARAPHRASING.
Now that that's out of the way.
11/8/13 13:46 PDT
We played ROS! Here are preliminary notes. Give me time and I'll clarify:
We only were allowed to play level 33 characters.
Melkor:
- Mistral breeze deals cold damage - seems good for Procing cold blooded.
- Power hungry is OP. Being healed by a health globe makes your next arcane spender FREE. Stacks 5 times! Tried it with meteor lightning bind. Rained lightning hell down "CM" style. By the time my 5th free meteor landed, I had enough AP to cast another for a total of 6 chained lightning meteors. Insane
- GLACIAL SPIKE (Magic Missile) is effective. Froze enemies once every 3-5 shots. Animation VERY similar to D2 ice missile.
- Many channeling promoting passives. - There was a passive that increases your armor/resists/damage the longer you stand still. (Capped at x time)
- Spectral blades rune increases all fire damage duration - interesting because certain fire damage skills have 3-5 second durations. Fire spells are def an interesting build choice.
- Items have primary and secondary stats. Items show range of stats possible.
For example - a source has 7-13 damage but next to that damage range there is a parenthetical reference showing you what you COULD have rolled. (Ie: 5-20)
- Dropped blue boots that had 9% meteor damage bonus...
- Global waypoints - port anywhere and everywhere. Simple enough.
- Arcane orb Spark rune uncontrollable but - buffs next lighting damage - you can not control anything other than the direction of the orb. Its range is fixed but all enemies that get hit by the orb buff your next lightning spell by 1% per enemy hit (no cap mentioned)
- Slow time casts at location - imagine this- cast slow time at location. Lob an above mentioned arcane orb at slow time point, drop a couple of meteors..run in to the fray with DS popped, pick up all those globes...cast nova, chain drop meteors for freeeee. GG.
- Teleportation animation is amazing...screen doesn't just snap to, moves with you
- It seems that the percentage damage of spells are off the chart. Time bomb does 1592% weap damage...at level 33
- Wave of force...has a rune that states that all enemies affected by WOF buff arcane damage by x%. STILL seems like were gonna hate it but we shall see.
- 4 passives at level 70
- Channeling not only looks focused, it looks viable. Skills that provide shields (animation is much like the shielding affix currently on E's) that increase armor/damage when standing still. Stackable elemental damage bonuses from passive.
- E had a affix called "poison enchanted" affix. Imagine the molten animation...change color to green)
- From a dev yesterday regarding THE MYSTIC:
- Re-rolls are "categorized". So let's say you have a bifecta ring with int/vit/cd/CC and say...cold resist. Just because you wanna re roll that cold resist, you'll find that IAS is NOT in the option list. I won't go as far as to say, "Like for like", but it seems that is the direction of the mystic.
From Jaetch:
- Archon's AR/armor buff is 50%
- Archon's bonus damage (12% sheet DPS boost per kill) seems to be limitless. Reached 5K+ DPS at level 33 with blue items
- Archon lasts 20 seconds. All damage boosts wear off as soon as Archon wears off
- Sparkflint reduced to 10%, Familiar itself is 110% damage
- RoF has a base of 440%+ damage
- Black Ice residue is 1100%+ and stacks... OP...
- Prism's AP reduction effect snapshots
- Got Magefist off Ghom. Had a special affix that doubled fire spell durations (Fire spell damage boost unchanged)
11/8/13 17:09 PDT:
- In Westmarch, I found a monster was immune to channeled abilities, but it seemed more like a bug because no "immune" message showed
- Discovered a legendary amulet that had a chance to "cyclone" enemies within an area of the attack point. Results were similar to how a Cyclone monk vacuums mobs together. And FYI, amulet came with vitality, cooldown reduction and regen. Seems like a decent follower/support class item.
11/8/13 18:35 PDT:
- Nephalem Rifts are completely random, as in... you have no idea what's left and right. They're opened by Rift Keys which are obtained through mini-quests in which you hunt for bounties (unique bosses that spawn randomly in different parts of Sanctuary)
- You're required to kill X% of total mobs in the Rift before you fight the Rift boss
- Within the Nephalem Rift, there are special Rift shrines that last 30 seconds, which include:
» Speed Shrine: pretty sure this shrine maxes out your movement speed. You move stupid fast.
» Power Shrine: your sheet DPS is increased by 400%
» Channeling Shrine: ALL spells cost ZERO resources and have ZERO cooldown
» Shield Shrine: your character is invulnerable
» some kind of lightning shrine that I can't remember: you constantly shock nearby mobs for huge damage
- Nephalem Glory (the same buffing globe from consoles) is now available on PC
- CLOSED BETA POSSIBLY BY THE END OF NOVEMBER
- OPEN BETA POSSIBLY BEFORE THE END OF THIS YEAR
From Melkor:
During the ROS panel I asked Josh Mosqueira, "with the removal of the AH, we have heard that Blizzard is potentially going to be giving us an alternative, perhaps even limited model for trading. What, if anything, can you tell us about that?"
As BDF pointed out from watching the virtual tour, my question (like everyone else's) was addressed in a somewhat vague, philosophical context. Josh made mention of the conflicting nature of the AH to the spirit of Diablo. He did not directly answer my question. Hey, I tried! Please see above for my one on one with Josh yesterday that produced similar results. I don't personally see any model being developed...not even a commodity exchange.
11/9/13 11:15 PDT:
From Jaetch:
- It seems Mirror Images inherit the buffs from your wizard. For example, casting Arcane Orbit and then casting Mirror Images give each Image the Arcane Orbs. The Arcane Orbs can detonate on impact, but the number of Orbs do not decrease.
- That said, Mirror Images do full damage (I can AFK and have 2x images take out a whole wave of mobs on their own).
- Obtained a legendary ring that granted 100% immunity to incoming poison damage and doubles outgoing poison damage (non-CoB WD rejoice or... the return of Venom Hydra? Poison-based main hand weapons?)
11/9/13 12:17 PDT:
Holy hell. Just attended the gameplay systems. Saw footage of the new skill black hole. Looked cool...everything gets sucked in to the cast point. But that's not what was most interesting:
Loot 2.0 - by now we all know the philosophy of loot 2.0 - less is more, what you get is very powerful and should be rewarding/game changing. What we saw today were some items. So you may have read above about the break down of item stats into primary and secondary stats. Primary was classified as damage/life/armor section while section 2 is described as "extra curricular stats" such as MF/GF/PUR, etc.
Also, my original deduction about how you will not be able to mystic things like cold resist into say, a socket, is not as "linear" as I originally described. For example, we saw a shot of someone re-rolling life regen for attack speed. This does not mean that I was misinformed...it simply implies that Blizzard's definition of "like for like" is not necessarily the same as ours...
Open Beta in less than 2 months seems like a dream considering nothing has been said about pre xpac patch and if its going on PTR first.
Only way this seems likely is if they don't need to put pre xpac patch in ptr and just have players test it using ROS beta client during Open Beta. Even than it seems a bit far fetched, at least in my opinion. Can always hope though !
That sucks, I hope the actual beta isn't going to be that limited. I understand act 5 is limited for spoilers, but there's really no logical reason to limit character levels.
If they do that, we're going to have the same issue original D3 did. Where the openly tested levels 1-13 were very polished, but most of the stuff beyond was an unpolished mess.
Hey Jaetch was there any new info on Nephalem Trials? It was mentioned at Gamescon during Athene's interview with Josh, something along the lines of random portals spawning and facing waves of mobs and being rewarded Resplendant chests depending on how well you do I think. Starting to think it got scraped since there's been absolutely zero mention of it as far as I know.
Hey Jaetch was there any new info on Nephalem Trials? It was mentioned at Gamescon during Athene's interview with Josh, something along the lines of random portals spawning and facing waves of mobs and being rewarded Resplendant chests depending on how well you do I think. Starting to think it got scraped since there's been absolutely zero mention of it as far as I know.
I could answer this one I Guess. I'm pretty certain that the Nephalim Trials became the Nephalem Rifts, 10-15 minutes randomized "loot runs", and although they don't spawn randomly in the world, they require Rift Keystones to open which is earned by completing bounties, and as random drop anywhere in Adventure Mode.
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Wise ElderThis is a messy post that we've put together on the official forum, but this is what we've found out so far:
Written from Melkor's perspective:
So disclaimer first: I'm doing this all from memory. If I say that someone said something, you can't turn around and count that as gospel. Sure, I know what I heard, but that doesn't mean I haven't made an error AND we all know how rapidly the intent of a statement can change based on the utilization of a single word. I promise you all to tell the truth- but I'm NOT a blizzard employee and I'm NOT the press. Also, the quotations used in these posts are for separating who said what, not to be used as a word for word quotation. I'M PARAPHRASING.
Now that that's out of the way.
11/8/13 13:46 PDT
We played ROS! Here are preliminary notes. Give me time and I'll clarify:
We only were allowed to play level 33 characters.
Melkor:
- Mistral breeze deals cold damage - seems good for Procing cold blooded.
- Power hungry is OP. Being healed by a health globe makes your next arcane spender FREE. Stacks 5 times! Tried it with meteor lightning bind. Rained lightning hell down "CM" style. By the time my 5th free meteor landed, I had enough AP to cast another for a total of 6 chained lightning meteors. Insane
- GLACIAL SPIKE (Magic Missile) is effective. Froze enemies once every 3-5 shots. Animation VERY similar to D2 ice missile.
- Many channeling promoting passives. - There was a passive that increases your armor/resists/damage the longer you stand still. (Capped at x time)
- Spectral blades rune increases all fire damage duration - interesting because certain fire damage skills have 3-5 second durations. Fire spells are def an interesting build choice.
- Items have primary and secondary stats. Items show range of stats possible.
For example - a source has 7-13 damage but next to that damage range there is a parenthetical reference showing you what you COULD have rolled. (Ie: 5-20)
- Dropped blue boots that had 9% meteor damage bonus...
- Global waypoints - port anywhere and everywhere. Simple enough.
- Arcane orb Spark rune uncontrollable but - buffs next lighting damage - you can not control anything other than the direction of the orb. Its range is fixed but all enemies that get hit by the orb buff your next lightning spell by 1% per enemy hit (no cap mentioned)
- Slow time casts at location - imagine this- cast slow time at location. Lob an above mentioned arcane orb at slow time point, drop a couple of meteors..run in to the fray with DS popped, pick up all those globes...cast nova, chain drop meteors for freeeee. GG.
- Teleportation animation is amazing...screen doesn't just snap to, moves with you
- It seems that the percentage damage of spells are off the chart. Time bomb does 1592% weap damage...at level 33
- Wave of force...has a rune that states that all enemies affected by WOF buff arcane damage by x%. STILL seems like were gonna hate it but we shall see.
- 4 passives at level 70
- Channeling not only looks focused, it looks viable. Skills that provide shields (animation is much like the shielding affix currently on E's) that increase armor/damage when standing still. Stackable elemental damage bonuses from passive.
- E had a affix called "poison enchanted" affix. Imagine the molten animation...change color to green)
- From a dev yesterday regarding THE MYSTIC:
- Re-rolls are "categorized". So let's say you have a bifecta ring with int/vit/cd/CC and say...cold resist. Just because you wanna re roll that cold resist, you'll find that IAS is NOT in the option list. I won't go as far as to say, "Like for like", but it seems that is the direction of the mystic.
From Jaetch:
- Archon's AR/armor buff is 50%
- Archon's bonus damage (12% sheet DPS boost per kill) seems to be limitless. Reached 5K+ DPS at level 33 with blue items
- Archon lasts 20 seconds. All damage boosts wear off as soon as Archon wears off
- Sparkflint reduced to 10%, Familiar itself is 110% damage
- RoF has a base of 440%+ damage
- Black Ice residue is 1100%+ and stacks... OP...
- Prism's AP reduction effect snapshots
- Got Magefist off Ghom. Had a special affix that doubled fire spell durations (Fire spell damage boost unchanged)
11/8/13 17:09 PDT:
- In Westmarch, I found a monster was immune to channeled abilities, but it seemed more like a bug because no "immune" message showed
- Discovered a legendary amulet that had a chance to "cyclone" enemies within an area of the attack point. Results were similar to how a Cyclone monk vacuums mobs together. And FYI, amulet came with vitality, cooldown reduction and regen. Seems like a decent follower/support class item.
11/8/13 18:35 PDT:
- Nephalem Rifts are completely random, as in... you have no idea what's left and right. They're opened by Rift Keys which are obtained through mini-quests in which you hunt for bounties (unique bosses that spawn randomly in different parts of Sanctuary)
- You're required to kill X% of total mobs in the Rift before you fight the Rift boss
- Within the Nephalem Rift, there are special Rift shrines that last 30 seconds, which include:
» Speed Shrine: pretty sure this shrine maxes out your movement speed. You move stupid fast.
» Power Shrine: your sheet DPS is increased by 400%
» Channeling Shrine: ALL spells cost ZERO resources and have ZERO cooldown
» Shield Shrine: your character is invulnerable
» some kind of lightning shrine that I can't remember: you constantly shock nearby mobs for huge damage
- Nephalem Glory (the same buffing globe from consoles) is now available on PC
- CLOSED BETA POSSIBLY BY THE END OF NOVEMBER
- OPEN BETA POSSIBLY BEFORE THE END OF THIS YEAR
From Melkor:
During the ROS panel I asked Josh Mosqueira, "with the removal of the AH, we have heard that Blizzard is potentially going to be giving us an alternative, perhaps even limited model for trading. What, if anything, can you tell us about that?"
As BDF pointed out from watching the virtual tour, my question (like everyone else's) was addressed in a somewhat vague, philosophical context. Josh made mention of the conflicting nature of the AH to the spirit of Diablo. He did not directly answer my question. Hey, I tried! Please see above for my one on one with Josh yesterday that produced similar results. I don't personally see any model being developed...not even a commodity exchange.
11/9/13 11:15 PDT:
From Jaetch:
- It seems Mirror Images inherit the buffs from your wizard. For example, casting Arcane Orbit and then casting Mirror Images give each Image the Arcane Orbs. The Arcane Orbs can detonate on impact, but the number of Orbs do not decrease.
- That said, Mirror Images do full damage (I can AFK and have 2x images take out a whole wave of mobs on their own).
- Obtained a legendary ring that granted 100% immunity to incoming poison damage and doubles outgoing poison damage (non-CoB WD rejoice or... the return of Venom Hydra? Poison-based main hand weapons?)
11/9/13 12:17 PDT:
Holy hell. Just attended the gameplay systems. Saw footage of the new skill black hole. Looked cool...everything gets sucked in to the cast point. But that's not what was most interesting:
Loot 2.0 - by now we all know the philosophy of loot 2.0 - less is more, what you get is very powerful and should be rewarding/game changing. What we saw today were some items. So you may have read above about the break down of item stats into primary and secondary stats. Primary was classified as damage/life/armor section while section 2 is described as "extra curricular stats" such as MF/GF/PUR, etc.
Also, my original deduction about how you will not be able to mystic things like cold resist into say, a socket, is not as "linear" as I originally described. For example, we saw a shot of someone re-rolling life regen for attack speed. This does not mean that I was misinformed...it simply implies that Blizzard's definition of "like for like" is not necessarily the same as ours...
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
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Wise ElderIs this what you think? Or did someone who works for Blizz actually make this estimation?
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Wise ElderNo, I'm kidding... I actually do care if that info came from a Blizz exployee.
Only way this seems likely is if they don't need to put pre xpac patch in ptr and just have players test it using ROS beta client during Open Beta. Even than it seems a bit far fetched, at least in my opinion. Can always hope though
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Wise ElderEdit: Should know by now "possibly" is a very, very loose word for Blizzard.
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Wise ElderToo tired now.
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Wise ElderNope.
No CM. No Frozen Orb. No Black Hole. No crazy passives.
At least I got to try basic Archon.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
If they do that, we're going to have the same issue original D3 did. Where the openly tested levels 1-13 were very polished, but most of the stuff beyond was an unpolished mess.
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Wise ElderInterpret it how you will for the "we can't say" answer.
Also, CM based builds are indeed going down. No surprise there.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIeWq9W94FY
The "open beta" estimate doesn't really make sense, but closed beta seems pretty likely this year.
Why on earth is that ? Care to explain ?
Ofc, patch 2.0 is part of the beta, but the vanilla D3 doesn't have to be patched for the beta to start ?
"and our pre-expansion patches typically hit between 2 weeks to 2 months before"
But I sohuldn't need to link that post for you to know that, because that's how all of their games work.
Beta>>Pre expansion patch>>Official game release