DiabloFans

Personally, I don't want PvP-based stats such as Resilience; to me, it is just one extra thing to collect and grind for just to have fun. I hated that in WoW; all I wanted to do was blow people up in my spare time when I'm not concentrating on PvE but use my PvE gear, save for a few possible exceptions of talisman, gems, jewelry, and maybe an armor piece or two. It's not that I don't care enough about PvP to get a dedicated gear set, but just that I feel PvE gear should be on par with PvP gear in both realms. If a piece is more useful in one than the other, that's fine, but not when pieces are made for PvP.

However, I am all for PvE-based stats that hold higher priority in PvP, such as Health, Defense, Resists, Accuracy, and especially auxiliary stats that affect overall combat such as Movement Speed. As a personal preference, I will most likely PvP with a full on PvE gear with maybe some exceptions as listed above: talisman, gems, jewelry, etc.

My prediction is that Diablo III will not have PvP-specific stats, but may have a few end-game pieces of equipment that is definitely more useful in PvP than in PvE. The only pieces of equipment that I would support being fully PvP-based are talisman, gems, jewelry, and perhaps weapons designed for PvP, such as weapons with bleed, knockback, slow, or other. The gems, talisman, and other micro gear stats would still give hardcore PvP players something to grind for to be "complete" but it shouldn't hold a huge edge against average PvP players that use mostly PvE gear. This also makes weapon choice more situational and maybe interesting tactics combining weapons with skills(not sure how it would work for casters though).

Diablo III PvP should be way more about character set-up than it is about gear. Not saying gear shouldn't be important, but definitely how your character plays will be a much larger factor. Blizzard is putting in so much effort to make character development fun, unique, and more individualistic, I don't see why they wouldn't want this to be the main attraction to both PvE and PvP.

We need a thread that doesn't stagnate due to lack of information! So, as thread title suggests: if you could design one skill to be in D3 for the class of your choosing, what would it be? Some example questions:

What class would it be for?
What would it be called?
What would it do? +Runestone augmentations?
What would it look like? +Runestone augmentations?
Why do you want it?

My skill would be..

Class: Wizard
Skill name: Willowisp Guardian
Flavor text: "The Wizard invokes a Willowisp by condensing the energy present in the air and then bending its form to imbue herself with an armor of magical properties. Just the mere act of conjuring such beings are forbidden by the Zann Esu and Vizjerei due to their erratically violent nature and dangerously unstable properties; however, these spectral beings are some of the Wizard's highest interests and are subservient to her magical prowess."

Regular Effect: A windy aura that resembles a Willowisp(above) is created around the Wizard for a short amount of time(~5 seconds). Armor grants a large amount of move speed and shoots up to 3 lightning streams toward up to 3 random enemies when armor expires. Lightning streams go through most enemies. Armor expires naturally 5 seconds after casting or if the Wizard is hit by a magic-based projectile before the 5 seconds are up. If armor expires by a magic-based projectile, half of the projectile damage is negated. Armor cannot be cast for a minimum of 5 seconds after casting(affects all augments).

Runestone Augments
Crimson: Armor loses move speed bonus, but up to 10 weaker lightning streams are released upon expiration.
Indigo: Changes the expiration effect to a single large and powerful lightning nova that pushes back smaller enemies(anything smaller than the Wizard).
Obsidian: The spell now creates a companion Black Soul(Willowisp) for 20 seconds instead; it cannot be controlled and does not follow the Wizard. Black Soul has its own health and roams randomly. If a hostile enemy is nearby, it will fire a lightning stream in that direction every 3 seconds(up to 6 streams in 20 seconds). Only one Black Soul per Wizard may be summoned at a time. Recasting creates a new Black Soul and the old one expires.
Golden: Lightning streams become chain lightnings that bounce up to 3 times each.
Alabaster: When used, Wizard becomes immobile(and unaffected by all types of movement effects such as teleport and knockback) for 10 seconds. All incoming damage is reduced by half and each source of damage is retaliated with a lightning stream in that direction without limitations. The Wizard is unable to attack, cast, or perform any other action for the duration of this spell.

Visual: Creates an aura around the Wizard that looks like the pictured Willowisp above. Lightning streams look like the Lightning spell from D2. For the Alabaster augment, I wanted an interesting mechanic to the skill. It can be used to clear large amounts of weaker monsters that surround you, be a good starter to use on low-damage monsters(teleport in and perform), can be used as an emergency defensive spell when you know a very strong attack is going to hit you(will reduce it by half). And a Black Soul looks like this! I'm sure you all remember. <3

It'd be nice to make more efficient use of your inventory space, but I don't think rotating should be in D3. Doesn't feel like an element that needs to be in a hack-n-slash. I have the same OCD feeling with weird inventory placements; I NEEED all my charms on the far left and right sides while tomes are on the far right and other items neatly in the middle. Not sure if item rotation would exactly help.. I'd hate if I had to rotate some weapons to be horizontal while others are vertical. Still, main reason I wouldn't want it, is that I don't feel like it belongs.

edit: typo.

I don't know about making Diablo ultra big, but I think he deserves to be a bit bigger than he was in previous games. Either that, or give him multiple forms, like someone above has already said. Or perhaps, multiple battles spread through out the acts against Diablo's form(s) would be pretty neat, too! I always wanted to fight the dark wanderer that appeared outside Kurast. My first time getting to Act3 I thought I'd be able to fight him as a boss, and was a bit disappointed.

What I would rather see is a more interesting battle, regardless of difficulty(Normal, NM, Hell). Example, fighting Diablo in D2, he had a fire wave that was a 360 radius spell that covered a majority of the map, but would be stopped by walls. Same with his lightning breath move; I'd like to see more extra-high damage spells/moves from bosses that you almost have to dodge/avoid/hide from(unless you spent a lot of points in defensive traits and with gear above that particular boss' difficulty).

I thought one of the funnest experiences I got from D2 was fighting Diablo and Baal in Hell difficulty for the first time. Diablo you had to avoid his outward expanding radius fire, his firestorm, as well as his lightning breath: there was (almost) no way to take any of those spells in Hell on your first run through without exceptional gear. Baal also had his blue arrow stomp that knocked back and slowed, as well as a mana-draining short range spell that crippled you to only normal attacks pretty much if you didn't have mana leech or mana/rejuv potions with you. This is one of the reasons I'm glad D3 got rid of town portals.

You mean you guys don't have a Collector's Edition of Diablo III sitting on your desk?

Quote from Winged

So I feel Blizzard, even with such a anxious fan base will wait until a relivent date to release Diablo 3 for marketing reasons. March 13th 2012 is my Golden Ticket, it just looks right to me.

3/13/2012

:rolleyes:

I agree with the special date kind of thing. Diablo 2 had a number of coincidental dates, but if they had planned Diablo 3 for a 2011 release, they're way off from any significant dates(as far as I know) since most of them are in June-ish. March 13th sounds nice, I admit. March 23rd isn't too bad, either, though it is a Friday. 3-23-10 was the last update to D2, according to Wiki. But, to be honest, I'm thinking Blizzard will try to either gun it for the 2011 release as planned or go with a "oh well we already missed it; let's take our time" kind of mentality: Therefore waiting until even June 29 2012 to get that special date release.

Quote from Likeahorse

I think they could care less about holiday release, look at sc2 release date. But there is not much coming out this fall, yes there is some big ones here and there like gears 3, but not a multitude of triple A titles like last year, so there is an opportunity to be had here if I thought they did care.

keep blizzcon in mind, dont think it will be before blizzcon, might hurt attendance, will probably want to announce official release date AT blizzcon "exclusively" and have enough time after to advertise that date to the public, so blizcon plus 4-6 weeks i could see, or at least a quarter they could possibly release in.

Yeah, I agree, the exact date doesn't matter so much for Blizzard. Their more recent releases weren't too hung up on dates, but since they planned for a 2011 release in the past and currently haven't completely ruled it out, I'm thinking they would still try to gun for it: it'd either be late November or early December. Any later than that, they might as well leave it for 2012.

I can definitely see a release date announcement at Blizzcon. Almost no chance that they'd even consider announcing a release date before then, let alone the actual game.

Not believable for me.

Diablo should look nothing like that, past, present, or future. It is a pretty generic demon; Blizzard wouldn't do that to Big D. Also, his horns would be lower and protrude outward. More likely than not, they would use the current D3 Diablo(the one with head flaps lol) as the Diablo cover art, imo.

The background map art is way too sharp. The white text contrasts too much and would definitely by smaller and to a corner, not in the middle. The Blizzard logo should be in the middle, top or bottom, and probably blue or red. Gold is not so probably going by history. It should also be rated M? These are subjective rulings, but I feel that if this is what the actual cover is, then Blizzard's art department(or whatever handles the box art) needs to do better.

I'm rooting for November 14/21/28 of 2011. Will provide plenty of time to be purchased during the holidays and a few weeks before winter holidays begin. Will be picked up easily by plenty of people as gifts if they aren't already mindlessly clicking away.

I feel like it's wishful thinking though, but from a profit standpoint it wouldn't sound too bad. They could cut down their 6-month beta by a few months and focus solely on technical issues, then work on technical+content issues once the game is out. Balance and content isn't as important, imo, for Diablo. Technical issues, however, could severely cripple a game to its death; FFXIV being an example of a terrible UI and an incredibly large amount of, quite serious, technical problems.

My 'mf' character will be the one that I enjoy playing the most and can play the longest without getting bored with. No point if, say, the wizard is the best item grinder when I get bored/annoyed of playing him/her easily. Rather play a class I enjoy playing to find items for days on end instead.

I think it's true that casual gamers are more likely to find a niche than hardcore gamers are. Mostly because there are just so many more casual gamers, but what I find in hardcore gamers are that they are just flat-out competitive: It doesn't matter all that much what they're competing in, as long as they are and not doing poorly at it. Back onto topic, it's not so much the simplicity-vs-complexity deal that will keep hardcore players or not, but the ability to rise in competition with other players(getting better gear, better skill set ups, better strategies, dueling strategies, ranks, achievements, etc).

As a side note I don't really like the labels of casual and hardcore as I've never fit in with either group descriptions. Semi-hardcore, I suppose? I'll drown myself with hours of game play a day in a game that I'm interested in; it wouldn't matter to do if that game was an RPG, MMORPG, RTS, FPS, etc etc. Shit, the boyfriend and I drop hundreds of hours playing Harvest Moon games, Minecraft, mobile games, and Hack-N-Slash dungeon crawlers, all of which are not generally thought to be played by hardcore but more casual gamers.

Ah, not sure if something changed overnight, but it seems to be working fine now(See edit). I have Shockwave Flash enabled and can see 95% of the ads(sometimes bottom ad is MIA). I'm seeing more ads now: mostly Rift, LotR Online, and D&D Online ones. Could have been a problem with those? Unsure, but for whatever reason, they are displaying now and Firefox is no longer lagging and consuming resources.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Edit: It seems to be working MOST of the time now. I browsed a few forum threads and hit upon one that didn't show ads but had the old symptoms of resource consumption and lag. Had to disable Shockwave Flash to navigate away.

Shockwave Flash is now version 10.2.153.1, or 10.2 r153, but I am still having the same problem with it enabled.

Could it be my Firefox version? I had not checked it until now, and apparently I am using version 3.6.16.

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit version.

As of right now, I'm fine with temporarily disabling Shockwave Flash when browsing DFans. No rush to fix it but would be nice to have it fixed soon. I can try to provide more info if needed, but having others providing info would be more useful to cross-check versions; could be a combination of things?

Well I've disabled Shockwave Flash already, so the site is running normally now and I can still see the ads. I think it may be something else that runs on flash in the background? It was taking up a good amount of CPU power to keep a DFans tab open; memory also hiked to ~150k or so then drop back to ~60k or so.

The lag starts about 2-5 seconds after a page is fully loaded and, as far as I could tell, happens 100% of the time when I have Shockwave Flash enabled. Problem started probably within the past week. I'm unsure whether or not this started before or after FF and/or Flash was updated. To my knowledge, Flash hasn't been updated recently. FF seems to auto-update, so I haven't really kept track of when it last updated.

Hope that helps.

Edit: Sorry, just kidding. I can't see the ads w/o enabling SF.

Edit2: Uhm, okay so I refreshed a bunch of pages and opened multiple tabs on DFans. For the most part, with SF disabled, the top and bottom ads are missing. It's just empty space. But occasionally, some of the pages DO display an ad. I have another tab open from the front page that shows a Progressive ad at the top, and a grey box for the bottom tab. However, I have a second tab open with the same front page, and both ads are missing. So.. I'm unsure whether or not still this is a problem with Flash ads.. I'll reload FFXIVCore pages a few times with Flash enabled and disabled to see if I run into any problems.

Edit3: I have the same lag issue with FFXIVCore but ONLY on their front page with Flash enabled. Forums works fine with Flash enabled. As for DFans, I get the lag 100% of the time, regardless of front page or forum pages with Flash enabled.

Quote from Ophion

What exactly is loading when you experience the lag? I'm not a firefox user but shouldn't it display something like "waiting for [something]"?

Mm, no, the bottom says "Done" which means they're done loading the page. Everything is just heavily delayed and laggy. Scrolling isn't smooth, typing takes forever for it to appear, and stuff like that. So I don't think it's something that isn't loading.

Checking task manager, it does eat away at my CPU consistently just keep a tab open. Memory hikes up quite a bit but always comes back down. I don't have this problem on my FFXIV board that I visit which is also run on Curse. To type, I have to type in a notepad and copy+paste it into a reply box, otherwise it takes years for the letters to pop up.

The lag seems to appear on all pages: front page, forum pages, and even in the reply page.

EDIT: I seemed to have found what is causing the site to lag for FF. It's not an add-on, but a plugin. When I disabled Shockwave Flash, my CPU usage dropped to pretty much nothing and the site works normally again. I'm not entirely sure what this means, since this is the only site that seems to have the problem. Do ads on diablofans use shockwave or something?

It is listed as Shockwave Flash 10.1.102.64 or 10.1 r102

I've been getting this problem the past two days or so. None of the add-ons seem to be affecting the lag I'm experiencing on diablofans. My cache is automatically cleared upon closing of FF, so it can't be that either. Unsure what else to do.

No, I'm not going to start using Chrome because there is lag on one website.