DiabloFans

Very cool

I am really enjoying all the interviews they are doing

Quote from Zero(pS)

Keep the ideas coming guys. From what we know the developers got their eyes on this thread, so you never know when an idea might be used.

Just try to to keep them simple (ideas that are way complex and completely off-sync with the rest of the skills/runes in the game are probably not even considered) and try to keep the spirit of the original design intact (unless the core idea is bad in the first place, like say a pure dmg increase in a skill that's never going to be an efficient dmg tool).

For instance, what would it take to make Widowmakers (the Corpse Spiders rune) a viable mana regen tool? How high would the damage of Spider Queen go to make it a viable "summon"?

It's definitely good to recognize that simplicity is key to making skills awesome (simplicity in getting from point a to point b not that builds can't be complex or inventive).

And like you said I think it's good to see that some skills simply need number tweaking to improve while others could probably benefit from entire reworking of their mechanics to perform against the more popular ones we use right now.

I've actually been working on my seismic slam build the last day or so and have really found a good place where it's outperforming expectations. The key element that is missing for the sidelined builds is clearly skill synergy, functionality and gear. In time I see these things working great. The game is fun as heck when you make a new build work well

Quote from Elendiro

congratz on the blue post

It's cool to know it's drawn some attention. I think it's a great way to express some cool ideas and try to better explain why certain skills simply aren't being used.

Another rune idea for the Barbarian

I just started working on a seismic slam barb and I think it would be really cool to have a rune that crates a circular shock wave around the player rather than a straight line or cone. Like a spamable ground stomp I guess.

To elaborate:

I think my fav current rune for it would be Rumble as it creates a better means to help control and finish off remaining mobs.
Crackling Rift and Strength from Earth are pretty good secondary options.
Stagger does't really have as much oomph as I would like. Adding stun is cool but at a low mp it's not that useful (mobs die too fast) and could have been tacked onto one of the more creative runes even if it removed the knockback since I don't find that to be a useful part of the skill anyways. And Shattered Ground's extra knockback is only a hindrance to fast kills.

That's awesome I am excited to read the transcripts and I really like where they are headed now.

I really would like to see the skills with really lengthy cool-downs be reduced drastically.

This game is far too fast paced to have something with a two minute CD. It's the reason Thrive on Chaos rune is about the only WotB rune being used. The problem is that Wrath is far too powerful versus other skills without that cool-down. The other side of the problem coin is that with such a huge cool-down you are wasting a skill slot 105 seconds out of 120 without the endless up-time Thrive on Chaos provides.

Perhaps... Wrath of the Berserker could be a passive that activates when you've done something. example ideas:

- massacre 50+ monsters.
- kill x# of mobs at once.
- gained x# of fury in a certain time.
-gone down to 10-5% health.
- goes into Wrath when engaging an elite pack with 60sec cool down

Something that triggers it but doesn't make the player rely on the skill. The WotB could just give a default buff (pretend the runes do not exist since it's a proc type passive) and it lets players feel like they go into a frenzy when circumstances are at their peak of crazy. It opens that 6th skill slot and makes the barb feel a lot more unstable and unpredictable.

Quote from Ashy_Larry

I may have had an idea that is relevent.... I don't think the problem is the skills, persay.... I think the issue is, when blizz made these skills, there was no monster power, therefore the enemies didn't have millz of health....

Not to sound contrary but I believe at launch the monsters in Inferno had higher damage and health pools than MP10.

Skills and runes were more balanced around the 1-60 leveling rather than making them function well at endgame and working backwards from that.

Quote from Zero(pS)

Quote from Uldyssian

I think it would be fun to have leap slam rune that removes the cool down. Maybe to balance this it no longer generates fury but costs like 10-15 per cast.

That would be a nice homage to D2's old Leap

Exactly It was my favorite skill as a Barbarian. it made act 3's trek to Travincal soooo much easier. What's that? An annoying river maze? Here, let me just leap to the other side

I think it would be fun to have leap slam rune that removes the cool down. Maybe to balance this it no longer generates fury but costs like 10-15 per cast.

Or if not this perhaps have an effect like worm hole rune on the wizard's teleport skill where the leap's cool-down is ignored for say 4-6 seconds.

We need to stop getting frustrated that we aren't learning all the juicy tidbits that are most likely being worked on for the expansion and being saved as Blizzcon reveals.

Lets try and give them more insight into what we like and dislike about all the things in the Diablo series. That's what they are interested in right now. Let's put our money where our mouths are and eloquently lay out some focused opinions on what we actually mean when we say that something is less than stellar in Diablo 3.

And of course they are going to be promoting the Console version. I don't care about it myself. I Don't own a console. However, why would they not take at least some of the time to express interest in another Diablo product they are shipping soon?

Cynicism has it's place, but it's too trendy and too easy to fall into a cycle of "Oh they don't care. It;s all PR fluff."

Well fine, that's what it is. But we can make use of the air time given to us to have some real talks about what we want rather than wasting time trying to get them to reveal features we can see as being for the expansion.

/two cents

Question: Would it be possible to create a journal that is account-wide rather than per character? It's fine if I can have the books drops for each character, but giving us an account-wide journal would mean that at any time, any character could listen to every books you had discovered collectively rather than piecemealing them. Or at the very least provide a checklist so that way it's easy to see which character is missing which lore books.

Quote from Indimix

In all honestly, who the hell thought that toad of hugeness was a good idea...?, please, who, tell me, I'd like to speak with that person, at least once.

Make it a permanent pet and I'm sold

Quote from elvy

(In an effort to avoid the strawmen, you cannot do anything naked (counting your follower as naked too) as a max level character in Diablo3, which does not make sense if you're a magic class in an RPG. You cannot do much as a naked Fighter in other games, but this makes sense!)

Exactly. And that's a problem in my opinion. Nothing about our character's strength is derived from ourselves. It's all about gear. In someways it's nice to gain power from loot (why else would we want better gear ever). But.... we should have some inherent self-power.

Nostalgic moment: I remember going back to level two in Diablo 1 to punch the Butcher after having killed Diablo. That was fun

To me the new rune system in D3 is awesome. The part of the new skill system that is falling short stems from certain runes being vastly superior than others and some lacking synergy between skills. It feels as if runes were designed with the idea of being viable as you level rather than all the skills/runes being designed to be viable at inferno MP+ then scaled back.

Once they tweak and improve the lacking runes/skills for the coming expansions, I think people will be less inclined to look back at D2 with such nostalgic admiration for the skill trees.

Also I really loved the idea of skill runes as drops and having different levels of quality. This does lead to inventory clutter but perhaps we could see some type of drop or crafting that upgrades the skills we have.

I have seen stuff about it from MMO Champ, HearthPwn and Diablo.Incgamers, but I haven't seen anything on here make mention of it.

?

Quote from Twoflower

Remember that D2 before the expansion was nowhere near the stellarness that people remember it for today. Things like for example the reworked skilltrees with synergies, or runewords, or legendaries that were actually better than rares, all that stuff came with LoD or much later even.

Comparing D3 to D2 at release I'd say we are on a good way and I am very much looking forward to the expansion.

I agree that it has me pumped for the expansions

That being said, all of the gradual improvements that took place in Diablo 2 (and personally I loved that game at launch) should have been the starting point for a game that was released 11 years after Diablo 2 rather than leaving us conceding the fact that 'Well at launch that game in 2000 wasn't as polished as it ended up becoming later so we'll have to wait and see what this 2012 game does.' A lot of what we got at launch for D3 was a watered down game where they scrapped several aspects of it to where we are now experiencing a slow crawl towards an amazing game.