DiabloFans

The damage nerf is worse, plus they die instantly. Can live without disc. regen.

Quote from amergh1

All this talk rumors did not Barho words from a trusted company and I expect after threemonths beyond the rumors about you if one has the words say and reliable source comes

I understand.

I believe he is specifically referring to the order in which you unlock new skills and stuff. So really all he's saying is the the skills and runes you see in the game now and the ones they are intending for release. I wouldn't really take any information on this as being indicative of release date soon.

That isn't to say that the opposite is true, like the rest of us I'm thinking we will see a big announcement in the near future.

Ya that is what he's talking about:

Guy: Why changing the lvl req. for skills: for testing, or for polishing, or to silence the demanding of the release date?

Jay: we change skill levels for a variety of reasons all focused on polishing based on our playtests.

Guy: thanks. Which order will be the final version? [d3] will be awesome anyway! Grats!

Jay: what is currently in the beta is what we intend for ship, but we're still tuning and things can change.

So really he's saying nothing at all other than they changed the order in which you unlock certain skills, and that change wasn't just done for no reason, it was done because they intend to keep that new order. Kind of a stupid question really.. don't see how it deserved one reply, never mind two.

I wasn't expecting it either ! Very excited to try it, I hope they don't wipe so I can just jump right into hardcore mode with the damage increase, could make for some fun! (Or a bit of sadness)

Anyone else think the second loading screen looks a lot like Lut Gholein? I would love to see that city and act come back, I loved that place. Except the maggot lair.

I would say it's the worst user interface I've had to deal with in a long time, but I'd be lying, because skyrim was exceptionally bad as well. "Oh you have a keyboard with 60 buttons? You'll love our how our entire skills and inventory system is contained on one UI that you can only control with your mouse. Want to craft, that'll be 8 different button presses, click, F, enter, F, click, slide bar, enter."

But being slightly better than that is like winning a swimming contest against someone who drowned.

I think you're misunderstanding what people mean. The UI itself isn't so bad, it's how it actually works.

Put a skill in slot 3, and put a different skill in slot 4. Done?

Now swap them. Let us know how that goes.

Scroll of Resurrection for WoW is a sign of no release date being announced for at least a few weeks I'd say. They obviously want to get a few people to resubscribe to WoW with this deal, and so we've got a few weeks - 7 days of free playing + extra time for word to spread; I don't imagine they'd want their Diablo III release announcement competing with that.

This puts announcement 20th at the soonest, and there is just no way April 17th is release date in this case. Sad face, I was really thinking release announcement this week, or next and still optimistically holding on to april 17th. =(

/sigh

You are the one giving no argument, I've provided multiple very detailed explanations to attempt to back up my points and convince you why I think the system is good, and allows for diversity and, having played the beta, is a lot of fun, at least up to level 13. I realize it's one opinion, but I've 'betamaxed' (all 5 classes level 13) both patch 12 and 13, and I felt patch 13 was just a lot more enjoyable, the rune system feels really good.

You have chosen to not respond to any of my arguments, instead you have make bold claims with no argument or evidence to support it, like 'Call of Duty and D3 have so much in common' .. what, I don't even .. ?

Fanboism? I can be a harsh critic, and am very stubborn, for several of the announcements, I was at first very dismayed (real money AH, no attributes, you name it) but once I'd gotten over the initial shock of complete change, I actually allowed myself to really listen to, and absorb the arguments given for the opposing side, and eventually realized that they were in fact quite logical, and what I was holding onto wasn't necessarily what I thought it was, but just an illusion. ie customization = skill points .. that just isn't true, this system not only offers more customization, but is more robust.

Quote from Crysto37

Ok first of all reroling same class is dead now, your not getting anything else that you didnt get last time its same shit all over again at least in D2 you were trying different build, not anymore thanks to this amazing skill system.

Burzghash is right, there is no good reason for forcing permanence on people, its ok to change class, skills, name, gender in monsters face, this permanent thing is so outdated common guys don`t you feeling me ?

I'm sorry but are we still talking about the same game. Doing the same shit over and over again? What does that remind me of.. baal runes, Mephisto .. Diablo .. Cows .. Diablo 2. You are literally referring to an incredibly repetitive game saying 'I don't want repetition it should be more like this extremely repetitive game.'

Trying a different build? Did you play D2? You mean getting pissed off because your build didn't work, and having to start again, likely to come to a grinding halt again at some point because you literally cannot make progress. Or copying a build from the internet.

The thing you don't realize is, you can still still try another build, while doing a new playthrough of the game, exactly as you said, you'll just be level 60 trying to do inferno (or hell) again, instead of normal. You're still playing the game of diablo over again, whether it be a new character, or an existing one with a new skillset, this game is all about repeating the same four acts over and over, getting gear.

There is a notification on the diablo 3 login screen that states servers are down for maintenance from 10:30AM PST to 12:30PM PST. Doubt it's anything exciting but I know before I was in beta I liked to hear about these things. Still enjoy hearing about it, but less exciting. I'd guess it's not a patch or anything exciting.

Sign of beta?

Note that it is 11:40AM PST and the servers are still up. Although they've said 10:30AM the past few times, despite the fact that it went down at like 2PM PST .. lol. Blizzard time.

Demon Hunter:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#WRckVQ!bde!aYYcYc

The idea is it's supposed to be a versatile build, capable of handling anything thrown at it.

Entangling Shot: With chain gang I can ensnare enemies that are coming at me, allowing me to keep distance.

Multishot: Kill.

Rapid Fire: This is my high damage single target ability. It also fulfills the role of dealing with physically resistant mobs. Undecided on the rune, either lower the hatred cost and do fire damage or hatred allowing go with piercing poison arrows instead.

Rain of Vengeance: Runed for a mortar style AoE stun, perfect for dealing with nasty 'glass cannons' hiding behind their minions, stun them, ensnare the minions and find a way to kill the casters in the back.

Vault: Escape mechanic. Nuf' said.

Companion: Not sure on this one yet, but likely, I'm liking the wolf to take some heat of me, and with vault as the only other discipline spender I'll hopefully have enough to cast the wolf often.

Passives: Damage and hatred generation, makes sense. Brooding may or may not be swapped out for more damage depending on how things are going.

But now things are just getting crazy. There are hundreds of different possible types of scenarios you could encounter. Having a separate build you need to switch into every time is going to significantly impede your progress, not to mention the fact that my brain would explode trying to min/max for all the different scenarios.

Ultimately the end point was you didn't gain much of an advantage over me, under the 3second assumption. Wasting 30s to change skills around just isn't worth it in my opinion.

However aside from all this, I can understand the frustration of feeling like you have to switch skills around in order to "min/max" your character for every situation, but it is my opinion that the slight edge you gain simply won't end up being worth the time and effort to switch around your skills (30 seconds). I'm willing to guarantee that there will be individuals rolling with "7 skill builds" where two are interchanged depending on the situation. Personally I don't really like the idea and just won't do it because it's annoying, but I'd be lying if I said part of me wasn't slightly bothered by this option. But the more logical part of my brain is telling me that realistically 6 skills is enough to have a versatile build, capable of dealing with anything you throw at it. Maybe not the most effective for individual scenarios, but I feel as though I could still run a dungeon as fast as someone changing their skills around for each unique situation, by not spending time fiddling with my skills, and being 100% comfortable and effective with the skills I use.

And this is the key for me, I believe that at the end of the day, it just simply isn't going to be about which skills you use (as long as it's diverse) it's about *how* you use them. Sure you may swap and down Diablo 10% faster than me, but I don't stop when I go around a corner and come against the nastiest single target rare spawn around, I jump right in and introduce him to his maker, without skipping a beat, none of this swapping nonsense. My character is ready for -anything-.

Trying to keep the quote thing going is a nightmare at this point, so I'll try to respond in order of your paragraphs.. sorry, I'm too lazy to crop out all of my own quotes etc.

Yep generally agree with the shadow power, entangling thing, makes sense and is reasonable. Plus you get a lot of utility out of entangling, whereas shadow power just gets your out of a fairly nasty situation.

Yea don't get me wrong bosses will live a lot longer than that, but you'll also never have the opportunity to stand still for 15 consecutive seconds. It was more a mathematical example illustrating why I feel as though rapid fire is not the low dps single target skill you claim it is, although comparing it to your massive rapid fire, yea it's *relatively* low, although you'd be totally out of luck against a physically resistance single target. So here you've got me, and our argument turns into how much time in any given fight can you afford to stand still and rapid fire, if its low than my low hatred runed rapid fire will allow me to stop and start rapid fire more freely, allowing maneuvering while maintaining enough hatred to actually cast it in bursts - I'll support this point with some math later.

But I'm not an idiot, on paper this gives you more than a 5% single target damage bonus over me, but at what cost, and what about bosses who can summon minions? Like you've said you've sacrificed almost all your mobility, if that boss can move quickly, then you're damage is completely irrelevant, you can't stand still for long without dying, and you don't have the mobility to buy yourself some time to stand still and rapid fire, but that argument isn't very important because I could easily change, say shadow power, for smoke screen, or vault and you've got your escape mechanic and can now buy some precious rapid fire time.

I do still think your build is viable though, you've got some solid hatred regen, and a massive AoE skill. Used correctly you'd be just fine, although you'd have to kite a lot more than I would, and ya, very low mobility, thinking about it more it isn't that great, you'd probably get overwhelmed pretty easily. Hard to say without seeing how cluster arrows works in terms of hatred cost vs. regen.

So I'll give it to you here that you're single target build will very likely kill bosses faster than me, I don't think it'll give you enough to warrant constantly swapping around skills, and actually ends up hindering you a great deal if you misread the boss and it turns into an AoE fight, or if he's got the mobility to render your rapid fire nearly useless, with a big overhead cost and the need to be on the move.

Let's do a bit more math, let's say for a given boss fight, the mechanics of the fight only realistically allow you to stand still for 3s. At 20+10/s, you're spending 50 hatred for about 1300% damage, or 26% dmg/hatred. With the hatred cost reduction rune, I'd be looking at 35hatred for about 700%, or 20% damage per/hatred. That's around a 25% difference in damage (not even close to 75%-100%), and can easily be negated by choosing, say, Steady Aim as a passive, with my increased mobility I can keep up that 20% extra damage, and our builds are now almost equal, despite the heavy AoE damage flavour of mine. And this is my point; you've sacrificed almost all of your AoE usefulness, and mobility, to gain a marginal increase in damage on me, I don't think it'll be enough damage to kill bosses 30s faster than me (the time to respec twice) and actually make you a more effective adventurer than I.

So the real question, do you get a worthwhile damage increase swapping builds before bosses? Short answer, yes. But is it worth it? Well that's subjective, and my opinion is no.

See how you replaced some of my skills with other skills of the same type, that's customization. You've got a nice snare, doubling as a bit of utility. High single target damage. Another more powerful utility, and the last one possibly going to a massive AoE damage skill, too high hatred cost for my liking, but I was looking at cluster for awhile. You've got a bit too much utility in my opinion, but it's a solid build and I can see it working, and you only have one skill that I also have, possibly two with companion, but all runed differently. Also notice shadow power doesn't increase attack speed anymore, it gives you life steal, seems redundant to have two life stealing abilities.

Also I do not have 4 AoE skills, when I refer to an AoE skill, I mean an AoE damage skill, the only spell like this is full broadside multishot, I'll explain why. Rapid Fire is meant to be my high single target dps skill, and it's a big one, coming in at 220+% per second to a single target. It's likely that instead of poison arrows, I'll go with fire arrows and diminished hatred cost, this is a feel of the game thing so I can't possibly make decisions now. This will also rely on which passives I take.

Also I assume you haven't played beta, rapid fire is a very low cost spell relatively speaking. I can spam it during skeleton king. Let me make this very clear, I start rapid fire, and I hold down the button, until the SK is dead. I don't stop casting, I don't need to move, and this is without vengeance. You can actually just cast rapid fire for like 10 seconds + consecutively (20 hatred, plus 10/sec after 10 seconds = 120 hatred). That's without regen, throw in that nasty rune and suddenly its 5+10/s hatred, making 14s uninterrupted rapid fire without regen. At 228% damage per second, you're looking at 3192% weapon damage over 14s. Hello.

Rain of Vengeance, again not an AoE damage skill the way I've got it runed, it's an AoE stun/cc with a mortar style attack. Very effective at dealing with pesky, glass cannon casters behind a wall of meat. AoE stun the casters, snare the meat, vault around and take down the glass cannons asap. This abilities sole purpose is an AoE utility stun, too high hatred cost for backbone AoE damage.

Entangle with chain gang, not for dps, not for AoE. This is to snare enemies at the front line, to buy me time to get away, kite, or avoid being surrounded, as I have no escape mechanism for being surrounded (aside from my own skill.. which I'll be relying on for the being surrounded issue.)

I disagree that single target damage is low, the only ability that can stand toe to toe with rapid fire, for single target dps, is impale, but with it's massive hatred cost, it isn't a viable one in my opinion, rapid fire fills two much needed roles, an alternate to physical damage, and a solid single target dps skill. It's very likely that my 6th skill will be the hatred bat, but the Templar companion also has a passive hatred regen, so going with the Wolf instead gives me another solid utility mechanic, absorbing some damage and getting 'aggro' instead of me, these will be game time decisions though.

And ya didn't pick passives because.. who cares. Probably two for damage and one for utility. Dunno. Vengeance and Archery, then maybe brooding for life regen, really depends on things are going. Passives are another game time decision for me.

Notice how we're having a discussion of two perfectly viable, and in my opinion, awesome looking builds, that are theoretically capable of dealing with any situation, and are literally *completely* different, but I don't see how yours does more single target dps than me. Yes the obvious 15% from marked for death, but that isn't a build deal breaker, and I doubt you'd gain more than 15 seconds out of it, thereby rendering the 'I need to swap to this slightly better single target build' argument moot.