There's a whole lot of unknown variables at play here unfortunately. Fortunately, that means that the fact that unattuned runes exist in the current build of the game is not the end of the world.
Blizzard is an iterative design company. Jay said they wanted to try this other system to see how it feels. So maybe it's just present in their internal testing right now to check out. If it turns out to be bad, they will change it. And change it again until it feels good.
I strongly suspect the version where only unattuned runes drop and you roll the dice every time you place it into a skill will not go live. No one really seems particularly happy about that idea. So I expect them to try it, find out it's too harsh, and then dial it back a bit. Perhaps unattuned runes will serve some different role, or be removed altogether.
The case that Jay Wilson made for it was that runes didn't have the same random character that the rest of Diablo's item drops had. I guess he forgot about gems, which drop of a particular quality and color. But to me runes are different. Runes are not a part of your character's gearset, they're a part of your character's skill set, or build. Random runes would be like leveling up in D2 and choosing a skill tree to put a point in. "Alright, let's put a point in Combat Skills, I hope I get Whirlwind! Darn, got Double Throw instead. Oh well, better luck next time..." That would feel super lame, because the character's build is the fundamental part of planning a class. Your gear drops are random and you hope to find gear that supplements your chosen build, but you've always had the freedom to choose which combination of skills and attributes you wanted to use. They've made runes such a vital part of how a character plays that I don't think they'll be able to get away with much randomness.
I think where they'll end up is runes will have a known color, lock to a skill when you put it in and have random modifiers as well. That way you can get the red rune you want no matter what (so that you can play your class the way you want), and you can continue the item hunt to look for the right modifier in the meantime.
For videos generated by those other than beta testers, I'm not sure how to tell which, if any, rune is being used. I have no idea where to find cast times in the skill calculator.
That's easy enough. Runes are not in the beta, so everything you are seeing is unruned. Cast times are not indicated anywhere offline, but most weapon skills are based on weapon speed.
I wonder if they just haven't completed the update to skills yet. The calculator shows 1 skill at level one (Impale), and 2 at level two (Hungering Arrow and Caltrops). Demon Hunters would be the only class to start the game with one skill and two skill slots. I suspect Hungering Arrow will be made a level 1 skill along with impale.
That said, I also think Hatred will regen slowly. The hatred generating skills seem small compared to the cost of the hatred spenders.
Fan of Knives is basically Frost Nova now. Short range, player based AOE that snares targets while doing moderate damage.
It's a tool you can use or not use, but it has its place.
I think it's old role was more strange. Why would the Demon Hunter voluntarily place themselves into the middle of a pack of monsters and spam a snare for low damage? One snare, get away, and start pelting them is all that's needed, and that's what we go. The cooldown allows for it to do more damage (to prevent the stand there and spam it technique).
@Bran: I'm glad you got the reference. I've been using it for years and only a handful of people have recognized it (and said something to me). Hurricane Neddy is among my favorite episodes of all time (behind You Only Move Twice, of course).
I do not expect level 7 runes to be common. And it seems like they're planning on having the runes lock to skills they're placed in. So when you level your Wizard to 60 using fire spells and suddenly decide you want to play with Ice, you have no runes for it. You'll have to invest either gold or time into getting runes for your new loadout. This puts investment behind your decision to change, and makes that matter.
That's where it's going to be difficult to change your build on the fly. You might swap one or two skills out for different scenarios (mob bashing vs. boss fighting), but you won't have the resources to radically alter your playstyle on the fly.
Customization options and permanent decisions are not the same thing.
I agree with you that being able to change your character's entire playstyle on the fly goes too far. But that's not because it lacks customization, it's because it takes away the importance of making decisions at all. A decision is only interesting if it comes with consequences. If I can take it back right away, there's no weight behind it.
That's why runes count. Runes do awesome things and are a very important part of your build. When you decide to socket a rune into a skill, you are locking that rune to that skill forever. That's a decision that matters. If you decide you made a mistake, you have to find another rune to replace the one you lost. Or spend the time to farm the gold to undo your decision (which should not be cheap if that's something they implement).
TL;DR: It's not lack of customization that's bothering people (it's been demonstrated that the customization options are pretty extensive), it's that people want their decisions to matter. I believe that runes can fulfill that role in the endgame if done right, and that's something we haven't seen yet.
It was as recently as Gamescom that they said the best rares will beat legendaries wasn't it? I doubt their stance has changed on that.
That said, rolling a top end rare is a huge shot in the dark. The main reason legendaries look so awesome is that they don't waste modifiers. Getting all the modifiers on a rare to be modifiers you want is an extremely unlikely scenario. But anyway, I'm fine with the system as is.
The crafting system allowing players to recycle rares and magics (and legendaries) into new items makes it so that no drops are wasted. The large inventories and in the field selling and salvaging just makes it easier for players to pick up everything and put it to use somehow. Breaking down and crafting rares is going to be a huge gold sink, which is needed if gold is to remain valuable.
I expect there to be some overlap in quality. Top-end magics will beat some rares. Top-end rares will beat some legendaries. At the very high-end, perfect legendaries and perfect rares will be about the same, with a slight edge to rares.
What made (and still makes) the DH's resource unique was the fact that it was split.
It used to basically be AP/mana, now its just kinda spirit/mana instead.
I haven't played it myself, so I guess I can't tell whether or not it's fun. It just seems like Barb, Monk, and Demon Hunter all kinda have the same rhythm to combat now. I'd be interested to know what happens to Hatred naturally. Perhaps it still regens naturally but even more slowly. That way you have the Barb that decays, the Monk that stays static, and the DH that regens.
Discipline just doesn't look all that interesting. It seems like you won't worry about it most of the time. Its basic function seems to be preventing utility skill spamming without needing to implement cooldowns (which is different than the other classes, granted).
Whatevs, I just was a bit disappointed to see 3/5 classes using the combo point style of DPS.
I am happy with the skill order changes, though. Impale at level 1 to give the DH a nuke right up front is pretty sweet. And skills like grenades and fan of knives that are much more situational being moved back to later levels seems like a nice fit.
Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed with the DH changes.
One of the things I most liked about Diii was that each class has a unique resource system. When they were first all announced they weren't radically different, but enough to provide flavor for each class. Now it really feels like Barb, Monk, and DH are pretty close.
Fury and Spirit were different enough to be ok, but adding a third class that builds a resource with half their skills and spends it with the other half feels kinda lame. I expected a more creative solution to the problem, or more subtle.
I liked that the DH had to pace themselves in combat and balance skill usage between Hatred and Discipline spells. But now it looks like I could ignore Discipline entirely if I wanted to.
I'm glad that they're trying to solve the problems with the DH, but it really feels like they took the easy way out on this one.
My only problem with Spectral Blade is you have to be near enemies, and this build is going to be rather vulnerable with no escape mechanics and increased damage from glass cannon.
I do like the Blizzard duration increase, might be worth the extra casting cost. I wonder how much AP regen we'll be able to get on gear. Picking a damage rune for meteor is tough. I like the Indigo effect, but since it doesn't persist, it doesn't fill the screen with destruction as much as Alabaster.
Yeah, it's more conceptual than serious (though honestly everything is until we actually play the game).
With enough faster cast gear, any wizard might run dry. This build just takes the efficiency aspect to the limit on all the major nukes to keep on dropping pain. Might also call it the Framerate Killer.
As you can see, we have Meteor, Blizzard, and Energy Twister for damage. Storm armor, familiar, and electrocute are all to regen AP. Everything has a golden rune in it for non-stop casting madness.
Passives were glass cannon for damage, Astral Presence for AP and AP regen. The third is a tossup. Prodigy for regen, but I also considered Arcane Dynamo to buff meteors, or Temporal Flux for slows (arcane damage from energy twisters), maybe galvanizing ward for health regen and less storm armor refreshing.
But here's the breakdown:
This spec has 120 AP and 19 AP/second regen.
If we cast one spell per second, Blizzard and Energy Twister are both a net AP gain (+2 and +12 respectively). Meteor has a net AP cost of 13, which means I could hit it 9 times in a row without stopping. A cast sequence of Meteor, Blizzard, Energy Twister has a cost of 56 over 3 seconds, but regens 57 making it sustainable indefinitely.
Now I actually expect to be casting more than one spell per second, and that's where electrocute comes in. When I do run empty, Electrocute just sends more chaos into the fray and regens a ton of AP per cast, enough to start up a casting sequence again.
Basically, this Wizard will cover the screen with falling meteors, blizzards, and tornadoes, with lightning jumping around whatever survives the onslaught. It has 4 damage types to deal with any resistances as well. It has absolutely no defensive skills or evasive skills, so if that's a problem I'll take out Electrocute for Slow Time or Teleport.
Mostly, though, I just want to remind the demons what the end of the world really looks like.
What we're getting at here is that part of Diablo is committing to a build and finding something balanced that can work for many situations.
You're not supposed to want to/be able to radically alter your play style on the fly. The skill UI is pretty slick, it should only take you a few minutes to swap your entire set of active skills and passives, and I think that's perfectly appropriate.
Another principle of Diablo is a simple interface. multiple hotbars that are swappable moves away from that design.
If Blizzard were to implement hotbar swapping and build saving features, they will have to put some sort of cooldown or cost on doing so. The fact that you have to change things manually is a design decision to make your decisions matter. Making it too simple to change your mind on the fly or even create highly specialized (not balanced) hot-swappable builds defeats the design of a game where making choices between what you can and can't do is the principle of character development.
They don't want players seeing a large pack of weak mobs and saying "Ok, I'll equip my AOE set now." and then when that pack is gone and they see a single large mob, "K, now I'll hit F5 and my entire build will change to deal with this one guy." I think they're ok if before you tackle a boss you decide to swap a skill or two, but entire skillsets and hotbars goes too far into creating a character that can just use everything at once.
Just wanted to know whether my logic is correct here:
Seven Sided Strike (SSS).
Crimson Rune (CR).
Indigo Rune (IR).
SSS (7 hits each dealing 130% weapon damage) with CR (damage increases to 234% weapon damage per hit) thus
7*234 = 1638% weapon damage in total.
OR
SSS (7 hits each dealing 130% weapon damage) with IR (increase number of hits to 14) thus
14*130 = 1820% weapon damage in total.
So is it correct to assume that SSS with IR is the best?
IR does more overall damage, but takes more time as well. So you're trading less damage per second for more damage per spirit. Is that worth it? It's up to you and how you want to build your monk.
Personally I'd take the crimson rune since the damage difference is small, and I can spend the extra time building more spirit to hit SSS again.
0
Here's a key thing: the website pulls data directly from the current game client (source: http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/199920/hatred-changes#post21). This means that the website is showing us data from their internal client.
Blizzard is an iterative design company. Jay said they wanted to try this other system to see how it feels. So maybe it's just present in their internal testing right now to check out. If it turns out to be bad, they will change it. And change it again until it feels good.
I strongly suspect the version where only unattuned runes drop and you roll the dice every time you place it into a skill will not go live. No one really seems particularly happy about that idea. So I expect them to try it, find out it's too harsh, and then dial it back a bit. Perhaps unattuned runes will serve some different role, or be removed altogether.
The case that Jay Wilson made for it was that runes didn't have the same random character that the rest of Diablo's item drops had. I guess he forgot about gems, which drop of a particular quality and color. But to me runes are different. Runes are not a part of your character's gearset, they're a part of your character's skill set, or build. Random runes would be like leveling up in D2 and choosing a skill tree to put a point in. "Alright, let's put a point in Combat Skills, I hope I get Whirlwind! Darn, got Double Throw instead. Oh well, better luck next time..." That would feel super lame, because the character's build is the fundamental part of planning a class. Your gear drops are random and you hope to find gear that supplements your chosen build, but you've always had the freedom to choose which combination of skills and attributes you wanted to use. They've made runes such a vital part of how a character plays that I don't think they'll be able to get away with much randomness.
I think where they'll end up is runes will have a known color, lock to a skill when you put it in and have random modifiers as well. That way you can get the red rune you want no matter what (so that you can play your class the way you want), and you can continue the item hunt to look for the right modifier in the meantime.
1
Youtube of wave of light: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tph4IORjyh8
Youtube of Seven Sided Strike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x_YN5d6FH8
Unfortunately, we're not able to answer your questions since neither of those skills is currently available in beta.
0
Zombie Bears. Rain of Corpses. Snake to the Face.
I'd say as far as epic goes, Witch Doctor is ahead of the rest. The Barb, for example, is just hitting stuff.
0
That said, I also think Hatred will regen slowly. The hatred generating skills seem small compared to the cost of the hatred spenders.
0
It's a tool you can use or not use, but it has its place.
I think it's old role was more strange. Why would the Demon Hunter voluntarily place themselves into the middle of a pack of monsters and spam a snare for low damage? One snare, get away, and start pelting them is all that's needed, and that's what we go. The cooldown allows for it to do more damage (to prevent the stand there and spam it technique).
@Bran: I'm glad you got the reference. I've been using it for years and only a handful of people have recognized it (and said something to me). Hurricane Neddy is among my favorite episodes of all time (behind You Only Move Twice, of course).
0
I do not expect level 7 runes to be common. And it seems like they're planning on having the runes lock to skills they're placed in. So when you level your Wizard to 60 using fire spells and suddenly decide you want to play with Ice, you have no runes for it. You'll have to invest either gold or time into getting runes for your new loadout. This puts investment behind your decision to change, and makes that matter.
That's where it's going to be difficult to change your build on the fly. You might swap one or two skills out for different scenarios (mob bashing vs. boss fighting), but you won't have the resources to radically alter your playstyle on the fly.
Customization options and permanent decisions are not the same thing.
I agree with you that being able to change your character's entire playstyle on the fly goes too far. But that's not because it lacks customization, it's because it takes away the importance of making decisions at all. A decision is only interesting if it comes with consequences. If I can take it back right away, there's no weight behind it.
That's why runes count. Runes do awesome things and are a very important part of your build. When you decide to socket a rune into a skill, you are locking that rune to that skill forever. That's a decision that matters. If you decide you made a mistake, you have to find another rune to replace the one you lost. Or spend the time to farm the gold to undo your decision (which should not be cheap if that's something they implement).
TL;DR: It's not lack of customization that's bothering people (it's been demonstrated that the customization options are pretty extensive), it's that people want their decisions to matter. I believe that runes can fulfill that role in the endgame if done right, and that's something we haven't seen yet.
0
That said, rolling a top end rare is a huge shot in the dark. The main reason legendaries look so awesome is that they don't waste modifiers. Getting all the modifiers on a rare to be modifiers you want is an extremely unlikely scenario. But anyway, I'm fine with the system as is.
The crafting system allowing players to recycle rares and magics (and legendaries) into new items makes it so that no drops are wasted. The large inventories and in the field selling and salvaging just makes it easier for players to pick up everything and put it to use somehow. Breaking down and crafting rares is going to be a huge gold sink, which is needed if gold is to remain valuable.
I expect there to be some overlap in quality. Top-end magics will beat some rares. Top-end rares will beat some legendaries. At the very high-end, perfect legendaries and perfect rares will be about the same, with a slight edge to rares.
0
I haven't played it myself, so I guess I can't tell whether or not it's fun. It just seems like Barb, Monk, and Demon Hunter all kinda have the same rhythm to combat now. I'd be interested to know what happens to Hatred naturally. Perhaps it still regens naturally but even more slowly. That way you have the Barb that decays, the Monk that stays static, and the DH that regens.
Discipline just doesn't look all that interesting. It seems like you won't worry about it most of the time. Its basic function seems to be preventing utility skill spamming without needing to implement cooldowns (which is different than the other classes, granted).
Whatevs, I just was a bit disappointed to see 3/5 classes using the combo point style of DPS.
I am happy with the skill order changes, though. Impale at level 1 to give the DH a nuke right up front is pretty sweet. And skills like grenades and fan of knives that are much more situational being moved back to later levels seems like a nice fit.
1
One of the things I most liked about Diii was that each class has a unique resource system. When they were first all announced they weren't radically different, but enough to provide flavor for each class. Now it really feels like Barb, Monk, and DH are pretty close.
Fury and Spirit were different enough to be ok, but adding a third class that builds a resource with half their skills and spends it with the other half feels kinda lame. I expected a more creative solution to the problem, or more subtle.
I liked that the DH had to pace themselves in combat and balance skill usage between Hatred and Discipline spells. But now it looks like I could ignore Discipline entirely if I wanted to.
I'm glad that they're trying to solve the problems with the DH, but it really feels like they took the easy way out on this one.
0
I do like the Blizzard duration increase, might be worth the extra casting cost. I wonder how much AP regen we'll be able to get on gear. Picking a damage rune for meteor is tough. I like the Indigo effect, but since it doesn't persist, it doesn't fill the screen with destruction as much as Alabaster.
0
With enough faster cast gear, any wizard might run dry. This build just takes the efficiency aspect to the limit on all the major nukes to keep on dropping pain. Might also call it the Framerate Killer.
0
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#PlfOgd!XbY!bbbbbb
As you can see, we have Meteor, Blizzard, and Energy Twister for damage. Storm armor, familiar, and electrocute are all to regen AP. Everything has a golden rune in it for non-stop casting madness.
Passives were glass cannon for damage, Astral Presence for AP and AP regen. The third is a tossup. Prodigy for regen, but I also considered Arcane Dynamo to buff meteors, or Temporal Flux for slows (arcane damage from energy twisters), maybe galvanizing ward for health regen and less storm armor refreshing.
But here's the breakdown:
This spec has 120 AP and 19 AP/second regen.
If we cast one spell per second, Blizzard and Energy Twister are both a net AP gain (+2 and +12 respectively). Meteor has a net AP cost of 13, which means I could hit it 9 times in a row without stopping. A cast sequence of Meteor, Blizzard, Energy Twister has a cost of 56 over 3 seconds, but regens 57 making it sustainable indefinitely.
Now I actually expect to be casting more than one spell per second, and that's where electrocute comes in. When I do run empty, Electrocute just sends more chaos into the fray and regens a ton of AP per cast, enough to start up a casting sequence again.
Basically, this Wizard will cover the screen with falling meteors, blizzards, and tornadoes, with lightning jumping around whatever survives the onslaught. It has 4 damage types to deal with any resistances as well. It has absolutely no defensive skills or evasive skills, so if that's a problem I'll take out Electrocute for Slow Time or Teleport.
Mostly, though, I just want to remind the demons what the end of the world really looks like.
0
0
You're not supposed to want to/be able to radically alter your play style on the fly. The skill UI is pretty slick, it should only take you a few minutes to swap your entire set of active skills and passives, and I think that's perfectly appropriate.
Another principle of Diablo is a simple interface. multiple hotbars that are swappable moves away from that design.
If Blizzard were to implement hotbar swapping and build saving features, they will have to put some sort of cooldown or cost on doing so. The fact that you have to change things manually is a design decision to make your decisions matter. Making it too simple to change your mind on the fly or even create highly specialized (not balanced) hot-swappable builds defeats the design of a game where making choices between what you can and can't do is the principle of character development.
They don't want players seeing a large pack of weak mobs and saying "Ok, I'll equip my AOE set now." and then when that pack is gone and they see a single large mob, "K, now I'll hit F5 and my entire build will change to deal with this one guy." I think they're ok if before you tackle a boss you decide to swap a skill or two, but entire skillsets and hotbars goes too far into creating a character that can just use everything at once.
0
IR does more overall damage, but takes more time as well. So you're trading less damage per second for more damage per spirit. Is that worth it? It's up to you and how you want to build your monk.
Personally I'd take the crimson rune since the damage difference is small, and I can spend the extra time building more spirit to hit SSS again.