Every class played and built well is going to be very strong if the skills, runes and passive balance that is currently in beta remains similar throughout the leveling curve to 60.
I killed sk with every class and while I liked certain classes more than others they all felt powerful and effective to me.
I do believe that the wizard from 1-13 is probably the least exciting class, but looking at builds I have come up with I think late game the wizard is going to be
Because judging how effective the wizard is gonna be overall by 13 levels makes ALOT of sense.
I have to admit I was underwhelmed with the wizard during the beta until I got diamond skin. Then it was like night and day as you could tank some damage from melee for a sec and time your frost nova to gain maximum distance.
Wizard has alot of cool skills and abilities that we just don't have access to yet.
I mean if you don't think a wizard isn't going to be radically different with teleport, mirror images and archon, come on....
Energy armor is great, but it's not the end all, be all.
Ice Armor chills and/or freezes melee attackers which combos nicely with the cold blooded passive. The jagged ice rune also makes melee attackers take 100% weapon damage which is no joke. The ice reflect rune could be really interesting. 25% chance on being hit by melee to cast a 75% damage frost nova centered on the attacker. The crystallize rune gives 15% armor bonus per hit stacking 3x and lasting 30 seconds each refresh. This is in my mind probably comparable to prismatic armors 40% resistance. Granted it's not as good because you aren't at 45% armor bonus all the time, but it's still solid.
Storm armor is solid all around. Right off the bat it shocks melee and/or ranged attackers. We don't know how frequently this is, but it's probably at least once every second or 2. This is basically free damage. The power of the storm rune reduces all skill costs by 3, not bad. Strike back increases the shock damage to 91%. Free 91% weapon damage. Scramble looks REALLY good imo. 25% movespeed for 3 seconds whenever hit by melee OR ranged attacks.
Honestly I think each armor has some really good reasons for using it.
I think they were op. Smoke screen is already a very solid skill and has some excellent runes to increase it's versatility.
Shadow power is basically a healing ability that you can also rune to great effect.
Neither one of these should be huge hatred regenerators imo when the dh already has an extremely powerful one with preparation and the punishment rune. You can make a build focus'd on regen'ing alot of disciple to get prep up faster. You also have to consider +hatred, +disc generation affixes and +max hatred etc.
I could easily see a lvl 60 demon hunter with 175-200 hatred dropping 4-5x cluster arrows, popping prep and doing it again and laying waste to huge packs of mobs, or using rapid fire and just straight laying the dps down on a boss.
D3 has so much more customization than D2. It's not even funny the two are league's apart.
There isn't necessarily gonna be a whirlwind build or whatever because you get to have 6 skills.
You may have a build that has 1 skill that is the most important, but it will likely require other skills and certain passives, affixes and gems to really make it work.
It's not going to be as easy to label specific builds because there are so many options and that is a good thing.
I could play a demon hunter and you play a demon hunter and we both have the exact same skill, but each chose different runes and passives and our 2 builds could be vastly different.
Both builds use the exact same skills, but have different runes and different passives. Both would play quite abit differently.
If you completely changed even 1 skill between the 2 builds you could massively change them.
This is real customization.
Not oh hey, whirlwind, alright.Figured I'd add that build A would me much more defensive and focusing on not getting touched and build B would be more about all around damage.
That's my initial impression from playing each class at least to lvl 9 and killing SK.
That said gaining even 1 new skill can rapidly change how a class function and/or how effective it is.
The wizard for instance was just making me go yawn and then I got diamond skin and every thing changed. Just from that one skill.
The witch doctor was highly effective so my rating doesn't have anything to do with his performance. I just didn't really like the abilities I had access to up to lvl 9. I know almost for sure that opinion will change with access to more skills and passives.
Overall I felt all the classes felt quite balanced with their differing playstyles.
I studied videos and abilities of all the classes extensively and had a good idea of what I would probably like to play.
My top 2 pre-beta were barb and dh.
And they still are. Barbarian because he just rampages through. The demon hunter because she's swift and deadly with grace.
Finished a SK kill a couple of hours ago with the witch doctor and just didn't care for him that much.
I have a feeling that I'll like both the monk and wizard tomorrow.
What surprised me most is what skills I have ended up like more than other so far vs what I thought I would like from videos. Ancient spear and caltrops being 2 skills I like alot that literally weren't in any of my theoretical builds lol.
Ya they all look good. I really don't think there is a "clear" winner among the rune choices which I believe is blizz's whole philosophy with D3 aka every thing is viable.
Hardened Wrath is obviously excellent. 40% total armor bonus makes you that much tougher to all damage and has excellent synergy with several passives.
Invigorate has some decent synergy with the Nerves of Steel passive. Basically Invigorate grants you 10% more hp, life regen AND 10% armor with the nerves passive. I assume vitality=hp?
Veteran's Warning is powerful because you are layering mitigation. 50% resist w/50% dodge chance is better than 75% straight resist because each of those dodges completely negates any damage taken. I don't know how fury generation works exactly from monster attacks, but it would be smart on the devs part to make fury based on being attacked and not whether it landed otherwise that would completely screw over barbarians using dodge. This rune has some decent synergy with sprint. You could get 27% just between this and the sprint rune rush, while you bale out. It also might stack with runed Wrath of the Berserker giving you 65% dodge chance for 15 seconds which would make you stupid hard to kill during that time.
Impunity is definitely quality. Armor does mitigate all damage, but I'm sure people with be stacking a certain resistance or 2 for certain areas of the game for various reasons. Say you wanted to reach 75% resistance to fire damage and had 50% damage reduction from armor and made the rest up with fire resistance. Well you'd need 25%, but with Impunity you'd only need 16% roughly cutting down on how much you have to stack. I dunno enough about how the game works yet to really predict how things work, but my guess is this rune will be used mostly for specific builds wanting to make themselves as immune to 1 type of damage as possible and see the other runes as more all-around options.
My guess is that Afro_Demonhunter's line of thinking is probably correct.
Each dog exploding for 275% with 4 dogs out is quite abit of burst damage and with confuse runed for dogs and big bad voodoo you're looking at being able to cause a pretty decent amount of explosions between zombie dog cooldowns.
I could see that rune being really solid with a zombie dog corpse explosion builds as a way to replenish dogs from explosions before their cooldown is back up. Basically frees up more chances for explosions.
Bash with pulverize rune gives you extra damage via hitting more enemies with your basic generator.
Seismic Slam is basically epic and Shatter Ground rune adds damage and increases knockback which "could" come in handy if you're getting swarmed. I have my eye on the cracking rift rune, but will have to see how narrow it's effect in game is before being able to tell if it's worth it.
Furious Charge with Stamina rune for some battlefield mobility and burst fury generation. I figure you can easily pull 39 fury or more out of each charge just hitting 3 guys with it. The merciless assault rune looks good too, but I think stamina has greater potential.
Warcry for balance. The +20% armor is nice and with the impunity rune gives you a very solid boost to all your resistances. This could be VERY useful on the harder difficulties for specific areas/enemies.
Ignore pain for oh snap moments. Thanks to the runes there are multiple viable ways to use ignore pain and it's up pretty frequently, but for this builds it's mainly for clutch survival. The Ignorance is Bliss rune grants you some additional healing which combined with the greatly boosted resistance gives you a higher chance of pulling through in a tight spot I think.
Call of the Ancients is for boss fights and for fun because come on, this is just cool. I choose the madawc's madness rune because seismic slam is boss so me and a bro using it is 2x the win.
Passives. Bloodthirst is for sustainability. Since this build is not particularly high in control or heals/passive mitigation boosts it needs some form of healing and this is pretty much 100% reliable. Combined with ignore pain and you're basically lifestealing 23% of all the damage you deal in 5 second bursts. Seismic Slam hits solidly and hits a large area. It adds up.
Relentless is epic imo. Ya you gotta be at or below 20%, but this is a clutch passive. This plus ignore pain will massively boost your chance to avoid being gibbed. This is like a free almost as good ignore pain going off when you get low on hp. That and this is a HUGE dps boost. Say you're getting surrounded by enemies and you start redlining it. This activates giving you time to pop ignore pain. Death averted. Also when this activates you can spam seismic slam to your hearts content. Now what isn't known is if the passive applies a buff effect that lasts for X seconds when you hit 20% hp or less, or if it only takes effect during that narrow hp gap. It will be decidely less powerful if the effect only persists during 20% or lower hp because if you have healing effects/lifesteal which pops you back over 20% it ends. That said it would still reapply instantly and regardless having 50% additional resistance at 20% hp and less and free attacks is very clutch.
Juggernaut passive for harder difficulties is gonna be strong I think. 20% reduced duration on cc's could be the difference between life and death. Also having the chance to be healed for 15% of your max hp every time you are stunned, immob'd, feared or charmed is gonna make this passive at least reasonably active in the hard difficulties and later acts.
So that's my thoughts. It's not the highest damage build or the toughest nor the msot focused, but I think it's viable and overall would be fun to play.
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I killed sk with every class and while I liked certain classes more than others they all felt powerful and effective to me.
I do believe that the wizard from 1-13 is probably the least exciting class, but looking at builds I have come up with I think late game the wizard is going to be
EPIC WINNING.
0
I have to admit I was underwhelmed with the wizard during the beta until I got diamond skin. Then it was like night and day as you could tank some damage from melee for a sec and time your frost nova to gain maximum distance.
Wizard has alot of cool skills and abilities that we just don't have access to yet.
I mean if you don't think a wizard isn't going to be radically different with teleport, mirror images and archon, come on....
0
Ice Armor chills and/or freezes melee attackers which combos nicely with the cold blooded passive. The jagged ice rune also makes melee attackers take 100% weapon damage which is no joke. The ice reflect rune could be really interesting. 25% chance on being hit by melee to cast a 75% damage frost nova centered on the attacker. The crystallize rune gives 15% armor bonus per hit stacking 3x and lasting 30 seconds each refresh. This is in my mind probably comparable to prismatic armors 40% resistance. Granted it's not as good because you aren't at 45% armor bonus all the time, but it's still solid.
Storm armor is solid all around. Right off the bat it shocks melee and/or ranged attackers. We don't know how frequently this is, but it's probably at least once every second or 2. This is basically free damage. The power of the storm rune reduces all skill costs by 3, not bad. Strike back increases the shock damage to 91%. Free 91% weapon damage. Scramble looks REALLY good imo. 25% movespeed for 3 seconds whenever hit by melee OR ranged attacks.
Honestly I think each armor has some really good reasons for using it.
0
Shadow power is basically a healing ability that you can also rune to great effect.
Neither one of these should be huge hatred regenerators imo when the dh already has an extremely powerful one with preparation and the punishment rune. You can make a build focus'd on regen'ing alot of disciple to get prep up faster. You also have to consider +hatred, +disc generation affixes and +max hatred etc.
I could easily see a lvl 60 demon hunter with 175-200 hatred dropping 4-5x cluster arrows, popping prep and doing it again and laying waste to huge packs of mobs, or using rapid fire and just straight laying the dps down on a boss.
0
There isn't necessarily gonna be a whirlwind build or whatever because you get to have 6 skills.
You may have a build that has 1 skill that is the most important, but it will likely require other skills and certain passives, affixes and gems to really make it work.
It's not going to be as easy to label specific builds because there are so many options and that is a good thing.
I could play a demon hunter and you play a demon hunter and we both have the exact same skill, but each chose different runes and passives and our 2 builds could be vastly different.
Here's an example:
Build A
http://us.battle.net...YXSV!YcU!aZZacY
Build B
http://us.battle.net...YXSV!XeT!cYbcZZ
Both builds use the exact same skills, but have different runes and different passives. Both would play quite abit differently.
If you completely changed even 1 skill between the 2 builds you could massively change them.
This is real customization.
Not oh hey, whirlwind, alright.Figured I'd add that build A would me much more defensive and focusing on not getting touched and build B would be more about all around damage.
1
1
2. Demon Hunter
3. Monk
4. Witch Doctor
5. Wizard
That's my initial impression from playing each class at least to lvl 9 and killing SK.
That said gaining even 1 new skill can rapidly change how a class function and/or how effective it is.
The wizard for instance was just making me go yawn and then I got diamond skin and every thing changed. Just from that one skill.
The witch doctor was highly effective so my rating doesn't have anything to do with his performance. I just didn't really like the abilities I had access to up to lvl 9. I know almost for sure that opinion will change with access to more skills and passives.
Overall I felt all the classes felt quite balanced with their differing playstyles.
0
Funny, actually dying once was my highlight lol.
Great game, can't wait to play the full version.
0
I would recommend one to anyone playing moba's or mmo's that aren't fps.
0
My top 2 pre-beta were barb and dh.
And they still are. Barbarian because he just rampages through. The demon hunter because she's swift and deadly with grace.
Finished a SK kill a couple of hours ago with the witch doctor and just didn't care for him that much.
I have a feeling that I'll like both the monk and wizard tomorrow.
What surprised me most is what skills I have ended up like more than other so far vs what I thought I would like from videos. Ancient spear and caltrops being 2 skills I like alot that literally weren't in any of my theoretical builds lol.
0
Hardened Wrath is obviously excellent. 40% total armor bonus makes you that much tougher to all damage and has excellent synergy with several passives.
Invigorate has some decent synergy with the Nerves of Steel passive. Basically Invigorate grants you 10% more hp, life regen AND 10% armor with the nerves passive. I assume vitality=hp?
Veteran's Warning is powerful because you are layering mitigation. 50% resist w/50% dodge chance is better than 75% straight resist because each of those dodges completely negates any damage taken. I don't know how fury generation works exactly from monster attacks, but it would be smart on the devs part to make fury based on being attacked and not whether it landed otherwise that would completely screw over barbarians using dodge. This rune has some decent synergy with sprint. You could get 27% just between this and the sprint rune rush, while you bale out. It also might stack with runed Wrath of the Berserker giving you 65% dodge chance for 15 seconds which would make you stupid hard to kill during that time.
Impunity is definitely quality. Armor does mitigate all damage, but I'm sure people with be stacking a certain resistance or 2 for certain areas of the game for various reasons. Say you wanted to reach 75% resistance to fire damage and had 50% damage reduction from armor and made the rest up with fire resistance. Well you'd need 25%, but with Impunity you'd only need 16% roughly cutting down on how much you have to stack. I dunno enough about how the game works yet to really predict how things work, but my guess is this rune will be used mostly for specific builds wanting to make themselves as immune to 1 type of damage as possible and see the other runes as more all-around options.
0
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#aeSXVR!deh!cZbbYa
0
Each dog exploding for 275% with 4 dogs out is quite abit of burst damage and with confuse runed for dogs and big bad voodoo you're looking at being able to cause a pretty decent amount of explosions between zombie dog cooldowns.
0
0
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#aeSkRj!dUT!cZbcbYHonestly I don't think this is even close to as powerful as some builds I have created, but I think it would be a fun and capable build overall.
Bash with pulverize rune gives you extra damage via hitting more enemies with your basic generator.
Seismic Slam is basically epic and Shatter Ground rune adds damage and increases knockback which "could" come in handy if you're getting swarmed. I have my eye on the cracking rift rune, but will have to see how narrow it's effect in game is before being able to tell if it's worth it.
Furious Charge with Stamina rune for some battlefield mobility and burst fury generation. I figure you can easily pull 39 fury or more out of each charge just hitting 3 guys with it. The merciless assault rune looks good too, but I think stamina has greater potential.
Warcry for balance. The +20% armor is nice and with the impunity rune gives you a very solid boost to all your resistances. This could be VERY useful on the harder difficulties for specific areas/enemies.
Ignore pain for oh snap moments. Thanks to the runes there are multiple viable ways to use ignore pain and it's up pretty frequently, but for this builds it's mainly for clutch survival. The Ignorance is Bliss rune grants you some additional healing which combined with the greatly boosted resistance gives you a higher chance of pulling through in a tight spot I think.
Call of the Ancients is for boss fights and for fun because come on, this is just cool. I choose the madawc's madness rune because seismic slam is boss so me and a bro using it is 2x the win.
Passives. Bloodthirst is for sustainability. Since this build is not particularly high in control or heals/passive mitigation boosts it needs some form of healing and this is pretty much 100% reliable. Combined with ignore pain and you're basically lifestealing 23% of all the damage you deal in 5 second bursts. Seismic Slam hits solidly and hits a large area. It adds up.
Relentless is epic imo. Ya you gotta be at or below 20%, but this is a clutch passive. This plus ignore pain will massively boost your chance to avoid being gibbed. This is like a free almost as good ignore pain going off when you get low on hp. That and this is a HUGE dps boost. Say you're getting surrounded by enemies and you start redlining it. This activates giving you time to pop ignore pain. Death averted. Also when this activates you can spam seismic slam to your hearts content. Now what isn't known is if the passive applies a buff effect that lasts for X seconds when you hit 20% hp or less, or if it only takes effect during that narrow hp gap. It will be decidely less powerful if the effect only persists during 20% or lower hp because if you have healing effects/lifesteal which pops you back over 20% it ends. That said it would still reapply instantly and regardless having 50% additional resistance at 20% hp and less and free attacks is very clutch.
Juggernaut passive for harder difficulties is gonna be strong I think. 20% reduced duration on cc's could be the difference between life and death. Also having the chance to be healed for 15% of your max hp every time you are stunned, immob'd, feared or charmed is gonna make this passive at least reasonably active in the hard difficulties and later acts.
So that's my thoughts. It's not the highest damage build or the toughest nor the msot focused, but I think it's viable and overall would be fun to play.