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Classes - Demon Hunter

The Demon Hunter is your classic bow-wielding class. From a wide range of arrow-shooting skills to marking targets, this class fills the role. In case you do not know yet, the DH uses two separate pools for their skills playing on the whole distinction between hatred and discipline. Admittedly, the two pools just does not do it for me. I am constantly checking my hatred and not caring about my discipline at all. If it runs out, I do not seem to really be at a disadvantage like I am with hatred. Hatred is used for most of your spamming skills and therefore is needed to continually dish out the pain. The more situational based skills of discipline do not need to be used that often. Especially through level 9, there are only three discipline skills you can even use compared to the six hatred skills. I honestly never used any of the discipline skills because the hatred skills could kill any group quick enough that it was never really needed (more on actual skills later). Overall, I had fun with the Demon Hunter. While I did not feel that he was the strongest class in the game, the tactics used in his combat were more involved and fun to use.

Skills

As mentioned, the Demon Hunter has two basic pools of skills; Hatred and Discipline. Hatred comprises most of your skills and all of your spamming skills. I had two hatred skills set to my left and right mouse buttons. You start of with Hungering Arrow and Caltrops. Hungering Arrow was a great first skill to have. With it seeking monsters and a chance to pentrate and seek more, it would mow down groups quickly. You could spam it almost non-stop without draining your hatred. Caltrops did next to nothing. It was a trap that was placed right under you so you had to lay it and then back away but by then you could have just killed them with Hungering Arrow. After that, you get Entangling Shot which I used for a minute but everything died to quickly to notice the entangle work. Then came Evasive Fire which became my bread and butter. It was a hatred skill that cost less than it refilled during the shot so you could spam it indefinitely. The nice thing about the skill was that if you were within a certain yardage of a monster, you would also back flip away for a discipline cost. This was a perfect skill to spam away and stay away from danger at the same time. I used this skill for the rest of the play through. Fan of Knives was okay but the plan is to stay away so I never ended up using it thanks to evasive fire. Bola Shot was my second main skill. I would cast it once or twice into a large groups, spam evasive until bola exploded and then repeated. The delay was perfect to get in other shots but then when it exploded it did massive damage. Vault seemed useless once again thanks to evasive. The only time I thought about using it was to get to the back of the mobs where spawners were but then you just ended up in the middle and taking loads of damage. Defensively, there was just no need. The last skill I got was Marked for Death which I used only because I didn't need anything else with my two-shot combo. I guess for uniques it was good but it was hard to even tell a difference. There are still some more skills to try out but I only got to level 8 at the end and the beta caps at 13. So, when I have more time, I will cap to try out the other skills.

Items

Obviously, there are tons of items so I will not bore you with the mundane and average. I had managed to beat King Leoric twice today giving me two rares. The first was a glove with 3% increased attack speed, 2% casting speed, +3 precision, and +1 vitality. The were a good drop to get but the worst part is that they are bright pink (pictured left). I also got a rare belt with +3 all attributes, +2 attack, +8 precision, and +1 exp for each kill. Everything else that I was wearing was for MF gear for a total of +9 MF. The best part is that with the shared stash you could transfer your gear over to your next alt and start them off with decent gear and MF.

Monsters

I will be highlighting just a few monsters in each article. This time around, I will mention first the Grotesque. This monster is especially tough because when he dies, he explodes which also deals significant damage. So, you have to make sure that you are plenty far away when killing this monster which was easy for the DH thanks to, once again, evasive. However, every now and then I would get caught and it does a good deal of damage not to mention releasing three more monsters to kill. The next highlight was not a particular monster but a monster attribute. Illusionist turned out to be a tough fight because the monsters were able to clone themselves much like Baal did in Diablo II. I was fighting one (pictured right) who was creating clones faster than I could kill them. They kept piling up and I couldn't get to the actual monster. This was especially tough since all of my shots would hit the first target in its path. I had no way of getting around them. Had I used vault, I may have been able to best him but instead I had to slowly chop down until I finally made my way to him.

Quests and Lore



I will preface with just the beginning of the lore of the game. You start off outside of New Tristram. You make your way through a few zombies when you come up to a guard. He asks for your help in defending their town. After proving your worth to him, he allows you to enter and you are told to go find Leah to ask about what is going on in New Tristram. I will elaborate more on the quests and lore through later articles.

Overall Review

What can I say? It's Diablo III. The game honestly feels like a Diablo game. I have tried out numerous hack n' slash games while waiting for this gem but none have held a canlde to the awesomeness that was Diablo II. Diablo III does not disappoint. I felt like I was playing the classic but it was all new all over again. The action, the pacing, the clicking, the loot, the monsters, the skills. It's all in there and more. The skill selection is great. I honestly would have been upset if I had to only choose a few skills and level them up. The openness makes it so fun and easy to test out different combinations and strategies. For the DH, I had to try out numerous different combinations to find a set the catered to my play style. I would have been screwed if I was not given this liberty and I can only imagine once you add in the runestones how many choices there are. But even with this freedom, I never found myself constantly switching for the situation like many thought players would do. You really find the skills that work best for you and stick with those ones.

The randomness is also amazing. I played through twice and found most of the dungeons completely different. There are even numerous mini dungeons that randomly appear to venture in to.They are great because they are small enough to where you do not feel like you are wasting your time going in them and makes you want to check out each one. Within the deeper dungeons, I found myself makes giant loops just trying to find the stairs down, much like the fun of D2's maps. They also did a great job with the outside world. It looks amazing and big enough to explore but still leads you to the next area.

The action is so well paced that I found myself needing to stop to use the bathroom but every corner there was something else that drew you in. It was blast but I may have done some kidney damage. Overall, the game was amazing and I cannot wait to play it some more tomorrow.

Stay tuned for some more beta coverage.
Right now, you can check out force playing through as the Barbarian.

You can also read up on snared04drummer's blog as he goes through the beat as well. I also encourage anyone else in the beta to start a blog of their own here on DiabloFans and we will make sure to highlight them to the rest of the community.