Diablo III

[Vakri]

Just a quick comment on one part of your post before I go to bed:

"With regards to skill balance, it's unfair to say that Blizzard should release a perfectly balanced game with this level of complexity."

I don't expect perfect balance. But some of this isn't your typical imbalance issues that plague every game - it's stuff that's so pathetically easy to see that I just can't believe that any competent play-tester could have possibly not seen it. It's not like Zombie Dogs are slightly worse than some other skill or that WD pet builds are slightly less effective than some other build; they are completely and utterly worthless. Wave of Zombies as well is just so obviously inferior to Zombie Bears it's ridiculous. It takes 3 seconds of using each Rune to realize that Wave of Zombies is the same thing but worse in every conceivable way. How could these things possible get past play-testing?

[Sir_NutS]

I agree that D3 lends itself for more builds. However the reality is that this is not the case currently. Every barbarian is running the exact same skills, goes for the exact same stats, and uses a one handed and a shield. Every wiz is running force armor, and half their spells and runes are completely useless. The potential is there, I just have to agree that this wasn't playtested very well.

Another example: barbarian's fury system is completely broken. No serious barbarian takes Fury expenders on inferno (unless you're running something silly like seismic slam kite build). All barbarians are at 100% fury except for casting Berzerker or Earthquake, which happens only when you encounter a champion. The fury bar might as well not be there.

Then take the melee vs ranged gap. It's just huge at the moment. I'm facerolling act 1 and 2 with my wizard one day after hitting level 60. I still can't get to Magda with my barbarian even after spending millions of gold on gear.

I'm convinced that Inferno testing wasn't a priority for them. But I think they will get to it, eventually. They know the game is greatly imbalanced at the moment, but they are blizzard, they will eventually get to it and fix it.

[zircon]

Just a quick comment on one part of your post before I go to bed:

"With regards to skill balance, it's unfair to say that Blizzard should release a perfectly balanced game with this level of complexity."

I don't expect perfect balance. But some of this isn't your typical imbalance issues that plague every game - it's stuff that's so pathetically easy to see that I just can't believe that any competent play-tester could have possibly not seen it. It's not like Zombie Dogs are slightly worse than some other skill or that WD pet builds are slightly less effective than some other build; they are completely and utterly worthless. Wave of Zombies as well is just so obviously inferior to Zombie Bears it's ridiculous. It takes 3 seconds of using each Rune to realize that Wave of Zombies is the same thing but worse in every conceivable way. How could these things possible get past play-testing?

Dunno, but those are specific examples of a handful of skills/runes. In D2, especially at release, nearly every skill was useless in Hell. Seems like in D3 they did quite a bit better, which is impressive given that each class essentially has like 180 skills each.

Sirnuts have you tried watching Kripparian or other Barbs stream? From what I hear from other players, Barbs have it even easier than Monks, and I'm doing OK in Inferno...

[Sir_NutS]

Dunno, but those are specific examples of a handful of skills/runes. In D2, especially at release, nearly every skill was useless in Hell. Seems like in D3 they did quite a bit better, which is impressive given that each class essentially has like 180 skills each.

Sirnuts have you tried watching Kripparian or other Barbs stream? From what I hear from other players, Barbs have it even easier than Monks, and I'm doing OK in Inferno...

I watch every video that Kripparian releases. I check his channel every day, been following him since D3 launched. Kripparian is running the same specific build that is needed for barbarians to progress, and is also been spoonfed by his friends. He spent 2 straight days farming goblins for gold to progress hardcore inferno and did the same and other tactics like chest farming on his softcore inferno run.

Not only him but I do watch other good players and read about it on the official forums and on diablofans. I do my homework, I think several years of WoW raiding made me that way.

And no, Barbarians aren't doing better than monks. Monks have a few different ways to run inferno, barbarians have 1. Monks can trivialize the most important stat in the game while barbarians have nothing comparable to that. Barbs are the most broken class at the moment, hands down. Which is sad because in my opinion it's the most fun to play. Just because the most popular Barbarian around (which is one of the most popular d3 players overall) is doing fine, doesn't mean every other barbarian is.

As I said before I just shelved my barb until I can play it again in a non-retarded way. In the meantime I'm having fun with the wizard (which I can actually play like a true wizard).

Edited June 14, 2012 by Sir_NutS

[Faustt]

Wave of Zombies as well is just so obviously inferior to Zombie Bears it's ridiculous.

At level 60 this is very true. Keep in mind that Wave of Zombies is a level 33 rune while Zombie Bears is 54. So it's not exactly like the rune is always out classed by another one. There are far more worthless runes for a WD like Spider Queen, Angry Chicken or Toad of Hugeness (has some CC applications, but is out classed by something like Hex or Horrify).

As for Inferno testing. I read somewhere awhile ago in an interview that internally the testers couldn't finish it themselves. Which means balancing was never properly done for the end game when launch day hit. I completely understand why they had to do this. They wanted to give the players a real challenge. If the developers, who are developers and not necessarily the hard core gaming type, could complete it, it would be far too easy for a large portion of the player base. It's a lot easier for them balance things by making it impossibly hard and looking at the data and feedback from players. After they seeing how things worked out after going live they could dial things down to intended levels. Like Zircon pointed out, every class has 180 skills, there's no way they could have balanced it all across all difficulties.

I think this could have worked if Inferno actually was impossibly difficult. Of course people found a way to finish the game, either through legitimate means or otherwise. Instead of all classes struggling through Inferno, we have a case of the haves and have nots. Yeah, it sucks, but with a game of this scale imbalance is bound to crop up. What does surprise is is how imbalanced it is melee vs ranged. How they didn't see that is beyond me, but it'll get there eventually.

[Sir_NutS]

As for Inferno testing. I read somewhere awhile ago in an interview that internally the testers couldn't finish it themselves. Which means balancing was never properly done for the end game when launch day hit. I completely understand why they had to do this. They wanted to give the players a real challenge. If the developers, who are developers and not necessarily the hard core gaming type, could complete it, it would be far too easy for a large portion of the player base. It's a lot easier for them balance things by making it impossibly hard and looking at the data and feedback from players. After they seeing how things worked out after going live they could dial things down to intended levels. Like Zircon pointed out, every class has 180 skills, there's no way they could have balanced it all across all difficulties.

This would be easily solved by giving the tester template champs with the gear the intend people to have in order to get through inferno at each act. They do this for WoW and it works. Comparing how vanilla WoW tuning was all over the place to something like cataclysm tuning where the fights were very well tuned for the most part, I'd say that method works.

And what boggles the mind is not the subtle things, like Vakri said; it's the glaring issues. An easy example: get a barbarian to 60, try to clear act 1 as dual wield, then try to do it with a shield. The difference is INMENSE. It only takes 15 minutes of testing to realize that DW is just not viable at all.

We're not talking about quirky builds here (even though they said quirky builds would totally work on inferno), we're talking about something as basic as a DW barb. It just wasn't tested.

And say for example compare the viability of running energy twister on a wizard vs running hydra. Any runes for both. It just something that doesn't take more than 15 minutes of testing by one single person. It really shows that Inferno testing was practically non-existant.

[zircon]

Beat Inferno with my Monk, woo! Here's my writeup on it (stats, items, build etc)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/v44km/i_did_it_beat_inferno_on_my_monk_after_111h_total/

Edited June 15, 2012 by zircon

[Nabeel Ansari]

Can someone who's played inferno and beaten it as a Wizard explain to me WHY diamond skin is not recommended? Because that's ludicrous to me...

[Tensei]

If I had to guess it's because the damage block on Diamond Skin eventually can't keep up with the damage scaling from monsters so you get oneshot with or without it.

It used to be exploitable with the Force Armor rune that reduced damage from every hit to 35% of your max HP at most, which, in combination with deliberately low vitality would let you shrug off a lot of damage. Of course, now Force Armor won't work if a single hit would take off more than 100% of your HP, so that doesn't really fly anymore.

[Nabeel Ansari]

I thought Diamond Skin blocked all incoming damage. That's what it says it does. >_>

So you're saying I've screwed myself by not practicing how to defeat hordes without it? It's the only way I was able to defeat Diablo (on normal).

[Tensei]

Diamond Skin absorbs only a certain amount of damage, and can be glyphed to absorb a higher amount.

This is mostly theorycraft as I don't have an Inferno Wizard, but the way it is with the other two ranged classes is that at some point it's just not really feasible anymore to sacrifice any DPS in favor of survivability because you really need obscene amounts of resists, armor and HP to be able to tank anything.

Typically you just want to kite and avoid everything while hopefully dealing enough damage to kill of your enemies before you run out of resources/cooldowns for your defensive skills.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Diamond Skin absorbs only a certain amount of damage, and can be glyphed to absorb a higher amount.

This is mostly theorycraft as I don't have an Inferno Wizard, but the way it is with the other two ranged classes is that at some point it's just not really feasible anymore to sacrifice any DPS in favor of survivability because you really need obscene amounts of resists, armor and HP to be able to tank anything.

Typically you just want to kite and avoid everything while hopefully dealing enough damage to kill of your enemies before you run out of resources/cooldowns for your defensive skills.

Noted. ( ¯^¯)

[Sir_NutS]

Gratz Zircon on the inferno clear!

Anyone has had any luck with the RMAH? I've managed to sell an utterly crappy legendary and a decent rare for 8 bucks.

[ShrackAttack]

I sold everything decent my barb had and made roughly 300$. I probably could've put my stuff up for more but wanted it all to sell. My brother has sold absolute TRASH items compared to what I put up and a few of his sold for 50-70$ each. It makes no sense.

As far as barbs go, sure the game is hard past Inferno act 2, but once you get even pretty decent gear you can mostly blow through the game. Some elite packs are just impossible though without the best gear, but once you're in godlike gear (20% string of ears, stormshield, decent helm of command, lantern ring) you can pretty much face roll the entire game without paying attention.

I was around 1000 vit/str, 850-1050 resist all, 55khp, 26-30% block, and I think 15-18k dps or so depending. Went Frenzy, wrath of the berserker, earthquake, revenge + provocation, ignore pain + iron hide, and the armor + resist shout for most of the game. Passives were the obvious, both armor ones + superstitious usually.

Whats a bit more hilarious is now I just bought a bunch of straight strength + critical hit chance to do weapon throw spec for super cheap and im farming with a wizard/witch doctor combo and am doing ridiculous damage. However, i have to play with basically zero escapes and everything one shots me. I'm running about 1700 str + 52% crit chance with only around a 1200dps 2hander. And most of my gear is trash since I basically have no actual gold anymore .

Edited June 16, 2012 by ShrackAttack

[Brandon Strader]

Gratz Zircon on the inferno clear!

Anyone has had any luck with the RMAH? I've managed to sell an utterly crappy legendary and a decent rare for 8 bucks.

Last I checked, paypal still wasn't working. I don't want no blizzard bux.

[Sir_NutS]

Actually Brandon, Paypal works. But the in-game link doesn't. Follow this link instead to set it up:

https://us.battle.net/account/d3/auction-house/landing.html

[Brandon Strader]

Yar! Got it working, and put up 10 auctions. I guess we'll see how this goes.

[zircon]

Uh oh, attack speed nerfs coming. Blizzard is taking their typical heavy-handed approach and basically cutting all IAS values in half. So, base weapon speeds won't be affected, but any attack speed bonuses on other equipment will be nerfed severely. Everyone thought they would be doing a 'diminishing returns' kinda deal, but evidently not. This is going to hurt Monks severely since we depend on IAS not just for damage but for spirit generation and sustain (life on hit).

[Nabeel Ansari]

I saw a black mage with proper capitalization and got excited.

For a small moment.

[Sir_NutS]

Uh oh, attack speed nerfs coming. Blizzard is taking their typical heavy-handed approach and basically cutting all IAS values in half. So, base weapon speeds won't be affected, but any attack speed bonuses on other equipment will be nerfed severely. Everyone thought they would be doing a 'diminishing returns' kinda deal, but evidently not. This is going to hurt Monks severely since we depend on IAS not just for damage but for spirit generation and sustain (life on hit).

the IAS nerfs will come in the same patch as the Infeno nerfs, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[Brandon Strader]

Uh oh, attack speed nerfs coming. Blizzard is taking their typical heavy-handed approach and basically cutting all IAS values in half. So, base weapon speeds won't be affected, but any attack speed bonuses on other equipment will be nerfed severely. Everyone thought they would be doing a 'diminishing returns' kinda deal, but evidently not. This is going to hurt Monks severely since we depend on IAS not just for damage but for spirit generation and sustain (life on hit).

This is gonna hurt me a lot too. Cutting in half... my attack speed might go down by 25% or more.. that's about the same as a frenzy shrine.

[Bahamut]

1.0.3 comes out today. Guess I won't get to see what it's like until 2 weeks later since I leave today for annual training with my unit.

[zircon]

Wow, two popular streamers (Kripparian and Krippi) just beat Inferno Diablo... on Hardcore. Amazing.

[Faustt]

Patch is interesting so far. The attack speed nerf means my casting animations are a little longer than before, so I get caught by mobs more often mid cast now. I was only using 15% on one piece, so it's not a big adjustment. Glass canon isn't as viable any more since repair costs went up so much. Death actually carries some weight now which is good.

The damage nerf in the higher acts means I can actually wear my resist gear and not get one shotted still, so yay for that. I'm down from 42K DPS to 19 now wearing it though.

Thankfully I was able to down the Siegebreaker before the patch hit today. No way I'd be able to handle reflect damage AND an enrage timer with my DPS cut in half.

I was slowly doing Siegebreaker runs before the patch and dying left and right from surprise ranged attacks. With the changes in drop rates I'll probably be doing Warden/Butcher runs with a 5 stack then hit Whimsyshire. Probably not as good loot wise, but a much safer route until I get my resists/health up some more.

[Global-Trance]

Wow, two popular streamers (Kripparian and Krippi) just beat Inferno Diablo... on Hardcore. Amazing.

Yeah this is an incredible feat! They managed to pull it off before the difficulty nerf. A lot of people who felt brickwalled by Act 2 and Act 3 are now facerolling mobs. It all depends on how you're built of course but it just sounds like they nerfed too much, including the difficulty itself.

Big ups to their hardwork and dedication on that world first clear though. Wow!