Diablo III

[Bren]

I always liked my zealot paladin more than hammers. I tried a hammer paladin. It was good for farming, but other than that, I found it a little too easy and preferred zeal / vengeance build with a desert Might (aura) mercenary.

[I-n-j-i-n]

I think forgoing the potion system could be brilliant. Because the game was totally broken by the time you start having access to insta-heal potions. Also, it can be a pain to get potions too. I'm glad to see them trying to change that old potion-habit of dungeon crawling games.

[Brushfire]

Feh, Diablo is a terrible game.

[Triad Orion]

the 1.1 patch

A BLIGHT UPON HUMANITY. I hated this patch, truthfully. I didn't play on Battle.Net much at all, first. So I played solo Single Player most of the time on my Paladin and I had really good gear out of Nightmare from grinding and getting really lucky, and I had a hybrid build because back in 1.09 it was more viable, even if it wasn't very powerful in the long run. Initially when I was in Hell Difficulty Act I in 1.09 I could actually do stuff by myself. It was extremely tough, but I could get by. As soon as 1.1 came out, it effectively bricked that level 70 plus Paladin I had worked a long time on. I could still do well in Nightmare, but I couldn't advance any further in Hell because of the ridiculous boost they gave the enemies. In fact, I got pushed back all the way to the Blood Moor and could barely survive there if there were more than three quill rats shooting at me at once. @_@

It pissed off a lot of people I knew too, who actually DID have level 90+ characters on Battle.net who got completely ruined by the way the game changed. Loss of Life-Steal on bosses, increasing resistances like mad, etc. It was sheer madness that Blizzard didn't include a way to respec at that point.

All of that complaining and hatred being addressed, 1.1 really did give the game a new dynamic and some great new features. In fact, it made the LOWER difficulties easier, which wasn't so bad... But anyway. I digress far away from the main topic.

Diablo III looks like a lot of fun. I'm digging how easy it is to shift between special moves and attacks to perform some outrageous combos. Good stuff. Though, I have to disagree with Injin in that I think forgoing potions entirely would be a bad idea. Sometimes, you just need them if you make an honest mistake; and if the higher difficulties punish you for dying like Diablo II, a single mistake shouldn't cost you *that* much. I think potions would be a great *supplement* to the orbs, but by the logic make potions either a little more cost prohibitive or rarer. *Shrugs*

Also, I hope this game fixes the issue where like, Sorceresses and Bow-Amazons have hardly any repair bills whereas Barbarians and Paladins have to continually pay out the ass to keep their gear in good condition. That was a bunch of bull in Diablo II.

[Bleck]

Feh, Diablo is a terrible game.

This guy, this is the guy

So cool, comin in and dissin what everyone be talkin bout

I wish I was as cool as him

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Can't find any CDs for Diablo 2... Gonna have to buy it again.

That and Starcraft.

[Blake]

This guy, this is the guy

So cool, comin in and dissin what everyone be talkin bout

I wish I was as cool as him

Word. He's even cool enough to not offer any explanation for his opinion, and cool enough to predict Diablo III's quality in present-tense.

[Lotd2242]

The real question is whether or not they're shooting for a Halloween release, a Christmas release, or a release prior to the year 2012.

I'm going to miss my Necromancer. The WDoc is ok so far.

[DarkeSword]

Alright, so I checked out the website and watched some gameplay videos. This looks like a game I can actually enjoy, so hooray.

[Dhsu]

So I watched the gameplay demo and they need to stop recycling their shoddy War3 engine.

[relyanCe]

Also, I hope this game fixes the issue where like, Sorceresses and Bow-Amazons have hardly any repair bills whereas Barbarians and Paladins have to continually pay out the ass to keep their gear in good condition. That was a bunch of bull in Diablo II.

The synergy'd Lightning Sorceress and the Faith Bowazon are laughing at you

[Monobrow]

It pissed off a lot of people I knew too, who actually DID have level 90+ characters on Battle.net who got completely ruined by the way the game changed. Loss of Life-Steal on bosses, increasing resistances like mad, etc. It was sheer madness that Blizzard didn't include a way to respec at that point.

1.1 was the goddamn blight. So many people left after it was applied. I'm glad we sold our accounts before it came out, because it basically ruined every pvp character we had. (91 pvp zon, 90 zon, 92 necro, 90 sorc, couple dins (FOH and Charge) and a few barbs (lance, hammer, and exe))

Zons were basically raped, guided arrow was so badass and it was ruined. Sorc energy shield build was ruined, Charge Pallys, Barbarians... Life leech was ruined, duels (which were basically centered around this) were ruined... a 9/6 ring became absolutely worthless...

Hammerdins became way overpowered... Sorcs had only one choice, blizzard. Barb duels lasted all of 3 seconds because of no LL.

Anyway yeah... And it became really annoying when you couldn't beat solo a special monster as a barb because of "immune to physical"... In fact most monsters became annoying as hell.

Anyway I'm talking about Classic D2 and later Classic Ladder D2, didn't really play Xpansion much... But I'm sure they got raped too.

[Avatar of Justice]

Word. He's even cool enough to not offer any explanation for his opinion, and cool enough to predict Diablo III's quality in present-tense.

He does the same shit in the anime thread. I typically ignore his flamebait.

[TehDonut]

Zons were basically raped, guided arrow was so badass and it was ruined. Sorc energy shield build was ruined, Charge Pallys, Barbarians... Life leech was ruined, duels (which were basically centered around this) were ruined... a 9/6 ring became absolutely worthless...

Hammerdins became way overpowered... Sorcs had only one choice, blizzard. Barb duels lasted all of 3 seconds because of no LL.

Well, sorcs gained a lot of synergies from the patch as well, like chain lightning/lightning could do upwards of 30k damage. They also a powerful fireball synergy which was mainly used for pvp. But I agree, barbs got destroyed by the patch. Only barbs I saw on bnet were MF barbs, simply because of the dual wield.

Only duels you see now are smiting pallies and its kinda boring cause of the life tap build. Basically, you die if you let go of the mouse button first.

[Bigfoot]

I miss the old days of D2. I didn't like LoD that much at all :\

I am tempted to play again though.

[Evilhead]

1.1 was the goddamn blight. So many people left after it was applied. I'm glad we sold our accounts before it came out, because it basically ruined every pvp character we had. (91 pvp zon, 90 zon, 92 necro, 90 sorc, couple dins (FOH and Charge) and a few barbs (lance, hammer, and exe))

Zons were basically raped, guided arrow was so badass and it was ruined. Sorc energy shield build was ruined, Charge Pallys, Barbarians... Life leech was ruined, duels (which were basically centered around this) were ruined... a 9/6 ring became absolutely worthless...

Hammerdins became way overpowered... Sorcs had only one choice, blizzard. Barb duels lasted all of 3 seconds because of no LL.

Anyway yeah... And it became really annoying when you couldn't beat solo a special monster as a barb because of "immune to physical"... In fact most monsters became annoying as hell.

Anyway I'm talking about Classic D2 and later Classic Ladder D2, didn't really play Xpansion much... But I'm sure they got raped too.

Wow, I can't believe people are still whining about their barbs getting nerfed. I played D2 for a long time, and the patches kept things fresh and exciting. Plus they addd alll kinds of new content with each patch. You missed a lot. By the time a certain build was played out and common Blizzard mixed it up to make things exciting. I always got bored with played the typical strong builds anwyay. After some patches it took some real skill to win a duel with a necro or some other builds of classes, but that what made it fun. I had a charged boltress who absolutely killed in duels, but later on I was playing hardcore exclusively so I didn't duel too often for that reason.

Anyway, I am so fucking stoked for this game to come out. I'm going to get it the first possible second I can, and I know it's going to own my life for a while. But I don't care! I've been waiting for this game for years now.

[Brycepops]

Wow, I can't believe people are still whining about their barbs getting nerfed. I played D2 for a long time, and the patches kept things fresh and exciting. Plus they addd alll kinds of new content with each patch. You missed a lot. By the time a certain build was played out and common Blizzard mixed it up to make things exciting. I always got bored with played the typical strong builds anwyay. After some patches it took some real skill to win a duel with a necro or some other builds of classes, but that what made it fun. I had a charged boltress who absolutely killed in duels, but later on I was playing hardcore exclusively so I didn't duel too often for that reason.

Anyway, I am so fucking stoked for this game to come out. I'm going to get it the first possible second I can, and I know it's going to own my life for a while. But I don't care! I've been waiting for this game for years now.

I agree with everything you just said.

[Monobrow]

Wow, I can't believe people are still whining about their barbs getting nerfed.

The thing is, it took a long time for people to get their builds down, and since there was no restat or sharing of stats/builds (without hacks) of course people would be mad at a new patch coming out and completely ruining their builds, especially a build that took forever to make (because leveling, at least in classic, was a huge bitch) and were superior to everyone else's (because not everyone knew what the hell to do or how to build a good character, or had the best equipment for it, so most people without help, made many different versions of the same character until they eventually got it right)

So yeah, I'm not the only person that thought it was shit. I haven't given D2 a thought in years, but since it is brought up, I'm certainly gonna say why that patch sucked. I didn't mind any other patch, but 1.1 came pretty late into the game's career, and all it did was basically WoW up D2... If something ain't broke, don't fix it, IMO, or at least don't change it so drastically as to put off the people that have played it for years and years.

Besides, I did come back, I did make a very good Necro, tried out a way overpowered Hammerdin, sorc, etc. etc and had some fun (on Classic Ladder, like I said) But that still doesn't take away from the fact that D2 lost a huge amount of people playing because of that patch... And very few remained afterwards to start over! Where there was no shortage of games to join pre-patch (especially duel games), it became much harder and downright boring unless you wanted to duel the same people over and over and over. Quality and variety of PvP significantly dropped, bottom line.

Anyway enough about this, let's hope D3 has the best of both worlds.

[Evilhead]

Monobrow: So you'd rather have an online world dominated by hundreds of cookie cutter builds with no variety? Yeah, it did take a while to get to your characters up to the 90s in classic. I made some myself. But with the new patches came tweaked exp that let you build a level 85 character in a couple days with the right methods which were both a good and bad thing. To me, experimenting with odd builds and thinking of new strategies were what made playing D2 enjoyable, and I hope Blizzard keeps the same system in place this time around (seems they are). For me it was more fun making new characters than sitting around on the top of the pile with lvl 99 gods, but I can see why some people would be miffed. None of the nerfs ever affected me because I didn't see the point in making the most popular builds, and it seems that Blizzard rewards thinking outside the norm. The most fun I had with the game was playing in hardcore mode with chain-lightning sorcs, poison dagger necros, and other weird but effective builds.

[Monobrow]

Well builds like ES Sorc wasn't the norm, I didn't know of more than 1 or 2 people that used it... Most of the best builds I knew weren't builds that people normally did, such as a well-built necro and charge pally (which was hard as hell to get good equipment for to even start the build) Some builds might have been similar, but thinking outside of the "norm" was what got those builds popular in the first place, and there were only a few people that really did it right... And I think at that point, there was still plenty of room to grow. Also, until dupes arrived, you were forced to "think outside the box" anyway because you had to build your characters around what your character found.

1.1's enforcement of sets and uniques being more important took away from that individuality of hard-found rare items anyway, as well as synergies basically pointing the player in the direction to go. IMO it basically made it easier for a player to have a "good" character, without putting that much though into it.

And I think Blizzard could have done more about bigger problems, such as body glitches, dupes, AA, and things like people bringing Windforce into Classic duel games. *_*

As far for me being mad, personally I'm not, because like I said earlier, I sold my accounts prior to the patch. But I can understand why a lot of people didn't like it (esp. the people I sold my accounts to) And when I came back, it just wasn't as fun for me.

[Triad Orion]

Well, I think Blizzard's learned something since Diablo II. Odds are 1.1 probably showed them that not giving the opportunity to respec will hurt your player base if you change a few of the core mechanics of the game. I suspect in Diablo III we may get an option to respecialize ourselves if a patch comes out or a particular build doesn't work well.

That was just the killer in 1.1. It bricked a lot of builds really fast, and actually still inspired the same cookie-cutter mentality, just in a very altered manner. This was *especially* true if you rolled with the Hardcore crowd. As Monobrow mentioned, there was greater emphasis on Set and Unique items, in addition to proper allocation of attribute and skill points. Before, you could pretty much throw your points where you saw fit and it worked well, but after 1.1 for a good Hell Difficulty build you needed the bare minimum of STR and DEX to use the best equipment in the game, you never touched Energy, and all the rest of your points went into Vitality just so you wouldn't die to the beefed-up, ridiculously resistant, resilient monsters.

To be successful in Hell, you almost needed one of those pre-defined cookie-cutter builds. Hell Difficulty was damn near unplayable in Single Player because short of using Open Battle Net, you rarely found the things you needed to just survive. Even on Battle.Net, good luck trying to beat anything alone if you didn't or if you weren't playing with helpful people.

That being said, on Normal and Nightmare, you did have quite a bit more in the way of options with Synergies and stuff, so long as you had no intention of playing seriously beyond Nightmare. This is how I ended up playing Diablo II after 1.1 came out. I pretty much stopped at the end of Normal and only went to Nightmare if I particularly enjoyed the character. This way, I admit, I still had a lot of fun with the game. Nightmare under 1.1 was challenging, but very doable, and I liked that a lot.

Diablo III? I don't anticipate this happening again. Blizzard's learned a great deal more with World of WarCraft. Say what you will about the game itself, but the fact that Blizzard refunds talent points to classes whose talent builds have been significantly altered now shows me that they've learned from their mistakes in the past. I have full confidence that Diablo III will be an amazing game, and I will no doubt end up buying it on launch day.

...whenever that is.

[Bren]

The most fun I had with the game was playing in hardcore mode with chain-lightning sorcs, poison dagger necros, and other weird but effective builds.

I Loved my chain lightning sorceress. That was by far my favorite class to create. With the 1.1 patch, my build was lightning as main damage spec, with some in frost for enemies immune to lightning. I always carried around a staff of lower resistance too, because 9 times out of 10 that would remove immunity. All this stacked with a Memory runeword weapon on a Normal/Hell combat mercenary for super high mana regen and good HP regen was a very viable build.

(the mana regen aura would get the life regeneration, so when the mercenary activated his aura, it would be double life regen)

[I-n-j-i-n]

So I watched the gameplay demo and they need to stop recycling their shoddy War3 engine.

1- Warcraft 3 had a pretty decent engine. Compared to some in its time, it was leaps above Command and Conquer engines. And it ran fast and without chugging out like other 3D FPS games like Age of Mythology.

2- The StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 engines are TOTALLY DIFFERENT. You don't have reactive physics in WC3.

[Brushfire]

This guy, this is the guy

So cool, comin in and dissin what everyone be talkin bout

I wish I was as cool as him

Word. He's even cool enough to not offer any explanation for his opinion, and cool enough to predict Diablo III's quality in present-tense.

Finally, someone who appreciates my greatness.

But in all seriousness, the Diablo series (or any other Blizzard game) has never really done anything for me. If you like Diablo, then I know your gonna pick up this game, and my opinion won't sway you at all. But know this. If you are in college or military tech training and your roommate has a very important test the next day, please click quietly.

^___^

[TehDonut]

Just one more thing about D2: The patch really did make things easier for those who got screwed with builds anyway. I mean, leveling got so much easier to the point where you could scrap your level 80+ char, move all your items to your new char and bring it back up to level 70+ within a day or two. I played on ladder, so I was used to this kind of thing what with the periodic ladder resets and all.

But yeah, I like the new engine they are running D3 on. The bodies flying everywhere + blood gushing + walls crumbling = yes.