DiabloFans

Hello all, RoS just got released yesterday for those of you who've been living under a rock or in a remote region of the Teganze jungles for the past year of your life. So far RoS has lived up to its expectations. It has brought us a better item hunt, better endgame, cool new areas, new class, and some new skills. I'd like to take a moment to go over some of the things I personally liked about RoS, and see what you guys in the community think.

So Let's start out with the new class, and go over it quickly. I haven't gotten to play much of the Crusader, but she's a fine class to play with. She feels like she's a brute, tearing down monsters with heavy attacks, wielding 2-Handers in a single hand with a shield on the side. Overall the class seems to be balanced, lots of mid-range attacks and some close up ones as well. She fits right in with the lore and is so far pretty appealing. Possibly going to be my main character if she can become better than my Barb or Wizard, but we'll see how that goes later this weekend.

The next thing I'd like to go over is Act V. Act V is a marvel, I mean truly it is. Astonishing detail, and an amazing setting all around. From the closed in streets of Westmarch, to the openness of the Blood marsh right down to the rocky terrain of the Pandemonium fortress, and the Eternal Battlefield, everything just feels right. It all looks gothic and dreary. My personal new favorite Act is Act V. It takes the randomness of Diablo 2 and combines it with Diablo 3's aesthetically pleasing painted style of art. Nothing seems bright or too colorful, but everything is vivid. It really gives you a sense of doom when you see Westmarch start burning to the ground. The Blood marsh is my favorite, the smokey look. The dense jungle and swampy lands and all the art inside of Act V is just breathtaking. The music too, it sets you right inside of one of the most dreadful places on sanctuary. Derek Duke nailed it. The tracks are all very odd and give you the sense of dread. The ambient noises make you worry and wonder what's close by. It all fits together nicely for an experience that I don't recall having in Diablo III vanilla. They really changed the tone with this expansion and act, and made it much more thematically fit with Diablo.

Rifts + bounties are something I've had little to no experience with but so far, they feel rewarding enough. Adventure mode is something I was really looking forward too considering it would finally allow us to farm any act any time, any place inside the act. It was essentially how D3 should've launched, but didn't. The allure of having to go through an item hunt is pretty exciting too. I love the idea of having to kill a certain monster for this and another for something else, so i can combine it to kill a monster for a chance to get some really cool rare item. It gives us the option to do something a little bigger rather than just go out farm, rinse- repeat. The Itemization is also just absolutely superb. Everything seems to be much more easily defined too. I understand the stats I want to make my personal build work, now I have to work for Items that have those stats. It isn't just looking for the ultimate trifecta anymore, there's some variance. This is what I think was a main problem of Diablo III. There wasn't anything you were looking for besides a trifecta, if it didn't have the trifecta you didn't want it. These trifecta stats also locked you into a certain set of builds that would work extremely well with the trifecta stats, thus creating basically a Diablo 2 cookie cutter build style. This is in my opinion the worst thing that can happen to a rpg. Cookie cutter builds. There's no variance then there's no fun. No experimentation and no uniqueness.



Please comment, and share your thoughts, and maybe some of your critiques about RoS. What did you like and what didn't you like?

The CGI wouldn't have been too hard to do. They can do amazing CGI work for WoW yearly, but couldn't do 12 characters in CGI then just replace them in the cutscene? Like All they'd have to do is replace each character, the background is it's own rendered part. It wouldn't be too hard really to just swap each one in and out. I'm dissappointed because usually the CGI's really bring the story home. It's more compelling than a simple sketch. They shouldve done what they did in D3V. Sketch - > CGI, or was it CGI -> sketch. Either way IT is nice, but I'm sorely dissappointed. Maybe something in the behind the scenes will tell us about why, or maybe what the next expansion is about.

That was the most dissappointing ending I have ever seen by Blizzard. That shit was soooo lame. NO CGI? Blizzard has an amazing Cine team, why the fuck did they forgo it, when even HoTS got one? And that game isn't story-centric! UGH that pisses me off kind of. Was really hoping for some badass shit in the ending, maybe a little nod to the next Expac like Sc2.

[b]Battletag:[/b]Enty#1971

Link to armory profile:http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Enty-1971/hero/56779[/b]

Preference for softcore (SC) or hardcore (HC): SC[/b]

Average time available to play (hours per week): 25+ Hours[/b]

[b]Preferred difficulty level: T1-T3[/b]

The community is lackluster. Idk about the second one. The clan though is maxed out and I can't request to join again which kind of upset me. I really wanted to be in the DFans clan where I assume people are more active.

It depends on what you're looking for. Are you looking talk with people, and hear the game without much detail at the same time, or are you looking to casually talk to people but want to hear the game in all its richness and detail.

If you want to hear all the different ambient sounds and just casually talk with people, then look for something like a pair of Sennheisers and a separate mic. The sound quality on headsets isn't up to par with audiophile headphones, the mic can be cheap too, or you could get something a bit pricey. If price isn't an option here, you could get Sennheiser HD600, or HD558 they're pretty standard and are pricey but reasonably priced compared to some of the competition. For the mic you could get a Blue snowball, USB setup plug N play and they're used by alot of streamers these days because they only cost 99$ and are pretty clear, so that's always an option, or you could get something like a ModMic. They get stuck to the side of your headphones and act as a boom mic. It was pretty much made for gamers who want really high quality audio with audiophile headphones instead of a cheaper headset.

If you're looking for ease of use, and everything built in no fuss no muss then a headset is the way to go. If price isn't an option then get one of the higher end ones. Razer Megalodons and Astro A40's have been my two favorite headsets so far. I broke my megalodons and wanted to try out A40's and they've lived up although not quite as comfortably. A lot of people swear by TB XSevens but I personally dislike the weight, and leather padding on the headphones, plus to me almost every TB besides the X1 sounds too tinny to me. With the megalodons and Astro's you feel a little more thump in your bass, and the low end fills out better. Trittons to me have a similar problem to TB's although they're slightly better. Steelseries makes Siberia's which are hugely popular and the D3 headphones are basically re-branded Siberia V2's and they are good although I don't think they're as detailed and open as the higher end headsets, and they lack the comfort of the A40's and Megalodons to me. I haven't tried out Krakens but I hate leatherette padding so I'm positive they won't be good for me, and Tiamats I haven't had a chance to try but I've heard some good things about them. Beware though, Dedicated 7.1 is pretty gimmicky. I'm not going to lie, it sounds like it'd be better but sometimes the drivers get in the way of eachother and stuff comes out slightly more muddy and mixed. I'm much more in preference to digital surround in a headset. IF you want true surround a speaker system is the only way to go.



There are tons of options, so my best recommendation is go somewhere where you can try on different headphones and listen. Gamestop has all the TBs on display so you can go there to feel them and try them out. A40's you'll have to go off reviews, same as Razer, and tritton. A place liek B&H might have some audiophile headphones you can try and see which you'd prefer if you're going that route. Find what your ears like, are they sensitive to higher pitches, do you hate the boom from the bass, what fits you will be decided by you. My ears aren't yours and I can only recommend what I hear so I'd definitely go check them out before you purchase. IF you can't try them out, then listen to music on shitty headphones. See if you can stand some tinny sounds, see if you don't mind muddy bass. Then read extensive reviews on the different headphones, See what reviews have to say. Is it too high pitched, is there an EQ, too much bass, uncomfortable, breaks easily. Stuff like that should factor into what you want.



Hope this helps a bit, have fun!

It's going to be 3AM EDT, 12 PDT because that's how it was for D3, HoTS, Every WoW expac, SC2, WoW and probably every online Blizzard release after WoW. It won't change now, "shortly after release" in the scope of things could be a day later, it'd still be shortly after release...

Yeah and the game isn't playable till 3:01 AM EDT, or 12:01 PDT So adjust accordingly for your timezone.

There are lvl 70 versions of some of the plans, so yeah gotta farm for lvl 70 versions again.

EDIT FOR EXAMPLE:

Wall of Bone is lvl 32 i think? or some lower level... Wall of MAN however is the lvl 70 version of the shield.

It shouldn't be a pain to crunch numbers though. That info is important and should be laid out directly in front of us. Especially when it drives the masses towards a specific item set. In this case it drives all players to play with 1H + OH or DW, which excludes a large majority of items, that Blizzard wants us to use. If they're not good enough people will just bitch and complain about not getting good drops, even though they're getting perfectly fine 2Handed weapons. This will then spur them to make 2Handers more powerful, or they'll end up giving them the boot and lower their percentage to drop based on players wants. Providing players with an easily communicable stat that can show players how much better they could be with a 2Hander in certain situations is extremely important in ensurign that players feel like their drops are still worth something.



I'm not advocating for such increases that we have to use 2 handers, but a slight damage buff over 1Handers + offhand is reasonable to ask, and I'd ask they directly use the +Damage weapon affix when calculating damage range and DPS, and make damage ranges visible.

This is essentially moot though with D3, In d2 only a handful of builds were 'viable' whereas in D3 almost all builds, barring some that don't really have any damage modifiers or damaging attacks, are 'viable'. SO to say that they'd find the 1 build rules them all quicker, is not really relevant. Sure there are always going to be builds that straight up do better, but at least in Diablo 3 the margin at which they do is significantly smaller.



And Bleu they could say somethings like Cluster arrow hits explodes for an initial damage of 1k-2k then releases three grenades each dealing 1k-2k on hit. Or something similar, I don't think this would be a major problem.What I do see as a problem is the % it's not feasible for someone to sit and calculate out their damage per hit based on a percentage, and my other problem is + damage affix not factoring into the DPS of the weapon!. It's a huge part of getting extra damage!

I have a question!

Let me get this straight. I haven't really played for a few days due to homework, but from what I get from it all is the problem people are having is that 2Handers have significantly less Sheet DPS than 1H + OH or DW. But they gain an increase per hit which can sometimes equate to better shots for certain skills? The bug is that they were rolling 1H damage stats? or that the + damage stat was/is lower than expected?

Second question, why does the DPS seem to NOT factor in the Elemental or physical + Damage affix when calculating DPS. The one someone showed earlier seemed to almost DOUBLE its damage when you factored in the Elemental damage it had on it.

Third question, would a change in the way skills show damage be warranted to fix this problem that people are having with 2Handers? and by Change how they show damage I mean instead of saying Frozen Orb does 450% damage( Made up number don't know the exact) it should say Frozen Orb deals 111002-150000 Damage? Would this allow players to more clearly see the change a 2Hander could do to help them?

I assumed it was not allowed sings you cant use both Kerri's wings and Tyraels at the same time, even though they'd be out of the way on each other. Odd and how do you guys have them already the game isn't out. I don't remember people getting the HoTS portraits and wings before HoTS came out? Same way no one has any ROS stuff either....

No one has it yet, and the banner will take the place of wings. You won't be able to have both active at the same time.

I Think that's technically better than a 1h, although I'd need a CTRL+ screenshot for comparison, because It doesn't seem to be factoring in the almost double damage increase thanks to the +Arcane. Think about it. Your range isn't 1170-1408 its actually 2055-2475 which averages about 2265 DPS. This is all speculation of course , if that's how the weapons handle damage which is how I assumed they worked. Could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time, although I see no reason why this isn't how it works.