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My confusion is when people say things like "What if I use the RMAH to buy my items, won't that give me an advantage?" and nobody thinks about how by lvl 30 there will be no items on the AH that are ahead of the people rushing the content. Is there something I am missing here?

to prevent the chat pverflowing with quest lines you can go into sound options and turn of qust chatter in Chat boxes, and have talk bubbles over speaking characters' heads. The talk bubbles include things like 'do you see that enemy over there!'

Quote from ElKapitan

In D3 all stat points have some use to all characters, be it Str on a Wiz increasing armour or Int on a Barb increasing resistances. As is, if I want to create a 'tank' barb I have to rely on items to do so. Why can I not create the character I want with stat point distribution and then 'round off the edges' with items? If I choose to make a Vit heavy build on my character I can then compensate if I feel the need, with items that do more damage or have Str on. If I choose to make a Str heavy Barb with limited points in Int for res, Dex for dodge and Vit for health pool and make more of a 'reckless beserker' approach, then why can't I?
Say I choose to make a shield block Barb and decide I don't care for dodge chances, then why would I ever want a point in Dex?

You can do this, the 60 points you get in Dexterity won't matter when compared to the 120 points you get from 1 gem out of who knows how many. As I said before the Stats were just moved

Personally, the fact that there are 2000 or 2 viable builds, is less important to me than that I can make the build I want to. For example, I I first played LoD, (not sure exactly when It was) I wanted to play a Fissure Durid with some summons. I learned the hard way that this was not possible and I almost put the game down at that point.

Now I have about 5 builds for the Doc (which looks to play more similar to the Druid than the Necro IMHO) some are silly (only dog skills) some are not, and they tell me that I can take at least the serious builds and with the right gear, and a some tweaking (which I can do as I play my first character: How Terrible!) I can play that character. and it will be mine!

I don't care that I can change to be exactly like your character. I don't want to, your character is stupid (as in not interesting to me). If you change your character to be identical to mine, that's your perogative and I may feel proud that my awsome unique build was so cool you wanted one too or I can not care and let you go on your merry way.

In any case I love that there are hundreds of billions of builds fo each class and thank you OP for all the hard work.

Quote from Solmyr77

Quote from Red_Panda

You're forgetting that dual wielding automatically gets a bonus 15% attack speed. It swings faster than sword and board - period. Therefore it does more damage. I believe it should decrease your damage.

No, I'm actually aware of the speed bonus. I'm a little confused about your opinion switching from one phrase to another, but whatever.
Let's try a little calculation. So your mainhand weapon does x dps. If you use it alone with no offhand, you do x dps. If you equip a shield, you may even do a little more depending on it's stats. Now if you equip a second weapon with y dps, your x dps are gone and -simply put- morphed into (x+y)/2 * 1.15.
So, if x = y, you gain 15% damage. But if y < x, you can actually get less than x dps as a result if the difference is big enough. I checked this ingame, so if you don't believe me, try it on your own.
So, to put it a little extreme: DW is only viable, if you have your one, big, amazing weapon twice. Odds are, your best two weapons at any given point will vary in dps.
As a result, the offhand plays an important role, which is good, but this role is called "mirror the mainhand or drag you down". Still don't like this

And here we have the problem of making DPS so important. so the Off-Hand can reduce your DPS, yes, if it low enough. But, It does not reduce the damage of your Main Hand weapon. That weapon's damage is still what it was, and will be the damage of attacks that use the Main Hand damage (like most Fury spenders and probably Leap Attack etc.) but attacks that alternate will first use the Main Hand weapon, dealing massive damage, then use the Off-Hand.

If your total DPS didn't drop then it would be like equipping a spoon that you never use and attacking faster with your Main Hand. That doesn't make sense. If you don't attack with your Off-Hand you don't get greater Attack Speed, when you attack with your Off-Hand, you should deal the damage of that weapon (you should not deal Beastly Axe of Critical Demise damage with you Spoon of Noodles, but instead your Spoon of Noodles damage). This results in the DPS drop if you use an Off-Hand with insufficiently high damage.

It would be like saying that x+x+x+x should always be less than x+y+x+y+x just because there are more numbers. but 10+10+10+10 is obviously going to be greater than 10+1+10+1+10. From what I can determine with some mental math you need to be within 10% to not lose DPS, and this does not seem too big a problem.

Edit for readability

You should get an email at some point. But not yet I think.

I wonder why you can walk through a wall of Fire if it is a wall? That doesn't make sense...

Seriously though I see a lot of speculation and distrust of Blizzard here and while some may use WoW to say that we are right to not have faith, I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt until the game comes out. Will we need pets? I don't think so, but I don't know. I will find out when I play. Does the Doc only have one survivability passive. No look at Blood Rights, It gives you 2% health regen. and since healing spells tend to give you over 3000 health we can speculate that health will be over 3000 meaning that it could easily cover the cost of light spell-casting assuming you don't go a Mana-less or nearly Mana-less build. Here we must also take into consideration that not all passives or even all skills have been revealed for each class (Fetish Sycophants anyone?)

I think that the way the Kazraa act when they encounter the wall indicates that they can move through it and If you look at the whole game play preview the second wall shows more clearly that when they are in damage range of the wall they are slowed and they continue to move forward, even on the edges of the wall where they could quickly walk around. That, however, is still speculation.

As for the argument about width...the term is ambiguous and there is little to no indication of how they are using it. To me I understood it to be a two layer wall that can be passed through slowly, but there is no indication that this is or is not true. Also, the reason they are called widescreen is because it reads much better than longscreen. :Thumbs Up:

Bottom line, wait a few more months, and then we can talk about this.

Screen shaking may be a problem, but there should be an indicator of what foe is targeted. If you are working on a group of tough monsters (ala the Ancients) Focusing damage on one at a time becomes important and I would like to know where the damage is going from targeted attacks. no need to have excessive effects but something should be visible.

Some characters come from rich families and have an allowance.

I never got into incgamers, I visited the wiki a few times, but the forums just felt wrong to me. Kind of closed minded at times. Here I feel that there is solid debate and only occasional outbursts.

As far as objectivity goes, It is incredibly difficult to be purely objective and the news folks on fan sites are not professionals, but on this site they do try (a great example of this was a recent podcast where the three guys were on the same side and explained that because they are all in agreement it was hard for them to support/talk about what others had a problem with. They talked about there opinions and then addressed the fact that there is another side that could have merit but did not know how to do it justice themselves.)

With respect to being called a 'fanboi' I have been called a fan-boy, although I believe I am just a fan. The reason for this is that I am generally a positive person, and look at things positively until I have empirical evidence to actually make a decision. Having not been able to play the game I generally try to find the positive points about any controversy (occasionally I don't but then I reserve final judgment until I can get more solid information.) I feel that Blizz is a company that has earned enough respect that they deserve this much at least. Does this mean I reject arguments that are against any given decision? No, but I will try to come up with counter arguments. If I can't do that, then there is a problem in my mind with the decision that was made (I actually feel this way about the 'new' rune system that Jay Wilson mentioned they wanted to try. I hope they think it feels horrible and ditch the idea.) Anyway that is my thoughts on Fan-boy vs. Hater, I think that a positive outlook has been earned by this developer so I won't hate until the game is out and people have really experienced it (and there is reason to rage.)

I posted this on the official Blizz forums. I am posting here as well. Let me know what you guys think.

So I am pretty sure lots of people have asked this question as to how many possible builds are there for each class in D3 (Elective mode enabled). I didn't find the answer anywhere myself, so I decided to create a thread on it. Here's my take on it.

A build consists of any 6 active skills and any 3 passive skills.
For each class
# of active skills = n
# of passive skills = p
Each active skill has 5 runes

No. of ways of picking 6 active skills from a choice on n = nC6. (n "Combination" 6)
No. of ways of picking a rune for each of these active skills already chosen = 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 5^6
No. of ways of picking a passive skill for a choice of p = pC3. (p "Combination" 3)

Total No. of possible builds for each class, S = nC6 x 5^6 x pC3.

nC6 = n!/(6!(n-6)!) and pC3 = p!/(3!(p-3)!).

Now let's compute the no. of skills for each class individually.

Barbarian

# of active skills = n = 22
# of passive skills = p = 16

Therefore S = 22C6 x 5^6 x 16C3 = 652,863,750,000. (652 billion+)

Demon Hunter

# of active skills = n = 23
# of passive skills = p = 15

Therefore S = 23C6 x 5^6 x 15C3 = 717,670,078,125. (717 billion+)

Monk

# of active skills = n = 21
# of passive skills = p = 14

Therefore S = 21C6 x 5^6 x 14C3 = 308,626,500,000. (308 billion+)

Witch Doctor

# of active skills = n = 22
# of passive skills = p = 15

Therefore S = 22C6 x 5^6 x 15C3 = 530,451,796,875. (530 billion+)

Wizard

# of active skills = n = 25
# of passive skills = p = 15

Therefore S = 25C6 x 5^6 x 15C3 = 1,259,070,312,500. (1259 billion+)

Things to note
Wizard has the most no. of builds and Monk has the least. Wizard has more than 4 times the no. of builds as the Monk.Some interesting comparisons involving the no. of Monk builds since it has the lowest no. of builds.
► If every person in this world (~7 billion) plays Monk in D3, then it is possible to play in such a way such that every single person is playing with a different build.

► So if every single person in this world is playing Monk in D3 with a different build, it will still only cover 2.27% of the all the possible Monk builds.

► So will there be a time when it is certain that 2 people will have the same build?
Yes. Going by the present growth rate of world population (1.1%), the population of Earth will reach 310 billion in the year 2569. If every person in the world is still playing Monk in D3 at that time, then it is guaranteed that there will be atleast 2 people who have the same build

► How much time will it take me to test all the builds for Monk?
If you test a build each second, then it will take 9787 years to check all the 308billion+ builds for the the Monk.

Since checking builds every second isn't possible, so let's say you check a new build every 5 minutes. Then it will take 2.9+ million years to check every build for the Monk.

► And we haven't even touched the other 4 classes which have a lot more builds than the Monk.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4768346902

Quote from asfastasican

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you "choose" your skills in D2, they get stronger, whereas in D3 when you "choose" your skills, they are relatively the same strength as the rest of your arsenal.

There's a huge difference there and i think that picture is... well... not well-thought out and pretty desperate...

Like most things in D3 many aspects that were present in D2 are still present in D3, they've simply been rearranged or moved to function more intelligently. In the case of strengthening skills, the same effect is now accomplished via gear. We'll get into that more.

Quote from asfastasican

You see, even with a simple talent tree system in D2, the game hurdled over a very simple design problem.

-How do we get the player to focus on a small handful of skills while allowing him the freedom of using them all?-

In Diablo 2, they simply did this by allowing the player to invest points into a small handful of skills without holding their hand. In Diablo 3, they pidgeonhole you into bringing a small handful of skills into a fight, but it's a lot more boring because you can switch to any other skill that had the same level of strength without any investment.

Which also comes with all the faults and flaws of Diablo 2's systems. A flawed system that encourages point hoarding, investing in transitional skills, and one-point-wonders. These are Bad Things™. That's why a tree system was ditched in favor of what we have in D3. That is why D3's systems are objectively better. They keep all the things you supposedly love about D2, in different form, and solve a great many of D2's very real and very critical flaws.

Quote from asfastasican

You see, over 10 years ago, the Diablo 2 team had the brain power to understand that their game would have gotten boring fast if the player had 20 spells and could use those 20 spells at any time. They simply gave players the option to make a handful of skills stronger so the player would just say "Lol, my fireball is weaksauce, I'll dump a bunch of points into my Hydra and have that dragon own crap." The player wouldn't bother with fireball on his or her own, because it was weaksauce. They could still use fireball though if they wanted to though.

Your statement above makes the false assumption that they knowingly prevented people from having access to all skills whenever they want because it would hurt longevity; you don't have any basis for that, but it's irrelevant anyways. A weak fireball is a worthless fireball. Why would you ever use something that is purposely gimped when you have better tools available to you? The point of D3 is to give players the ability to choose whichever 6 skills they want to use at any time (providing a restricted skill set and forcing intelligent choice and strategy) without giving the player essentially worthless 'gimped' skills. There's no reason to do that. What they have instead done, MUCH more INTELLIGENTLY, is give everyone a baseline effectiveness on the skills they wish to use, and then letting them improve their skills further through gear with skill affixes.

Quote from asfastasican

Oh, and by the way, every player, young and old, noob and pro, could all perfectly understand Diablo 2's system. It wasn't rocket science.

The issue is not how difficult it is to understand D2's systems. The issues is they're flawed and needed improvement. Pretending that this was all done to simplify the game so those of lesser intelligence could understand the systems is a poorly thought-out strawman argument.

Quote from asfastasican

I can see why they would want to change and simplify WoW's talent system after seven or so years of mmo play, but the fact of the matter is that WoW's entire god damned success was helped along by using Diablo 2's system, not Diablo 3's. A lot of my friends aren't interested in MoP either if that counts for anything.

Again, history and success of prior products is not an adequate excuse for not making improvements. "Diablo 2 did it good and other games borrowed from Diablo 2 so why aren't we keeping things like Diablo 2!?" will never be a valid argument. Period.

Quote from Adon

Quote from pskfry

Quote from Gheed2010

The paid posters are putting up a good fight.

But this is only the warmup - when people realize just how badly these design choices have hurt replayability a month after release, it will be really interesting. The QQers will have a whole new layer of bitterness.

Paid posters? You retarded?

Yeah this game has no re-playability. I've only played the first 13 levels of the beta like 50+ times. No re-playability at all.

You are the exact target audience then. Someone who is happy with little to no content and will run drills for them like a lab rat. I used to be the same way, then I grew up.

1. I'm probably older than you.
2. I play all kinds of games. Dawn of War, Heroes of Newerth, World of Warcraft (and in the past, many many other MMOs from Everquest to Rappelz), The Witcher, Demons Souls, I played Diablo 2 extensively.
3. I am the target audience. Someone that recognizes a good game and plays it, and enjoys it.

I haven't played through the Beta so many times because I don't have anything better to do. I have a girlfriend, a salaried job at a software company, and a social life. I've played through the Beta so many times because I love what Blizzard has done with this game, and if the first 13 levels of the game are any indicator, there will be plenty of re-playability.

Do you even know how the maps are set up with the interchangeable tiles that swap out every time the map loads? The randomization of areas/dungeons with mobs with different affixes and abilities, coupled with the item hunt and the customization that goes along with deciding which stats to value in your armor/weapons is where re-playability comes from. Not stat allocation or skill trees.

Some call it addiction, others say its a calling.

A calling to seek justice in dire times when great evil requires even greater heroes to step forth and defend what is sacred.

You my friend, are one of the chosen ones and this feeling you have within is but a spark amongst the fire of passion of which, when May 15th comes, will explode into a new form and reveal your true self. A hero of Tristram.

Hey everybody, I was really bored and decided to throw together some simple but, IMO, elegant Diablo related signatures. If you want one just let me know which one, what style text and what you want it to say. They're free to the community but if you want to repay me I'd appreciate helping support my youtube channel by commenting, viewing or thumbs up/down my videos. Here's a link to it. http://bit.ly/GG6v2a Either way, I hope you enjoy the signatures

P.S. If you don't want any signatures leave me some feed back, What you think of them, what you think I should do or shouldn't have done? Thanks.

P.P.S. I am taking suggestions for personal signatures, if you want me to make you one just give me details on what topic or images you want to be in it, the text, font or a preference and your preferred color scheme.

Examples of some of these with peoples names edited on them are in the comment below this one

I want my Druids, and I want Scosglen. That is all.

Quote from Winged

...Another useful tidbit of knowledge is that you will not be able to swap skills in between matches. This makes it so a team can adapt their play style to counter an opposing team, making it so comebacks are very possible if a team can adapt efficiently.

This confused me. You mean that we will be able to swap skills in between matches, right?

Quote from Winged

Through a display of testimonials from in-house testers who have been put up against the Inferno difficulty, we're given an idea of how difficult endgame content will truly be.

Were these testimonials shown? I think it would be amusing to read what they had to say about getting their butts handed to them on Inferno, lol!!

Awesome write up, thank you very much.

Gameplay

With the game drawing tantalizingly close to completion, there wasn't any ground braking announcements in this particular panel, but one could say none were expected. Most, if not all of the game features have been announced prior, even if they have not been detailed yet. So in that light, while nothing completely new was founded, we received a great deal of detail on already existent features.

Achievements & Banner
As the panel opened they jumped right into it, beginning with Achievements. We've heard very little on this front in the past, so any news on them was welcomed. There are three main ways to progress through your achievements.

• Game Progression:

This is rather self explanatory, there will be achievements for progressing through the game such as completing a difficulty, or defeating a boss.

• Obscure Gameplay:

So you've defeated the normal difficulty, neat. How about weaponless, or even gear-less? Such feats of insanity will be rewarded via achievements.

• Longterm Goals:

These goals include things such as completing the Bestiary, a feature while tracks what creatures you've encountered. Or finding every lore book in the game.

Your achievements progress reflects onto your Banner, slowly but surely adding new ribbons, facets, or other features. New ways to personalize your banner may become available through these achievements also. These small additions to your banner themselves expand as you complete more and more achievements. For example, as you progress in a certain category of achievements more gems may start appearing on a ribbon dangling from your banner. Or as you play through more Hardcore content the mound of skulls and bones under your banner will grow.



Crafting

Crafting is getting an overhaul in Diablo III, becoming more viable for any stage of the game. In this topic we got a good amount of confirmation on the abilities that each of our three Artisans will provide.

• Mystic:

This Artisan offers item enchantments. This may ring a bell, as a similar system was in place in Diablo II. With the new system you'll not only be able to enchant your items, but continuously do so, each time rolling better and better stats. This enables a player with enough focus and funds to eventually achieve very high stats on his or her item.

Through these enchantments, you can also take advantage of very off-class type items on your character. An example the developers gave was a Demon Hunter using a one handed axe and a shield, both of which being enchanted with Hatred regeneration, something that wouldn't natural spawn on such weapons. As the Mystic levels up, she will have access to more powerful enchantments, which are dropped as recipes in the game.

• Jeweler:

This old man has very simple, yet essential talents. He can combine Gems, add sockets to items, and remove gems from items. Exactly what scales as he levels isn't entirely clear yet, but one could imagine a few scalable aspects, such as what level gems he can combine, or what level item he can add sockets to.

• Blacksmith:

We know more of this Artisan than the other two, both through more exposure via Blizzard, and presents in the beta. The Blacksmith can forge a huge variety of items, some are unlocked as he levels up, others only through recipes you find as drops. He even has the ability to forge legendary items, some with set values. This is a beautiful thing, since through the randomness of Diablos' drop system, by the time you find every item in a set for a mid-level character, you've likely already out leveled the set, making it useless.

Now through the Blacksmith you'll be able to craft your way to a full set if you're willing to front the needed materials and gold, making those low-mid range set items a viable choice. Besides crafting he can also repair your items, something that will likely need to be done regularly come Inferno, seeing as you loose 10% of your item durability with each death in the game.


PvP: PvP hasn't undergone very much change, which at this stage of the game shows how solid it is at heart. As was discovered a while back, the Arena will now have a team death match style of scoring. Meaning that your lives are infinite, you respawn shortly after each death, and the team with the most kills at the end of the game wins. Exactly how long each round will be isn't clear, though one full game will likely be around ten minute. The system of health globes that spawn at certain points on the map wasn't spoken of, so where they are with that is unknown.

Something that has changed is the amount of players in each match, moving from 3v3 to 4v4. Another useful tidbit of knowledge is that you will not be able to swap skills in between matches. This makes it so a team can adapt their play style to counter an opposing team, without worrying about them having an entirely different skill-set from round to round, making it so comebacks are very possible if a team can adapt efficiently. This forces players to think strategically, instead of just swapping skills to deal with a problem.

Auction House: As known, you'll be able to trade nearly anything you find in-game through the Auction House, be it gold, gems, crafting materials, tombs, etc. Whole character selling will not be available at launch, but will likely be added later on. Search features will be extensive, including a "smart search" which detects common stats across your character and searches for items with similar stats. For the more picky person there will be an advanced search feature where you'll be able to pin point exactly the item you're looking for.


Life Cycle Of Items

With the introduction of the auction house, comes a new level of item recycling that had never been seen in a Diablo game. Whereas in Diablo II items more or less drifted around form player to player endlessly rotating, in Diablo III these items can be transformed into many forms, and then like a Phoenix reborn, take shape into new amazing forms.
In Diablo II the ideal life cycle of an item was as follows: Drop > Wear > Trade > Eventually Sold. That's about as far as it went in the best case scenario. This wouldn't be so terrible if gold had any true value in the game, a purpose.

In Diablo III this is the ideal life cycle of an item: Drop > Wear> Trade > Eventually Salvaged > Crafted into new item > Eventually Sold. Not only are there many more things you can do with an item, but when it is eventually sold for gold, that gold can be used to continue feeding the economy, or even better, sunk into one of the many gold sinks, removing it from the game and delaying the build up of gold in the economy.


Final Game Tuning

Those words have a great ring to them, or maybe just the word "final" being used at all. Tuning, or polishing if you will, comes as the last stage of development. It's where numbers are tweaked, and features are perfected for release. This polishing happens across the entire game, so we'll touch on the interesting topics which were presented.

• Monster Improvements:

The creatures of Sanctuary are a formidable bunch, each with a role to play in the heat of battle. Fulfilling these roles is an important job, and sometimes new roles need to be created to address balancing issues. One of these issues that's very clear for any Diablo player is how casters can often avoid affixes of creatures, such as lightning, thorns, or other short distance AoE effects.

To adress this, the new affix called Mortar was introduced, where a creature will lob fireballs across the screen, endangering casters while flying right over melee characters' heads.

• Passive Skills & Synergies:
  

True to their claims of nothing being final, there have been small tweaks all cross the passive skills. In some cases is may just be a number change, though as they displayed there are a couple of new passive skills to support different builds.

• Synergies:

Another way Blizzard is supporting build diversity is by cutting down on synergies. While synergies may look appealing, they actually drastically decrease the amount of viable builds. This is due to the very nature of them, where if you have one skill you're most likely best off following it up with skills that all have corresponding synergies. This forces the player down a certain path in order to maximize the effects. While they're not removing synergies all together, they will be down-tuning their effects, or removing certain corresponding effects completely.


Class Tuning

With the idea of class specific resources surely came a huge amount of development to get to this point. As with any complex feature, constant polishing is the only way to achieve balance. While each class is fairing well with no major setbacks, small tweaks are being made to adjust how each class handles.

• Barbarian:

The trend Blizzard has noticed in the beta is players will skip the small Fury generators such as Bash or Frenzy in favor for the larger ones like Leap Attack, or Ground Stomp. To account for this the amount of Fury the smaller generators will create is getting bumped up. They also found that come late game the Barb is having a tough time surviving due to the classes' need to be within melee range of creatures. This is a little more complex polish, and will involve a few defensive changes.

• Wizard:

As we've known, a certain section of skills will slowly become less costly as you level, eventually becoming completely free. This system is undergoing small changes which weren't clearly detailed. All spells are also moving to % weapon damage, making weapon more important to casters than before.

A common concern with this change is - well if casters depend on weapon damage, shouldn't I just run around with a two handed axe? - This is being addressed by also having the casting speed rely on weapon speed, so while your attack may do more damage with a two handed axe, your DPS may be less than if you were to use a wand with a lower attack, but faster attack speed. There are also class specific buffs on many casting oriented weapons that could sway a players choice from say a sword, or axe.

• Witch Doctor:

Mana seems to be unlimited in the beta, and at this early stage of the game it essentially is. Though as the game progresses you'll have to make crucial choices that will effect how your Mana will behave. It was stated that if one were so inclined, they could form a build where you do indeed have infinite Mana, though they'd be sacrificing other aspects of the class, such as damage, or defense.

• Monk:

Mantras are now going to have a three second period when first cast where they'll grant double the buff they normally would. This makes them feel like less like a maintenance skill, and more like an active skill that needs to be paid attention to. Combo skills are also undergoing some small changes in their basic functionality, both in how they are combined, and how powerful each level of attack is. For example they plan to increase the range in Deadly Reach to make it more viable.

• Demon Hunter:

As touched on not too long again, the DH will have a completely new Hatred system than as the class does now. At this very moment in the beta Hatred constantly regenerates, though as many have found, you end up constantly low,if not drained of it. To remedy this there will be Hatred generating skills and spending skills, much like Fury. Snares will also see some buffs to better keep enemies at range, or help better preform their role.

While each class have some very specific changes coming, one change is reaching across every class - awesomeness. Through feedback from the community, and internal testing, a lot of players have found skills as a whole don't make them feel as awesome as they'd prefer. Blizzard has heard the cries, and plan to increase the visual effects of many skills, helping enforce the fact that you're a badass demon-slaying demigod.


Difficulties

Many fans have speculated on exactly how difficult each act will be. Some even feel the entire game will be relatively easy. This may be due to the easy content we've seen in the beta, which is indeed very casual. This is by design though, normal difficulty is meant to be a kind of tutorial, which teaches you everything you'll need to know, while not punishing you too hard for making mistakes.

Very casual players will enjoy this first difficulty, while more serious players will find it laughable. This again is by design, because in essence every serious gamer was once a casual gamer. At one point in time we all were n00bs. Blizzard understands this, and wishes to help turn those casual gamers into more dedicated gamers through nice and easy difficulty transitions.

Blizzard also understands that a large portion of their fan base are hardcore gamers looking for a challenge. Thus comes the concern that even in later difficulties the game will not present an adequate challenge, well Jay Willson assured us that this isn't something we should be worried about. Through a display of testimonials from in-house testers who have been put up against the Inferno difficulty, we're given an idea of how difficult endgame content will truly be.


Followers

Followers replacing mercenaries wasn't all too popular among the community. The fact that these new side-kicks were only available in single player was a big change it itself, but the added hit of them only being viable in normal difficulty never settled well with the majority of the fan base. In good fashion Blizzard has listened to these concerns and tweaked followers to be viable through all levels of content, though still only useable while playing solo.


Town Only Skill Swapping

The title speaks for itself, but the reasoning behind why this change is being made is interesting. The dev team found that more and more often players would have their skill UI open while slaying monsters, swapping skills out multiple times as they played through small areas. This would make for some problems if left unattended. Not only does it take up a large amount of screen real-estate, but it takes away from the feeling of identity with your character when you're changing such a core aspect so often.

So right now they're testing town only skill swapping where you'll walk over to this area or NPC to swap out your skills. Jay didn't seem very happy about this, and stated how this isn't the final solution. If this doesn't work they will also be testing an out of combat swap system. This second option could make for some heavy development, since it have been stated that Diablo has no in, or out of combat tracker that these type of systems can communicate with.

The randomness of the outer worlds in diablo 2 was so generic. They were just big squares and didn't feel like an actual environment. From what I've seen of the D3 beta, the environments look much more genuine and intricate. Even if there is less over-world randomization in D3, that negative is vastly over-shadowed by the positives.

Hey everyone, I took some of the leaked datamined item pictures posted on a Diablo fansite, and organized them to take a peek at how our characters will look like as the progress through the game. I think it came out pretty nicely, so much in fact, that I created an account (finally) to share it with you guys.
Sadly, I couldn't find any files with the Wizard helms, and I did not include itens with shared appearence such as rings, bracers and so forth. Also there appear to be class specific armor such as belts and helms which I couldn't find for all 5 classes so I excluded them as well.
On a side note, all the itens listed below are in their male version ATM.

You can check them out on the following links:

Barbarian:
1-9
10-17
Demon Hunter:
1-9
10-17
Monk:
1-9
10-17
Witch Doctor:
1-9
10-17
Wizard:
1-9
10-17
What do you think? Which tier &/or class did you like the most?

EDIT: Wizard helms are now shown!