Crippling Wave makes it into every one of my builds simply because it has great debuffs tied to it (either for increased damage or increased defense) and I don't need to build stacks every time I want to fight something. I just really can't justify not taking it.
It's a real toss up after that between Fists of Thunder, Way of the Hundred Fists and Deadly Reach.
Since they added the Combination Strike passive I've been playing with builds that have 3 generators: Crippling Wave, Way of the Hundred Fists (Obsidian, Blazing Fists) and Deadly Reach (Crimson Rune, Foresight). The idea there being to build the highest offensive bonuses I can and blow stuff away.
I don't think we'll see a raise in the level cap- It would essentially limit us to walking around the one (or two) new acts introduced in the expansion. The only way to get around this is to add in a new difficulty higher than Inferno in each expansion, but this seems like it would get out of hand quick.
1. 2 new classes. I've heard whispers (guesses) at 1 new class, but we've only got 5 classes as is - they're good classes admittedly, but I really want to see 2 classes per expansion to really round out the roster. By the time the expansion rolls around, I'm likely to have all five of the original classes at max level after all.
2. Expanded PvE content (especially endgame). Of course I'd like to see the main acts get expanded a bit (hopefully by adding stuff hinted at in the original game, nothing huge a dungeon here a quest there). More importantly though I'd love to see additional content added at end game. An endless dungeon mode with waves of enemies for example, perhaps a challenge mode where we have to beat bosses or areas with certain stipulations (no gear / speed runs / kill the boss without killing any trash).
3. One of the following two things:
-An additional Rune type, bringing the total types of rune up to six.
OR
-Several additional skills added for each class (bringing the total skills per each class up to 28-32).
4. Expanded PvP options (without bringing back the grief fest that was Diablo 2).
Suppose even a medium-small fraction of players from WoW have not tried Diablo but will no as a result of this offer.
Let's say 1 million (of 10-11 million) WoW players have never played Diablo and don't have much interest, but with this offer they get it for free and decide to give it a whirl when they run of out things to do in WoW:
Now, let's say fully half of these people just hate Diablo 3 but the other half enjoy it:
Of the remaining 500k how many do you think will buy expansions for Diablo 3? How many will spend money on the RMAH?
This is good business through and through. The only people complaining are the ones looking at it and saying "Well, that guy over there got something for free, why not me?"
Well, that in itself isn't even true - 12 months of WoW isn't terribly cheap as far as video games go and you can be damn sure a lot of the revenue generated by WoW went into developing Diablo 3, not to mention the experiences and lessons learned by the WoW Development team.
Reposted from the monk forums on the D3 official forums with some very quick napkin math:
Reposted from the main monk thread, figured this could have some interesting converstation on it's own.
Relevent Passives:
Frenzied Attack: (Requires Level 13) - When wielding two weapons, the Monk has 20% increased critical strike chance and 30% increased critical strike damage.
Superior Skill: (Requires Level 15) - Increases precision by 20%.
Weak Spot: (Requires Level 20) - Increases critical strike damage by 100%.
So this is clearly pre-emptive, but making some VERY moderate assumptions about gear it seems to me that for a pure damage build a crit focused monk is the way to go, in large part because there's only a handful of non-situational damage increasing traits otherwise.
Note that at low levels it's probably worth less, but once you start getting higher gear levels you can afford to really focus on +crit/precision and +crit damage gear.
Some quick assumptions here: I've heard that at base level the bonus damage on a critical hit is 50%. Let's assume crit damage is multiplicative like it is in WoW.
50%+(100%)+(20%)
=100%+(20%)
=120% damage on a crit from traits alone. (170% if we assume it's additive, but I think that's unlikely).
Now, there's a screen shot floating around of a 2 handed barbarian weapon with +30% crit damage on it, so it's not unreasonable to assume we will be able to get AT LEAST +30% crit damage from gear (probably much more, but I'll play it safe).
120%+(30%)
=156%
So at this point with some moderate assumptions we will be dealing +156% additional damage on a crit (or 256% of base damage).
So let's make a silly assumption here just to emphasize how big a number 156% extra damage on a crit is:
Let's assume we're starting with 0 crit rating - we never crit, ever for some silly reason.
Now we get a piece of gear with exactly 1% worth of crit rating on it. That's a full 1.56% average damage increase.
Now, from traits alone we get 20% crit chance, we'll probably have something like 5% base line and since we're focusing on crit/precision gear I think it's pretty safe to assume we can get AT MINIMUM 25% crit rating from gear (again, assuming we're going for crit all the way).
If each point of crit is worth about 1.56% increase damage from baseline and we can push 50% crit in high end gear - that's (50x1.56=78) a 78% increase in average damage with no conditions other than being spikey/slightly random.
And that's assuming we can only get 30% additional crit damage from gear, which seems pretty unlikely to me given that we've seen 1 item which gives 30% additional crit damage ON IT'S OWN. I find it much more likely that we'll probably be able to push our crit damage up to 230-250%, which makes each percentage of crit worth 2.3-2.5% of our baseline damage.
At lower gear levels it'll probably be safer to go with a straight attack / conditional trait build but crit and +crit damage scale AMAZINGLY well together.
TLDR:
At low gear levels crit builds probably wont be anything special, but as anyone who played a DPS class in WoW knows: +additional crit damage is absolutely ridiculous. I doubt very much anyone will be able to push 100% crit chance - it would totally ruin the point of critical hits, however I'm certain you can push it quite high. The post I quoted references a fairly modest 50% crit chance (given how much of that can come from talents), you'll probably be able to push something like 60% crit chance with 250%ish crit damage in end game BIS gear.
You would sacrifice a lot of attack power to do this I'm certain, but attack power scales in a linear fashion. 200 rating is 200 rating, no matter how much you have. Crit is a percentage of your damage on the other hand.
That statement is a little misleading because critical hit chance is actually linear as well, it's the crit damage that really changes it up, which the post I quote outlines.
Basically alot of lvl 1-2 runes will drop early on...so..
Let's say you find 6-7 lvl 1 runes... you put them into magic missle 7 times, you might get 7 of the same rune, you might get 7 different and u might get half half... it's random...
This means, that, if you find a high lvl rune, socket it into a demanded skill, let's say endgame wizard skill that everybody wants, you have a very valuable lvl 7 meteor rune, that does awesome stuff...
Likewise, you might get a lvl 7 rune into meteor that does something different, than the other lvl 7 rune into meteor..
What does this mean?
It means you might end up with having 7 different sockets into skill meteor as wizard..
only 3 of those sockets u want, the 4 remaining u sell on the AH or.. you salavage it for crafting to be used in other stuff..
The system actually is good.
I'm quite alright with having random stats on the runes, but to me it's seems quite silly to rob us of all control over character customization. Certainly the drops should be random, a level 7 indigo rune should be a rare drop. It could be that I get tons of crimson runes and no indigo runes but to simply leave it random which type of rune you get seems terribly frustrating.
Perhaps I just read it late in evening after my brain had given up trying but I'm having difficulty understanding the proposed changes to the rune system.
One interpretation leads me to believe that there will no only be one type of rune (albeit 7 levels of said type). This rune will have random stats on it. On top of the random stats this will change up the skill in some way (ie. Extra magic missiles) but given that there is only one type of rune it will always change the skill in the same way. This is obviously terrible for every reason so I assume this interpretation is just wrong.
Another interpretation leads me to believe that the runes are basically the same as before, but now they have stats attached and you don't know what type of rune it is (indigo, violet, gold, etc...) until you socket it. This is pretty aweful too - given the removal of stat placement and traits (for good reasons I will admit) we have little enough control over which way our character grows - making the runes we put in random in rune type is frustrating to no end and players really like to be in control of -something- unique to their character. Runes are the perfect way for that to occur.
Yet another interpretation is that the runes are basically the same as before but now they have stats on them and while you get to know the colour before hand, the stats wont be known until you socket it though. Of my interpretations, this is the best case scenario. At this point though, why have the stats kept from us? Just give of the info we want to make choices. Chances are we're still gonna socket that 10 attack, 15 crit rune rather then hold out for something better, we'll just feel more comfortable with the decision.
So can anyone clarify what was meant by those potential changes? Anyone care to just throw in your 2 cents?
Alright so, after the big news earlier this morning I've been lurking the Official Diablo 3 forums and I would VERY much like to post some of my thoughts and hopefully shape some discussion, especially now that Bashiok is lurking the forums rather closely trying to get a feel for these changes.
That having been said, I can't get on because I seem to need a Diablo 2 CD Key to access the forum. Consider:
-The game came out 11 years ago. I have bought this game at least 4 different times since I was a teenager, and more recently simply cracked it because I've run out of money to waste rebuying games who's disks disappear.
-I have a battle.net account attached to an active wow subscription.
-Until very recently, I have been set on pre-ordering the game (now, I'm more of a wait and see how it turns out).
Given all that (and I'm sure there are many people in this boat with me) I really don't see why access is limited on said forums and I suppose what I'm really looking for is a way to make my voice heard and with any luck have some blues comment on the things which concern me. Does anyone know of another way to access these forums?
0
It's a real toss up after that between Fists of Thunder, Way of the Hundred Fists and Deadly Reach.
Since they added the Combination Strike passive I've been playing with builds that have 3 generators: Crippling Wave, Way of the Hundred Fists (Obsidian, Blazing Fists) and Deadly Reach (Crimson Rune, Foresight). The idea there being to build the highest offensive bonuses I can and blow stuff away.
0
1. 2 new classes. I've heard whispers (guesses) at 1 new class, but we've only got 5 classes as is - they're good classes admittedly, but I really want to see 2 classes per expansion to really round out the roster. By the time the expansion rolls around, I'm likely to have all five of the original classes at max level after all.
2. Expanded PvE content (especially endgame). Of course I'd like to see the main acts get expanded a bit (hopefully by adding stuff hinted at in the original game, nothing huge a dungeon here a quest there). More importantly though I'd love to see additional content added at end game. An endless dungeon mode with waves of enemies for example, perhaps a challenge mode where we have to beat bosses or areas with certain stipulations (no gear / speed runs / kill the boss without killing any trash).
3. One of the following two things:
-An additional Rune type, bringing the total types of rune up to six.
OR
-Several additional skills added for each class (bringing the total skills per each class up to 28-32).
4. Expanded PvP options (without bringing back the grief fest that was Diablo 2).
1
Suppose even a medium-small fraction of players from WoW have not tried Diablo but will no as a result of this offer.
Let's say 1 million (of 10-11 million) WoW players have never played Diablo and don't have much interest, but with this offer they get it for free and decide to give it a whirl when they run of out things to do in WoW:
Now, let's say fully half of these people just hate Diablo 3 but the other half enjoy it:
Of the remaining 500k how many do you think will buy expansions for Diablo 3? How many will spend money on the RMAH?
This is good business through and through. The only people complaining are the ones looking at it and saying "Well, that guy over there got something for free, why not me?"
Well, that in itself isn't even true - 12 months of WoW isn't terribly cheap as far as video games go and you can be damn sure a lot of the revenue generated by WoW went into developing Diablo 3, not to mention the experiences and lessons learned by the WoW Development team.
0
0
TLDR:
At low gear levels crit builds probably wont be anything special, but as anyone who played a DPS class in WoW knows: +additional crit damage is absolutely ridiculous. I doubt very much anyone will be able to push 100% crit chance - it would totally ruin the point of critical hits, however I'm certain you can push it quite high. The post I quoted references a fairly modest 50% crit chance (given how much of that can come from talents), you'll probably be able to push something like 60% crit chance with 250%ish crit damage in end game BIS gear.
You would sacrifice a lot of attack power to do this I'm certain, but attack power scales in a linear fashion. 200 rating is 200 rating, no matter how much you have. Crit is a percentage of your damage on the other hand.
That statement is a little misleading because critical hit chance is actually linear as well, it's the crit damage that really changes it up, which the post I quote outlines.
0
I'm quite alright with having random stats on the runes, but to me it's seems quite silly to rob us of all control over character customization. Certainly the drops should be random, a level 7 indigo rune should be a rare drop. It could be that I get tons of crimson runes and no indigo runes but to simply leave it random which type of rune you get seems terribly frustrating.
0
One interpretation leads me to believe that there will no only be one type of rune (albeit 7 levels of said type). This rune will have random stats on it. On top of the random stats this will change up the skill in some way (ie. Extra magic missiles) but given that there is only one type of rune it will always change the skill in the same way. This is obviously terrible for every reason so I assume this interpretation is just wrong.
Another interpretation leads me to believe that the runes are basically the same as before, but now they have stats attached and you don't know what type of rune it is (indigo, violet, gold, etc...) until you socket it. This is pretty aweful too - given the removal of stat placement and traits (for good reasons I will admit) we have little enough control over which way our character grows - making the runes we put in random in rune type is frustrating to no end and players really like to be in control of -something- unique to their character. Runes are the perfect way for that to occur.
Yet another interpretation is that the runes are basically the same as before but now they have stats on them and while you get to know the colour before hand, the stats wont be known until you socket it though. Of my interpretations, this is the best case scenario. At this point though, why have the stats kept from us? Just give of the info we want to make choices. Chances are we're still gonna socket that 10 attack, 15 crit rune rather then hold out for something better, we'll just feel more comfortable with the decision.
So can anyone clarify what was meant by those potential changes? Anyone care to just throw in your 2 cents?
0
That having been said, I can't get on because I seem to need a Diablo 2 CD Key to access the forum. Consider:
-The game came out 11 years ago. I have bought this game at least 4 different times since I was a teenager, and more recently simply cracked it because I've run out of money to waste rebuying games who's disks disappear.
-I have a battle.net account attached to an active wow subscription.
-Until very recently, I have been set on pre-ordering the game (now, I'm more of a wait and see how it turns out).
Given all that (and I'm sure there are many people in this boat with me) I really don't see why access is limited on said forums and I suppose what I'm really looking for is a way to make my voice heard and with any luck have some blues comment on the things which concern me. Does anyone know of another way to access these forums?