DiabloFans

Quote from Radacci

well alot of ppl are complaining that the game is to easy and such, and i tend to agree.
i know it's cause it's small part of act1 and all that.
but a lot of ppl might just play the game once for story or such, cause they cant and dont feel like repeating the same thing again, again, again. and not get a challenge until hell. i think it's gonna ruin the whole experience for them.
i know normal is kind of *tutorial* difficulty, but couldnt they just have had an optional tutorial difficulty?

The game is meant to be replayed. If people are playing it once for the story then the difficulty shouldn't bother them too much (Also, Normal WILL get harder in the later acts). If someone is playing for a challenge then that person will be replaying the game often. We're talking about 2 different people here. If a person happens to be playing for the story AND the challenge, he also won't mind replaying the game a bunch and plans to.

No one will be "expert" players on their first run, no matter how many hours of Diablo II you have under your belt. I welcome the Normal difficulty as a place to learn as much as possible since this is a new game, regardless of my skill in previous games.

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.

Quote from CptBlasto

We already got a pure caster, pure melee, ranged/physical, and whatever you wanna call a monk. What playstyle do you all think will be missing?

We'll need another melee type definitely. Right now there are 3 ranged classes and then the Monk/Barb. The Barb is pure melee and the Monk is the "hybrid" melee (akin to a Paladin) so what other types of melee are there?

How about a melee pet class? We have the Witch Doctor which is the caster pet class for the most part (lots of summoning of things) but he's not an actual, all out pet dependent class.

I'm thinking something like the Beast Lord from Everquest. He was in-your-face melee with a pet and a few nature spells (very short range). So something along those lines would be a good addition and balance things out archetype-wise in Diablo 3.

I can think of all kinds of ways to make the pet prominent so it really means something and the Beast Lord doesn't become just a Bard with a pet. The pet would never have to be summoned either since Skill Slots are extremely precious in D3 and it seems unfair to have a full on pet class lose a slot to summoning his pet. So when the pet dies it will automatically resurrect after X seconds OR when the Beast Lord's resource becomes full either from generating it via skills or passively regenerating it. Now, onto some specifics.

The Beast Lord uses Nature Power (can't think of anything cooler, lol) with a starting cap of 100. It regenerates slightly faster than Discipline does now for the DH, which isn't that fast. All Physical attacks generate Nature Power and all Nature/Pet skills use it.

He will have 3 Skill types like most other classes. They will be...

Beast - physical melee
Nature - Poison damage skills, mostly melee with some very short ranged skills also
Animal Instincts - skills pertaining to the pet

Some examples below.

Animal Instincts type skill - A self buff...

One With Nature - Lvl 1 Skill
Costs 50 Nature Power - 60 Second Cooldown - Lasts 120 Seconds

For every 5 damage your pet takes you receive +1% physical damage which stacks up to 25% and lasts for 10 seconds. Also, when your pet goes below 25% health, you become enraged for 8 seconds, increasing movement speed by 20% and Poison Damage by 50%.

Beast type skill - A physical damage (mainly) melee attack...

Beastly Strike - Lvl 1 Skill
Generates 5 Nature Power

Deals 100% of Weapon Damage to the closest 3 enemies in front of you. Deals another 1% of Weapon Damage as Poison Damage for every 2 Nature Power you have.

So the best case scenario would be, with a full pool of Nature Power, you do 100% of Weapon damage to 3 enemies and then 50% of Weapon Damage as Poison Damage to them also.

Nature type skill - A poison damage melee attack...

Venomous Cloud - Lvl 2 Skill
Costs 10 Nature Power - 6 Second Cooldown

You emit a cloud containing gaseous venom that infects all targets within 12 yards of you. The infected targets have +20% chance to receive a critical strike and +20% damage from your Pets abilities.

Animal Instincts type skill - A utility/mobility/defensive/offensive move all in one! (kinda silly but fun)...

Spirit Walker - Lvl 4 Skill
Costs 15 Nature Power - 15 Second Cooldown

You enter the spirit world and your body becomes ethereal, making you immune to all damage for 5 seconds. During this time you take control of the spirit within your beast pet. Your pets movement speed is increased by 100% during this time.

Wherever your pet is when the 5 seconds is up, your body will become corporeal at this location and deal 100% of Weapon Damage as Physical Damage and 100% of Weapon Damage as Poison Damage to all enemies with 7 yards.

Well, I had fun writing this and hopefully some of you find it interesting, the idea of a melee pet class focused MAINLY on melee attacks with a dash of nature/poison stuff going on and a BIG emphasis on the pet itself.

That last ability I listed was a little nuts but it was fun to think about! I was trying to make a point that this class would really play off of the pet, where the pet is, what damage it's taking, stuff like that. Those things would be important to the player in deciding what skills to use (my pet is doing X so I should do Y. I just made my Pet do Z so that means I should do X next, etc).

Quote from Daemaro

The idea is that regular runes won't provide any affix, just do what we've seen so far. But unattuned runes will provide something a little extra. So if plain runes never dropped, what would the need for bonuses on unattuned really be?

You can bet both will be present.

The need for the bonus would be the same as it would be no matter what system they use. People will want more stat bonuses. I don't think stats being on unattuned runes is a way to gauge whether regular runes are still around or not. Maybe I misunderstood your meaning.

Anyways, it's nice to know that everyone agrees this is the best way to do it though, people may get angry at Blizzard for things here and there but they are pretty damn smart so hopefully they realized this like we all have and they do it.

Someone needs to pass this on to Jay just in case this simple, elegant solution has slipped by the D3 team somehow lol.

Awesome! Glad to hear this.

Thanks for clearing it up for me and sharing your thoughts guys

Quote from Dolaiim

Thing is, once in a while an unattuned rune is gonna drop. Bonus! Unattuned runes, once you pop them in, hit you with +affixes associated with them. So, you can go the safe route with a tuned rune (crimson, alabaster, etc), but when you get an unattuned runes, pop that baby in and see if it's what you want! If it is, SCORE! Awesome rune, plus stats! If not, SLANG IT ON THE AH. And that brings me to my next point:

You can buy the perfect rune for your build on the AH, from the guy who found the rune, tuned it, didn't like the stats, and sold it.

Literally everyone wins. Everyone.

EXACTLY! I was fearing this wasn't the case when I first heard of the new system so that's why I started thinking just like that.

So is Hatred like it was before just with added generators for Hatred boosts or does Hatred need to be generated first like Fury and Spirit?

It's like it was before but instead of just running out of Hatred you have ways to generate it.

You should just dump some Hatred and balance it out with a few generators then dump some more, trying to never get close to empty (unless you have to dish out some super burst damage).

So when I first heard of the new Skill Rune system they are trying out (the random, unattuned runes with random stats) I liked the idea. The reason I liked the idea was because I was under the impression that Unattuned Runes dropping was IN ADDITION to regular Runes dropping as well.

First of all, I still haven't heard if it is or isn't like that. I assume it isn't, please correct me if I'm wrong.

In short, I believe keeping plain Runes in addition to Unattuned Runes alleviates the frustration but keeps the fun parts of the new system.

They should have regular Runes still drop but they don't have any of the stat bonuses of Attuned Runes. This way people can go with "what they know" (or feel) to work by using regular Runes until they find/trade/buy that Attuned Rune they are really looking for. This allows people to experiment with Unattuned Runes but still have regular Rune "backups" to use.

Allow the Mystic (or something) to create regular Rune types at a decent cost + materials and keep Unattuned Runes as a loot drop. Best of both worlds. People will still really want the Unattuned Runes since they will have stat affixes.

I think the system could work awesomely if they keep both types of Runes in. I can see how it could be frustrating having such a random factor to something that is supposed to be a HUGE/KEY part to customizing your play style, BUT...I can also see how it can be fun/exciting to experiment and find the PERFECT Rune or to buy and sell them.

I'm pretty torn between the old system and the new one, which is why I started thinking about this.

I was under the impression that Unattuned Runes was IN ADDITION to regular Runes dropping as well...No?

If not, I think that would help out.

Have regular Runes still drop but they don't have any of the stat bonuses of Unattuned Runes. This way people can go with "what they know" (or feel) to work until they find/trade/buy the Attuned Rune they are really looking for.

I thought the Mystic could make regular Runes? Is that being taken out in this iteration then? Maybe I'm wrong.

I think the system works awesomely if they keep both types of Runes in. I can see how it could be frustrating having such a random factor to something that is supposed to be a HUGE/KEY part to customizing your play style, BUT...I can also see how it can be fun/exciting to find the PERFECT Rune or to buy and sell them!

Keeping plain Runes in addition to Unattuned Runes alleviates the frustration but keeps the fun parts of the new system.