DiabloFans

If you have faith that THIS group can get PvP ready to go in two months after release, I don't know what to tell you. This current crop of knuckle heads will take 6+ months to get half the PvP maps they want out the door. I have zero faith in D3's management. Taking this long and cutting this much is incompetent. Compared to WoW and SC2 this group is a shambles. And again, it will take them a lot longer than two months to get PvP out the door. Feature creep, iteration, then cutting late instead of early, will all lengthen the time it takes to get PvP done.

All of the fake passives, unless they do something better than just "double strength for three seconds" or something that lame.

Magic Weapon
Ice, Storm, Energy Armor
Mantras
War Cry, Battle Rage

The on-activate effect is an okay start, but they can do better. I like the idea of Revenge, a conditional skill you can only use when something else happens. More skills like those (but not too many). But mainly, fake passives are fake and boring. Get rid of them!

Quote from Azjenco

Quote from trocadero_fuerte

B/c they were interesting and promoted varied gameplay. Like Mystic enchants used to (which they also removed). It's not okay to remove tools and abilities which help non-traditional or weird variants, so while they're "streamlining" things so you don't need basic attack, it's not a positive development. Unless they give new skills to help out melee hunters and wizards, but I doubt that's coming. Also, related, is Magic Weapon still in the game?

The Mystic is a terrible loss to the game. It was one of the features I was looking most to try out.
However, sadly I cannot empathize on the basic attack issue. I never used it in D2 and usually go for other attacks in most games, so it doesn't that severe to me.

I never used basic attack in D2, but when I saw Magic Weapon, Virtuoso and Fundamentals, I figured they figured out a way to make it interesting. They had a plan to make basic attack somewhat attractive in certain situations and builds, but then they abandoned it. And melee Hunters are now a pipe dream. How can they have so many awesome Ninja skills (grenades, chakram, smoke screen, vault, daggers) and won't let them wield two handed katanas? Unleash the Ninja!

Quote from Azjenco

Quote from italofoca

There are passive skills that boost the power of basic attacks (Demon Hunter's Fundamentals and Wizard's Virtuoso - also they are viable for barbarians too once basic attacks generates Rage ). Why they are cool and why basic attack should exist in D3 ?

Why do people still bring these skills up when they've been removed from the game?

B/c they were interesting and promoted varied gameplay. Like Mystic enchants used to (which they also removed). It's not okay to remove tools and abilities which help non-traditional or weird variants, so while they're "streamlining" things so you don't need basic attack, it's not a positive development. Unless they give new skills to help out melee hunters and wizards, but I doubt that's coming. Also, related, is Magic Weapon still in the game?

Since they removed mouse over for skills/runes you haven't unlocked yet, and they haven't updated the calculator, this is really annoying. It is now mechanically impossible to get your auto-attack (regular attack) anywhere on your bar if you select a second skill at level 2. Does that mean they got rid of the passives for Wizards and Hunters that boosted auto-attacks? We can't tell, b/c you can't mouse-over and read tooltips for higher level skills, runes, or passives!

Point is, the new UI is much, much worse than the old one. I want to see all of my skills on the same page, no scrolling.

The mini-map in the corner was one of the best features of LoD. The overlay map is an abomination.

Quote from trocadero_fuerte

Is there a limit to how much I can store in my Battle.net Balance?
Yes, there are limits on how much Battle.net Balance you may purchase or accumulate. Different currencies have different maximums. If the amount of current balance plus the amount you wish to add exceeds the maximum cap, a display will pop up informing you the balance cannot exceed that amount.

Currently, it's $200 US in North America. So, uh, that means the MAXIMUM price you can sell anything for is $200? Doesn't that seem a little low for perfect rares?

Nevermind, you can pay for stuff w/ things other than B.net Balance (credit cards). False alarm.

Is there a limit to how much I can store in my Battle.net Balance?
Yes, there are limits on how much Battle.net Balance you may purchase or accumulate. Different currencies have different maximums. If the amount of current balance plus the amount you wish to add exceeds the maximum cap, a display will pop up informing you the balance cannot exceed that amount.

Currently, it's $200 US in North America. So, uh, that means the MAXIMUM price you can sell anything for is $200? Doesn't that seem a little low for perfect rares?

They should have dumped the jeweler and kept the mystic. Enchants could do all sorts of interesting things, and gems were incredibly boring. But why give away the good stuff for free, when everyone will buy the expansion anyway?

Quote from Molster

Quote from Entity

Worst post ever, such shitty news and stupid regressive changes. Now we have to wait for them to re-balance the entire game and we know for sure they still haven't made a decision on runes/skills.

umm all changes are done...

They scrapped and redid the entire item system? They rebalanced all of the monsters? Oh, and they haven't even talked about skills/runes.

Yes, it's a good change for item diversity between classes, but at what cost?

-Tying defense and barbarian damage in the same stat is really dangerous. The hardest hitting Barbarians will be harder to kill. There is no trade off between damage reduction and attack power. Same goes for Hunters and Monks, as well (dodge being a great defensive stat currently). Doctors and Wizards got the short end of that stick; health globe bonus is nice, but not nearly as helpful as preventing the damage up front.

-There were much better ways to force class/item diversity than this. More/varied resource related affixes, especially weird ones (gain health per Fury spent was a great example). Class only stat bonuses, "+13 Attack (Wizard only)," which I admit is inelegant, but similar to what they're doing anyway.

-On that same track, it sounds like they're going to do this anyway, but here goes. They introduce skill modifier affixes. "+5% additional weapon damage Cleave, Barbarian only." Not only that, they can target specific aspects of the skills, so a single skill might have multiple affixes available. "+4% additional weapon damage Grasp of the Dead, Witch Doctor only." "+0.4 seconds additional duration Grasp of the Dead, Witch Doctor only." These would have to be handcrafted and tightly regulated, to avoid weird stacking exploits. This REALLY makes gear class diverse, but does so in a much more interesting way. And it makes the choices less boring than "+ all skills" from D2.

-This also leads to a way to save the Mystic. Take away all +stat enchants. They're boring. Give her weird enchants, like the resource enchants, proc effects (on hit/crit/etc), skill enchants (from above), etc. Maybe that's what they wanted to do, but tabled it for an expansion. Okay, I can live w/ that. But they started out of the gate shaky (having so many boring gems/enchants which overlapped) that I honestly wonder.

-On Precision. They could have fixed this easily by A) adding more +critical damage sources in the game, readjusting the point Precision to % chance critical hit formula, and C) readjusting the power of the Attack stat. It's not very clear whether critical strike chance is a flat % or the usual rating system (meaning you need more as you gain in levels to get the same % critical strike chance). Hopefully they keep the rating system in, otherwise we have the weird "obsolete gear is best in slot" problem from before.

Conclusion: They need to separate damage from defensive stats, especially if some defensive stats (Armor/Dodge) are way better than others (Health Globes). There needs to be a choice between defense and offense. They could have promoted class/item diversity through other, more clever, and frankly better ways. The system they had in place was a great foundation to build from. This adds more problems than it solves, and is inelegant and cluttered compared to what they had. Also, the skill/rune overhaul seems ominous as well. I'm worried they'll screw up a really good thing.

Yes, it's a good change for item diversity between classes, but at what cost?

-Tying defense and barbarian damage in the same stat is really dangerous. The hardest hitting Barbarians will be harder to kill. There is no trade off between damage reduction and attack power. Same goes for Hunters and Monks, as well (dodge being a great defensive stat currently). Doctors and Wizards got the short end of that stick; health globe bonus is nice, but not nearly as helpful as preventing the damage up front.

-There were much better ways to force class/item diversity than this. More/varied resource related affixes, especially weird ones (gain health per Fury spent was a great example). Class only stat bonuses, "+13 Attack (Wizard only)," which I admit is inelegant, but similar to what they're doing anyway.

-On that same track, it sounds like they're going to do this anyway, but here goes. They introduce skill modifier affixes. "+5% additional weapon damage Cleave, Barbarian only." Not only that, they can target specific aspects of the skills, so a single skill might have multiple affixes available. "+4% additional weapon damage Grasp of the Dead, Witch Doctor only." "+0.4 seconds additional duration Grasp of the Dead, Witch Doctor only." These would have to be handcrafted and tightly regulated, to avoid weird stacking exploits. This REALLY makes gear class diverse, but does so in a much more interesting way. And it makes the choices less boring than "+ all skills" from D2.

-This also leads to a way to save the Mystic. Take away all +stat enchants. They're boring. Give her weird enchants, like the resource enchants, proc effects (on hit/crit/etc), skill enchants (from above), etc. Maybe that's what they wanted to do, but tabled it for an expansion. Okay, I can live w/ that. But they started out of the gate shaky (having so many boring gems/enchants which overlapped) that I honestly wonder.

-On Precision. They could have fixed this easily by A) adding more +critical damage sources in the game, readjusting the point Precision to % chance critical hit formula, and C) readjusting the power of the Attack stat. It's not very clear whether critical strike chance is a flat % or the usual rating system (meaning you need more as you gain in levels to get the same % critical strike chance). Hopefully they keep the rating system in, otherwise we have the weird "obsolete gear is best in slot" problem from before.

Conclusion: They need to separate damage from defensive stats, especially if some defensive stats (Armor/Dodge) are way better than others (Health Globes). There needs to be a choice between defense and offense. They could have promoted class/item diversity through other, more clever, and frankly better ways. The system they had in place was a great foundation to build from. This adds more problems than it solves, and is inelegant and cluttered compared to what they had. Also, the skill/rune overhaul seems ominous as well. I'm worried they'll screw up a really good thing.

Ugh. What a bunch of noodling.
Pros: No ID scrolls. Good. Maybe they can get rid of the ID mechanic entirely. "Unwrapping your present" is when you finally have a spare moment to stop, open your bag, and read all of the stats on your new shiny. If the combat is as fast and constant as they promise, then you shouldn't have a lot of downtime to stare at your gear.

Cons: Everything else. There's a very good reason they changed the stats and made them only do one thing at a time. Barbarians/monks/hunters become defensive/dodging stalwarts AND can dish out the pain w/o any trade-off. Wizards/Doctors secondary benefits aren't very helpful most of the time. This is a dumb change.

Mystic wasn't broken beyond repair, you just can't use the same stupid stats for enchants as you did for gems. Besides, they still need a good rune sink (unless runes are removed from the game).

Cube/Cauldron gone, blech. I don't want to go to town. They were right the first time, I WANT TO KILL STUFF, not chat w/ the damn blacksmith. Maybe some tweaks? (Cauldron gives you a fraction of the vendor sell price? You pay a penalty for convenience).

I have a sinister, sinking sensation that skill points/levels are back again, and +skill gear is back. I really, really hope I'm wrong. If they bring back skill points, they're even more spineless than I figured, and we might actually get Diablo 2.5, which would suck.

Quote from lorien1973

If we fight envy and wrath, I hope either of them has a head in a box as a thrown weapon.

Envy had the head in a box, wrath had a custom Springfield handgun. Or Wrath could have two sabres.

Blizzcon: "If people only use Inferno in one small area, or there's a path of least resistance, we'll patch it and change it to try and get people to use more of the game in Inferno."

Today: "You can't farm any old act in Inferno you want. Have fun farming the Cathedral!"