DiabloFans

I dunno who is at fault, but when the team goes 2-14, the coach gets fired. This game looked so damn great in 2010, right after Blizzcon w/ the super crazy fun PvP. Runes as items, Mystic and enchants, saphires and diamonds, Nephalem Cube, soul bound top end gear. And then they went backwards. They tried to be too much like D2. If I wanted a watered down D2, I'd play that crap fest Torchlight. D3 was going to be a better game, and someone got gun shy. Whether it was Jay or someone else, Jay didn't have the guts to stick w/ the good decisions initially instead of iterating the fun out. PvP is in utter shambles. They had separate PvP modes w/ altered stats/mechanics that would allow the designers to balance separately, and they scrapped that. They had so many good things in their hands, and they second guessed themselves to death. Indecisiveness does fault the manager, in the end.

I love these videos, b/c THERE ISN'T SOME NASALLY NECKBEARD BLABBING OVER THE ACTION! Note to all Youtube video makers: SHUT UP AND LET THE GAME DO THE TALKING. There are so many terrible Youtube videos b/c people talk over them, and they sound awful. I really, really love these videos, you get a great sense of the sound work. I think Blizzard's sound guys are underrated sometimes.

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.

DPS is a lousy stat to track, anyway. Most monsters are supposed to die very, very quickly. The ones that aren't require some tactics, which doesn't translate into flat DPS. Especially given the random nature of monster affixes and potential overlap of multiple champion groups/events. You'll need a lot of non-DPS abilities to deal w/ what the game throws at you.

However, I would LOVE to see an EKPH meter (Elite Kills Per Hour, Elite being defined as champions, rares, mini-bosses and bosses). Since that's where the phat loot comes from, that's the most important statistic. EKPH is a function of almost everything, your damage, AoE, CC, defense, movement, group tactics, merc tactics, resource management, etc. That would be a more useful stat to track and experiment w/.

"Development Article soon ™" is code word for there is a delay we need to come forward with.

FML.

apparently nothing is delaying d3 release. it's magically happening with no explanation.