I'm not really sold on the followers yet. I like going it alone, and I found myself declining his offer to accompany me on basically all my characters when I had a chance to play the Beta.
So, for the beta at least, all the classes can manage all the way through without a follower or undue difficulty? Do you have to change up your build to manage without them?
It'll be interesting to see if the whole game, even inferno, can be conquered completely solo.
I think the templar as a healer and tank is definitely a good call. Especially if you're build is gonna turn into a glass cannon. I'm not sure how good the AI is for getting the templar to actually act like a tank, but even if he's not an optimal tank, he should keep a good number of baddies at a distance while you blast away at them.
I'll probably be taking the Templar too for HC. I don't really like playing with other players when I'm doing HC so the Templar will be a perfect companion.
In SC I doubt you will worry so much about companions, I'm sure you will spend most of your time playing with other people in which case you are unable to use a companion.
I've been playing through Diablo 2 hardcore the last few days with an Amazon and my act 2 merc and valkyrie are invaluable when it comes to keeping monsters from getting near me. A must have for soft, ranged damage dealers if you don't wanna deal with playing in rando games.
Excellent write up. I've been looking forward to playing as the witch doctor, and what you described seems to be about what I expected. I'm glad to know that the witch doctor, at least from what you have described, sounds like it will be everything I had hoped. I like that firebats became your mainstay for dealing damage. Perhaps horrify and hex will become more useful with some rune augmentations or at higher difficulties.
I don't think I'll specifically be grinding for loot, but I'll probably go through parts of each act multiple times before progressing. I don't want to rush through the game. I'd like to see as many of the random events as I can before I move on, and the added experience will be helpful. I'll probably wind up getting some nice gear in the process though.
I couldn't swear that this is the case, but I think I remember reading a blue response about this. I think the official word was that this wasn't something they planned on changing. Not so much a "working as intended, but more of a "it's not game breaking, and there are more important things to deal with." Again, I could be wrong about having read this. I'll look around and see if I can find a link to the post.
We've only seen a handful of items both from the beta and the armory on the official website. There isn't a total available yet, but I would expect there to be at least as many as there were in diablo 2, probably more. More will likely show up in expansions and contet patches as well.
I like this idea. Some alternate rules in case people want to use beer instead of hard liquor:
If you die, whoever revives you pours as much or your beer into a glass as they want and you have to chug it.
Upon leveling, you get to pick another player, and they much chug the rest of their beer.
Every time your group kills a unique or finishes an event like jar of souls, everyone takes a swig of beer. Upon killing an act boss, each player finishes their beer.
If someone gets an item they don't want, but two or more other players want it, each player who wants it opens a fresh beer and they race to see who can finish it fastest. The winner gets the item.
If anyone pukes, they have to divide their gold equally among the other players.
This melee wizard uses spectral blade to dish out damage at close range. Frost nova helps keep enemies from getting too buck on you, and will slow them down should you need to beat a hasty retreat with teleport. The rune on frost nova keeps you dealing lots of critical hits, so that spectral blades heals you, along with the healing from the rune on magic weapon. Ice armor also keeps your enemies frozen while you shred them to ribbons. blur and galvanizing ward help to keep you alive while you're in the fray, and black ice adds some extra punch to frost nova and blizzard.
I'll be playing a witch doctor for my first play through, and I'll want to do that solo. My second play through will be with a barbarian. My ideal group for my barbarian would be a wizard, a monk, and a demon hunter.
I would be very surprised if there weren't separate servers for console and PC versions of the game. The different control schemes would not be balanced, Blizzard might also want to keep the servers separate because the games might wind up using some aspects of the PSN or Xbox Live. We'll just have to wait and find out though, since there hasn't been a whole lot of official word on this topic.
I always enjoyed making retarded builds in Diablo 2 with my friends and then running through the game to see how we did. It adds a new level of difficulty to the game. And sometimes you find things that on paper you wouldn't expect to be very effective, but turn out to not be so bad and a lot of fun.
I know some people want chat channels in the game pretty badly, but I'd rather them just get the game out quickly. I never used the chat channels in Diablo 2 and I probably wouldn't use them in Diablo 3. The only in game messaging I did was when I was actually playing the game or when I was talking to someone I knew from outside of the game.
Those are both lists of achievements that have been seen so far. I haven't heard anything else about other achievements, but I'm sure a lot of them are being kept secret to avoid providing spoilers.
Those both look pretty cool. That sword is gonna look gnarly as hell in the hands of a barbarian decked out in heavy armor. I don't think it really suits the witch doctor though.
I'm probably going to have some eight to twelve hour stints playing the game when it first comes out, but I don't think I'll be pulling any all-nighters. I'm going to try to pace my self and have a thorough first play through, rather than a fast one. Unless, of course, one of my buddies gets the game at release as well and decides to make s competition out of it. If that happens, I'm gonna have to bring the big guns out and act like it's finals week and Diablo 3 is my major.
0
So, for the beta at least, all the classes can manage all the way through without a follower or undue difficulty? Do you have to change up your build to manage without them?
It'll be interesting to see if the whole game, even inferno, can be conquered completely solo.
0
I've been playing through Diablo 2 hardcore the last few days with an Amazon and my act 2 merc and valkyrie are invaluable when it comes to keeping monsters from getting near me. A must have for soft, ranged damage dealers if you don't wanna deal with playing in rando games.
0
0
0
0
0
If you die, whoever revives you pours as much or your beer into a glass as they want and you have to chug it.
Upon leveling, you get to pick another player, and they much chug the rest of their beer.
Every time your group kills a unique or finishes an event like jar of souls, everyone takes a swig of beer. Upon killing an act boss, each player finishes their beer.
If someone gets an item they don't want, but two or more other players want it, each player who wants it opens a fresh beer and they race to see who can finish it fastest. The winner gets the item.
If anyone pukes, they have to divide their gold equally among the other players.
0
This melee wizard uses spectral blade to dish out damage at close range. Frost nova helps keep enemies from getting too buck on you, and will slow them down should you need to beat a hasty retreat with teleport. The rune on frost nova keeps you dealing lots of critical hits, so that spectral blades heals you, along with the healing from the rune on magic weapon. Ice armor also keeps your enemies frozen while you shred them to ribbons. blur and galvanizing ward help to keep you alive while you're in the fray, and black ice adds some extra punch to frost nova and blizzard.
0
0
0
0
0
http://d3db.com/achievement#1-1-0
Those are both lists of achievements that have been seen so far. I haven't heard anything else about other achievements, but I'm sure a lot of them are being kept secret to avoid providing spoilers.
http://d3db.com/achievement/i/41
This one seems like what you're talking about. I'm sure there will be similar ones for other parts of the game.
0
0