After reading the 3 previous class previews it feels as if Blizzard's preview for DH basically says 'you're the least broken class right now' which I feel like is generally correct. It appears that no skills received any significant changes to their mechanics and for the most part they are bringing low DPS skills in line with the higher DPS skills that people feel are currently required. I was really surprised they mentioned nothing about our discipline skills (except Sentry) so it leads me to believe they think we're mostly fine on that side of our skill tree. It is also important to remember that with the DPS increases, Inferno elites will also receive a 25% health nerf, so all these skills are going to feel much more powerful than they do today.
As for specific skills, I run a build that uses Cluster Arrow/Loaded For Bear, so increases in damage without resource increases are always nice. What is yet to be seen is how viable synergizing these skills with existing passives will be. Someone mentioned the cost of Sentry as being a negative to putting it on your bar, well when run in a high crit build with night stalker, sentry may be net discipline generator with the right crit level and attack speed. I'd also be interested to know if the sentry AI is smart enough to prefer targets with Marked For Death, which could lead to some interesting gameplay. RoV will be fun to play with even with the 30 second CD.
I think the changes DH's have the most to look forward to involve the updates to 1h and 2h weapons. I think 2h xbows and bows are going to be super-powerful (assuming the new affixes will be on them), and hand crossbows are going to be a competitive alternative with the right skill complement.
I would focus on doubling your pre-sharpshooter DPS over increasing your resist all to around 300. Sharpshooter does not give an accurate representation of your true DPS, especially in Act 3 where you are constantly under attack. I suggest farming up in Act I or Act II until you can attain about 60k DPS without the sharpshooter passive. I'm about there and can handle progression Act III, but I am aiming for about 75K DPS before the farming become lucrative.
Fact of the matter is that he sees this game through his own lens of competitiveness and desire to be at the top of some competitive platform that doesn't yet exist in Diablo 3. Part of his arguments revolve around this desire to be in an elite class of gamers that can claim to be "the best" at Diablo 3. Sorry to say but there will never be a ranking of "the best" diablo 3 player players (maybe in PvP) and that is OK. It doesn't mean this game is bad, it just means it doesn't appeal to that portion of gamers. They should return to MMOs/WoW. Most of his ideas sound like they belong in WoW or are variations of things that WoW does right now.
He claims to be an expert on 'end game' and then is pissed that D3 being 'all about items' at the end is wrong. The whole design philosophy of this game for the last 6 years has been about end game item farming. The point of D2 was also item farming. I could even argue that the end game of most MMOs is about item farming.
In the end, homeboy needs to pickup a new game or realize that Blizzard makes games for regular human beings for which don't have 400+ hours played in the first month of release. I bet the statistic on the population that has made it past Inferno Act 1 is less than 1% of the active playing population. SC2 had a similar stat that after 1 year, 90% of all players were gold rank or less.
0
As for specific skills, I run a build that uses Cluster Arrow/Loaded For Bear, so increases in damage without resource increases are always nice. What is yet to be seen is how viable synergizing these skills with existing passives will be. Someone mentioned the cost of Sentry as being a negative to putting it on your bar, well when run in a high crit build with night stalker, sentry may be net discipline generator with the right crit level and attack speed. I'd also be interested to know if the sentry AI is smart enough to prefer targets with Marked For Death, which could lead to some interesting gameplay. RoV will be fun to play with even with the 30 second CD.
I think the changes DH's have the most to look forward to involve the updates to 1h and 2h weapons. I think 2h xbows and bows are going to be super-powerful (assuming the new affixes will be on them), and hand crossbows are going to be a competitive alternative with the right skill complement.
0
3
0
He claims to be an expert on 'end game' and then is pissed that D3 being 'all about items' at the end is wrong. The whole design philosophy of this game for the last 6 years has been about end game item farming. The point of D2 was also item farming. I could even argue that the end game of most MMOs is about item farming.
In the end, homeboy needs to pickup a new game or realize that Blizzard makes games for regular human beings for which don't have 400+ hours played in the first month of release. I bet the statistic on the population that has made it past Inferno Act 1 is less than 1% of the active playing population. SC2 had a similar stat that after 1 year, 90% of all players were gold rank or less.