Diablo III

Cool, thanks. :)

No thanks needed, happy to help. (Though I'd be surprised if anything I'd said was truly helpful, to be honest!)

Necromancer patch notes were updated again; they've got a whole slew of Legendaries available now (I think I counted 32) and have tweaked the set items and skills. And yes, there's a two-piece scythe/phylactery set (EDIT: shield, apparently, not phylactery) called Jairoan Arms, which gives Army of the Dead the Unconventional Warfare rune. And... that's it, for now. One presumes they might implement other buffs with the set after further feedback, goodness knows the Bul-Kathos mighty weapons, Norvald's Fervor flail and shield, Danetta's hand crossbows, Shenlong fist weapons, Manujama ceremonial knife and mojo, and Chantodo wand and source have rather more involved effects. I suppose we'll see.

Just as we'll see if they do, indeed, release the DLC in time for Season 11. And just as we'll see what the price ends up being. (Still no word on that.)

(Primal Ancient update: Omryn's Chain. Which I use in precisely no Demon Hunter builds. Still, 15 Forgotten Soul...)

edited 12th May '17 10:37:55 PM by mlsmithca

Just used the Witch Doctor's pirahnas (with Bogadile rune) on some enemies that were on a bridge, and discovered that the Bogadile is fully modeled, not just the face/snout that comes up above the water. So that's pretty neat.

I did one of the Cursed Chest events in the area before the battering ram in Act V. Unfortunately, some of the enemies were the primordial scavengers, who would run all over the place when repairing their rock armor, so I was only able to defeat two of the five waves of enemies before time ran out. It's a conspiracy, I tells ya!

Yeah, I've lost a fair few Cursed Chest/Cursed Shrine events in Act V to those things. By far the most aggravating Cursed Chest event, though, remains the Cursed Pulpit in Act IV, in which the chest is on a walkway across a large hole... and the enemies spawn around the circumference of the hole. Pretty much impossible on higher difficulties outside multiplayer.

Necromancer patch notes have been updated again; the scythe/shield set is now called the Jesseth Arms (while the Spear of Jesseth has been re-named the Spear of Jairo... if that's some sort of reference to Diablo II lore, it's over my head), and putting the Unconventional Warfare rune on Army of the Dead has been shifted to the Fate's Vow legendary, while the two-piece set now gives your skeleton minions an attack buff. In fact, a lot of legendaries and skills/runes have been tweaked, probably in response to tester feedback (one presumes this will make Necromancers less squishy in higher Greater Rift difficulties, one complaint testers were having).

And something planned for Patch 2.6.0 that will probably affect some of the pet-based builds quite profoundly: Zei's Stone of Vengeance is having its effect changed so that now the damage buff is based on the distance between you and the target (as it is for non-pet builds), not the pets and the target as it currently is. Which, if any, of the character classes will suddenly see its leaderboards entirely taken over by a new build remains to be seen.

Fair to assume Patch 2.6.0 will go live between Seasons 10 and 11 - if I had to guess, late June. And, as ever, still no word on the Necromancer DLC release date. Or price.

(EDITED TO ADD: Primal Ancient update: Orb of Infinite Depth. Oh, yes.

EDITED FURTHER TO ADD: Primal Ancient Salvation. Oh, no. )

edited 31st May '17 9:47:33 AM by mlsmithca

The dialog in Diablo III is... actually very well-written and thought out. It doesn't have any of the goofiness that occasionally popped up in the dialog in Diablo II. (Albeit funny goofiness)

Voice acting is a bit dodgy for some of the bit characters, though.

Which ones?

The Enchantress is the worst offender, imo.

Really? I thought she sounded rather cute and sweet.

If you were also thinking of the Templar as another example, NO.

BUT THE WILL OF A TEMPLAR IS STRONGER

No complaints about Sumalee Montano's performance as Eirena here either. And definitely none about Dominic "Reed off Star Trek: Enterprise" Keating as Kormac, Large Ham or not. There are some NPCs with seriously ropey voice acting, though; there's one event in Westmarch where you have to rescue a trapped child, and he has far and away the worst fake British accent since - y'know, I don't care if it's cliché to say this, it's still true - Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. And Sofia Pirri as Emperor Hakan II reminds me in all the wrong ways of Natalie Portman's performance as Amidala in The Fan Dumb Menace.

(Primal Ancient Logan's Claw?! Screw you too, game.

EDITED TO ADD: Of all the Primal Ancients to get for a second time... why did it have to be a bloody Deathseer's Cowl!? Are you trying to make me uninstall you, game?! )

edited 4th Jun '17 10:41:45 PM by mlsmithca

I started playing as the Wizard last night. She's very cool so far. :)

Yeah, the Wizard remains my favorite character by a wide margin. So much disintegration!

Being voiced by Grey DeLisle certainly helps; sounds as though she had a lot of fun with that role. (Ditto Crispin Freeman with the role of the male wizard.) Although it did mean that when I was introduced to a few episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender after having already racked up a few dozen hours' wizarding, I kept waiting for Azula to say "I'm so good, I astound myself!", or "Your grave awaits!", or "Need more Arcane Power." (Yes, Blizzard games. There will be something, somewhere, that you always need more of.)

I've been having a very hard time taking the boss Tirathon Sartheril (I think that's his name) in World of Warcraft's Vault of the Wardens dungeon seriously because his voice actor is so obviously the same as Kormac's.

Incidentally, Blizz has put up a big post about the Rise of the Necromancer pack, which will be purchased content. You get a lot of stuff, including two new character slots and two extra Stash tabs, among other things.

No word of price...

Plus the Wizard has an Awesome Ego.

The cosmetic stuff certainly looks cool (new wings are always good, although I probably won't be moving away from the Wings of Mastery any time soon), but Blizzard seem to be remaining awfully tight-lipped about the release date (how very out of character for them) and price. At this point, I'm guessing the content probably will go live with the next major patch between seasons (assuming the end of Season 10 is announced this Friday for two weeks thence and the patch goes live the following Tuesday, as happened with Patch 2.5.0, that would make the release date three weeks from tomorrow, or 27 June), but I couldn't begin to guess what the price will be.

(Oh, and I just checked Dominic Keating's IMDb page; it's Tirathon Saltheril, with two Ls, but yes, that's his voice all right. If you lose to him, he'll be telling stories about that for a while!)

edited 5th Jun '17 5:32:35 PM by mlsmithca

I ran across videos of the beta versions of the Necromancer Set Dungeons on YouTube earlier today, and what little I watched of them revealed something interesting: among the changes to the UI, there's now a difference of 100 enemies between basic completion and mastery instead of 50 (I wonder if this will apply to all of the existing Set Dungeons; the Spirit of Arachyr dungeon only has 155 enemies in total, so does that mean basic completion there will involve killing 55 enemies?), the time limit for both basic completion and mastery has been set at five minutes... and instead of the enemies only becoming visible on the mini-map after you've completed the basic objective and just need to track down the last fifty, they're now visible from the very start.

If this carries over to the public version of Patch 2.6.0, it's going to make a lot of Set Dungeons significantly easier. For example, it will reduce the number of surprise enemies foiling objectives involving taking no melee damage or allowing enemies into melee range (cf. the Embodiment of the Marauder, Zunimassa's Haunt, and Tal Rasha's Elements dungeons - all of which were easy enough to start with!), and it will also give advance information about patches of high enemy density for dungeons whose objectives require careful exploitation of that (cf. the Legacy of Raekor, Wrath of the Wastes, Armor of Akkhan, Roland's Legacy, Unhallowed Essence, Inna's Mantra, Uliana's Strategem, Helltooth Harness, Raiment of the Jade Harvester, Delsere's Magnum Opus, and Firebird's Finery dungeons), and make it much easier to keep track of stray enemies in dungeons with large and/or labyrinthine maps where missing enemies at the beginning and only realising it when you have 5 seconds on the clock, 2 enemies left to kill, and no idea where they are is a common problem (cf. the Might of the Earth, Roland's Legacy, Uliana's Strategem, Raiment of the Jade Harvester, and Vyr's Amazing Arcana dungeons).

As for the Necromancer Set Dungeons, it looks as though some of them will stand alongside the Might of the Earth, Natalya's Vengeance, and Spirit of Arachyr dungeons in terms of too much speed being a bad thing; some of them have few enough enemies that there isn't much room for error when it comes to completing both objectives.

And still no word on the release date or price for the Necromancer DLC. Naturally.

Didn't they say it'd be sometime in the autumn or something?

I don't think they've posted a release date ("second half of 2017" is as much as I've been able to find with a few Google searches), just an indication that it will go live with Patch 2.6.0, probably between Season 10 closing and Season 11 opening. They posted an announcement a few hours ago that Season 10 will end two weeks from today, but Season 11 won't begin until 20 July; best guess, then, is that the Necromancer DLC will go live in early to mid July. (Which would, indeed, be the second half of 2017.)

I'm going to hold you to that prediction. If it's wrong, you'll owe me five thousand dollars.

If you're that confident it won't be, then I suspect you must know something I don't. (Well, everyone knows a lot of things I don't - such is the nature of knowledge - but I mean something specific to Diablo III.) Would you take $5000 in Monopoly money?

Me, all I know is that while Blizzard may not have set a release date in stone, speculation is rampant that the Necromancer DLC will go live between the end of Season 10 on 23 June and the beginning of Season 11 on 20 July, probably on the same date Patch 2.6.0 goes live (and brings with it Challenge Rifts, new areas in Acts II and IV in Adventure Mode, and a tweak to how Zei's Stone of Vengeance works, among other things).

So, I have to ask—is anyone else afraid to see how much the Necromancer pack is?

I don't want to derail too much with ranting, but the gaming industry is in increasingly poor shape. For just two E3-related examples—we have Yet Another Assassin's Creed with seven(!) editions including an $800 monstrosity, and Take-Two has decided that mods are illegal and trying to crush a group who mods GTA V.

Blizzard has always been better than the competition. They stand outside of the money-grubbing wading pool, but over the last few years they've been experimenting with dipping a finger into it.

They've had some small "mishaps"—the Diablo 3 AH and the Starcraft 2 expansions. And yet I still support them, because I do believe they tried to control the inevitable grey market and cheaters in D3 and the SC 2 expansions are absolutely worth it from a single-player story perspective.

But then we have them sneaking microtransactions into Overwatch at launch. Even if you never buy any loot crates, like me, the cosmetic unlock system is still designed around encouraging you to do so. These were added to Heroes of the Storm along with shit-tons of garbage to fill those loot crates with to prevent you from getting worthwhile stuff. Content in HOTS was always more expensive than comparable MOB As and now they've gone from a simple shop where prices were in cash to a typical point system where you never actually spend all of said points; from something better to the industry standard.

As DLC goes, the necromancer pack is Doing It Right. This isn't content they stripped from the launch title, not something to pre-order in advance, anything like that—this is brand new shit they've made since the game launched. This is what DLC should be; something that breathes new life into the game rather than being part of some $200 bundle you should buy before anyone's even determined if the game is worth a damn.

I just don't like their silence on the matter and I'm hoping this isn't a $40 addition to the game. They put some work into this and that deserves to be rewarded, but I'm concerned with how much they want. Concerned that Blizzard decided to put their hand in that hype-culture, pre-order NAO, games-as-a-service wading pool and splash around for a bit; now this is an absolute premium new class that warrants an expansion's price.

Blizzard would have to put in a ton of effort to be as scummy as many companies in the industry, but that just makes me hold them to a higher standard.

EDIT: I mean, shit, in the ten minutes since I posted this, I just learned that microtransactions have been added to a six-year old RPG. WTF, people.

edited 16th Jun '17 10:07:28 AM by Rotpar