Diablo III

I think the mention that they were thinking of touching One With Everything put a chill in many monk players' hearts for a moment (me included). Given the amount of cash we invested in that gear, well, I imagine anything that would invalidate all that spending will sure to make people angry, to say the least.

edited 16th Aug '12 11:40:16 AM by MyssaRei

One With Everything is the skill that makes all resistances equal to your highest resist, right?

Right.

Finally, a Seven-Sided Strike buff; the skill always seemed so pointless to me. 777% damage over 7 hits— so 111% damage per hit. That's, what, roughly the same as just hitting a guy with one Way of the Hundred Fists? Only it has a cooldown, costs spirit, and you can't target it as well.

Number of hits is kind of meaningless if you don't know the speed of them. Well, aside from those fixed per-hit effects.

Was a while since I played a monk, but what is the speed of that?

edited 16th Aug '12 2:21:08 PM by AnotherDuck

I almost exclusive used it to teleport out of a danger zone, or for single target.

Admittedly, my only Monk is a Hardcore character.

True, Seven-Sided Strike does the same amount of damage much faster than your spirit generators, but it still feels like a waste to me.

Really excited about the Exploding Palm buff, though. The damage increase is insane.

The point of Seven Sided Strike has always been that you're invincible while it's happening. You use it to dodge monster mechanics.

I don't have a high level monk, but so far, I've used the exploding fist just as an extra damage dealer, and as a crowd clearer. Seems to work rather well. How is it on higher levels?

Demon Hunter 1.0.4 Preview

• Bola Shot, Evasive Fire, and Entangling Shot are getting damage buffs to compete with Hungering Arrow. Grenades need to get worked over more thoroughly in a future patch.
• Spenders are getting buffed as well to compete with Elemental Arrow, like Chakram and Cluster Arrow.
• Rain of Vengeance and Sentry are also getting buffed.

So far most of this is just straight up damage tweaking. I'm not seeing much in the way of mechanical changes to any of the classes.

@Another Duck: Exploding Palm becomes a lot less effective at higher levels and difficulties, just because it doesn't do enough damage or last long enough. On lower levels, sure, you can pretty easily hit one strong enemy with a Palm, finish him, do lots of damage, etc., but it's not really viable on even Hell enemies just because it's not strong enough.

Demon Hunters: We gave up on making grenades good.

Why can't they just increase the numbers like the others?

edited 16th Aug '12 6:51:06 PM by Clarste

They didn't give up, but they admitted they needed a rethink which won't be in time for 1.0.4.

And, the act you've all been waiting for, the Witch Doctor 1.0.4 preview!

• Zombie Dogs are getting some buffed health but even more important, are getting a Force Shield type effect that limits the damage they can take in one hit. A well-geared Witch Doctor will find their pets surviving a minimum of 5-6 hits rather than getting one-shotted.
• Baseline WD mana regeneration is increasing by more than double.
• Vision Quest is getting nerfed but its ability to proc seems to be increasing. Not sure exactly how that works.

Vision is a completely different skill now. It's "ability to proc" isn't really interesting at all. Now it's just "gain a small amount of extra mana regen for using basic skills".

I'll be the first to admit that Vision Quest was a broken concept, but this new one isn't a very interesting replacement.

Grenades needed more then raw damage, unless that damage was going to be absurd. It's a fun skill provided you're fighting in tight, narrow spaces where enemies have to cluster and the grenades can't bounce around.

I think the point is to remove Vision Quest from the "WTF are you doing not having this passive?" category and move it to the "pretty good and competitive with the other passives" category.

Well, that's obviously the point, but now it's basically a weaker version of Spiritual Attunement.

Say hello to the Paragon system.

Well, this addresses some of the concerns about people who've already hit the level 60 mark. Kind of reminds me of the "virtual" levels some MM Os add to give people things to shoot for after hitting the cap. In this case, stat bonuses as if you were leveling normally per Paragon level, and a native +3% MF/GF per Paragon level, to the maximum cap of 300%.

edited 20th Aug '12 9:48:28 AM by MyssaRei

They've discovered my one weakness: an addiction to leveling up.

I like that system. It rewards people for grinding regardless of whether they happen to find good items.

Not sure why it needs a different name though. Couldn't they just say they're raising the level cap except after 60 you get MF instead of new skills?

edited 20th Aug '12 10:12:40 AM by Clarste

Raising the level cap involves a whole set of additional scaling issues, though, like gear drops for those levels, and other stat-based concerns like armor and resistance caps.

Giving people flat buffs is much simpler from a game mechanics perspective.

Interesting.
I think I like it.
It seems like a nice tidy way to address current issues, while allowing growth in the future and allows them to "wean" us off Magic Find gear, with an overall buff, no less.
I'm certain some will bitch about "the brand new grind" being "mandatory" to be "competitive", but then, they always bitch about that.
I'm hopeful. Let's see how it pans out.

This is expansion pack type stuff, and they're rolling it out in the next update? Blizzard, I tip my hat to you. Great stuff.

I'm personally fond of the idea of having no level cap at all, although there's probably dozens of reasons why this is a bad idea. But anything that lets me level up like crazy is a good thing.

edited 20th Aug '12 10:27:21 AM by Talby

Woo hoo! Drama!

Jay Wilson says on former Diablo II dev, "Fuck that loser."

Pass the Popcorn!