All the strategy you listed is just planning a build. Which isn't strategy, it's research outside of the game. Once a build was chosen you just spammed whatever skill you decided to pick. If it didn't work out, research and new character time.
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Diablo 3 Discussion Thread
- Thread starter xenios
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Ok...stupid question. I'm on my first run through normal with my wizard (first character to act IV) and just killed Azmodan. It asked my if I really wanted to travel through the portal of heaven at the time and I chose no to farm some more in act III. How in the hech do I get back to act IV now as I can't find the portal? Has to be something stupid I'm missing????
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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I guess the same can be said about D3, though. You can just look up what skill loadouts are the best. There are definitely a handful of each for every class. I think being allowed to upgrade and put points into bettering skills would have made things much more interesting. Witchdoctor pets are the first thing that pops into mind.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Start new quest at the character select screen, pick the first one in Act IV.
So I read that first article.
First paragraph:
then later on, this:
First paragraph:
then later on, this:
This is why video game journalism is such shit. The guy makes some valid points but he surrounds them with completely contradictory nonsense, and if you didn't know any better it's like he's never played an RPG at all before.
I'm pretty sure you could place a point into dexterity and see immediately that your attack rating was better and that your block % was better. That's within the game.
Also, I think you need to describe your version of "strategy" for me to have any idea what you're trying to argue.
skill points add absolutely nothing except maybe delusion.
build diversity can be pretty vast and i think there are plenty of people who adjust how they play to their liking in terms of skills. I have a whirlwind build that i took from somebody and replaced a couple skills and i like the way it plays much better.
earlier on this forum another barb had a different version of a whirlwind barb.. there are many ways to play not just a handful
I'm not saying D3 is a tactician's dream, because it lacks strategy too. But at least with D3 if I am having problems I can change a build on the fly, or I can experiment without having to scrap a character. That amounts to more in-game strategy than D2 had.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Yea, what an idiot. There were swarms of flies in D2, which also dropped loot. In fact, one who actually played D2 might notice more than just a single enemy type that looks kinda like it maybe mighta possibly been in both games. Maybe.
this topic has been gone over and over again and it always ends with the same conclusion.
stat stacking does nothing for you in terms of customization. nobody is saying creative builds didnt exist in d2.. unfortunately they were extremely rare and you were pretty much garbage if you didnt play/build your character a certain way. anybody that played diablo 2 extensively knows this to be true. diablo 2 made you feel creative but really youre just a googler that can right click.
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I did that...it just takes me back to the stronghold/portal. There are no quests listed under the Portal to Heaven (act IV) so I think I'm fucked and have to kill Azmodan again. WTF why would it ask me that then not let me continue?
you gotta make sure you get the waypoint and start the quest
My idea of strategy is along the lines of how to attack an enemy, what skills to use, what weapons to use, etc. In D2 this all had to be decided before you even loaded up the game clicked 'create character'. If it didn't work, exit the game and google some more and create another character.
In D3 you can swap from offensive to defensive skills if you are having troubles, or 2H to 1H (if barb) and not worry that you are out of stat points for whatever weapon you happened to have/find. That's already more 'in game' strategy than D2 had.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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I'd probably redact your first sentence, as you really have no idea what I'm talking about.
My point is, as it stands, some skill builds are vastly more powerful than others. Some don't even work at all past Hell. I think Witchdoctors got the brunt of that mess.
agreed; WD has it the worst ( poor pets )
some are the best i think that is just gonna happen no matter what.. but there are lots and lots of builds you can do that are still viable / comparable to those is all im saying
Right: playing the game a certain way was the result of you customizing your character. The challenge to playing a certain way was that the game would throw obstacles in your way like "immune to X", and if you were primarily a X-dealing character you needed to have an alternative strategy or you were SOL; you couldn't just change all your skills to suit the moment. It's "making use of what you have" versus "having everything handed to you" to get a job done.
Stat stacking affected which weapons and armor could be used, and some weapons and armor were better depending on what skill you used. Anybody that played Diablo 2 extensively knows that to be true.
It's like dating a chick for a few months and on the 150th day you discover an std which makes you go hmmm something isn't right here. Then you hate yourself for being so naive and not picking up on the clues, many of the prerelease interviews are very foretelling, a few of us had the foresight but the majority were blinded because we wanted to like it so much. Sugar coating a turd lollipop only postpones the inevitable, theres only so many licks before you reach the shitty core and that bad taste in your mouth isn't something you simply forget.
The ninja nerfs to protect RMAH profits and Blizzards sellout move and betrayal of it's core fanbase have broken alot of gamers hearts. This game was supposed to be a long term relationship, not a sleazy whore house fling. Normal thru Inferno act 1 was spot on if you could get past the fisher price dialogue and obnoxious wow copy n pastes. The gameplay was actually pretty fun despite its many flaws, thats mainly why you see so much mouth foaming, the wasted potential is just way too frustrating for many who have followed and waited forever with the highest hopes and expectations of a fun game that would live up to the sequel's longevity.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Sure, there will always be best combinations. I just think some skills and passives weren't even really tested. There should also be at least some element of character progression; whether it is a small pool of points you can allocate to certain skills in your loadout, or whatever.
cageymaru
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Don't feel bad I only put 700 days played into WoW and it's boring as hell to me nowadays. 700 x 24 = 16,800 hours or so. When people say that putting 150 hours into D3 means you like it I lol hard. 200 hours into a game means you've just took the time to scratch your backside once or twice.
It's not even 10 days played!On another note is 9,000 dps for a mage decent for Hell Act 1? Really nice Husband / Wife team wants me to play with them but I'm tired of the fragile Demon Hunter. I don't like the game, but I keep meeting these really cool people that don't really love the game but like doing stuff with other people. I'm all about the social aspects of gaming so I tag along with them. His wife plays an awesome tanking mage or monk btw.
beckzach05
n00b
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Just about to start Nightmare tonight. 9k dps is crazy. I'm going to smile, nod, and rock my 310dps like it's 100 times that.
D3 ftw
D3 ftw
9,000 is low for Act 1. I was at 15k in Act 1 when I got there.Don't feel bad I only put 700 days played into WoW and it's boring as hell to me nowadays. 700 x 24 = 16,800 hours or so. When people say that putting 150 hours into D3 means you like it I lol hard. 200 hours into a game means you've just took the time to scratch your backside once or twice.
On another note is 9,000 dps for a mage decent for Hell Act 1? Really nice Husband / Wife team wants me to play with them but I'm tired of the fragile Demon Hunter. I don't like the game, but I keep meeting these really cool people that don't really love the game but like doing stuff with other people. I'm all about the social aspects of gaming so I tag along with them. His wife plays an awesome tanking mage or monk btw.
Go to the AH and buy a blue 700-800dps weapon for like 20k gold, that should get you there even if the rest of your gear is relatively bad.
cageymaru
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They are tested extensively by Blizzard. The Blizzard philosophy is to create one set of skills that works well in most situations. Witch Doctors have that. The rest is for experimentation when you're bored or over gear the content. That's the Blizzard formula for WoW that has worked for umpteen years.
Would it be nice for the rest of the skills available to every class be viable also? Yes of course, but Blizzard doesn't balance games based on lots of skill combinations. So what they typically do is make those minutely obviously a cut below what the bread and butter skills are. Then they applaud the community for theorycrafting and figuring out what the best builds are for a class.
Anytime they find an outlier they squash the bug as it wasn't intended. Thus all the nerfs you've seen so far.
Breath_of_the_Dying
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I'm still in the party that believes stat stacking and skill points were an illusion to customization. 99% of the endgame characters, you didn't choose your allocation, they were chosen for you. You didn't whimsically choose to put more points into a stat because you found something awesome, you most likely followed cookie cutter builds and knew EXACTLY what items you were going for and only allocated exactly the minimum stats to wear them all. Most of the guides gave a full roadmap for skill and stat allocation for every level.
cageymaru
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Yea I have a 500 dps staff atm. I was trying to be as cheap as possible with the mage. Kinda hard finding cheap weapons on the AH that are -9 level requirement sometimes. I don't sell items on the AH so I only have looted gold. Yes, I detest using the AH that much.
You had some pretty funny analogies in here. But I gotta slow your roll a little bit. You speak of things such as longevity and what this game is supposed to be like in the long run. Well its not really a fair shake down to say that about a game that is < 2 months old. You have NO idea if its going to have a player base in 1 year, 5 years, 8 years. You can certainly guess and hypothesize but unless you have some crystal ball no one knows about well then your just shootin words into the wind.
Is the player base going to dwindle? Of course, I'm sure the same thing happened with D2 and pretty much every other game. But there very well could be people still playing it in 5 years and talking on forums about it like it was there greatest game, and thus it would have lived up to its sequels longevity (at least in their eyes, which is all that matters since their the ones playing). Do you think the # of people playing D2 at the 'end' was equal to the people playing in the beginning? So it just might mean that you caught and std, not everyone else has.
I feel like people just HAVE to somehow analyze and make these fanatastical revelations about Diablo 3.
cageymaru
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Bet you could finish most content without having the perfect build in D2 or the absolute perfect gear. Try playing a Demon Hunter without invisibility and see how far you get in D3 Inferno. That's the difference in the two design philosophies.
Of course there is a guide that tells you to grab skill X, Y, and Z, but there was some leeway. D3 just punishes the noobs that don't want to read guides, or base the game off skills that worked in prior difficulties.
You're going to have a frustrating time progressing in Inferno without making use of the AH.Yea I have a 500 dps staff atm. I was trying to be as cheap as possible with the mage. Kinda hard finding cheap weapons on the AH that are -9 level requirement sometimes. I don't sell items on the AH so I only have looted gold. Yes, I detest using the AH that much.
I don't see the hate for the normal AH. There was an auction house in WoW so I kinda like it, I like playing with the economy.
I don't like the RMAH though. I've made about $170 from D3 RMAH, but it still feels like an overall negative for the game.
krameriffic
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In Diablo 2, this was mostly true. But that's not a flaw with the entire notion of a stat allocation system, but rather Diablo 2's implementation. Diablo 2's stats didn't offer customization or diversity because they were poorly balanced. What Blizzard did with D3 was essentially cede that a balanced system would never happen, so instead of even trying, they nuked the whole system.
Breath_of_the_Dying
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I have yet to read a class skill guide for my wizard except for the one time my friend showed me the blizzard hydra combo when I was stuck on belilal for a few hours, which I didnt even use to finally kill him. I used archon in almost every build I changed throughout inferno, then dropped it to kill diablo pre 1.0.3. I tried new skills that I never used in the entire game to beat diablo.
The game doesn't punish those who don't read guides, the game punishes those who are too stupid to realize that a build isnt working for their play style or gear setup because they are stuck using a build they read in a guide
Okay...where did the guides come from? People getting creative. You can't just take a look at the state of the game 10 years later and say "no one was creative, it was all cookie cutter build guides". Well no shit, people had 10 years to come up with all that stuff. If players decided to put no additional thought into anything then it wasn't the game being flawed, it was the players being lazy or unimaginative.
If I wanted to make a Poison Dagger Necromancer (and I did), my ability to customize the build wasn't compromised just because someone else had already worked out a sweet way to place the points and posted it online. If the guide said "enough dex for max block", but I wanted a different shield, then suddenly my stat allocation would deviate from the guide. And hey, perhaps my choice of shield made the build sub-optimal by a particular standard, but it was my decision to do so. But it seems Blizzard is big on promoting "optimal" builds these days: how else to explain the inclusion of enrage timers in D3?
As far as the "oh noes, I ruined my character -> start over" issue goes, it didn't take rocket science for the Path of Exile devs to include "respec points" as quest rewards and a function of a rare orb found in-game. *Presto* you can respec, just not on a whim and not all at once; the character isn't ruined.
Intel_Hydralisk
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I got to Act 3 pre-nerf (week 2...) without smoke screen. Didn't know that it provided invincibility while invisible. I simply used vault for everything. FWIW, I didn't use nether tentacles either.
I think D2 punishes skill decisions much more...
Don't feel bad I only put 700 days played into WoW and it's boring as hell to me nowadays. 700 x 24 = 16,800 hours or so. When people say that putting 150 hours into D3 means you like it I lol hard. 200 hours into a game means you've just took the time to scratch your backside once or twice.
On another note is 9,000 dps for a mage decent for Hell Act 1? Really nice Husband / Wife team wants me to play with them but I'm tired of the fragile Demon Hunter. I don't like the game, but I keep meeting these really cool people that don't really love the game but like doing stuff with other people. I'm all about the social aspects of gaming so I tag along with them. His wife plays an awesome tanking mage or monk btw.
normal people dont play that many hours of video games. most people would be ashamed of that many days spent playing a video game
you are the minority. 150 hours is a lot of hours for most people
you can argue semantics all day if you want. Diablo 2 is flawed especially in customization. you arent creative in diablo 2 and neither is anybody else except the 5 people that made the 5 guides that everybody followed.
cageymaru
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I got into Hell without knowing that until it got nerfed one patch. I like training my mage buddies in Inferno with mobs when I Smoke Screen. Nether tentacles I've used for maybe 30 minutes total as I don't read guides or forums about what is good and what isn't. I like tinkering.
But 1.03 it didn't matter how many times you died so you didn't need to know that it gave you invincibility. I was a tumble god until I found out that there was a timer on killing elites in Act II Inferno. Vault hasn't been on my bars since as it is a waste of time. I lag a ton still so I just sidestep abilities in advance using my internal timer. Knowing that much about a game makes it kinda boring as there isn't anticipation of death unless you get one shot. Well until you lag out or 1 shot yourself with reflect.
I'd take the D2 skill system where you have to rebuild your guy from scratch if you find out that you did it wrong the first time. I liked the old Frankenstein movies so it fits into my personality. Plus it gives the game replay value. D3's AH and Pick-A-Skill caters to the casual players. And I believe at the detriment of the player base as I lost another 12 or so people off my friend list in D3 in addition to the 30 or so that left earlier. And only one went back to play WoW so far. It's like Blizzard is cannibalizing their own for a few pennies from the RMAH.
I'm indifferent to the game as I just play to chit chat on ventrilo. I do love training people with Smoke Screen though. Does Teleport for mages work the same way? Never used it as I've just stood next to the mobs and froze them in place. I've just gotten to Act 3 Hell and maybe there will be a challenge there for me. Will be interesting to see what is "bad" for mages in Inferno though. That's my group's goal.
cageymaru
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Well I really enjoyed the game while I played it. Can't knock me for that. Ha ha!
Oh and most of the people on my friend's list in WoW played like that.
true that son; do what you do! i am just glad video games are becoming a more acceptable use of free time... whenever somebody scoffs at video games the first thing i ask is how much tv do you watch a week and then i double it cause they always lie hahahhaha
robble
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I put lots of quarters into that machine!
It depends on what segment of the population you are referring to. People like me who have a significant other and a job/house/life etc.? yea 150 hours is a lot.
The average WoW player? 150 hours aint shit. Lots of those guys put 12+ hours a day into it. Everyday.
LeninGHOLA
Vladimir Hayt
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Sometimes the fixation with who is in the minority and who is in the majority opinion when it comes to gaming seems inane.
So many people said things like, "If you don't like Diablo 3, you're doing it wrong". Now, if you play it too little, you're doing it wrong. If you play too much, you're doing it wrong.
I dunno, people should play games the way they enjoy.
IMO, normal people don't watch TV. I mean, other than yelling at stupid commecials, it isn't even interactive.
cageymaru
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I don't like the interface as only having 3 things to search for is more frustrating than dying to a mob. And I did try to sell some 900+ dps rare weapons a couple weeks ago for 8,000 gold each and ended up vendoring them as they didn't sell. I remember one was a Barbarian weapon with crazy str, vit, crit+dmg and LoH. So I vendored them all.
Breath_of_the_Dying
[H]ard|Gawd
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I got into Hell without knowing that until it got nerfed one patch. I like training my mage buddies in Inferno with mobs when I Smoke Screen. Nether tentacles I've used for maybe 30 minutes total as I don't read guides or forums about what is good and what isn't. I like tinkering.
But 1.03 it didn't matter how many times you died so you didn't need to know that it gave you invincibility. I was a tumble god until I found out that there was a timer on killing elites in Act II Inferno. Vault hasn't been on my bars since as it is a waste of time. I lag a ton still so I just sidestep abilities in advance using my internal timer. Knowing that much about a game makes it kinda boring as there isn't anticipation of death unless you get one shot. Well until you lag out or 1 shot yourself with reflect.
I'd take the D2 skill system where you have to rebuild your guy from scratch if you find out that you did it wrong the first time. I liked the old Frankenstein movies so it fits into my personality. Plus it gives the game replay value. D3's AH and Pick-A-Skill caters to the casual players. And I believe at the detriment of the player base as I lost another 12 or so people off my friend list in D3 in addition to the 30 or so that left earlier. And only one went back to play WoW so far. It's like Blizzard is cannibalizing their own for a few pennies from the RMAH.
I'm indifferent to the game as I just play to chit chat on ventrilo. I do love training people with Smoke Screen though. Does Teleport for mages work the same way? Never used it as I've just stood next to the mobs and froze them in place. I've just gotten to Act 3 Hell and maybe there will be a challenge there for me. Will be interesting to see what is "bad" for mages in Inferno though. That's my group's goal.
There is nothing really stopping you from releveling a class and sticking to a different build, by lvl 10 there are many ways to play a class
Edit: you can also beat inferno without touching either ah. There are trade channels and trading forums all over the interwebs.