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Diablo 3 – The Infernal Barbarian

Jul06

A few hours after hitting level 60 I mowed through Hell Mode Act IV and one-shot Diablo. That’s when the real hell began.

Act I

Inferno Mode is hard, and particularly difficult for a Barbarian. As a short-range melee class, you have to take the hits, and the hits are big. Real big. The first thing I noticed about Inferno was that even the trivial zombies took a few hits to kill, and they actually do some damage. The elites are out of this world crazy. With normal Hell mode gear, the second you step into an area of effect zone (molten, plagued, desecrator, or the like), you die.

This sent me back to the Auction house for a few upgrades. I found a strong DPS 2 hander in the real money AH for $3 and this helped (1080 base DPS, 200 strength, socket). I picked up some more armor and changed my passives to be more defensive. I ended up (in several waves) spending a lot of gold to get level 60 pieces on most slots. This enabled me to slog through Act I scene by scene, but the going was tough and expensive, even before Blizzard’s repair cost hike. The elites trained me to play better and more defensively. You can’t step in their shit. You can’t get hit by their telegraphed physical attacks. If health gets low you have to run until your cooldowns recover. You have to be careful about pulling too much trash at the same time, or God forbid, two elite packs (99.9% fatal). If you can’t kill The Butcher fast enough, the whole floor starts to burn (enrage timer). I went into him with five stacks and couldn’t kill him in 30 minutes. When they wore off I switched to a more offensive build and managed to kill him with no stacks, just to get it done.

A more defensive build

Cleave (with Broad Sweep) – I still wanted an AOE main as there are far to many enemies to single target down

Seismic Slam (Stagger for Crowd Control) – This is a controversial skill. It’s a terrible fury dump on bosses, but I like it against crowds and elites because you can AOE, and more importantly, stun and knock back big groups of enemies. This keeps a little damage at bay while dishing out some punishment.

Ground Stomp (with Wrenching Smash) – This turns out to be a pretty awesome skill. Against trash it’s a great way to gather in a group for Cleave or Revenge and against champions it allows you to keep them stunned — briefly.

Revenge (with Provocation) – a combo fury-free heal/aoe. The increased chance to proc seems the best when you need it to survive.

Furious Charge (with Dreadnought) – A short cooldown escape/closer with a heal and stun. This extra heal (besides your health potion) can really keep you alive.

Wrath of the Berserker (with Insanity) – This big burst damage is pretty much a requirement to burst down tough elite packs and bosses.

Passives: Superstition, Tough as Nails, and Nerves of Steel – I ended up going all defensive for now. Later, I was able to switch out Superstition (which seemed the worst of the trio) for Ruthless.

Follower: Templar, specced fully for healing. Really, as a Barbarian, anything that heals you is good. If you can stay alive, you will prevail. The Templar also has a nice WOW Warrior style charge and stun.

Back on the Farm

Before some of the recent patches and hotfixes Act I dropped shit gear. Packs dropped mostly blues, even with 5 stacks, and bosses dropped two crap yellows. The repair costs were so high versus the rewards (not to mention the high AH prices) that you lose money to play.

This forced me to find farming spots. If you set the quest to “search for the stranger, the cursed hold” and teleport to the “old ruins” there is about 75% of the time a cellar straight to the west through the gates. The elite there is very easy and drops a lot of gold. He’s easy enough that you can kill him in a complete set of gold find gear, plus he’s real close to a checkpoint so you can repeat it quickly. This is incredibly boring but earns (for me) about 200,000 gold an hour.

I think it’s a serious flaw that the game basically requires you to farm gold in order to either progress or even play at the edge of your skills. Act I does not itself drop good enough gear to allow you to pass it easily, at least not during the first 4-6 weeks of release. The totally random nature of the gear means that you almost NEVER find a genuine upgrade yourself in Inferno. You need to sell what you find and buy stuff on the AH. But it’s EXPENSIVE. Either I’m missing some easy gold earning technique or the player base can an incredible tolerance for tedium. It takes A LOT of farming to improve your gear in Inferno, and Act I is the easy sauce.

Also, I have terrible luck selling on the AH. I keep 10 items listed on both gold and $ AH at all times, but they rarely sell. I’ve tried pricing them cheap, I’ve tried pricing expensive, but there is such an incredible supply (despite high prices), and the visibility is so low, that very little seems to sell. There are no aides to pricing and it’s very tedious to search for comparable prices. There should be a “show me stuff that is like this item” search.

Act II

If I thought Act I was hard, Act II was a total wake up call. There is a very steep cliff which is not present in any of the previous difficulty modes. And unlike those earlier modes, in Inferno, there is no option to just grind for a bit and level past it. You have to improve your skills, spec, and gear. At first, using gear that made Act I Halls of Agony easy enough, even Act II trash pulls of more than 2-3 mobs killed me. And forget about elites. Those annoying wasps with their mini-wasp “bullets” could easily be fatal. In Act II, as a Barbarian, you need at least 200-400 resist in every category in order to survive the area of effects.

One of the first things I did was switch from 2-hander to 1-hander and shield. Getting a shield with a reasonable block rating (17%+) helps a lot, but your DPS craters compared to 2-hander or dual-wielding. I had to farm, farm, and farm some more in order to repurchase more gear slots with a big chunk of “all resist.” This stat is essential to Inferno melee and is priced accordingly. Any gear with it, and decent other stats, is very expensive. I re-gemmed for all vitality. I got some more health on hit. Other classes can focus on DPS, but the Barbarian needs to use at least half his stat allocation for resists, armor, and healing. It sucks.

As I slowly got my resists up around 400 I was able to push through the Act. Still, even before the repair hike, progress cost me money. Some elites took a couple deaths to finish off and this cost a lot of gold. I was, however, able to move forward, defeating 80-90% of elite packs. Bosses were no problem, and single elites, but occasional pulls involving two packs or nasty affix combinations like molten and fiery chains or molten, invulnerable minions, and waller would require skipping or resetting the game. Belial was hard. After the patch where he has a enrage timer he required a more DPS/healing oriented spec (including Frenzy) and a two-hander to defeat.

Act III

The third act put me up against yet another wall. Defeating the first elite pack took me into the yellow and cost 45,000 gold. Hardly an economical solution. I put on my two hander, changed my passives to DPS, and went back to farm Act I. With my Act II gear (all purchased, at most I’m wearing one piece that actually dropped for me) I can now crush Act I Inferno. I only die when I get exceedingly sloppy (like taking on three elite packs) and can DPS the Butcher down in about 1.5 minutes.

Farming Act I earns perhaps 150,000 gold an hour direct and a huge number of rares, particularly after the most recent patch where they drop from both elite packs and bosses in good numbers. The increased drop rates of ilevel 62 and 63 stuff mean that some of it is even decent. Still, the random number generator churns out enormous amounts of crap that is barely useable by any class. Vendor fodder. I have improved my gear to about 22,000 DPS with a 2-hander, 7k armor, and 400-450 resists. Then back to Act III and see how that goes.

I can kill some elites, but I still die too often. It would cost me 200,000 gold an hour to progress. Hmmm.

Stacking it all up

I have mixed feelings about the valor stack mechanic. It’s essentially pretty good except for the fact that it requires at least an hour or two of play time. The fact that the game will disconnect you after about 20-30 minutes of pause means that you can’t really leave it. That DC will kill your stacks and reroll the world. This isn’t a big deal before 60, but loosing those stacks sucks. It can also be frustrating with the harder end-of-act bosses that really need a different spec than the rest of the Act. By the time you arrive at them, you usually have 5 stacks, and killing them without any is useless. I don’t like being forced to kill trash with a single target DPS spec just so I can save my stacks for the boss.

The Gear/AH Problem

The relationship between gear, progress, and the Auction House seems fairly broken. In order to progress in Inferno you need extremely specific gear that is very expensive. During the first couple of weeks the acts themselves were not dropping this in sufficient quantity. The RNG generates a lot of crap. I try to have no more than one “second rate affix” on any piece too, ideally zero. A second rater for a Barb is something like Int, or Dexterity. I try to have no “third rate” like gold pickup range or something specific to other classes. This kind of gear drops once in a blue moon.

With the new drop rates, and my ability to farm Act I and Act II it should be possible to get a lot of good gear, but I despair of actually finding much I might want myself. Which leaves the AH. It just seems very difficult to sell anything, and what I want to buy is frightfully expensive. Prices are random and all over the place. The AH needs a lot of improvement for finding items. It needs more than three filters and ways to sort your finds better. It needs tools for pricing your loot and probably a higher limit on the number of sales and a shorter sale time.

It just seems broken to have progress come only from an external mechanism (or willingness to pay significant real dollars or farm insane gold stacks). Blizzard has made improvements (and a few backward steps like the repair cost hike). The increase drop rates are good and the reduction of crafting costs. Still, merging gems is frightfully expensive. Blacksmithing requires a lot of materials considering how random the results are.

Coming from WOW, which also had a very steep cliff in vanilla at level 60, this one seems even odder. That was gated by your ability to raid (and to a lesser extent by a similar willingness to grind), but this one seems “pay to play” or “grind to play.” Neither seems super appealing.

Check out my review of Barbarian 1-60 leveling.

Or my Beta preview of all the classes.

By: agavin
Comments (4)

Posted in: Games

Tagged as: Area of effect, Barbarian, Barbarian Build, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, inferno, inferno mode

Diablo 3 – Barbarian 1-60

Jun08

I used the Diablo 3 Beta as a chance to explore each class, but my first 48 hours with the real game were thwarted by the login boss. Blizzard clearly had a few problems out of the box, but by Wednesday or Thursday things were mostly stabilized.

I rolled a Barbarian as my main. Thematically, I’m more a Witch Doctor type, but I didn’t love the indirect style of gameplay so I debated Barbarian or Wizard. Both were fun to play, but ultimately I went with the Barbarian because he seemed tougher (theoretically less dying) and his “jump right into the middle and kill” style was very satisfying. Over the next three weeks I played through Normal, Nightmare, and Hell, and have just started on Inferno.

Normal Mode

The game is pretty easy on Normal Mode, probably easier than Diablo II (it’s hard to remember). Personally I think the difficulty here is about right, there’s really no reason to be punitive given the game is intended to be played multiple times. A couple mechanical changes make for less downtime than previous games: You don’t have to corpse run. All you lose when you die is a bit of time and the cost of repair. Champions save the health you left them with, so zerging is possible. In normal I barely died, perhaps only 5-6 times.

Each play through took about a week of fairly casual play, with the increasing difficulty being matched by increasing familiarity. The end of Act I and Act II seemed the hardest. Bosses seemed pretty easy. Act IV very easy.

Game Size

The game is long and very linear. It feels about the right length. Acts I and II go on and on. Even on the second and third play throughs I kept saying to myself “oh yeah, this again” as I had forgotten all the varied sub areas. The random generation does mix it up fairly well. I, myself, usually explore every level completely, milking every last chest, monster, and elite out of it. This makes the game considerably easier than if you force ahead at the fastest rate. The way I did it, the leveling was perfectly paced, I reached level 60 just as I hit the last boss of Act III on Hell Mode.

Plot

The plot as told in D3 is a bizarre mix of voice over quest text and three kinds of FMV. There is a brown ink on parchment style, in game boss talk, and the fully rendered advanced CGI style. I found only this last compelling. The full-rendered character models, notably Leah, are pretty awesome. So are the angels. The boss speeches are pretty laughable, almost Scooby Doo style. “Muuuhahhaha. Now I have become the prime evil!!!!”

The quest structure is pretty good, if entirely 100% linear. You can skip everything for repeat listening (or not). I also enjoyed the comments of the companion followers. They are well acted and occasionally amusing. Still, they do get a bit repetitive.

None of this detracts much from the game as it’s more about the combat and the overall mood than it is about the specifics of character and plot. Nevertheless, as a writer I suggest that Blizzard could use to… ahem… hire one. This is no Uncharted with regard to story.

Barbarian Build 1

It takes until about Act II of Normal Mode to really get enough of your skills for a full sense of the class. Once you do, the Barbarian is a real badass. Wading into a giant group of trash is very satisfying. Blood and bodies fly everywhere. I tuned my first build for maximum AOE damage output. Given the difficulty level of Normal this was fine even for champions and most bosses. Occasionally, I had to swap a skill for bosses.

Cleave (usually with Rupture) – This is a no brainer, it’s the AOE fury builder

Either Rend (usually with Ravage for extra range) or Seismic Slam (with Stagger) – More AOE. Rend is a little more practical, particularly against elites and bosses, but SS is so much more fun. It’s particularly exciting with huge groups of mobs.

Leap (with Iron Impact then Call of Arreat) – Great for opening a fight, or getting a brief stun, or escaping

Revenge (with Vengeance is Mine or Best Served Cold) – a combo fury-free heal/aoe

Battle Rage (with Marauder’s Rage) – a pure damage buff

Call of the Ancients (with the Council Rises) – If you get overwhelmed, this will sop up some monster attention and burn them down

Passives: Ruthless, Weapons Master, and Berserker Rage or Brawler – all of these are straight DPS increases

Follower: Enchantress, speced for buffs and DPS

For bosses I would sometimes swap Cleave out for Frenzy (Sidearm) for more single target DPS and COTA for Wrath of the Berserker (Insanity) to burn bosses down.

This basic build served me fine through all of Normal and Nightmare.

Nightmare

The second difficulty level doesn’t really feel any harder than the first. It’s more fun too because you have a much more complete set of abilities. In general, in both Normal and Nightmare, I would kill bosses in one try, maybe two. I barely noticed champion packs and would usually only die if I caught an Elite or Champion at the same time as a huge pull of trash mobs.

Hell

In Hell Mode, after the Skeleton King, things start to change. Suddenly, champion packs of three start to become a problem. Single elites and their minions can also be tough, but generally I found these much easier than champion trios with certain abilities. In Diablo, champion packs (usually 3) and elites roll from certain sets of abilities. Generally, they will have three or four. For melee classes like the Barbarian some of the worst are: Molten, Plagued, Fire Chains, Waller, and Frozen. If one of these movement impairing or area of effect skills is combined with something like Horde, Extra Health, Illusionist, or Shared Health it can be a real problem. Lethally a movement impairing effect, an AOE damage, and a health/numerical increase. The strategy here is to pick off the minions and then focus down one of the three champions, all the while keeping out of the deadly stuff. In Hell Mode, even a well equipped melee can die in seconds if trapped inside the bad zones.

By the post Skeleton King section of Act I, the “real bosses” (uniques) are no longer the problem. It’s these champion groups.

Build 2: Dealing with Hell’s Champions

For a while, in late Act I and early Act II Hell Mode, I was dying too often. Clearly I needed more survivability.

Cleave (with Broad Sweep) – I still wanted an AOE main as there are far to many enemies to single target down

Hammer of the Ancients (Smash for max damage) – This turned out to be a more useful way to spend fury. It allows for slamming down champion and elite health in a more focused manner

Revenge (with Best Served Cold) – a combo fury-free heal/aoe. The increased Crit helps you really smash and destroy

War Cry (with Invigorate) – exchanging the damage buff for this increased armor really helped survivability, and even better it has a self heal.

Furious Charge (with Dreadnought) – A short cooldown escape/closer with a heal and stun. This extra heal (besides your health potion) can really keep you alive.

Passives: Ruthless, Weapons Master, and Nerves of Steel – Replacing the last DPS buff with increased armor and gemming and gearing for more Vitality, Lifesteal, and Health per second really helped keep me alive.

For bosses, I would usually change out Cleave for Frenzy (Sidearm) and Ground Stomp for Wrath of The Berserker (Insanity). But at level 60, the need to keep up the Valor stacks (which reset when you spec) made me stick with the usual build. It wasn’t a problem, just without WOTB bosses took a bit longer.

This build worked wonders for my Hell Mode champion problem. With the first build, I would die again and again on certain champion abilities. Once I learned to play this build, use everything on cooldown, and keep moving, I rarely died more than once or twice on even a tough group.

Gear

One of the weird things about gear in D3 is that while rare drops come in a fairly steady stream and blues are a dime-a-dozen, it’s very unusual to find an upgrade in the game. The gear available on the auction house was almost always better and cheaper than finding or making it in game. I suspect this is because of the random factor. As a Barbarian (or any class) you only really want certain stats. Any Intelligence or Dexterity (or a host of other stats) on gear is near useless. The odds of perfect Barbarian gear dropping is low. But with millions of players the AH is choked with it. Same goes with the crafting. At first in Normal Mode I leveled the Blacksmith. But it gets very expensive by Nightmare and for the cost of just one skill level you can buy one or two better things on the AH. This trend, frustratingly, seems even more true in Inferno. You have to play inferno to earn gold to buy better gear on the AH, not to actually win better gear (unless you are very lucky). I don’t think this will be good for Inferno. The relationship between play and reward is too disconnected.

Inferno

I’ve only had a day or two to play Inferno and have only done so in the easiest section of the game, but it’s clearly a lot harder. Even normal trash hits for a wallop. I came across a champion pack with Fire Chains, which along with Molten, are my least favorite. They crushed me. You have to get in close as a Barbarian to do any damage and they just cross those chains over you — near instant death. If this persists I will experiment to changing all my passives to survival and stacking my gear with more resists. Still, I think it will be hard.

My guide/discussion to Barbarian Inferno play is in a separate post.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer system is great for hooking up with your battlenet friends. I did a bunch of that. I found cooperative a little slower, but perhaps more fun, than solo play. You often have to wait for the other person to do something, or go back to town and sell, etc. In solo, things go at your own pace. I played a couple of times with mismatched levels. This works but isn’t very fun. It was either hard to stay alive (if I was too low) or way too easy (if I stepped down). I suspect that once a bunch of my friends reach Inferno it will be easier. I was often concerned with not messing up my solo game or having to repeat. If you exit the game to join another and you aren’t at a checkpoint you’ll have to backtrack a little to wherever it lets you reset the quest to.

I also think to progress in Inferno will nearly require group play. We’ll see.

Overall

The game rocks. As I mentioned in my beta preview, it isn’t the most graphically advanced game. The camera is incredibly conservative and never changes POV. But the game is impeccably smooth and the responsiveness of the skills and varied monster deaths are awesome. The overall feel is exciting and it’s extremely gratifying to destroy demons en mass. Stuff destroys all over the place too, which is awesome. Class balance is also very good with a wide number of cool and useful abilities and play styles. Most games are really lame in this department and it doesn’t really seem to matter which skills you use and how you combine them. Not so here, there are all sorts of interesting synergies and the builds feel distinct.

Makes me wonder if I should level a Wizard!

Continue reading about my Inferno Mode experience here.

By: agavin
Comments (14)

Posted in: Games

Tagged as: Area of effect, Barbarian, Barbarian Build, Berserker, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, diabloIII, Hell Mode, Normal Mode, Roleplaying, Witch Doctor

Diablo III: Wrath

May08

Blizzard has released Wrath, an animated short by directory Peter Chung (Aeon Flux) depicting an ancient battle between the angels of Sanctuary and Diablo. Pretty cool.

Strangely though, I am reminded a bit of Ralph Bakshi’s bizarre The Lord of the Rings.

By: agavin
Comments (3)

Posted in: Games

Tagged as: Animated cartoon, Animation, Arts, Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, Peter Chung, Ralph Bakshi, Wrath

Diablo 3 – Commercial

Apr29

The geek watch countdown!

And a second ad:

By: agavin
Comments (11)

Posted in: Games

Tagged as: Blizzard, Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo, Diablo 3, Diablo III, Fantasy, RPG

Diablo 3 – Beta Preview

Apr19

[ NOTE: this is my beta preview. I also have a release post on playing the Barbarian 1-60 and a separate one on the Barbarian in Inferno Mode. ]

Finally, the Diablo 3 beta invite showed up in my mailbox. Unfortunately, by the time I got it downloaded and installed I was headed to Vegas for the weekend (which wasn’t so bad, really). But as soon as I returned, I fired it up, rolled a toon, and cranked through the 1.5-2 hours it took to defeat the Skeleton King and “finish” the beta. Then I rolled another class. Then another and another until I’d played them all.

General Impressions

Not surprisingly, for a Blizzard game, and one that is only a month from launch, the game looks “finished” and is seemingly bug free. I didn’t have any problems. I didn’t try any multiplayer but I’m looking forward to it in the release.

Graphics wise, D3 is kinda dark, which wasn’t a problem playing at night, but during the sunny hours it was hard to see a lot of detail. I play on a Mac Pro with an Apple 30″ monitor. At full 2500×1600 resolution the game ran fine (I have a ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB). There was occasional slight slowdown as new textures paged in (I think that’s what it was because it wasn’t during big fights but moving into new areas).

The art is fantastic and everything is modeled in detailed 3D, yet the classic three-quarters pulled back viewpoint limits the options for dynamic camerawork or even the simple ability to show enemies at any real scale. Overall, this substantially reduces the visual drama in favor of more approachable gameplay.

But in that regard, Blizzard does it’s usual slick job of babying you into the game. This is in complete contrast to a hardcore RPG like Dark Souls, which does no coddling. Here, you start each class with just one skill, gaining them incrementally as you level. The early quests are easy and straightforward. By the time you get into the depths of the cathedral and to level six or so, the real flavor of the class starts to emerge.

The overall gameplay is, as one of my friends said, like the Diablo II you remember, not as it actually was. If you boot up the aforementioned classic you’ll find a 2D game that runs in 800×600 (and that only with the expansion pack installed!). Sure the gameplay is slick, but the late 90s graphics are very dated. The new Diablo brings the same basic experience but updated to perhaps 2007 level technology. And really, it’s that great gameplay that matters.

The Barbarian

I’m normally drawn toward dark wizards, and so in D2 I mostly played a Necromancer. In D3, that niche is filled by the Witchdoctor, but neither the pet based nature or the class style really appealed. I decided to try out the Barbarian. Big and plate wearing, this is a very straightforward class. The few skill choices available in the first nine or so levels basically seemed to oscillate between heavy hitting on a single target and non-quite-so heavy hitting on multiple targets. I haven’t studied the skill system in detail but it seems to have been simplified, moving away from the elaborate talent trees. Each skill can be powered up or tweaked with runes, and there are several completely distinct skill slots (primary, secondary, defensive, etc) that you can swap in and out skills that belong exclusively in their particular category. For the Barbarian, the primary is a fury generating basic attack and the secondary a harder hitting fury sink.

Progression with the Barbarian was a piece of cake. In the limited scope of the beta I barely even had to chug a health potion, perhaps once. I didn’t die at all. Even the Skeleton King was pretty easy. The attacks definitely got more satisfying as they leveled up, but some felt lackluster like the bleed-causing whirlwind. Maybe it gets cooler later. Maybe they aren’t done with it.

Still, all and all a very fun class to play.

For my discussion of leveling 1-60 in the final version, see here.

Taking on the Skeleton King

The Wizard

Next I tried out the wizard. This is the ranged magical damage dealer. Overall, this class is much squishier than the Barbarian and I died in one spot (right on returning to the Cathedral where there are three big sub-bosses). You have to watch your health and make sure to kite, mostly using the freeze ray or the frost nova to slow down the badies. I liked the feel of the freeze ray, it’s pretty fun. If you tune the skills toward the electrical discharges and the spark-like exploding fireball the wizard can do some serious AOE damage. On one middling outside area I collected a rather large collection of undead and then obliterated them in a big firefight (earning a 60 enemies killed at once achievement). I think there is more pure DPS output here than with the melee classes — in exchange for being fragile.

You have to pay more attention to your resources than the Barbarian. The defensive skill (on the 1 key) is crucial. With the Barbarian it was a sweetener, here, it’s key to getting out of the middle of a big cluster of foes (or blasting them down quick if you are using Crystal Armor). Although harder, it was a fun class to play and I’ll be torn what to try first in the release version.

Monk

Third up I tried the Monk. Squishier than the Barbarian for sure, but fairly similar in that you get right in the thick of thinks and wallop. At the earlier levels the different skills didn’t seem as differentiated. Theoretically the Barbarian would be slower and the Monk more nimble, but the Barb is plenty fast, so I’m not sure I yet see a compelling advantage. The teleport TO an enemy rune is kinda cool though.

At about level 7 or 8 things power up a bit and the excitement level rises. The spinning circle of fire and triple punch are real nice. Overall this was an easy class too. I didn’t die and pretty much never needed a health pot.

Witch Doctor

A few days after finishing the monk I felt it was my duty as a Necromancer player and diehard WOW Warlock to try the Witch Doctor. It was immediately obvious that this was a seriously squishy class, even more so than the Wizard. It’s harder to kite with too. A lot of the early skills are pets of one sort or another and you have to toss them out there and run. This is true of the spiders and bats. I really didn’t like trading the snaring hands for the bats and quickly went back to it. The spiders were okay though. Like the other classes, by the time I got to level 8 or so he was getting fairly powerful. The dogs were fun. The runed version of the grasping hands was a really solid snare and the machine gun blow gun too. Fun to play, but despite the cool theme, I think the Wizard was more straightforward as a ranged caster.

Demon Hunter

This is the last class I played and thematically the least interesting. The Hunter in WOW never held any interest whatsoever for me and it’s the only class I’ve never rolled. But the D3 Demon Hunter turned out to be pretty fun. Its long range and rapid fire is satisfying and I put an epic? (yellow) bow I got from another tune to good use right from the beginning. The problem with this class, like the Witch Doctor and Wizard, is that it’s very squishy. But even more than those other two it becomes problematic when you get mobbed by mobs. The Demon Hunter can go down fast. Now, even given that, I only died on the Skeleton King, but it was the only class where the boss gave me some trouble. Once I learned to kite and stun him and run back and forth for the health balls it was okay, but still harder and slower than the other classes. Up until that point I often felt I was really kicking ass with the DH, but the problem seemed to stem from the classes’ lack of AOE. I ended up having to use the “trap” as my slowing and AOE device, laying them down (up to five) in advance. I didn’t like the invisible skill very much. The Wizard, while also a ranged squishy, has much better AOE (at least at these early levels).

Gear

I enjoy the gearing up minigame in Diablo, always have. My only complaint is the still present need to manage your inventory. It’s not as bad as in D2 where one spent a ridiculous amount of time combing the trash from your inventory and leaving it on the dungeon floor, but you still have to do this. The more readily available town portal(s) makes flipping back to sell your crap much easier.

I also don’t exactly get what gear you really want for each class. Classes can use a large percentage of the items, which I guess is a good thing, but it’s hard to know if a 15.5 dagger is better for a Wizard than a 12.0 wand.

Multiplayer

I spent about an hour playing the last two dungeons and the Skeleton King with a pickup group of one other person. This does not represent any exhaustive survey of D3’s four player coop mode. Overall, it was fun, and slightly easier. It was also slower as one often had to wait on the other person. That player clearly hadn’t run through the whole beta four times already and didn’t know exactly where to go like I did :-). I’m assuming multiplayer is the most fun with a good or pre-made four man group. I was playing my monk (repeating the dungeons and she was level 9-11) and they were playing a Demon Hunter about two levels lower. There is no increased loot or particular advantage to playing multiplayer, either. There should be. It’s also not very competitive anymore because everyone has their own loot and there is no PVP (that’s in a separate non PVE mode like the WOW arenas).

Random

The consistent naming and art elements in Blizzard style are an amusing note. While Diablo is darker and more gothic than WOW there are quite a number of common enemy archetypes. The grotesques (abominations in WOW) are one example. These are a distinctly Blizzard baddie. Many of the spell names (and even the class archetypes) are overlapping. The Demon Hunter fires arrows and drops traps and bombs like the Hunter. The Wizard is like a WOW Mage, even down to having a Frost Nova with nearly identical effect. There was even a skeletal sub-boss with the same name as a Scholo boss.

I can’t wait for May 15. In the meantime, watch the Wrath animated short.

Or read my discussion of the Barbarian class, levels 1-60 here.

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