What a disappointment. I played the Wizard and it was a bit... flat. To say the least.

Didn't show damage on any of your skills. Good luck deciding which of them you want.

Not being able to choose more than one skill for each slot is really quite lame. I'd really rather wield both Ray of Frost *and* Arcane Orb, thanks.

Man, the mana. Sure, I get it that Blizzard don't want people endlessly popping pots. But I'd rather endlessly pop pots and have endless mana. So much for "frantic action" when you run out of mana and have only weak-ass signature skills to use. At least in D2, you could effectively have infinite mana. That was frantic.

Oh, and the signature skills are useless junk compared to their vastly more powerful "secondary" counterparts.

Also, I feel like the game offers less choice than D2, not more. You can't choose how to expend your stat points, for example. And removing the "loot drops for everybody" was great for online play... not so much for co-op play. Now I have to waste my time looting places my friend already looted for any valuable items.

Whilst there were plenty of things about D2 I didn't like, and I appreciate that Blizzard is trying to fix them, I don't think these changes go in the right direction.

I tried out the Witch Doctor for about a day, honestly game didn't hold my attention long enough.

I have to agree with the skills though, was irritating between trying to choose whether to summon exploding frogs or shooting a stupid poison dart.... it would have been a lot more fun if i could have summoned said frogs AND my flaming bats whilist my zombie dogs rampaged about.

i mean hell most gaming mice have plenty of buttons for the use of those skills.

considering that this was a server stress test beta i doubt we'd seem some major changes in the next month before release.

i think i still plan to eventually buy the game when it comes out, but i am not overly excited about it anymore, was a rather big let down.

I played it with it's closed beta too and wasn't too thrilled about it. It looks cool when everyone is blasting things left and right, and I'm finally ok with the art style, but man it is boring. There's no stress to it, just keep clicking. You never really have to worry about dying, which actually makes Hardcore mode attractive. And yea the lack of skill choice is disappointing. Maybe the skills pick up once you hit like 20 or 30 though, kind of like half the builds in D2.

It does feel like a nice upgrade to D2, but very similar as well. Now I think the one thing that will make me buy this game is the number of times the ArchAngel Tyrael shows up. He's the flat out most awesome character...eva.

Apparently enemy AI, item drops, damage calculations, and a bunch of other stuff is done on a Blizzard server? Is that why it was laggy as **** despite my computer blowing the system requirements out of the water?
And what does that mean for if I want to play without internet?

I swear games these days are such a load of bullshit.

no idea TPS, i honestly didn't get any real lag problems, i only managed to get my char to lvl 10 before i got distracted by other things. Doesn;t seem to be much customization regarding the skills, it is more like you get them all, but you only have 6 buttons in which to place them in, also they are divided into different categories(at least for the Witch Doctor it is dunno about the other classes), so if you get two very neat abilities but they are the same category(like the witch doctors Exploding Frog jar, or Flaming bat swarm) you can only use 1 at a time(and changing the skills on the fly is basically impossible).

Honestly don't know why they did it that way, more than enough keys on a keyboard(or some mice) for abilities.

Can you say console port?

I know nothing about diablo even I know this comment is noob city

are you sure you guys aren’t missing something in the options that allows you to put abilities wherever you want?

i checked and i didn't see an option like that anywhere(totally possible that i missed it), if i did then my problems concerning the abilities is moot.

i'd be interested to see how a game like diablo would do on a console...

What, in D2 you could expend your stat points however you wanted and in D3 you can't? That's a fairly objective fact.



D3 is PC and Blizzard are thinking about maybe porting it. That's all. It's not a port.

from reading the forums there’s something in the options that frees up the ability placement, however I am unsure whether this relates to the problem at hand or not. with all their emphasis on customisation in D3 I would be surprised if they left such a restriction in.

the point being that (apparently, I only ever watched D2 be played) it was merely the illusion of choice in D2, everyone min-maxed the points in exactly the same way (per hero) so there was really only a handful of viable ways to build the characters via stats.

Blizzard removed any type of stat placement when they decided to redo the whole system, essentially you level up and just unlock abilities.

@PKC- i must have missed that option then.

Maxed, possibly, but in the intervening time, you could and did expend them, for example, to make up for deficiencies in your existing skillset.

More relevantly, there might be a fixed number of super-optimal builds, but I don't know or care about them. The build I use on my own character is for fun.

it’s called “elective mode” and should be enabled. like I said though I am unsure whether this fixes the issue in question.

come on dead, nobody believes you. we all use our stats to make our character the most powerful they can be! anyway, I am merely paraphrasing the responses from blizzard for why they abandoned the skill points. i don’t really have an opinion

I know, I was saying that they used a simplistic control setup to make a console port feasible.

Heard some chit chat about making D3 on the consoles in the future. So it is possible.

Also...

You don't. It was confirmed AGES ago you have to be online for D3, unless things have changed snce then.

Diablo I was also on playstation :3

1) Turn on Advanced Tooltips.

2) Enable Elective Mode.

These two options will improve the game drastically. It may still not be good enough, but try it.

Also, signature spells as a wizard do a lot of damage. I played one. The main thing is you have to upgrade your weapon, it's pretty unintuitive but spell damage is keyed off of weapon damage.

That's what elective mode does. It removes the bullshit of only allowing one skill of each category, you can just use all defensive spells if you feel like it.

ah, i guess i didn't understand what it meant by that then lol.

i can't play the beta anymore sadly cause i was only part of the free weekend, and i have yet to pre-order the game, but thanks that will improve the chances of my getting the game lol.

the only other thing is does it allow the use of more than a max of 6 spells?(mouse1-2 and then keyboard 1-4).

like i said i really didn't spend too much time playing around with it, just kinda admiring the artwork and whatnot(which i like, its a nice touch)

I'm glad to hear that it is looking like a disappointment. I hope it fails horribly for trying to keep a 15 year old formula!

For a moment, I thought you were talking about Starcraft. XP

Funny how my statement comes off as ambiguous when it comes to Blizzard games, isnt it?