TruckOSaurus said:
First of all, what did you think of the beta? Also, from what I gathered skills are unlocked automatically as you level up and you don't put in points like in Diablo II, does that mean that once all skills are unlocked you can create whatever build you want? |
Beta is pretty rad. From what I gather it's about 1/3rd of Act 1. A normal run through will have you up to about level 10.
What I really like about the map is that every game it changes, by that I mean the area maps (not dungeons) remain the same, but the things inside it change. Some games you will find the den of the fallen, other times, there will be other areas you find. For instance, in the crypt portion, there are three crypts, only one leads to what you want but the other two have good grinding stuff in it. One of them in particular is one of two things "the lady's bones" or "jar of souls". It's in this way that the game changes everytime.
So, you run around, drop rate is pretty good. Blues on occasion. You'll get a guaranteed rare when you kill the main boss, sometimes two, but only the first time you kill him. Subsequently, you need your magaic find pretty high before you start finding them elsewhere.
There is a blacksmith who makes magic items for you and honestly he has better items than you'll generally find anywhere else. Have a nice 2 magic bonus hat? Well, the blacksmith can make one with three!
A lot of the item metagame deals with collecting a shit ton of blues back to camp, breaking them down into base material, and crafting new items. Your inventory holds something like 30 items now, and all items take up the same amount of space give or take. No more javelin taking up a third of your inventory.
The classes are well balanced as well.
Barb is really good at getting in the thick of things and fucking everything up. Lots of explosive damage and aoe attacks, plus he can jump around and has a scorpion like lasso that stuns.
Wizard is quite good, though what confused me was that her spells do "percentage of weapon damage". At first I thought she was just weak, but then I gave her a better weapon and suddenly she was doing more damage. Not sure how I feel about that, as it's weird. Her spells are pretty good. And I'm sure with teleport she's much better, but I never got it.
Witch doctor is a powerhouse, he has a move called like soul steal or something. It's an aoe that does no damage but depending on the number of enemies inside the circle, you get a boost to your intelligence, which then affects all your damage. I think every 1pt of intelligence increases damage by 1%. Then you just use his firebat flamethrower move and you can take down enemies faster than any other character. It's unreal.
Demon Hunter was fun. Lots of quick movement buffs, lots of damage. Only thing is it's hard to find good one handed crossbows for her, so I just gave mine a shield. A lot of her moves also hit multiple foes, which is important to me. She also has a fantastic snare, probably the best one in the game. Finding a good ability fusion is hard with her though. You want to take some moves, but then find yourself weak in areas. Like, Barb has a great powerful single target right click, and a great multitarget left click. Most classes are like that. DH has a hard time with a good mix like that.
Monk is just nasty. He can zip around really quickly, does a lot of damage, avoids a lot of hits with his high dex, and is just fucking cool. He's not as strong as the barb, nor as speedy as DH or as killy as WD and Wiz, but he's a very good mix of everything, and has probably the coolest moves (like that giant bell thing).
One of the things I noticed is that it's viable to see 2 barbs or witch doctors having completely different builds at same level.
And yes, there are no more attribute points or anything like that. It will all be done through items and gems and crafting etc. Skills are unlocked via levelling and yes you can pick any build you want (there's about a 15-second delay when switching skills). There will also likely be a "skill page select" so that you can change skills on the fly.
