3261

I’m only talking about the whole basic attack issue. You can use however many summoning spells as you want as far as I’m concerned.

3262

So if you’re a summoner attacking instead of standing around doing nothing was never really allowed?

3263

I feel like I’m being trolled, but how about let’s use “viable” instead of “allowed”. Hitting something with your weapon as a Witch Doctor isn’t too far away from doing nothing because the class isn’t built to be a melee combatant any more than the Barbarian is built for fighting at range. The removal of the basic attack button, intentional or not, doesn’t change that. You’re obviously free to dislike it and I’m not faulting you for doing so, but what you’re asking is for a ranged/summoning class to play in a manner that it wasn’t designed for from the start.

3264

Not to dive into the middle of this, but my first thought is that since all dmg output appears to be geared entirely around the weapon(s) equipped it’s probably better than nothing. Yeah, all skills are modifiers using that weapon as the baseline, and some are heavy modifiers, but that base weapon attack could be what shaves off that last pixel or two of damage to kill a mob. I’d prefer it were there as a sort of auto-attack for all classes.

3265

Ha, to be fair that’s how I feel too. I mean, the game was clearly designed with basic attacks in mind, because the game started out with basic attacks and had them until just now, which is also reflected in not having attack skills to actually use all types of weapons in all classes. Also, as John Reynolds just pointed out all your skills are based on weapon damage to start with. So to keep using the summoner build you’ll be walking around with the biggest weapon you can find so your pets hurt more, and by the very definition of the skill your attack will do ten times as much damage as your zombie dogs’.

It also doesn’t matter if basic attacking Diablo to death as a witch doctor will be viable because basic attacking is something you do instead of standing around doing nothing because basic attacking is not allowed. Maybe no one will use basic attacks in Inferno mode, but it is pretty much unquestionable that people will find entertaining and even useful ways to use it for the majority of the game just because they like stabbing people with with their demon hunter.

3266

So my thinking is that you could theoretically adjust the system so that, for example, runes started out weak and got better as you played with them slotted. Or you could have certain skills that are automatically part of the class at a given level (the way they all are now), and others that require investment to be good at.

Either way, though, Bashiok’s argument is valid: you’ve introduced rewards for investment in a character, but in a way that interferes with character customization. What you really want is that feel that you’ve made a bunch of character choices and that you’ve created some sort of personality for your character. But here’s the thing: you have.

At each level you are making choices about which of the skills you just unlocked you are going to start playing with. It isn’t very long before you’ve carved out a significant niche for the types of skills you are emphasizing. Then you’ve started to select your equipment to complement your strategy. Now some new skills unlock and you can easily see how they fit into your scheme. Until you run across some situations where you’re having trouble, then maybe you rethink some things. If the game is hard enough, and the skills interesting enough, then there’s lots of possible tweaking to go through to develop your play-style, and refine the things that you like until they are good enough to win.

Of course, if you spend time reviewing everything that is possible and are completely familiar with the game, and know what all the skills are, does it lose a lot of appeal? I would argue that it will take quite a while for this to happen. If all the skills are really viable, there are a ton of combinations that are possible with any given class, so there’s a ton of experimentation there before anyone could really be an authority on what the right build is.

But now, here comes my complaint. Due to what I said above about you naturally developing a paradigm for selecting certain skills and making your equipment choices on that basis, most of the unlocks you get as you level will be useless. Not because the skills themselves are bad or the ones you’ve got are more powerful, but simply because that’s not the type of necro you’ve chosen to play. Yes, you could experiment with them, and maybe at some point you’ll chose to do that, but for the most part, you are going to ignore them unless you actually make an alt with the intent of playing that way from the start, or you decide to go through the effort of acquiring high-level gear to fit a different play-style because you are bored with your max-level toon.

Thus, leveling up becomes a little boring with no points to invest, no skills you care to check out, and really nothing relevant to your character occurring. Now imagine that you had 1 point to spend each level. You could put this point into a skill (active or passive), or invest it in a weapon, defense, or your class resource. Each line of investment caps at 5, and any time you can swap skills you can swap the points you’ve earned around.

So what does this do? You are still able to swap your build freely, but now you get to make a choice every time you level. Instead of your skills and stats just automatically getting better whenever you level, you get to choose how they level, so you feel like you are doing something useful when you level up.

Anyway, some system like that would be good, I think, but I think the current one isn’t as bad as people are making it out to be.

3267

Beta codes were just posted on UGO.com

GO you glorious sons of bitches!

http://www.ugo.com/games/diablo-iii-beta-codes

3268

Wow, that sucks. I can just imagine going through 100+ codes one by one and having none of them work. Shame, UGO. Shame.

3269

I tried 5 picked from random places in the list, all used. I figure that means they’re all gone. So it goes.

Horrible way to distribute them, though, for sure.

3270

I just went through and sampled of half of them, and none worked.

3271

Aww, man. I thought these were just posted, so there would be a chance of some working. Sorry guys.

3272

Not a chance. They were all gone in a couple minutes, and since it was just a list of codes, hundreds of people spent (and are no doubt still spending) their time going through that list one by one and not getting in. UGO just contributed to the amount of misery in the world.

3273

That’s like throwing open bags of rice to starving villagers. Pick up what you can!

3274

Except some of the rice is actually a bunch of rocks!

3275

So you think the Diablo III beta is a bunch of rocks to starving people? Odd.

3276

Wait, what?

Not even in hardcore did you put everything into vitality. Amazons put a ton of points into Dexterity (how else do you use that high end bow?). Sorceress builds put most points into energy (because MANA SHIELD was your vitality). Barbarians put tons of points into strength in order to wear high level armor (how else do you bring your armor rating into the ten thousand range?). Etc.

And no unique builds? Let’s take the Amazon for example. You had the Speedazons built around Strafe and the versions built around Multishot. You had the Amazons that used two handed spear builds. You had the Amazons using Javelin/shield builds that abused the hell out of that chain lightning-like ability (forgot the name, it has been a decade …).

All of these were viable in Act 5 HELL difficulty. Not in single player Act 5 hell, but in 8 player games, where the monsters had tons more health than usual. You even had Sword/Shield Amazons and these too were viable (this one required a couple uniques, which were easy enough to acquire). These builds all required proper gear, of course (in the sense of needing high defense armor or a high damage or high speed bow, etc).

Then there were the generic cookie cutter builds for Amazons based on the Windforce unique bow and that other unique Ballista (name forgotten).

All of these had variations on the theme. And the same applies to other classes. There was of course the most popular build at any one time for any one class, which is what the majority of people used. But at the time when the Whirlwind Barbarian was all the rage, for example, with that majority, the Frenzy Barbarian was not just viable, but freakishly powerful, in Act 5 Hell (more powerful than the Whirlwind one in Act 4, thanks to the presence or Iron Maiden). Just because most people didn’t go for it, doesn’t mean it did not exist or wasn’t viable.

TL;DR: don’t judge Diablo 2 based on what you saw most people do. Most people did not bother exploring 2/3 of the viable and quite powerful builds the game had to offer - they just went straight for the most common and popular cookie cutter builds. That wasn’t the fault of the game, however, but of the general population of Battle.net.

3277

I think you missed the part where he said “that wasn’t required for gear in vitality”.

3278

It’s like you not only didn’t read the thread, you didn’t even read the post you quoted.

3279

Yes, that is true. Every character i played, i found out a target armor, got stats for it and other gear i would need, then dumped everything else in to vitality.

Diablo 2 didn’t force you to play the God of the month that blizzard liked to make, but there were a number of things that just would plain not work on higher difficulties.

3280

Didn’t read the thread? What, out of all the threads and posts on the forum, I stumbled upon Shiftless Bastard’s post randomly?

Which is half your points! For an Amazon that wants a decent (forget great) damage bow, or a Barbarian that wants good armor, half their points are going to go into dexterity/strength. So even with the caveat of gearing requirements, giving the impression that all people did was pump vitality is completely disingenuous.

I did, both, and it still isn’t true. I played hardcore and softcore D2 for half a decade, and people did not do what you describe. You’re talking about the myth of what people supposedly did.

In fact people did the opposite of what you describe. Sorceresses did not put all their points in vitality, they put most of them into energy, because of Mana Shield.

And if we move on from hardcore into softcore, all the amazons, particularly the Windforce/Ballista cookie cutters, put all their points into Dexterity. They pretty much ignored vitality, because it was useless on softcore. Like I said, the idea that vitality was the only stat you pumped after gear requirements is a myth even in hardcore, and definitely was never the case in softcore.

And the point about build variety still stands.

And a great number of things that did.

The idea that only a handful of cookie cutter builds worked in D2 hell difficulty is a myth.