Just checked out the announcement, it only costs $40 for X360 and PS3, which is the same price as the expansion pack on PC. It’s $60 for xbone and PS4, but they didn’t have the base game before. Seems pretty fair.
rei
2862
Are there any officers in the main qt3 guild approving membership? I submitted a few days ago when the 150 cap freed up but it’s still pending.
I’ll jump on after work today and get through some approvals.
There’s probably an ointment for that.
-Tom
Why can’t I get more stash tabs? I have 15+ stash tabs in PoE, plenty of room to collect various bits and pieces that may one day contribute to a particular build. And I can continue to buy as many as my heart desires.
But in D3 I am limited. Leveling multiple characters and simultaneously trying to keep interesting pieces of gear that may contribute to a build one day is near impossible.
This in turn exacerbates issues with drops rates and skill/rune selection (perceived or otherwise) because there is no room to collect things that would contribute to a build you may try, but individually would be ineffective until you collect some complimentary items. I might like to try a +lightning damage build, but am less inclined to swap a piece of gear and skills if it will limit my effectiveness until I have the other six pieces that would help.
After spending the last couple of days in PoE since the new race started, this has really hit home. I can go on farming runs and just dump 100+ items in my stash for sorting later without even coming close to filling it. No more downtime in groups as people do town runs and stand there evaluating gear because they have no room in their stash. In D3 20% of my stash space is taken up with gems and crafting mats and those non-gear unique drops.
Blizzard may even be missing out on a monetisation strategy. I don’t get it, are they worried about the additional infrastructure costs associated with allowing each player 50 stash tabs?
aeneas
2866
New patch incoming apparently
A quick skim and it looks like Monk and Crusader are being heavily buffed, and a few skills are moving away from the use of dodge – probably the closest we’ll ever get to Blizzard admitting dodge is weaker than the other primary traits for mitigation.
lokiju
2868
I love how Blizzard seems to avoid fixing hunters in any of their games. Dexterity is the weakest attribute. Dodge is broken. You should get armor without having to use a passive.
HC character death due to lag is overstated IMO. I have had about a dozen HC characters since release and none of them died due to lag.
Very good news. I still prefer the console version to be honest. Perfect timing as an anniversary gift for the wife (she loves Diablo - the game, not Satan). Unfortunately her level 60 HC wizard died last week on the 360. Good news in that we can restart together.
tryte
2870
100% agree with the lack of stash space–if they consolidated the amount of space crafting mats and dyes and white items take up, that would at least free up 2 entire tabs for me right there. Having to use 3 mules is just an inconvenience and waste of time.
“Force Weapon : Increase the damage bonus of Magic Weapon to 20% damage. (No longer has a chance to Knockback)”
Force weapon is already 20% w/2% knockback chance…
I like the Archon Element changes quite a bit, so I hope that’s actually real. Hoping they address dodge mitigation as well, being required to use the same 3 passives as every other HC monk is less than ideal.
Crusaders certainly needed it. They were massively underpowered with only a couple viable builds.
Even with blizzard’s track record of not being great at balancing, i have to ask how they could release the crusader in the state it was on release? Even brief testing would have shown the class was severely underpowered and near broken.
And blizzard broke judgement - resolved rune! Yet another case of blizzard seeing everyone using something (because crusader has very few working options) and then deciding to break it. +20% crit on this ability is not even worth using at all.
YMMV. I know my non HC died due to server/network problems when blizzard was recently having problems.
Boo they nerfed vampire bats for witch doctor. Typical blizzard not understanding the reason why everyone took it over the other runes (because they weren’t worth it and most people using it were just trying to trigger fetish procs).
Clanan
2872
Wizard Doc summoning is getting a nice buff as well! Dog damage 30% instead of 12%, 10% chance for fetish sycophants, loyalty gives 30% move speed increase.
Fierce loyalty is still probably not good. If it worked in combat, i could see it being useful, but otherwise the speed boost is useless and i don’t think the +1 zombie dog is worth a passive personally.
Spect
2874
Crusader got a complete overhaul to be more powerful.
Barbarian, Witch Hunter, and Demon Hunter all received power-ups for when they are low on fury/mana/hatred.
Wizard got nerfed.
Monk did not change at all.
30% Speed boost (even non-combat only) is a pretty big deal for bounty runs. Generally, a WH doesn’t move much (compared to other classes) in combat. Admittedly, it’s going to require trying out to see how picky the game is on engaging combat when you try to skirt groups of whites.
I for one welcome our new Crusader Overlords.
Lots of interesting changes there. No more movespeed reduction on Heavenly Strength (woot!) Two potential “get out of jail free” cards for us HC types, though I’ll be curious to see how often the “Indestructible” passive gets used. I guess you’d use it if you were sticking with Rally for the decreased cooldowns? Otherwise I suspect most folks will just switch to Prophet.
A little strange to see Fist of the Heavens get reduced while Blessed Shield gets buffed. I was under the impression more people were using the latter than the former. Towering Shield is now a viable passive if you’re a shield chucker or are using the Punish/Bash combo.
The Judgement/Resolved nerf… Maybe a bit too harsh, but 80% was definitely too high. Probably hurts the solo player more than groups.
Some nice changes there, but none for my favorite class, the Demon Hunter, who unfortunately is constrained to two endgame builds, one of which requires quite a few specific very rare legendaries and the other which requires all very rare specific legendaries. Shame.
Also no fix for the monk having no way to AE an entire room, or for monk resource generation at lower gear levels.
I see no reason why the Crusader should have to spend a passive slot to use 2H weapons. Just build that stuff into the class, man.
Hopefully we start seeing some sort of changing community bonus active a large proportion of the time.
It’s a decent patch. Not enough, but a nice start.
rei
2879
I just want my Gibbering Gemstone to drop, dammit.
I think the patch note explanation is consistent with the change, which seems reasonable:
•Fist of the Heavens and Blessed Shield both fill a similar role of being ranged multi target skills. In order to provide better differentiation we are adjusting Fist of the Heavens to be better at damaging a single target, with the area damage component being a peripheral bonus. To this end the damage of the primary strike of Fist of the Heavens has been increased, while the damage of the secondary bolts has been decreased.
Personally, I’ve been using Fist rather than Shield in my Condemned (Blade of Prophecy) build, and I’d appreciate it doing more single-target damage.
