1721

I’ll add to this. Lvl 62 right now, playing on master. The class feels pretty strong, killing speed is satisfactory, but it all feels so shallow. I’m using punish as primary, a secondary that seems to suck the least (sweep), an attack speed passive aur…law and then 3 skills with cooldowns - judgement with crit rune, condemn with instant explosion (pretty nice synergy between these two) and heaven’s fury with large beam rune. The playstyle basically comes down to slow resource buildup then spamming a relatively low damage secondary while cycling cooldowns to keep the kill speed nice and steady. Hopefully I’m just oblivious to the awesome synergies that are hidden somewhere but so far my verdict is - underwhelming.

Build - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/crusader#acRilf!YUV!baYZZZ

edit: Just got a Blade of Prophecy, this is some awesome stuff.

1722

The class does seem like it suffers from having all of its “cool” abilities on long cooldowns. An attack I can only hit every 30 seconds isn’t really an exciting prospect in an arpg. I suppose I have one of those on my DH too, but it completely cleans the house at around 4500% weapon damage aoe. The crusader cooldowns don’t seem to have that kind of impact.

I’ve also been using sweep as my primary spender, for the exact same “suck the least” reason.

The law passive effects seem really underwhelming compared to monk mantras/barbarian shouts/pretty much any class buff, and their active abilities are pretty dinky for their incredibly long cooldowns. I’m also running the attack speed one because a) damage and b) the others seem laughable.

Also, the Righteousness passive should probably just have been how the class works by default. I wonder what percent of builds will take it. I’d expect at least 95%, but time will tell.

So, I’m killing and surviving OK, but the class seems a bit off.

1723

So people have been playing through the night? Sounds like the servers are doing alright then?

1724

So people have been playing through the night? Sounds like the servers are doing alright then?

They worked fine for me. I was already playing when the expansion was switched on. Got a message in chat about it, but wasn’t even kicked out of the game. Finished up my boss run, exited the game, and joined another QT3er’s RoS game. All very smooth. Didn’t notice any particular lag either. Two legendaries in the first hour, too!

1725

Servers worked just fine, and a nice job by Blizzaard. I ran into a bit on oddness when I tried to create my Crusader right at midnight, but logging out and back in again took care of it.

Had a blast playing the class. Still not quite sure what she’ll be when I settle on a level 60-70 build. Right now for leveling, she’s almost like a heavily armored AOE caster class…but that’s a leveling choice option to get to Act 5. Blessed Hammer with the electricity have served me pretty well on expert and hard.

1726

I was discussing this with a friend last night, but what they need to do is add back the concept of jewels from D2. I got an legendary ring with a gem slot. Relatively speaking (from the other stats the item has), gems at this level do not add much of anything.

1727

I’m an East Coaster, but since I don’t sleep much I started around three a.m. Even at that hour there were 18 people from the Qt3 clan still on. :D
Playing at T2 I got to 66 and to the first sub boss with my monk. Got two legendaries in that time (roughly 3 hours), yet another Flying Dragon (2H staff) and a fist weapon missing main stat and socket. At first I thought I’d fix it with the mystic, then realized may as well wait for L70 stuff. That mystic is very cool but unless I start exercising some self control is going to get me broke quick!

1728

Did they fix 2-handed weapons rolling 1-handed damage yet?

1729

Also on the plus side, the story isn’t written by a four-year-old!

Instead of all the bad guys telling you everything, your character has to actually figure things out. I guess telling your enemy all your plans in advance is something they do in Hell, but Angels aren’t as stupid.

1730

Seems like it. Once a good 2-hander dropped I couldn’t find a pair of weapons that could hold up to it, even saving the best one hander I had in case something else good dropped.

1731

Did they fix 2-handed weapons rolling 1-handed damage yet?

From my understanding, not as such. It’s just that higher level 2-handers can now drop, circumventing the issue. I think this was discussed a few pages ago.

I got an legendary ring with a gem slot. Relatively speaking (from the other stats the item has), gems at this level do not add much of anything.

They’re still not gamechangers so far, but after only an hour or so of play I’ve already dropped a couple of “marquise” quality gems that have something like 5 times the stat bonus of anything I crafted in vanilla D3. Based on that, I’m expecting that high level crafted gems will offer a pretty damn big stat bonus. Of course, level 70 weapons probably roll pretty amazing stats too.

1732

People who don’t play hardcore are weird ;P

Really the ring stuff is more boring than it is challenging, mostly because of the key farming. Boss fights are pretty fun. I guess you could also farm keys solo and then group up with others for the boss fights, but this just meant every warden kill gave us 3 chances for a ring. Two coworkers and I were able to make rings for our crusaders after two nights of farming and boss runs (maybe 2 hours each night). We were farming keys at T2 and started boss fights at T1 but eventually went up to T3 (drop rates on organs go up with difficulty). These were with characters that had been 60 for less than a week and paragon between 5 and 90.

Overall I think we were pretty lucky since we only needed 10 or 11 machines to get enough parts for a ring. I’ve heard of people needing many more boss fights to get everything together. I’ve also heard that the level 70 version of the ring, while it does require parts from 4 boss encounters instead of just 3, should be slightly less random since you can choose which bosses you want to fight instead of depending on rng. So that’s cool.

Pretty psyched about firing up the expansion tonight, I’m hearing only good things about Act V so far and adventure mode looks awesome.

1733

Feel the same way so far; was trying to determine if it was because it was new or not. I haven’t head-desked ONCE and it also seems very skippable, which is tickbox number two on my list. Story dialogue playing two words into an audio log and cancelling it out still seems silly to me, but whatever.

Most ignoble death so far: getting cooked by flame vents while fighting a surprisingly challenging elite event in the rat infested catacombs.

1734

As a casual hardcore player (i.e. mostly play hardcore characters but never finished the game with any of them) is Reaper of Souls worth it, or is the content mostly for 60+ characters? I believe I have to finish the game on hardcore to unlock Adventure mode, but what about the Nephalem Rifts and bounties? Are those features only available in adventure mode? Is there anything that the game adds for lower level characters aside from a new class?

1735

Most of the other stuff was echoed in the thread already, but my primary impression is that I love all the little minidungeons/events in Westmarch. I’ve seen like 7 of them already. Assuming that my game isn’t bugged to give me all of them for some reason, this was a major plus for me.

1736

delirium, rifts and bounties are in adventure mode, so you’d have to finish the story once and then it is unlocked for all of your characters. At that point you could even create new level 1 characters and go right to adventure mode for leveling. If you haven’t played since the 2.0 patch then there are definitely improvements for lower levels. Loot is more useful, difficulty settings are less restrictive, legendaries do cool new stuff and there are a lot more options for skill builds now.

1737

So I have to finish the game on hardcore to get adventure mode for my hardcore characters? Or can I do it with one of my normal mode characters? It’s kind of annoying that they require you to finish the game first to get all of these extra features. I’m not playing Diablo for some sense of completion, I just want to enjoy the game at my own pace.

I’ve been playing 2.0 for a few weeks and I totally love it, so that’s why I’m wondering if it’s even worth dropping money for an expansion where most of the content is going to be locked for the forseeable future.

1738

The former. Hardcore is separate from normal in all aspects.

1739

I actually reset my Barb’s story progress so I have to slog through act 3, but I did get to level 62 or 63 and I’m liking his new Avalanche skill so it’s not all bad!

Did the difficulty bonuses change with the release of the expansion yesterday? I can’t tell. But what I could tell was that for powering through Act 3 there was no reason not to bump it down from Master to Expert and then Hard. I get less experience per monster, sure, but I defeat monsters so much more quickly that I’m gaining experience nearly as quickly.

There’s no difference in loot between those difficulties (other than Torment), right?

1740

Imperial gems will only drop in Master and higher, but they are very rare in Master (and T1 for that matter). Beyond that, same loot.