I think I’m finished with all the beta play. Had the barb and sorc to level 25 and the others to level 20. I then took sorc to the end of the story available and also cleared the level 25+ stronghold (which strangely didn’t have any big reward that I could see).
The sorc was definitely the most enjoyable to play, with chain lightning and hydras, although the necro was a close second. Rogue was solidly in the middle with the druid and barb finishing it up. If they don’t change much between now and release in terms of balance, I’m probably going to run the sorc or necro at launch just so I can really enjoy the gameplay and not get too frustrated with it.
I feel I almost got my money’s worth from D4 just playing this beta. This was exactly what I was expecting and it didn’t disappoint. Since I have the ultimate edition, I’ll be watching for all those extra cosmetics to come along.
Speaking of cosmetics, I had one to apply to my horse, a shield, which suggests you’ll be able to dress up your mount and advance their look somewhat. With all the transporters around, though, what exactly is the point of mounts? Just for style?
Never did find out how you can delete characters from their slots. [Edit] Yeah, I did just a little bit down this page. I mean, it’s right there in the screenshot, right? [/Edit] I would guess this is going to be functionality added at release, but that’s why I have multiples of the same character (my druid) still hanging out.
I am very eager for June to arrive. I will be playing this like no other game exists for a while.
I think the Sorcerer will definitely be easier to play Hardcore with than the Necro. There’s not only dodge, but also the teleport to get you out of trouble. With the Necro, I’m mostly just standing around casting stuff and so when I suddenly get attention, I’m not used to dodging much either, so my immortal character in the beta did die, and pretty quickly.
I will probably do the same, the defensive mechanics in D series are very binary (unlike PoE for example, which has actual mitigation instead of relying on invuln) so it really doesn’t matter much which class you play. I’d have preferred to play a barb or a druid but if their beta state is any indication I would rather revisit them in S2 when class balancing will hopefully be addressed.
Still not a complete fan of what I’ve seen though, and the likely CDR meta we will likely once again be heading in thanks to the misguided design philosophy. But overall I like the game and have no regrets about getting the ultimate edition, or whatever the one at 100€ tier was called. Diablo is still Diablo.
My druid had that necklace random from somewhere, too, and I didn’t even realize it. I had the vine as my ability in that slot so once I paid attention to what I had on the necklace I switched to the wolves and they were werewolves, as a result. They were definitely resilient; I don’t believe I had to resurrect them once. The vine was pretty useless, though.
points to the “Delete Character” button on your screenshot
I made a bunch of dupes accidentally at one point too. Happens when you attempt to create a character - in which it attempts to immediately send you into the game - however, the servers are down or otherwise you receive an error and are still in the character creation screen. You try multiple times and each time it creates a new character in a slot, but never starts the game. I was able to delete the dupes though.
This doesn’t really help when you have many possible 1H sets to compare with.
It’s a real shame, as this is exactly the sort of QoL improvement that sequels are supposed to bring. D3 plays fine, I doubt D4 can improve on that much other than by being new. But if it could get rid of those little bits of friction it would be wonderful. In this case it’s not like there’s a “perfect” solution, but it seems they don’t even try.
Yep, way better. It’s amazing they put this out there so horribly unbalanced. I don’t care if they’re saying that melee overtakes casters in power later (which honestly is an issue too!) because they gave us levels 1-25. And the response to “this isn’t enjoyable” should never be “it gets better later”. Another thing I noticed with sorc is that loot was constantly dropping with +skill modifiers which encouraged me to try out new skills I wouldn’t have otherwise. Those drops were few and far between on druid, which I hope is due to extremely bad RNG given how often they dropped as a caster.
I also have some issues with their design overall - upgrades feel incremental and legendaries don’t feel “legendary”. They have a legendary power tied to them (which seems to be the same pool of powers you can unlock from dungeons) but are otherwise generic named drops. Combined this makes me less excited than I should be when yellows and oranges drop. And having to click on bushes and rocks to get specific crafting mats… no thanks. Someone I know put it best when they said it feels more like an MMO. They said it as a positive where it’s very much a negative for me.
All that said… peer pressure will probably make me pick this up at launch. If I were playing solo it’d be waiting for a sale or expansion to revamp the approach. Worked wonders for 2 (which already felt good pre-LOD) and 3!
No, spark is the basic resource builder attack and chain is a core ability in the next cluster down and to the left I think. It is a mana hog too, but man it wrecks stuff.
Leveled all character to at least 20. Barb was maybe the only “difficult” one in that I had to play a bit smarter. Enjoyed druid with both a wolves build and a lightning build. Think I enjoyed necro a bit more then sorc but not by much. Went ranged with the rogue it was ok but I may try more of a melee build at launch.
Same, I keep getting ‘out of memory’ errors. It was happening anywhere from 2 seconds to a couple of minutes with textures set to high. After changing the textures to medium, the game lasted about 15-20 minutes. This is with 32GB of system RAM and 8GB of GPU RAM.
A Google search shows other folks with the problem. I found mentions of memory leaks, and I guess there’s a resource leak somewhere, but I didn’t notice RAM usage going up over time. Not gonna keep banging my head against this one, I’ll just wait until it’s fixed.
Welp, I got my Necromancer to 25, got a golem, had some more fun, and then decided to stop. Very excited about the full version in June. This was great fun.
The only real use of spark (besides wanting to be lightning) is to pump your crit rate up so your core skill does big damage or procs another ability or passive for crits. I’m not a fan of the gathered lightning mechanic but I got it churning those out pretty well by using a few aspects and Enchantment.
When you pop your ultimate you can rapid-fire spark like a submachine gun, at least. I find even without that it’s fine for trash mobs. The only drawback with chain is it is a huge mana hog. Well, at 25; maybe later there are ways to boost mana like in D3 where my disintegrate mage can channel all day long without seeing the mana bubble even move.
I finished the story line available in the beta, and thought it was pretty decent. Final big fight was nasty; died once before figuring out the mechanics, but then it was long but ok. Fired up a Rogue to 5, through the first town, and called it quits. Looking forward to the real deal for sure.
This map is really nifty, thanks for posting it. I had heard the unique elites, but missed them crossing around the map. I dropped by and got all three really fast.
I will say I really like how the affixes can really change up the skills, sort of like the runes in D3. My whilrly Barb picked up:
My favorite thing about the Necro is that I got a legendary one handed (!) Scythe where blood mist activates corpse explosion. I didn’t have Blood Most, since I’m mostly concentrated on skeletal minions, but after getting an item like that I had to put out one point into Blood Mist.
So Blood Mist makes you invulnerable for 3 seconds, and spreads this little blood effect around you slightly. And you walk over corpses and it they all ignite, pop,pop,pop,pop, one after the other. If I time it after my minions kill a few lowbies it’s incredibly effective against Elites and bosses. Plus it’s so fun. Yeah, take my skeletal army and then watch the corpses explode. Muahahahah.
Okay, I (foolishly?) upgraded to 16GB, and this indeed lets me now select ‘Medium’ despite my GPU being way behind in VRAM. Just enough things benefit from the extra ram (incl. Anno 1800 and modded Cities Skylines) that I don’t think it is too much of a waste and extends its life just a touch further.
(I found an old Amazon gift card from ~3years ago - so I’m counting it as having found change in the couch).
You really need some of the uniques to bring out the power in the builds. I picked up a Necro unique which power was for Blood Mist to proc Corpse Explosion on all nearby corpses. Together with the Blood Mist ability to create a corpse every second, and reapers that also created corpses, that escalated some boss fights into affairs which lasted a few seconds.
