So for me the beta was all about testing all classes to try to find a main character for release. I got a sorc to 25, druid to 21, necro to 21, rogue to 20 and barb to 20.
While I had fun with all of them it still varied a lot aswell as the overall class balance and skill balance. Each class had a lot of skills that were completely useless or overshadowed by other stronger skills, something that I really hope gets fixed till release date.
The class imbalance was also crazy, I mean everyone who played a bard/druid and necro saw the difference. I also think that a big part of it was due to the fact that barbs and druids class mechanic wasn't available in the beta and I really really hope the it all evens out at max lvl. Personally I don't mind if some of the classes have a better or worse leveling experience as long as it evens out at max lvl.
In terms of fun I can't really put them in any order yet because they all played very different and were fun in their own way.
Sorc was fun because I had the feeling that any playstyle was viable and strong and skills very extremely flashy and aesthetically pleasing. Played pure ice, pure lightning, pure fire, and mixed. Everything was fun but the two hydras mixed playstlye was the best for me. Sorc was also the only one I fought the worldboss with and the fight against him as a sorc was a lot of fun and I felt like I've contributed a lot (we still didn't kill him because the timer ran out at around 1% hp due to some lvl 15s joining the fight)
The only con for me is that I don't like the style of sorcs armors, imo they are the weakest in that regard.
Rogue was also very fun because of the same reasons. I tried range builds, melee builds and mixed with traps and every playstyle was a lot of fun and very strong with some huge numbers.
Probably the most fun for me . Also aesthetically very pleasing armorwise but as a con, the skills didn't look flashy.
Necro was probably the strongest, most broken class I've every played. Tried a lot of builds and while there were a lot of strong options I thought that it wasn't worth to sacrifice the pets and therefore I felt forced to play a pet build. This wouldn't be a bad thing if the pets would at least look good BUT unfortunately the pets look like assets from D3, blue cartoony skellies, disgusting. If this wont get changed I can at least exclude necro from my potential main list but to be honest I'll probably still exclude him just because of the fast that at release almost everyone will play necro because op=fun to most people.
As expected barb was very weak at the start but grew stronger and stronger the higher I got and the better equip I got. Problem was build variety. For me there was only one build (bleed + thorns) that was strong. He had so many useless and/or unfun skills and fury generation was very slow very I was constantly out of fury even if skilled for more fury generation. Aesthetically pleasing armors and skills looked and felt quite good with just the right amount of ooompf that you'd expect from a barbarian killing machine. Spin to win was actually spin to tickle or spin to lose...
Druid, oh druid. Before the beta I was 100% sure that this is going to be my main. After the beta? Well, I'm not so sure anymore. I hope Blizzard will give us a deeper sneak peak of druids class mechanic and that it will be good enough to bring him on par with the others. Skills looked good but there very soooo so many understunded and underwhelming skills it wasn't even funny. He felt very slow and most abilities were extremely weak. He also had the weakest basic attack and the slowest class resource generation. Animal companions were completely useless. The only halfway viable build I could come up with were the two shapeshifting builds. They were also very aesthetically pleasing and sounded and felt good, just the number didn't at all. Bear basic attack was the most depressing attack I have every used in any ARPG.
Hope this gives a little insight to the classes.
So far I can only exclude necro and barb for me with sorc and rogue on top but waiting for what they'll do with the druid because I still got hope for this one. I'd maybe even risk playing him still and hoping he evens out at max lvl.
From reading the comments I don't think many of you saw the Mist + corpse explosion necro build in action. It's what I played and built properly you have zero weaknesses and it was crazy OP. Nothing else from any class (played them all to 20+) came even close to this.
This one shows it n action at the beginning and then the rest of the video explains how the build is put together:
The build is dependent on at least one legendary item that makes mist explode corpses and reset its own cooldown.
Dependence on a specific drop is always a negative especially since the live game is not likely to give you access to legendary items in low levels at the same rate we had in beta, but that's the only minus for this build.
You can't expect that you'll be able to play this way when the game goes live but if you get lucky and you can, you will be the god of lowbies.
Plentiful corpses + immunity + high damage permanently? What's not to like?
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
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Dependence on a specific drop is always a negative especially since the live game is not likely to give you access to legendary items in low levels at the same rate we had in beta, but that's the only minus for this build.
Exactly and while for necro this is just a "well then I won't clear maps in 3 seconds but instead 5 seconds *shrug*" for druid it could be a real problem.
I'm very curious how they gonna handle those problems or if it's really just a "wait till max lvl, from then on everything will be fine"-thing.
Personally I don't mind a class to be weak(er) while leveling as long as it's fine and balanced at max lvl.
Dependence on a specific drop is always a negative especially since the live game is not likely to give you access to legendary items in low levels at the same rate we had in beta, but that's the only minus for this build.
Exactly and while for necro this is just a "well then I won't clear maps in 3 seconds but instead 5 seconds *shrug*" for druid it could be a real problem.
I'm very curious how they gonna handle those problems or if it's really just a "wait till max lvl, from then on everything will be fine"-thing.
Personally I don't mind a class to be weak(er) while leveling as long as it's fine and balanced at max lvl.
From my experience, Blizzard in Diablo games balances for end-game and does tweaks to the leveling experience usually only when something is just grossly underperforming. I don't think they care much about balancing out temporary leveling OP.
When a couple of years ago in D3 they hugely increased the base corpse explosion damage and then added several new items to make it a very good necro build at end game (especially for the no-set, LoD corpse explosion) that also made leveling a necro ridiculously OP compared to the other classes and they just left it that way.
But D3 has been around for a decade+ so who cares about 1-70 in that game? They may be more attentive to low level balancing in D4 just because it's new. We'll see.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Oh man, I played shapeshifter Druid and my gf played necro. The differences were night and day. I got legendaries that were sharing my buffs and shouts with the party she got a legendary that gave her 2 extra skeletons. Necro is freaking insane.
From reading the comments I don't think many of you saw the Mist + corpse explosion necro build in action. It's what I played and built properly you have zero weaknesses and it was crazy OP. Nothing else from any class (played them all to 20+) came even close to this.
This one shows it n action at the beginning and then the rest of the video explains how the build is put together:
The build is dependent on at least one legendary item that makes mist explode corpses and reset its own cooldown.
Dependence on a specific drop is always a negative especially since the live game is not likely to give you access to legendary items in low levels at the same rate we had in beta, but that's the only minus for this build.
You can't expect that you'll be able to play this way when the game goes live but if you get lucky and you can, you will be the god of lowbies.
Plentiful corpses + immunity + high damage permanently? What's not to like?
I did play that and it was crazy fun. But yeah, the corpse generation is easy most of the time, but not so easy against things like the world boss. Maybe there was an easy way to instantly make dozens of corpses with just the world boss as a target but I didn't see a way. I'll watch your video later on. Any corpses I spawned were instantly used for resummoning a pet since they all die really fast against the big boss.
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From reading the comments I don't think many of you saw the Mist + corpse explosion necro build in action. It's what I played and built properly you have zero weaknesses and it was crazy OP. Nothing else from any class (played them all to 20+) came even close to this.
This one shows it n action at the beginning and then the rest of the video explains how the build is put together:
The build is dependent on at least one legendary item that makes mist explode corpses and reset its own cooldown.
Dependence on a specific drop is always a negative especially since the live game is not likely to give you access to legendary items in low levels at the same rate we had in beta, but that's the only minus for this build.
You can't expect that you'll be able to play this way when the game goes live but if you get lucky and you can, you will be the god of lowbies.
Plentiful corpses + immunity + high damage permanently? What's not to like?
I did play that and it was crazy fun. But yeah, the corpse generation is easy most of the time, but not so easy against things like the world boss. Maybe there was an easy way to instantly make dozens of corpses with just the world boss as a target but I didn't see a way. I'll watch your video later on. Any corpses I spawned were instantly used for resummoning a pet since they all die really fast against the big boss.
The skellies do die very easily standing in the pools of death or not avoiding world boss one-shot mechanics.
There were a lot of people on Reddit calling for skeleton nerfs which I thought was stupid. Necros are not even a proper pet class IMO because they lack the basic functionality of being able to send in the minions or bring them back.
So you can't rely on them exclusively (Golem and Reapers) to generate corpses. The pet-independent corpse generation comes from basic attacks (Decrepify or Reap,) mist form itself (3 per cast,) and Army of the Dead which revives all dead minions and generates many more corpses on volatile skeleton explosion.
You do get more corpses when the golem and reapers are alive but you're also not without corpses when they're not. None of those corpses are generated by killing something - just chances on hit or getting hit (Golem) so isolated single targets are not really that much of a problem.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Necro is definitely the most powerful class in the open beta build. Hard to say how it will play out after the first balance adjustment. My only fear with the necromancer is Blizzard may hit it with a two handed nerf hammer shortly after launch. My #2 choice was actually the druid. I found a nice build that allowed a solid amount of spirit generation and self healing and defensive build up that let him have lots of survivability. I may main that over the necromancer just due to the fact necromancers will be the #1 choice by far at least at launch. Sorcerer was my #3. The barb and rogue feel weak. I couldn't beat that last boss on the beta on the barb. Dps was just too low with no mechanic to self heal. I just ran out of health pots. Tried multiple times with different builds. The Necro just face rolled the same boss first try.
Perhaps it was because I was sick this weekend, or because I chose rogue ( a class I will never play in the Live game) but I wasn't all that excited after the weekend was over. Mind you, I stopped at level 20.
They nailed the art direction and tone of the game. Stuff like Lillith 'inspiring' the townfolk in the chapel was awesome, as was a sidequest with a skinned guy in chains moaning with pleasure. It is gorgeous and gorgeously animated. But having said that, to me it suffered from what I call 'Gwyneth Paltrow syndrom,' very pretty to look at but completely unexciting. Muted colors, slower movement, slower combat, less enemies at once, boring harvesting, tons of blue exclamation marks for side quests, unnecessary mounts, none of it got me all giddy and wanting to keep playing.
The music is amazing and all of it is very solid, but that energetic, hard hitting combat from D3? I couldn't find it. That brilliant skill system with its modifiers and passives? I don't think Aspects, the skill tree, the paragon system, the specialisations and the gear all working together are as refined of a system. Now, mind you, this is early game and it might all come together wonderfully but in this initial glimpse? Not so much, it felt like 'everything and the kitchen sink.' I also thought the skill tree for rogue was a true abomination, very boring. Should I mention the dodge button on a forced timer? The upgrading of potions through harvesting to 'heal more?' The PC UI on console instead of D3s brilliant wheel interface?
I don't know, I have been with Diablo since they released the first games' demo, they are my most played games ever. I ignored everything about D4 on purpose so I could enter the Open Beta with as much of an open mind as possible but now that I am done with it I don't feel the need to join the game day 1 at all, let alone pre purchase. I just hope I feel this way because I was sick, D4 was supposed to be my next 1000+ hour game, I didn't even make it past level 20 this weekend...
/Cheers, Lahnmir
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Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
So for me the beta was all about testing all classes to try to find a main character for release. I got a sorc to 25, druid to 21, necro to 21, rogue to 20 and barb to 20.
While I had fun with all of them it still varied a lot aswell as the overall class balance and skill balance. Each class had a lot of skills that were completely useless or overshadowed by other stronger skills, something that I really hope gets fixed till release date.
The class imbalance was also crazy, I mean everyone who played a bard/druid and necro saw the difference. I also think that a big part of it was due to the fact that barbs and druids class mechanic wasn't available in the beta and I really really hope the it all evens out at max lvl. Personally I don't mind if some of the classes have a better or worse leveling experience as long as it evens out at max lvl.
In terms of fun I can't really put them in any order yet because they all played very different and were fun in their own way.
Sorc was fun because I had the feeling that any playstyle was viable and strong and skills very extremely flashy and aesthetically pleasing. Played pure ice, pure lightning, pure fire, and mixed. Everything was fun but the two hydras mixed playstlye was the best for me. Sorc was also the only one I fought the worldboss with and the fight against him as a sorc was a lot of fun and I felt like I've contributed a lot (we still didn't kill him because the timer ran out at around 1% hp due to some lvl 15s joining the fight)
The only con for me is that I don't like the style of sorcs armors, imo they are the weakest in that regard.
Rogue was also very fun because of the same reasons. I tried range builds, melee builds and mixed with traps and every playstyle was a lot of fun and very strong with some huge numbers.
Probably the most fun for me . Also aesthetically very pleasing armorwise but as a con, the skills didn't look flashy.
Necro was probably the strongest, most broken class I've every played. Tried a lot of builds and while there were a lot of strong options I thought that it wasn't worth to sacrifice the pets and therefore I felt forced to play a pet build. This wouldn't be a bad thing if the pets would at least look good BUT unfortunately the pets look like assets from D3, blue cartoony skellies, disgusting. If this wont get changed I can at least exclude necro from my potential main list but to be honest I'll probably still exclude him just because of the fast that at release almost everyone will play necro because op=fun to most people.
As expected barb was very weak at the start but grew stronger and stronger the higher I got and the better equip I got. Problem was build variety. For me there was only one build (bleed + thorns) that was strong. He had so many useless and/or unfun skills and fury generation was very slow very I was constantly out of fury even if skilled for more fury generation. Aesthetically pleasing armors and skills looked and felt quite good with just the right amount of ooompf that you'd expect from a barbarian killing machine. Spin to win was actually spin to tickle or spin to lose...
Druid, oh druid. Before the beta I was 100% sure that this is going to be my main. After the beta? Well, I'm not so sure anymore. I hope Blizzard will give us a deeper sneak peak of druids class mechanic and that it will be good enough to bring him on par with the others. Skills looked good but there very soooo so many understunded and underwhelming skills it wasn't even funny. He felt very slow and most abilities were extremely weak. He also had the weakest basic attack and the slowest class resource generation. Animal companions were completely useless. The only halfway viable build I could come up with were the two shapeshifting builds. They were also very aesthetically pleasing and sounded and felt good, just the number didn't at all. Bear basic attack was the most depressing attack I have every used in any ARPG.
Hope this gives a little insight to the classes.
So far I can only exclude necro and barb for me with sorc and rogue on top but waiting for what they'll do with the druid because I still got hope for this one. I'd maybe even risk playing him still and hoping he evens out at max lvl.
So to your druid comment the best spirit generator was storm strike with the enhancement that applies vulnerability. I think a lot of people missed the fact this ability also applies a 25% damage reduction to yourself. It's pretty huge and makes you pretty tanky. AOE ability with the highest spirit generation that buffs your defense considerably while applying vulnerability at a 50% per attack rate. Yes, please.
Combine this with shred for your spirit spender. Take the enhancement that applies the dot and increases the AOE area. Now you apply huge DPS to everything you just made vulnerable with storm strike.
For defense take Blood Howl which heals you and take the enhancement which gives spirit. Now you have a short cool down which gives you extra healing potions basically and spirit to keep you topped off for shred.
Take the wolves for companions for no reason other than two wolves and a werewolf rampaging the country side looks cool. They do act as mini tanks to distract some of the enemies off you so you're not taking 100% of the damage while soloing. If you play with friends you could drop this skill.
I found the above very powerful and got through the whole beta content with it without issue. It's a solid build. I'll probably main it just because it's not a Necro
I made a Necro blood tank build with Hemorrhage, Blood Surge, Blood Mist, and Iron Maiden. All focused on fortify and self heal. I was AoE spamming with Blood Surge and enhanced iron maiden gave me endless essence. If I managed to take any damage I would pop Blood Mist and start all over. No dodging required and was completely unkillable.
My answer would be none. Dont play this game at launch. Couldnt play much during closed beta (and still felt dissapointed) but in open beta played a lot and this game is disastrous needs at least another 6 months to start considering an early access.
Blizzard is no longer the same company it was and we all know it but this is a new low for them.
The game I played during open beta is a 6 at best. This is actually a mobile game. They took diablo inmortal, improved graphics and tweaked the skills.
Its true that we didnt see endgame but leveling to 25 was dreadful and boring:
-Not a single item drop felt like an acomplishment. What the hell is power level in items? item level was invented for a reason and never has been surpassed.
-The short stat ranges? You cant have a bad drop but also can have an exceptional drop.
-I traversed the same dungeon map 2 or 3 times back and forth for nothing.
-Clear 100% of a dungeon? Are you crazy? With 200 mobs and mobs that spawn mobs that flee from you? Time sinking.
-"Dungeons" consisting of 2-3 rooms.
-Whats the points of cellars??? many didnt have elites nor chests.
-Core skills give less changes in stats/damage than the range (which is already quite limited) in a single item piece. I guess this way they control "overpower" because nothing gives a sh.. of a boost.
-Only 4 skills mapped. Im not asking for 40 like some MMO but holy... Diablo 1 had 4 skill hotbar already in 1996.
-Skill tree is not only ugly, unmanageable and unnecessarily large. Is a bad copy from D2 skill tree where each point only gave 3-4-5% increases, that grew exponentially at high levels, but you could use 20 points. Here you can use 5 max (some only accept 3 and some only give "procs") so there is no that sense of going deep into something focusing.
-World bosses are a mess. You get teamed with people that are afk or dont know what the hell they are doing.
-Melee feels like a joke. Chasing mobs like a Benny Hill show and getting hit by all area effects.
Closed Open Beta yesterday. Jumped on D3 (D3!!! which is horrendous) and felt like a palate cleanser.
Im heartbroken. This isnt Diablo, this isnt even a AA game. RIP Diablo.
From reading the comments I don't think many of you saw the Mist + corpse explosion necro build in action. It's what I played and built properly you have zero weaknesses and it was crazy OP. Nothing else from any class (played them all to 20+) came even close to this.
This one shows it n action at the beginning and then the rest of the video explains how the build is put together:
The build is dependent on at least one legendary item that makes mist explode corpses and reset its own cooldown.
Dependence on a specific drop is always a negative especially since the live game is not likely to give you access to legendary items in low levels at the same rate we had in beta, but that's the only minus for this build.
You can't expect that you'll be able to play this way when the game goes live but if you get lucky and you can, you will be the god of lowbies.
Plentiful corpses + immunity + high damage permanently? What's not to like?
This is what worries me the most with this game.
The fact that you probably won't see any rare or legendary drops until much higher levels when the game goes live, will mean that the Druid for example will be a total pain to level. While it was the class I was looking forward to the most.
The only reason my Druid became a bit more managable and fun to play during Open Beta last weekend, was when I had a few rares and two legendaries slotted.
In contrast, when I rolled a Necromancer I was just steamrolling through the content. I could literally just unequip all his armor, run around naked with a Scyte and skeletal warrior pets and mow everything down with ease.
So I really hope they address this before launch and buff the weaker classes a bit and make more of their skills actually viable. Though I fear the worst due to limited time left until launch.
The burning question though is how many of you enjoyed it enough or think it has enough potential to buy it at release?
What are you all playing till then?
D3, POE etc?
Funny enough I logging into my POE account and saw last time I had logged in was like 2013...lol
IDK what I'll play for the next 10 weeks. It has kind of spoiled other ARPGs for me.
I was already pretty well done with this D3 season having done everything in both regular and HC.
I tried playing a bit of Last Epoch but I'm just not feeling it.
I just want to play more D4. The beta just whetted my appetite.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
I have not played the beta, but my opinion applies to any game with class choices.
The class you chose should be based on what you like to play, not because such class is better than some other ones. It's like why are you playing the game then, if not to have fun?
Play what you think will be fun. It is the dev's responsibility to create balance between them; especially in a co-op game. I like playing mages, though not all mage classes I consider fun; especially, if they get too complicated to be somewhat useful.
So for me the beta was all about testing all classes to try to find a main character for release. I got a sorc to 25, druid to 21, necro to 21, rogue to 20 and barb to 20.
While I had fun with all of them it still varied a lot aswell as the overall class balance and skill balance. Each class had a lot of skills that were completely useless or overshadowed by other stronger skills, something that I really hope gets fixed till release date.
The class imbalance was also crazy, I mean everyone who played a bard/druid and necro saw the difference. I also think that a big part of it was due to the fact that barbs and druids class mechanic wasn't available in the beta and I really really hope the it all evens out at max lvl. Personally I don't mind if some of the classes have a better or worse leveling experience as long as it evens out at max lvl.
In terms of fun I can't really put them in any order yet because they all played very different and were fun in their own way.
Sorc was fun because I had the feeling that any playstyle was viable and strong and skills very extremely flashy and aesthetically pleasing. Played pure ice, pure lightning, pure fire, and mixed. Everything was fun but the two hydras mixed playstlye was the best for me. Sorc was also the only one I fought the worldboss with and the fight against him as a sorc was a lot of fun and I felt like I've contributed a lot (we still didn't kill him because the timer ran out at around 1% hp due to some lvl 15s joining the fight)
The only con for me is that I don't like the style of sorcs armors, imo they are the weakest in that regard.
Rogue was also very fun because of the same reasons. I tried range builds, melee builds and mixed with traps and every playstyle was a lot of fun and very strong with some huge numbers.
Probably the most fun for me . Also aesthetically very pleasing armorwise but as a con, the skills didn't look flashy.
Necro was probably the strongest, most broken class I've every played. Tried a lot of builds and while there were a lot of strong options I thought that it wasn't worth to sacrifice the pets and therefore I felt forced to play a pet build. This wouldn't be a bad thing if the pets would at least look good BUT unfortunately the pets look like assets from D3, blue cartoony skellies, disgusting. If this wont get changed I can at least exclude necro from my potential main list but to be honest I'll probably still exclude him just because of the fast that at release almost everyone will play necro because op=fun to most people.
As expected barb was very weak at the start but grew stronger and stronger the higher I got and the better equip I got. Problem was build variety. For me there was only one build (bleed + thorns) that was strong. He had so many useless and/or unfun skills and fury generation was very slow very I was constantly out of fury even if skilled for more fury generation. Aesthetically pleasing armors and skills looked and felt quite good with just the right amount of ooompf that you'd expect from a barbarian killing machine. Spin to win was actually spin to tickle or spin to lose...
Druid, oh druid. Before the beta I was 100% sure that this is going to be my main. After the beta? Well, I'm not so sure anymore. I hope Blizzard will give us a deeper sneak peak of druids class mechanic and that it will be good enough to bring him on par with the others. Skills looked good but there very soooo so many understunded and underwhelming skills it wasn't even funny. He felt very slow and most abilities were extremely weak. He also had the weakest basic attack and the slowest class resource generation. Animal companions were completely useless. The only halfway viable build I could come up with were the two shapeshifting builds. They were also very aesthetically pleasing and sounded and felt good, just the number didn't at all. Bear basic attack was the most depressing attack I have every used in any ARPG.
Hope this gives a little insight to the classes.
So far I can only exclude necro and barb for me with sorc and rogue on top but waiting for what they'll do with the druid because I still got hope for this one. I'd maybe even risk playing him still and hoping he evens out at max lvl.
So to your druid comment the best spirit generator was storm strike with the enhancement that applies vulnerability. I think a lot of people missed the fact this ability also applies a 25% damage reduction to yourself. It's pretty huge and makes you pretty tanky. AOE ability with the highest spirit generation that buffs your defense considerably while applying vulnerability at a 50% per attack rate. Yes, please.
Combine this with shred for your spirit spender. Take the enhancement that applies the dot and increases the AOE area. Now you apply huge DPS to everything you just made vulnerable with storm strike.
For defense take Blood Howl which heals you and take the enhancement which gives spirit. Now you have a short cool down which gives you extra healing potions basically and spirit to keep you topped off for shred.
Take the wolves for companions for no reason other than two wolves and a werewolf rampaging the country side looks cool. They do act as mini tanks to distract some of the enemies off you so you're not taking 100% of the damage while soloing. If you play with friends you could drop this skill.
I found the above very powerful and got through the whole beta content with it without issue. It's a solid build. I'll probably main it just because it's not a Necro
Damn I should have proofread my text, it hurts my eyes! xD
Sounds like a well thought out build. I actually tried all skills you mentioned and was aware of stormstrike being the best basic attack with it's damage reduction und vul. debuff. Unfortunately while testing druid I didn't mix and match my skills the same way I did it with the other classes. I just went full this full that. Nice to know that a mixed build worked well! This build would be even better with the legendary that turns your wolves into werewolves. Yeah and I totally dig that last sentence!
I've tested necro as a solo build aswell. Went all blood skills + corpse explosion. I got so much temporay shields/health while still doing decent damage. Felt like I was unkillable. Definitely also a fun way to play necro.
It's great to hear that you had a positive experience playing as a solo Necromancer with a focus on blood skills and corpse explosion. The combination of temporary shields and health along with decent damage output made you feel unkillable, which is always a satisfying feeling in any game. It's good to try out different playstyles and have fun with them!
These adbots are getting better, this looks like one using some sort of chat AI to me!
Perhaps it was because I was sick this weekend, or because I chose rogue ( a class I will never play in the Live game) but I wasn't all that excited after the weekend was over. Mind you, I stopped at level 20....
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I have been waiting for you to post, this is not what I wanted to hear, the only 'con' which I would consider a 'plus' you mentioned is the muted colours, I think games are becoming too dayglow these days.
I never play before launch so will wait for the reviews, hopefully they start it on the track to a more cohesive game by then.
Perhaps it was because I was sick this weekend, or because I chose rogue ( a class I will never play in the Live game) but I wasn't all that excited after the weekend was over. Mind you, I stopped at level 20....
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I have been waiting for you to post, this is not what I wanted to hear, the only 'con' which I would consider a 'plus' you mentioned is the muted colours, I think games are becoming too dayglow these days.
I never play before launch so will wait for the reviews, hopefully they start it on the track to a more cohesive game by then.
I'd still take it with a grain of salt because I know how much of an impact being sick can have on the perception of a game/movie/series/book I consume while being sick. Don't want to discredit Iahnmirs opinion, just wanna say that it's always best to test for yourself, optimally in good or at least neutral mood. That being said, just caught a cold yesterday :-/
Perhaps it was because I was sick this weekend, or because I chose rogue ( a class I will never play in the Live game) but I wasn't all that excited after the weekend was over. Mind you, I stopped at level 20....
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I have been waiting for you to post, this is not what I wanted to hear, the only 'con' which I would consider a 'plus' you mentioned is the muted colours, I think games are becoming too dayglow these days.
I never play before launch so will wait for the reviews, hopefully they start it on the track to a more cohesive game by then.
I would advise to wait. End game is gonna be the most important factor and is still a total incognita.
Open beta leveling for me was boring and the game felt very lacking in gameplay and internal mechanics. Felt like the only polished aspect was the Story and Graphics.
I doubt the game is gonna improve hugely in those aspects before June so its gonna be totally dependant on the endgame and when they dont show or let people experience is not a great sign.
This game can be a good game (I dont expect this to be anywere near great in the first 12 moths even with some miracle and lots of patches) or a total flop at its current state.
After trying the beta, I was dismayed at how much D4 reeked of Diablo Immortal design, not feeling the phone game/MMO elements of it all. Also no Paladin/Crusader or Monk classes at launch. First Diablo game I am going pass on from the start.
Perhaps it was because I was sick this weekend, or because I chose rogue ( a class I will never play in the Live game) but I wasn't all that excited after the weekend was over. Mind you, I stopped at level 20....
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I have been waiting for you to post, this is not what I wanted to hear, the only 'con' which I would consider a 'plus' you mentioned is the muted colours, I think games are becoming too dayglow these days.
I never play before launch so will wait for the reviews, hopefully they start it on the track to a more cohesive game by then.
I'd still take it with a grain of salt because I know how much of an impact being sick can have on the perception of a game/movie/series/book I consume while being sick. Don't want to discredit Iahnmirs opinion, just wanna say that it's always best to test for yourself, optimally in good or at least neutral mood. That being said, just caught a cold yesterday :-/
You are absolutely right and not discrediting anything, a proper fever can wreak havoc on ones perception of anything, especially art related.
I will be playing this and really hope I will connect with the game a bit more when it comes to flow and pace. But all the additions like mounts, harvesting, dodge on timer, tons of side quests etc.? None of it feels like it is truly adding anything, it is just bloat distracting from the moment to moment gameplay to me. They, completely understandable, went bigger and wider in scope, I am afraid it is just noise interfering with my enjoyment. And I really, really, hope I am wrong, its f-ing Diablo after all.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Comments
While I had fun with all of them it still varied a lot aswell as the overall class balance and skill balance. Each class had a lot of skills that were completely useless or overshadowed by other stronger skills, something that I really hope gets fixed till release date.
The class imbalance was also crazy, I mean everyone who played a bard/druid and necro saw the difference. I also think that a big part of it was due to the fact that barbs and druids class mechanic wasn't available in the beta and I really really hope the it all evens out at max lvl. Personally I don't mind if some of the classes have a better or worse leveling experience as long as it evens out at max lvl.
In terms of fun I can't really put them in any order yet because they all played very different and were fun in their own way.
Sorc was fun because I had the feeling that any playstyle was viable and strong and skills very extremely flashy and aesthetically pleasing. Played pure ice, pure lightning, pure fire, and mixed. Everything was fun but the two hydras mixed playstlye was the best for me. Sorc was also the only one I fought the worldboss with and the fight against him as a sorc was a lot of fun and I felt like I've contributed a lot (we still didn't kill him because the timer ran out at around 1% hp due to some lvl 15s joining the fight)
The only con for me is that I don't like the style of sorcs armors, imo they are the weakest in that regard.
Rogue was also very fun because of the same reasons. I tried range builds, melee builds and mixed with traps and every playstyle was a lot of fun and very strong with some huge numbers.
Probably the most fun for me . Also aesthetically very pleasing armorwise but as a con, the skills didn't look flashy.
Necro was probably the strongest, most broken class I've every played. Tried a lot of builds and while there were a lot of strong options I thought that it wasn't worth to sacrifice the pets and therefore I felt forced to play a pet build. This wouldn't be a bad thing if the pets would at least look good BUT unfortunately the pets look like assets from D3, blue cartoony skellies, disgusting. If this wont get changed I can at least exclude necro from my potential main list but to be honest I'll probably still exclude him just because of the fast that at release almost everyone will play necro because op=fun to most people.
As expected barb was very weak at the start but grew stronger and stronger the higher I got and the better equip I got. Problem was build variety. For me there was only one build (bleed + thorns) that was strong. He had so many useless and/or unfun skills and fury generation was very slow very I was constantly out of fury even if skilled for more fury generation. Aesthetically pleasing armors and skills looked and felt quite good with just the right amount of ooompf that you'd expect from a barbarian killing machine. Spin to win was actually spin to tickle or spin to lose...
Druid, oh druid. Before the beta I was 100% sure that this is going to be my main. After the beta? Well, I'm not so sure anymore. I hope Blizzard will give us a deeper sneak peak of druids class mechanic and that it will be good enough to bring him on par with the others. Skills looked good but there very soooo so many understunded and underwhelming skills it wasn't even funny. He felt very slow and most abilities were extremely weak. He also had the weakest basic attack and the slowest class resource generation. Animal companions were completely useless. The only halfway viable build I could come up with were the two shapeshifting builds. They were also very aesthetically pleasing and sounded and felt good, just the number didn't at all. Bear basic attack was the most depressing attack I have every used in any ARPG.
Hope this gives a little insight to the classes.
So far I can only exclude necro and barb for me with sorc and rogue on top but waiting for what they'll do with the druid because I still got hope for this one. I'd maybe even risk playing him still and hoping he evens out at max lvl.
This one shows it n action at the beginning and then the rest of the video explains how the build is put together:
The build is dependent on at least one legendary item that makes mist explode corpses and reset its own cooldown.
Dependence on a specific drop is always a negative especially since the live game is not likely to give you access to legendary items in low levels at the same rate we had in beta, but that's the only minus for this build.
You can't expect that you'll be able to play this way when the game goes live but if you get lucky and you can, you will be the god of lowbies.
Plentiful corpses + immunity + high damage permanently? What's not to like?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Exactly and while for necro this is just a "well then I won't clear maps in 3 seconds but instead 5 seconds *shrug*" for druid it could be a real problem.
I'm very curious how they gonna handle those problems or if it's really just a "wait till max lvl, from then on everything will be fine"-thing.
Personally I don't mind a class to be weak(er) while leveling as long as it's fine and balanced at max lvl.
When a couple of years ago in D3 they hugely increased the base corpse explosion damage and then added several new items to make it a very good necro build at end game (especially for the no-set, LoD corpse explosion) that also made leveling a necro ridiculously OP compared to the other classes and they just left it that way.
But D3 has been around for a decade+ so who cares about 1-70 in that game? They may be more attentive to low level balancing in D4 just because it's new. We'll see.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
There were a lot of people on Reddit calling for skeleton nerfs which I thought was stupid. Necros are not even a proper pet class IMO because they lack the basic functionality of being able to send in the minions or bring them back.
So you can't rely on them exclusively (Golem and Reapers) to generate corpses. The pet-independent corpse generation comes from basic attacks (Decrepify or Reap,) mist form itself (3 per cast,) and Army of the Dead which revives all dead minions and generates many more corpses on volatile skeleton explosion.
You do get more corpses when the golem and reapers are alive but you're also not without corpses when they're not. None of those corpses are generated by killing something - just chances on hit or getting hit (Golem) so isolated single targets are not really that much of a problem.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
They nailed the art direction and tone of the game. Stuff like Lillith 'inspiring' the townfolk in the chapel was awesome, as was a sidequest with a skinned guy in chains moaning with pleasure. It is gorgeous and gorgeously animated. But having said that, to me it suffered from what I call 'Gwyneth Paltrow syndrom,' very pretty to look at but completely unexciting. Muted colors, slower movement, slower combat, less enemies at once, boring harvesting, tons of blue exclamation marks for side quests, unnecessary mounts, none of it got me all giddy and wanting to keep playing.
The music is amazing and all of it is very solid, but that energetic, hard hitting combat from D3? I couldn't find it. That brilliant skill system with its modifiers and passives? I don't think Aspects, the skill tree, the paragon system, the specialisations and the gear all working together are as refined of a system. Now, mind you, this is early game and it might all come together wonderfully but in this initial glimpse? Not so much, it felt like 'everything and the kitchen sink.' I also thought the skill tree for rogue was a true abomination, very boring. Should I mention the dodge button on a forced timer? The upgrading of potions through harvesting to 'heal more?' The PC UI on console instead of D3s brilliant wheel interface?
I don't know, I have been with Diablo since they released the first games' demo, they are my most played games ever. I ignored everything about D4 on purpose so I could enter the Open Beta with as much of an open mind as possible but now that I am done with it I don't feel the need to join the game day 1 at all, let alone pre purchase. I just hope I feel this way because I was sick, D4 was supposed to be my next 1000+ hour game, I didn't even make it past level 20 this weekend...
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Combine this with shred for your spirit spender. Take the enhancement that applies the dot and increases the AOE area. Now you apply huge DPS to everything you just made vulnerable with storm strike.
For defense take Blood Howl which heals you and take the enhancement which gives spirit. Now you have a short cool down which gives you extra healing potions basically and spirit to keep you topped off for shred.
Take the wolves for companions for no reason other than two wolves and a werewolf rampaging the country side looks cool. They do act as mini tanks to distract some of the enemies off you so you're not taking 100% of the damage while soloing. If you play with friends you could drop this skill.
I found the above very powerful and got through the whole beta content with it without issue. It's a solid build. I'll probably main it just because it's not a Necro
Blizzard is no longer the same company it was and we all know it but this is a new low for them.
The game I played during open beta is a 6 at best. This is actually a mobile game. They took diablo inmortal, improved graphics and tweaked the skills.
Its true that we didnt see endgame but leveling to 25 was dreadful and boring:
-Not a single item drop felt like an acomplishment. What the hell is power level in items? item level was invented for a reason and never has been surpassed.
-The short stat ranges? You cant have a bad drop but also can have an exceptional drop.
-I traversed the same dungeon map 2 or 3 times back and forth for nothing.
-Clear 100% of a dungeon? Are you crazy? With 200 mobs and mobs that spawn mobs that flee from you? Time sinking.
-"Dungeons" consisting of 2-3 rooms.
-Whats the points of cellars??? many didnt have elites nor chests.
-Core skills give less changes in stats/damage than the range (which is already quite limited) in a single item piece. I guess this way they control "overpower" because nothing gives a sh.. of a boost.
-Only 4 skills mapped. Im not asking for 40 like some MMO but holy... Diablo 1 had 4 skill hotbar already in 1996.
-Skill tree is not only ugly, unmanageable and unnecessarily large. Is a bad copy from D2 skill tree where each point only gave 3-4-5% increases, that grew exponentially at high levels, but you could use 20 points. Here you can use 5 max (some only accept 3 and some only give "procs") so there is no that sense of going deep into something focusing.
-World bosses are a mess. You get teamed with people that are afk or dont know what the hell they are doing.
-Melee feels like a joke. Chasing mobs like a Benny Hill show and getting hit by all area effects.
Closed Open Beta yesterday. Jumped on D3 (D3!!! which is horrendous) and felt like a palate cleanser.
Im heartbroken. This isnt Diablo, this isnt even a AA game. RIP Diablo.
The fact that you probably won't see any rare or legendary drops until much higher levels when the game goes live, will mean that the Druid for example will be a total pain to level. While it was the class I was looking forward to the most.
The only reason my Druid became a bit more managable and fun to play during Open Beta last weekend, was when I had a few rares and two legendaries slotted.
In contrast, when I rolled a Necromancer I was just steamrolling through the content. I could literally just unequip all his armor, run around naked with a Scyte and skeletal warrior pets and mow everything down with ease.
So I really hope they address this before launch and buff the weaker classes a bit and make more of their skills actually viable. Though I fear the worst due to limited time left until launch.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
I will wait and see when the player reviews start coming in and see if the devs did something with the classes and their leveling experience.
Currently. Diablo 3 is actually a more enjoyable and refined experience. This last Season is hilarious, over the top and great fun!
For me, ARPG's are not the main games I play anyway, so I can wait and have enough other games to enjoy in the meantime.
I was already pretty well done with this D3 season having done everything in both regular and HC.
I tried playing a bit of Last Epoch but I'm just not feeling it.
I just want to play more D4. The beta just whetted my appetite.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The class you chose should be based on what you like to play, not because such class is better than some other ones. It's like why are you playing the game then, if not to have fun?
Play what you think will be fun. It is the dev's responsibility to create balance between them; especially in a co-op game. I like playing mages, though not all mage classes I consider fun; especially, if they get too complicated to be somewhat useful.
Sounds like a well thought out build. I actually tried all skills you mentioned and was aware of stormstrike being the best basic attack with it's damage reduction und vul. debuff. Unfortunately while testing druid I didn't mix and match my skills the same way I did it with the other classes. I just went full this full that. Nice to know that a mixed build worked well! This build would be even better with the legendary that turns your wolves into werewolves. Yeah and I totally dig that last sentence!
I never play before launch so will wait for the reviews, hopefully they start it on the track to a more cohesive game by then.
I will be playing this and really hope I will connect with the game a bit more when it comes to flow and pace. But all the additions like mounts, harvesting, dodge on timer, tons of side quests etc.? None of it feels like it is truly adding anything, it is just bloat distracting from the moment to moment gameplay to me. They, completely understandable, went bigger and wider in scope, I am afraid it is just noise interfering with my enjoyment. And I really, really, hope I am wrong, its f-ing Diablo after all.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer