Thread: DIABLO III BETA BITCHES

Finally, the long-awaited email has arrived in my inbox:

I got my DIII BETA KEY!!!

I was wondering why I hadn't received one, what with my (relatively) souped up PC. I noticed last night that my desktop resolution as specified on my beta profile was only 1024x768, so I reuploaded my system specs with the higher resolution I've been using for a while now.

Well, probably was just a coincidence.

Anyway, I am so fucking psyched! I get to play at least parts of DIII right up to probably a little shy of release, and apparently all the character classes are implemented, so I can be a witch doctor straight out of the gates.

Perhaps will upload screenshots and impressions up here, if I can tear myself away from the game long enough

I think they shut down the NDAs when moving out of their friends and family beta

there's a few people who are streaming DIII gameplay already, no NDA issues there, I'm pretty sure

Originally Posted by Nick2.1

Fuck.....you....


Imma go cry now.

Thank you.

That's all I've ever wanted to hear

I wish I could have gotten on this shit, but I don't know if this computer will run it, even though the last ones could be run on a battery, screen, and some paperclips.

Originally Posted by crapoo16

I wish Best Buy didn't troll us and that the game really did come out 2/1/12

I know; the bastards!

Alright, here's a little info that might not be completely clear without experiencing the game, as well as other general information:

First, of course, the meat-and-potaters of DIII are the skills and itemization systems. Itemization has changed a bit, but still will mostly be familiar to any player of Diablo-esque games. The skill system, on the other hand, is completely revised.

There are no skill trees anymore. Instead, one skill is unlocked per level. At first you can only equip two abilities at a time, but every 6 levels thereafter a new ability slot is unlocked until you have the maximum of SIX ability slots at level 24 (out of 60). By level 29, you'll have unlocked ALL the skills of each class, 24 per class.

However, it doesn't stop there, not by a long shot. In addition to unlocking these skills there is also a slot for one rune stone per ability slot. Rune stones are drops from creatures, appearing in Act II
Nnormal and beyond. Rune stones modify or completely change the ability that they modify. There are 5 colors: alabaster, red, gold, indigo, and black. So in essence, you actually get 5 abilities for every 1 ability unlocked.

There are 7 levels of rune stones, with the highest only being rare drops in the new Inferno difficulty, and the lowest being fairly common drops in Normal. Obviously the higher the level of rune stone, the more powerful the modified ability.

In addition to active abilities, there are also 3 slots for passive traits that are unlocked at levels 10, 20, and 30. By level 30 you'll have all your passive traits, 17 in total. Note that passive traits are ALL UNIQUE to each character class.

So, to summarize: 24*5 rune stone-modified abilities = 120, of which 6 can be equipped, and 17 passive traits, of which 3 can be equipped.

Blizzard has said this results in about 97 billion possible combinations per character class, though of course not all of them will be viable, and not all of them will be much different from each other. Still, seems like a rich territory of choices to me.



I'd go on but I need to go for now.

Originally Posted by Nick2.1

The 100,000 testers invited recently is a good sign, they are stress testing the servers.

Yep, that's what I'm thinking and hoping too.

Originally Posted by crapoo16

Act 2? I suppose they must have added more,

Oh, no, no... I just know that runes will start dropping in Act II of Normal. The beta still ends at the Skeleton King on Normal (for those that don't know, that's only 1/3 of the way through Act I),

I'm wondering if I should put my beta key to use and play through it

Well, I suppose only if you want to try out each of the 5 character classes.

I guess the issues you were experiencing may have been resolved by now. One thing I'll say that's unrelated to your issues: if you do try it again, just let the WHOLE game download before playing, NOT just after the progress bar turns yellow in the "Playable" part. Otherwise the game will freeze for seconds at a time each time you use an asset which hasn't been already downloaded.

Originally Posted by Vengeful Scars

I wish I could have gotten on this shit, but I don't know if this computer will run it, even though the last ones could be run on a battery, screen, and some paperclips.

oh, so what most people run LoL on

because I enjoy LoL

hehehe i know

i just like casual play more than anything else - even LoL has some ridiculous tryhards that are too much for me at times. I can't imagine playing HoN or DotA2 in that kind of climate

Since I haven't said anything about the game for a while, I'll add this little bit.

The class that the most people will either love or hate, with little in between, is the Witch Doctor.

There two qualities about the Witch Doctor:

1) He's the funny one of the group. For instance, one of his abilities is Fire Bats, which is a short ranged AoE channeled flamethrower. He summons bats, which are set on fire through a flame above him, and fly straight towards whatever's in front of him.

Get it? Fire Bats? Ugh.

A lot of people don't care for the pun, or the ability, but I have to say it's not such a bad ability.

Actually this brings me to my next point:

2) All the other classes rely primarily on big blasts of damage. The Witch Doctor is unique in that he relies heavily on DoT effects and pets, supplemented by more limited direct damage abilities. For a lot of players, I think this makes them feel "weaker," especially in Act I of Normal where the enemies die really quickly. I suspect that at harder difficulty levels this will change as enemies take longer to kill, but nonetheless you don't get that satisfying rush of blasting things to bits.

I don't get Fire Bats...

But he sounds like the Warlock in WoW, I never played them, but without their pet they just seemed to DoT my priest to death.

Originally Posted by Vengeful Scars

I don't get Fire Bats...

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Firebat

But he sounds like the Warlock in WoW, I never played them, but without their pet they just seemed to DoT my priest to death.

WoW-type MMORPG's and Diablo-type action RPG's are totally different, and because of that the Witch Doctor has a completely different feel compared to the Warlock in WoW.

Err, dunno what to say beyond that... I think it's rather obvious.

Originally Posted by crapoo16

I still haven't even touched it.. I let my friend use it and he's been hogging it but meh I don't really care lol. Signed up for Guild Wars 2 Beta earlier today T_T

OMG me too!!!

IF YOU GET IT INSTEAD OF ME I KILL YOU

Originally Posted by crapoo16

I hope I get it and put it to waste just to spite you.

The DIII key I really don't care so much about.

But I SWEAR to BALTHAZAR... if you DARE desecrate a SACRED GWII BETA KEY, I WILL summon phantasms to stab you to death.


(PS I wanna be a mesmer to start :} )

nice they announced a date.

Ok, so wow...

If you haven't seen the February update on the skill system:

The one thing that has remained the same is that you unlock skills gradually as you level up, in a predetermined order at predetermined levels.

Before the update, you could slot any skill you wanted on any keyboard hotkey or either mouse button. Thus you could have any combination of skills you wanted. In addition, runes were drops that altered or basically completely changed any skill. They came in different colors which affected each ability in a particular way, and they came in ranks where the higher ranks increased the power of the runed ability by increasing numbers in the ability (i.e. how much damage is done, how long status effects lasted, etc.)


NOW... skills are LINKED to a particular mouse button or keyboard hotkey. So that means you have a set selection of 3 to 5 skills that you can assign to the left mouse button, a selection of 3 to 5 DIFFERENT skills you can assign to the right mouse button, a DIFFERENT selection for keyboard key "1," and a DIFFERENT selection EACH for keys 3-4.

So you can only ever have ONE ability active from the left mouse button skill selection, ONE from the "1" hotkey selection, etc.

That really cuts down on the number of builds possible. For instance, all the monk's mantras are now on hotkey "4." They are party-wide auras that have two effects: a very long term one that lasted as long as the mantra was active and a very short-term one that activates upon the mantra's casting. Though only one mantra could be active at a time, you could've done "mantra-twisting," i.e. constantly switching between mantras to keep the short-term buffs up.

Since you can now only have one mantra hotkeyed at a time, this clearly is no longer viable.


Also, runes are now not drops any more, but instead are "unlocked" as you level up. There are no ranks any more either. You just select one rune per ability if you're a high enough level that the rune is unlocked. Thus, they are more like talents now, except you can select 1 out of 5 for each ability you have equipped.


I'm not sure how I feel about this simplification of the system. Granted, it does make class balance much easier. But it also seems so limiting.