On March 26 2023 17:01 SC-Shield wrote: Not being able to pick character's Strength/Dexterity/Health/Mana as before seems like dumbed down game.
Yeah that one seems rough to me, still only 4 stats but now you can't attribute any points other than with items, and only 6 skills available at a time instead of 16.
Getting those +5 stat/attribute points to allocate into str/dex/vit/energy (along with the +1 skill point for skill trees) was something I loved about D2's leveling system, especially when I was casually playing for fun and not hyper focusing on min/maxing everything. It gave me more benefits and control and flexibility as a player.
On March 26 2023 17:01 SC-Shield wrote: Not being able to pick character's Strength/Dexterity/Health/Mana as before seems like dumbed down game.
Yeah that one seems rough to me, still only 4 stats but now you can't attribute any points other than with items, and only 6 skills available at a time instead of 16.
I don't know if that is a problem. Usually distributing attribute points is just a noob trap. There is almost always a "best" way to do it, and you can't really make decisions, only mistakes. Even in D2, distributing attribute points is rarely a decision. For example, for Sorc it is always "exactly enough strength for your gear, everything else in vit". Sure, you can do other things. They are just worse in every aspect.
I generally dislike noob traps as a mechanic. Make decisions meaningful, don't just have a correct choice and many incorrect ones.
I think D2's attribute system wasn't great but allowed for some room in niche cases. E.g. allocating points into energy for corpse explosion. In most cases there wasn't a choice though. I had a look at the attributes in D4 and they all seem to reward you with important stats, so allowing the player to allocate points would be very beneficial imho. Instead there is no allocation and no attribute requirements on items, which makes having attributes at all pointless. Might as well just put the stats they provide on items directly without convoluting the system.
On March 26 2023 17:01 SC-Shield wrote: Not being able to pick character's Strength/Dexterity/Health/Mana as before seems like dumbed down game.
Yeah that one seems rough to me, still only 4 stats but now you can't attribute any points other than with items, and only 6 skills available at a time instead of 16.
I don't know if that is a problem. Usually distributing attribute points is just a noob trap. There is almost always a "best" way to do it, and you can't really make decisions, only mistakes. Even in D2, distributing attribute points is rarely a decision. For example, for Sorc it is always "exactly enough strength for your gear, everything else in vit". Sure, you can do other things. They are just worse in every aspect.
I generally dislike noob traps as a mechanic. Make decisions meaningful, don't just have a correct choice and many incorrect ones.
But it's not actually like that though. You could follow the same recipe every time and it works, but did you ever build a sorc that has 75% block? Most characters can make use of points in any stat, just because it's not perfectly balanced doesn't mean stat allocation is useless. Elden Ring lets you allocate between 8 different stats each level. Yeah I expect this type of complexity from RPGs, and of course I would hope that D4 is even better than D2 in such aspects.
I can see what people say with brighter colors, but I think D4 tries to be darker than D2 was and for that D4's color palette is right. Like d2's message was that even champions can be hollowed out given enough time and that the demons will always be back. In D4 people fall to their desires and the demons are more of an amplifier to that, which imo is more palpable and one of the aspects I really like in d4 so far.
And yes the problem with very bleak is that it can grow old quickly if you don't mix up the terrain enough. Naturally this is amplified by the fact that the beta is content locked, so so far it's snowy waste and caves exclusively.
On the Leah discussion I think people are looking for similarities. Like yes, obviously D4 introduces some characters that have a bit of backstory to make you sympathize, but it's not as centered on that one character as D3 was. If anything Leah is closer to Marius than to Horadrim girl.
On another note as a rogue I get to experience both melee and ranged and holy fuck ranged is so much easier especially in the boss fights. It's kinda annoying as a rogue though that bosses are immune to most status effects, which f.e. makes cold or daze builds very niche against them. I wish they'd just reduce the effect of the status on bosses so you still get your conditional skills.
I don't think you can really compare D3 to D4, D3 is an arcadey colorful screen explosion game, D4 tries to be a grimdark competitor for games like PoE, LA and LE. D3 is certainly consistent in it's rainbow balloon optic, but it also has the depth and weight of a pizza dough.
I agree that the skill/stats system could have some more depth and needs more balancing, but then again it's the beta. Overall I don't think it's too bad though, although I don't really see how you keep players lvl 35+ invested with what we can see so far because by then I've skilled most of what I'm going to use and then am supposed to spend 15 points on passive +3% damage passives until Paragon?
I must say I'm kinda baffled at all the "best class in D4" videos popping up. As you can even try and properly ascertain it at lvl 25 and only doing Act I. Even in D2 at this level and after Act II you typically haven't even glimpsed the true power of your character (and your build didn't really start coming together until like late nightmare or something).
Concerns for Druid having super weak early game compared to other classes seem valid though.
On March 27 2023 02:17 Manit0u wrote: I must say I'm kinda baffled at all the "best class in D4" videos popping up. As you can even try and properly ascertain it at lvl 25 and only doing Act I. Even in D2 at this level and after Act II you typically haven't even glimpsed the true power of your character (and your build didn't really start coming together until like late nightmare or something).
Concerns for Druid having super weak early game compared to other classes seem valid though.
What exactly are you perplexed about? Click-bait title + the current popular thing + tierlist = easy income for content creators for minimal work. This is how YT works and wait till you find about all the hyenas on Twitch making "react content" to this just by playing the YT vid and going "mmmhhhmmm", agreeing with these videos between wolfing down a pizza slice.
about druid: druid does feel weak but still feels a whole lot better than barbarian to level in my opinion. I tried barb and... I felt physical pain leveling it. Druid at least has some identity to it. Werewolf/Werebear/Earth magic/Lightning Magic. All it needs is number tuning. Meanwhile barb has never felt this generic and useless as in D4. Bleed + thorns was... traumatizing to play, to say the least.
people like rating things. Most reasonable people know that this is just Act 1. I've seen a lot of people theorize Barb will be best DPS wise because of the obvious case of more legendary affixes
I don't think it's wrong to make conclusions based on current balance, even knowing it will change. Gets people thinking about mechanics and skill interactions.
TBH, since seasons (or whatever they will be called) are a thing, early game balance is important. People are going to be playing the early game over and over and over
On March 27 2023 02:32 Latham wrote: about druid: druid does feel weak but still feels a whole lot better than barbarian to level in my opinion. I tried barb and... I felt physical pain leveling it. Druid at least has some identity to it. Werewolf/Werebear/Earth magic/Lightning Magic. All it needs is number tuning. Meanwhile barb has never felt this generic and useless as in D4. Bleed + thorns was... traumatizing to play, to say the least.
Well thorns always sucks in every game, doesn't it?
I reached lvl 20 by now on Barb, finished the story at 17 and I think it's fine (playing dual wield frenzy, my favourite from D2). It took a bit to get online but now after I realised I need to mostly spec into utility and defense it feels much better. I got 2 stun breakers, iron skin with regen, shouts with regen, damage reduction and movement speed. You can spec all of this because there is next to no point to invest anything but 1 point into an offensive skill because 99,9 % of scaling comes from the weapon anyways. After spending a whole bunch of time looking at the tree, I think there is a way to get frenzy to a fun state in later levels if the itemisation is done correctly (I have serious doubts). The tree itself is very lame so without many specific stats on items things won't work because of all the long cooldowns. What's up with those on almost every ability anyways? I thought this was a hack'n'slay... Anyhow, the final boss in the story still took 3 attempts because it's super anti melee. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a fun boss but the amount of puddles leaves little room to attack - if at all because the boss likes to stand in them unless you really pay attention to when he throws them, move away beforehand and then around to make him flee away from the puddle... It was just too much melee hate in just one encounter. I personally had fun with the challenge but I also think this boss would have been a cake-walk on range and that doesn't feel right. I think this encounter would have been better without the puddles. Another gripe I had was the scaling. In my first attempt I died at 5 % and decided to do a couple level to skill some regen, only to realise the boss levels with me and has now more life... One ironic thing I realised is that barb feels a lot better/stronger when playing alone because you don't get 90 % of your fury generation denied by other players killing your targets before you arrive...
On March 27 2023 04:23 Miragee wrote: Anyhow, the final boss in the story still took 3 attempts because it's super anti melee.
as someone who played Rogue -> Sorc -> Necro, it's baffling to hear any encounter taking 3 attempts. Only things that have killed me are Ashava and the Butcher
it's not just a ranged thing. Melee Rogue is fairly strong and super fast with dash + shadow step. Decent AoE with shadow imbuement, and future build sustain options like heals on crit
I hope they retune the early game balance. The vast vast majority of players will be casuals who don't push endgame, so making this portion of the game balanced and fun is a big deal.
I also am very curious how they will balance PvP. The abundance of slows / immboilzes / stuns from range seems like it will completely wreck Barb
On March 27 2023 04:23 Miragee wrote: Anyhow, the final boss in the story still took 3 attempts because it's super anti melee.
as someone who played Rogue -> Sorc -> Necro, it's baffling to hear any encounter taking 3 attempts. Only things that have killed me are Ashava and the Butcher
it's not just a ranged thing. Melee Rogue is fairly strong and super fast with dash + shadow step. Decent AoE with shadow imbuement, and future build sustain options like heals on crit
I hope they retune the early game balance. The vast vast majority of players will be casuals who don't push endgame, so making this portion of the game balanced and fun is a big deal.
I also am very curious how they will balance PvP. The abundance of slows / immboilzes / stuns from range seems like it will completely wreck Barb
Tbf, the problem was also that I was getting impatient. The boss is a fucking HP sponge and there is almost no windows to dps on barb and if there is a window you have to be lucky stay in or close to the correct place already and don't have to spend most of that time to slowly walk around all the obstacles. I'm also not a good player. Probably still above the majority of casuals because of my PoE/D2 experience, but my mechanical skills are fairly lackluster. That being said, I think I could have gotten him on my first try (as I said, got him to 5 %) but after like 15 minutes of fighting I got too impatient and ate too much damage during the final 25 %. The second attempt was mostly testing new abilities and the third attempt was still challenging but at no point I got the feeling I wouldn't be able to finish him in the end. But that still took 10 minutes. If you say you had no trouble on meele rogue then there might be a damage imbalance as well. Maybe that's because I didn't spec into damage? I don't know, the increases in the tree really don't look like they matter on barb but maybe I have miscalculated.
I doubt PvP in this game will be balanced at all. Blizzard is not good at balancing and ARPGs tend to have super broken PvP anyways.
Rogue took the longest. I did encounter many of the same issues you did, but it was easy for me to dodge attacks with dash + shadow step (this makes you unstoppable and TPs behind boss, so it's a free dodge basically). with 4 charges of mobility skill (had a unique that gave +1 s.step charge), it is skill dependent but I felt like my DPS uptime was fairly good. That said, I had to work hard for it.
Comparatively, Sorc damage + DPS uptime was just so strong it was effortless. For Necro, disembowel (basic skill that spawns corpses) works on immunity phases, so I just spammed corpses while I was waiting then blew them all up. +minions = GG
On March 27 2023 04:44 EchelonTee wrote: as someone who played Rogue -> Sorc -> Necro, it's baffling to hear any encounter taking 3 attempts. Only things that have killed me are Ashava and the Butcher
That's something I noticed also (only watching) is that early game seems too easy, I'd like a harder early game for sure I think.
On March 27 2023 05:08 EchelonTee wrote: Rogue took the longest. I did encounter many of the same issues you did, but it was easy for me to dodge attacks with dash + shadow step (this makes you unstoppable and TPs behind boss, so it's a free dodge basically). with 4 charges of mobility skill (had a unique that gave +1 s.step charge), it is skill dependent but I felt like my DPS uptime was fairly good. That said, I had to work hard for it.
Comparatively, Sorc damage + DPS uptime was just so strong it was effortless. For Necro, disembowel (basic skill that spawns corpses) works on immunity phases, so I just spammed corpses while I was waiting then blew them all up. +minions = GG
So I've been playing Barb (and yes, the final boss also took me like 4 attemps)
And I still don't udnerstand how it works? I'm lvl 20 already...
So you have 4 types of weapons and can weild them all at the same time?
But then some weapons are used by some skills and some others? But then 1 skill is able to use 1 weapon or another, and it selects one automatically? How does it decide? can you change which weapon it uses?
What If I like faster weapons? Why does it default to use the 2 handed ones?
I could unequip one, but it turns out the effects of the weapons do apply even if you aren't using them? Or at least some effects?
I believe all weapon effects apply to your character, except damage, which only uses the active weapon used automatically from the skill? is that right?
If that's the case then yeah, I can see why the barbarian sucks, because if you can have 4 attack legendaries then the effects would be very OP. So that means that a barb with 4 legendaries will be balanced, and a bard without them will suck
I think ìf you click S or C to bring up your skills, a mini-menu pops up on the bottom where you can choose which skill uses which weapon
Also, AFAIK Barb (and Druid) don't have their class specialization quest in the beta. So they are severely handicapped compared to the other 3. maybe it will be better later
The stun locks are definitely too much. If they are dangerous in act 1 normal, I can't imagine how much worse they would be in later difficulties or in the endgame. It makes it too difficult to melee at times.
The pace of the game makes it too difficult for melee classes to chase enemies, especially bosses, that jump around the screen. Druid was rough at first but I found werewolf to be have decent killing power and speed. Werebear has good burst damage with pulverize but feels really clunky with slow closing speed. Some of the skills, particularly the generators, just lack ooomph. The earth skills are also notable for being camouflaged with the bleak landscape and color scheme of act 1. I wonder if sorcs are going to have a similar issue with fire skills in a hell landscape. The blending in makes the earth skills feel weaker, though maybe sorcs won't have issues with their skills feeling weak. It doesn't surprise me that the most mobile melee class, rogue, feels the strongest to some people.
Druid's gameplay really opens up the further down you go the skill tree. I found vine creeper to be really good, especially with the added poison length. With a small 20-second cooldown, you can use it as a powerful AoE, along with rabies for werewolves. The issue early on is that their generators really lack oomph and shred is an expensive spender. With vine creeper and rabies, it feels productive to spam the generator while waiting for the poison damage to tick (roughly 4 seconds I think). Shred can also be upgraded for poison damage.
Druid's class specialization quest also takes you to what looks like act 2. Necromancer can put points into their skeletons right from the start so that's a lot of added power that druids don't have.
So it's confirmed that the beta stuff won't carry over to the final game, right? I was gonna test the beta on PS5 but I don't wanna install for a few hours.
EPT
