So ye,
first of all, the general gameplay changed quite a bit. The difficulty level in patch 14 significantly increased, due to an increase of damage on all mobs and decrease of available item possibilities.
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| Another run |
Not that you don't find any magic items anymore, actually you find LOTS of them and I do mean LOTS, in around 3 hours of testing, I got like hundreds of those and over 200 of the essense stashed, while crafting somehting here and there all the time and having close ot zero magic find. Each miniboss drops at least 2 blue's - definitly too much, chests drop them a lot more commonly and the shiny-golden-huge chests drop 4-5 of them. By the way not a single rare droped during this time, which feels wrong alltogether too. Also I wish the items would have colors like in diablo 2, with identification gone, affixed being nearly allways the same, after 30 min you just stop checking and simply sell/break all the blues, because you are geting way too many of them. By the way, talking about drops, the gold drops also were majorly boosted. Mobs now easily drop 3-4 times the gold they did before, same story for quests (also you level noticably slower). So at least you can use all the gold and resources for crafting
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| Remember this pre-beta 14? |
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| It drops slightly more now |
However, the palette of craftable items was changed completely too. Actually it's a step in the right direction from Blizzard, crafting was considerably overpowered before, but they forgot to close the gap they created themself. I You can now craft blue items only, because all rare crafted items are level 14+ and the blue non-armor items are mostly either level 4 or level 14+ too, leaving a gap around 10 levels big, when crafting is close to useless, except for level 11, when you can craft a bit of new armor.
--- The following paragraph is going to contain some D2<->D3 compare/rant, skip if you want ---
On the bright side, blue items seem to get more less-trashy affixes (like +experience, +health globe radius) and more worthwhile stats like magic find and primary attributes. Actually thats more or less the only worthwhile stats that spawn on armor, which is sorta sad. Things like +armor, +%armor, hit recovery, damage reduction, resistances, absorbtions, combined with identifications, made this nice effect of "Fwoosh, your item suddenly turned blue and now you will sometimes spawn combo lightnings when struck". Sure, it's not exactly a very useful stat, but it's responsive, while stats in Diablo 3 are simply "want" or "do not want", you don't really notice em, except for attack speed maybe. Even the primary stats don't feel very right at this stage, since there are no stat requirements on items and you don't get mana from a resource anymore, so it all feels a bit pale. ANYHOW, enough of my ranting. Back to patch 14.
--- Rant over :x ---
The good side however, is that difficulty and combat got a LOT better in patch 14. Not like it was that bad before, but now you have some feeling of challenge, more runes and skills available and its more fun in general.
The mob groups hit harder, drop less globes (or so i think) and a new boss modifier appears (nightmarish). These folks, sometimes cause you to run for your life, when they hit you. Usually you don't really notice this modifier (about as annoying as knockback and teleport, which is not annoying at all), except we are talking of a group of archers. Suddenly this modifier gets a lot more annoying and can deal severe damage. A nice sideeffect of this however, is the moment when a imp hits you and your might barbarian runs away, while the imp runs away in the opposite direction.
Also the level progression got a lot better for most classes. You unlock some new funny skills early on and also get access different and other runes.
I tested all classes without rings and with patch 14 equip/weapons.
The wizard for example, gets a new arcane orb rune, which makes it's explosion more damaging. It's not exactly very original and not as useful as the old orb rune, that was doubling the radius of it's explosion, but it looks and feels pretty cool. Also the "Tornado" spell is back in, it deals a bit more damage now an actually is fairly usable in large monster groups or tight spots (no pun intended). But the real kicker for me was the new Ray of Frost rune. Actually it's the one that was announced and presented in the video ages ago, it turned the Ray into a storm turning around you as long as you channel it. Back then it looked useless for me, you have to channel it, can't move, it's short ranged and it makes you a target. But truth is, it feels very "dynamic" and responsive. The dead skeletons, fly into the right direction, while geting frozen, the sound is perfect and it feels strong, concentrated and powerful. Awesome stuff.
Overall the Wizzy is a nice play. It's still a crazy glass cannon, but is well balanced and really fun to play.
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| much more shiny ingame |
The demon hunter didn't really learn a lot of new tricks. The smoke screen is a nice new toy (looks awesome by the way) and was handy in quite a few situations, but preparation is something you don't really need or want until higher levels and it really feels like the demon hunters AOE capabilities got toned down a whee too much. Sure she still has the bola shot, but with it's rune removed from beta, it's not effective enough compared to other classes. The burning-shot-rapid-fire (looks nice) and a 4x hiting entangling shot runes are nice things, but they both suffer from the problem of not dealing enough AOE damage, while being amazing skills.
Sure those abilities will be effective later on and more are to come, but the demon hunter now feels underwhelming again.
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| Kill it with fire |
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| Smoke Screen visual |
The barbarian provides a excellent play. One you rarely see, from a meele character in a ARPG. He is mostly balanced, his abilities scale nicely and he is fun to play. Cleave (still) feels too powerful, because of it's "Rupture" (?) rune, that causes enemies to explode upon death. With a single attack cleave is capable of clearing out whole groups of mobs, even if they are lead by mini-boss guys or include champions. The early on available rune for rend makes rend a very effective skill (over 200% damage in 17y around you), but it feels a bit uh, powerless. Maybe because you dont see any response on the enemies. A very minor knockback or some on-hit animation should fix it though. The ground stomp rune looks fine, but the skill isn't exactly required early on. But the 2 really "New" abilities are Ancient Spear and Seismic Slam. Well the ancient spear is another case of "rend". It deals good damage, is useful, but feels very wrong. As for once, it's too shiny. The spear is bigger then the barbarian and it's all silver-blue-whatever. It should be smaller and feel more "bloody" and have a different sound too actually. Feels like a toy otherwise. Also it does not show any "force". If the opponent it hits, does not die, yes it looks great. However if it dies, the target just "falls apart" in place, instead of it's corpse being dragged to you.
...And then there is the seismic slam. And I love it. It might not even be that crazy effective, since it costs more then Hammer of the ancients with rolling thunder rune and deals less damage (unless enemies are lined up or have ranged support), but the sound, visuals and effect are just great. Very fun to use and also very useful and quite well balanced.
All in all, the barbarian was a great play and except for some minor issues perfectly fine.
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| Seismic Wave in progress |
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| Ancient Spear sorta looks fancy |
Overall, it's a great class to play. Now only if the first witch doctor mask, wouldnt be designed to be so butt-ugly...
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| Combo-Action |
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| Frog Country |
Finaly the monk. There is not much to tell about him. His gameplay feels as fluid as it was before, attacks are really responsive adn well timed, the runed fists of lightning ability (patch 13), feels and looks awesome and it's definitly a cool class. Really new in this patch are 2 runes and 2 abilities. The lashing tail kick rune morphes it into a fierry AOE attack. There is absolutly nothing to not like about it. It still feels like the same ability, just improved. The tempest rush rune is pretty effective, while it's not really damaging, it's one of the utility abilities, that is fun to use. The mobs fly away nicely and give a extra touch of realism and it provides a bit of mobility. The exploding palm rework is a nice addition and while 30% mob health as damage isn't that much, I asume it will be a lot in later difficulties and is also very noticable if used on close-to-dead boss mobs. Last in line is the "Wave of Light". And I'm really so-so about this one. For 3 reasons. First of all, it sorta feels like spoiling the monk. With the exception of "astral ally" you actually get your last offensive ability worth noting at level 17, which makes the progression of the monk class sorta lame, while other classes get new and new offensive abilities until level 30. And yes of course there are runes, still it feels sorta wrong. Then there is the actual ability. While it indeed does deal up to 300% weapon damage, it's not allways very simple to hit with it, because of its fairly thin line AoE and using 100 spirit to kill 3-4 mobs that are lined up for it, feels like a huge waste. And even if you do encounter mobs that are lined up for it, you rarely have 100 spirit. Finaly, the looks. The actual wave should be a bit brighter. It just feels poor in comparison to the monks and other classes abilities.
Anyhow, overall the monk is still awesome to play, but he could use some minor tweaks.
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| Lashing Tail Kick - Runed |
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| Wave of Light... |
In total, it's a nice patch, it needs quite some improvements and yes the skill GUI is still sloppy and the previous GUI was way better, but still the game is way more polished then 99% of other games I can think of at release.
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| and again |
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