06-16-2012, 08:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-16-2012, 08:44 PM by Concillian.)
(06-16-2012, 02:07 PM)Lissa Wrote: There were a ton of skills that were hotfixed, but never mentioned in the actual patch notes because they had already been hotfixed it. Look at Strafe for instance which in 1.0 was uncapped in the number of arrows that could be used against a single target. They hotfixed that as well and capped the number of arrows that could go into a single target to 3 IIRC, might have been less. I know before the capped it, Strafe was the Amazon's great boss killer as I used it to great affect on the end act bosses.
Strafe was popular because it was massively bugged before 1.04. Your shining example of Blizz QA in those days is they fixed one of the two major bugs that affected a skill?
The strafe bug is what made the Amazon viable prior to 1.04... because of the bow bug... So again, they fixed one of the major bugs with strafe, which was cool, but two other major bugs effectively neutered all other Bow Amazon skills and kept Strafe as reasonably viable.
Essentially every Bowazon ability other than Strafe was horribly bad, due to the bow bug, but thanks to the strafe bug, Strafe was not horribly bad... Depending on the DEX of the Amazon, the Strafe bug largely canceled out the bow bug if an Amazon used Strafe...
So... since these two major bugs largely offset each other and Bowazons weren't completely neutered (in fact they were AWESOME thanks to the strafe bug in co-op with a concentration paladin, because the way the bugs interacted, concentration gave 2-4x the listed damage increase to Strafe) Blizz QA was good back then? 2 offsetting bugs in place for ~5-6 months meant everything was cool, right?
Of course not all Amazon skills were largely neutered. Guided arrow was completely neutered since any more skill points than one in the skill did nothing.
Not almost nothing, not a little bit... nothing. Skill points did nothing in a game where skill points were a primary source of character power.
The bugs in Diablo II were so many and so large that this skill that completely wasted skill points was considered a "minor bug" in the 1.04 patch notes.
These are all bugs that were fixed in patch 1.04... which was 5-6 months after release.
While we may not have yet discovered such bugs in Diablo III, at this point I'm siding with those who think Diablo III is more polished than Diablo II.
Just the fact that the character screen looks to be a reliable source of information is a huge step in the right direction of polish and QA over Diablo II. They seem to be adjusting things on a quicker timescale as well, but that's somewhat debatable. What isn't debatable is the level of polish in the shipped game. Diablo III has fewer glaring bugs and major issues than Diablo II did.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.