(06-06-2012, 06:16 PM)Bolty Wrote:(06-06-2012, 04:46 PM)Roland Wrote: Health link is a joke. All it means is if you focus-fire one mob down slowly enough you essentially kill the whole pack. Mind, I'm not against the ability - as a Demon Hunter I enjoy it, actually - but let's not kid ourselves into thinking it truly adds any challenge. Maybe melee characters fare a bit worse, but I doubt that.
I can tell you play a ranged class.
When a champ pack is sighted, my goal as a Barbarian is to blow every cooldown I have to try to kill one member of that pack as quickly as possible. Once the number of champions gets reduced, the fight becomes substantially easier. Health Link prevents that, and guarantees that all 3 (or 4) members of the pack will be beating on me for the entire encounter. It's just another of the myriad of "screw you melee" boss abilities out there, which I loathe, just as you would loathe Vortex and Mortar. I laugh at Mortar. Vortex is an issue for melee only if it's combined with Freeze or Arcane.
Ok, perhaps I'm brushing this off a little too lightly by saying positioning should still be a priority for a melee character (just like it was in D1). Does that mean endlessly kiting? No. Does it mean having to separate an elite pack down a bit? Yes, sometimes. That said, I can see how Health Link would prove dangerous to melee, what with keeping the pack around longer. However, if you can target one mob continuously it will, with a bit of time, drag the entire pack down, thus making the fight end more quickly than another pack. Again, though, maybe I'm asking too much of melee.
OTOH, if you want to see what it's like on the other side of the coin just ask to play my Demon Hunter. 
(06-07-2012, 12:37 AM)Elric of Grans Wrote: To be honest, I think they are making gem upgrades WAY too cheap now. I found Square a little over-priced, and Perfect Square WAY over-priced, but those below were fine. At those prices, they may as well bring back the Horadric Cube and make them free! Two gems for an upgrade seems needless too; I have no shortage of gems to upgrade, just cash to upgrade them with (I have three or four dozen Square gems of every colour because I cannot afford to upgrade them).
When you can buy them on the AH for about 1/10th the cost of crafting them up, yes - they're too expensive. Of course, that's because supply outstrips demand by a fair margin, and if you progress quickly enough through the Acts / difficulties you'll be swimming in higher tier gems so fast you'll be vendoring the lower tier ones just to free up the stash space. Do I think it was too costly before? Yes. Do I think the changes they're making are going to fix that? Probably not completely, given the supply of them from drops. We'll see though. I'm not concerned about gems. The Blacksmith is a much bigger initial gold sink when raising. Top-tier crafting could maybe use a cost reduction of about 10% or so, but beyond that it's mostly just leveling him up that's a huge gold sink - with no payout.
Roland *The Gunslinger*