Reaper of Souls - initial reaction

[FireIceTalon]

Going into RoS, I had high hopes that this game could finally redeem itself after the overall disappointment that D3V was, largely due to patch 2.0 which improved the game substantially. Yet I was pretty reserved at the same time just because there has been such a large disconnect between the devs and the player base as far as D3 has been concerned.

After a day and half of release, the only thing I can say is, I am completely BLOWN AWAY.

Not only did the game meet my expectations and what I was hoping for, it far exceeded them. I am almost in tears, that is how good it is. There are still a few things that I would like to see changed/fixed, but overall, I have to give Blizz props for delivering a great Diablo expansion game. I am not going to go into details right now, as I am still soaking everything in and just overwhelmed in general at how much fun this game is now.

I started the moment it was launched at 10 PM my time Monday night. I didn't go to bed until 1 am THIS MORNING (Wednesday). That is how fun and addicting this game is. My wizard is coming along very nicely in her adventures (in Adventure Mode) throughout sanctuary

That is all for now, more to come later.

Edit. Screen shot of my wizard, current level, look and stats:

[Aahzmadius]

Yeah, I'm having a ton of fun as well. Adventure Mode rocks. I now have 2 chars to 70 and I'm torn between which one is going to be my "main" because they're both so enjoyable to play.

For anyone jumping back in, my main advice is to leave the difficulty at Normal or Hard as you make your way to 70. Then you can turn up difficulty as you replace your old gear for new. The ramp-up in monster toughness is noticeable at 64 and at each level thereafter. A veteran HC player joined our 70 game on Hard diff when he was 61, and he didn't make it out.

[pakman]

I haven't gotten a character to 70 yet, but my Monk is level 64 right now, and I have been leveling a Hammerdin (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/p4km4...o/43544459) who I just finished Act iv with last night on expert. I am having fun so far, but can't decide what difficulty to to play on. My monk is currently trying to play through Act V on T2, but I think I might lower that. The problem with lowering the difficulty below that is that the game just doesn't seem challenging enough, even though it is just story mode right now.

[FireIceTalon]

Here is my full thoughts now.

Yea the game is definitely a reality check for those of us who were farming higher difficulties pre-launch. T5 was no problem for me pre-launch, but I knew monsters leveled up as you do so I lowered it to T3 before I even started. Turns out, even that wasn't enough and I had to lower it to T1 just to complete Act 5 reasonably. It was still challenging since I was fighting lvl 70 monsters (I hit lvl 70 in about 3 hrs) with lvl 60 gear on. I died plenty of times, but the rough patch was only temporary and I found upgrades quickly.

Now, I'm back in T2 and destroying it pretty efficiently, will probably try T3 soon. Adventure Mode is just incredible, I cannot explain how this feature alone makes the game so much better. I'll probably never play campaign mode again. So I've been running bounties (mostly in Act 5) just improving my char steadily. Nephalem Rifts are incredibly fun too - I love the new look, random levels (Highlands at night time is @_@) and the random monsters that generate, but it is better to do these with a friend cause they tend to be pretty lengthy.

One thing I am a little concerned about is the kind of gear that will be required to farm T5-6. I mean, right now my Wiz has like 850k dps with buffs, over 8 million toughness (10+ million when Unwavering Will procs), 300k life, 2500 all resist, over 8K LoH, and T2 feels comfortable @_@. I can't even imagine the numbers I will need to do higher torment levels, it must be insane. I'm guess all legendaries in every slot is pretty much required to survive in those difficulties. But no rush, I like being able to build my char now and find upgrades instead of having to play AH Tycoon. It is actually fun and REWARDING to play the game now.

The Mystic is another incredible new feature, I use her constantly. The character customization is really nice too, with transmogrification and the fact we can dye legs now....

Another great thing now is that boss fights are more challenging than in Vanilla. In D3V, most of the bosses u could just face tank and win as long as you had enough mitigation and healing. Azmodan is still too easy, and Belial and Diablo are only hard at certain points in the fight. The new bosses, especially Malthael, have a lot more interactive abilities that force you to move and think about how u use your skills. Malthael is probably harder than most elite packs - not in a cheezy way, but in a genuinely challenging way. This is a welcomed change for me, bosses should be harder than elites in my opinion.

The new Wizard skills are just fabulous. Black Hole is just so much fun to use, and has become my fav skill. The passives are really nice too - Elemental Exposure is nice if you are using a build that has multiple elements, and Unwavering Will boost your armor, resist, and dmg if you stand still for 1.5 seconds - this is neat for channeling skills or those tank more.

In general, I am overwhelmingly pleased. Still, there are few tweaks that need to be done, and there is still a couple major changes that it needs.

The most glaring one of course is the implementation of a REAL PvP system. What we have now is a joke, its not even worthy of being called PvP. PvP was a big reason why many people played D1 and D2 for so many years, its the ultimate end game feature. When you get perfect gear in every slot and can faceroll the highest difficulty, the only left to do really (with that char at least) is to now test your skill against others. They will need to put this in if RoS is to have the same longevity as its predecessors.

The new loot system is nice, but I still see some room for improvement. For instance, most weapons only roll with 3 primary stats, and a socket is pretty much a requirement or the weapon is useless. This only leaves us with 2 other stats if we have to enchant a socket on our weapon. They either need to make it so weapons have 4 primary stats like most other items, or make it so that weapons have a socket by default. I would also like to see some more interesting secondary affixes across items.

The drop rate of legendaries and set items could a little higher. In patch 2.0 in Vanilla I was finding lots of legs, but now not as much. They don't need to make the drop rate significantly higher, but a small-moderate increase would be in place I think, say maybe 25% better chance. Although last night I was very lucky and found two nice leg upgrades (source and bracers).

The drop rates of Death's Breath needs a substantial increase, probably should be doubled. We need this material to craft almost everything, and the drop rates right now are just too low for how much we need it.

Experience gains for paragon leveling have been nerfed too hard. In a system where we only have a soft cap (paragon 800) and essentially an infinite amount of levels we can get, the experience we get from monsters needs to be rather high, so it feels like we are progressing. Right now, paragon leveling is so slow it feels like a crawl

Last but not least, and this isn't so much an RoS issue as it is a D3 issue in general since its been here since day 1 - monster affixes. I think monsters can spam their abilities too much - this is especially true of cc traits like Frozen, Jailer, Waller, etc. Also, some traits shouldn't be able to spawn together. Especially true now that elite packs can spawn with up to 6 monsters instead of just 4. Being chain frozen and jailed is not fun, nor is it challenging - it is outright annoying. I like being challenged, I do NOT like being trolled.

Despite these negatives I've listed here, RoS is a great game and I never thought D3 would reach levels like this. Overall, as it is now, I would give the game a solid 9/10. It is superior to its predecessor, D3V, in every way, by a landslide. I'm one of Blizz's toughest critics, but I have to hand it to them here, they delivered an amazing expansion pack. If they implement a legitimate PvP system and do a few tweaks here and there, this game will become a classic.

[LochnarITB]

I am having fun so far, but can't decide what difficulty to to play on. My monk is currently trying to play through Act V on T2, but I think I might lower that.

I think I've settled on T1 for act V. I may even just turn it down to master for my secondary toons. For I - IV, T2 seemed almost too easy. However, running T2 in V feels like having cranked it up another notch or two from the earlier acts. Just a small bit of inattentiveness can get your toon dead real fast. I love playing at my edge, but reviving over and over gets old. Maybe when I get my wizard decked out with the best of what I see going by in guild chat, I'll dip my toes into higher again, even T6 (very doable in I - IV, just very very slow ).

Just in case anybody hasn't heard this already, I am loving D3 2.0! I have barely touched POE since the patch hit. They are even starting the race season tomorrow (I got hooked real bad last season) and I don't know if I will even bother with it.

[FireIceTalon]

Act V is certainly tougher than Acts 1-III (Act IV is debatable since you still have mallet lords, morlu mages, and corrupted angels which are all just stupid as elites). Battlefields of Eternity is one of the hardest places in the game, a primordial world of strange creatures (not demons) that make even the burning hells themselves look like Disney Land.

[pakman]

Well, I beat Act V today with my Crusader at level 52 or 53. I ended up wiping on Malthiel with ~3% hp left because I stood in the swirly-slowing things too long thinking I could go Super Saiyen and just taken him out with that last busrt of damage. Nope. I ended up going for a super tanky, single-target build for the fight. I took most of my damage from the swirly things. and basically nothing from Malthiel himself. It's a really rough fight, and there has to be a better way to deal with the swirly things as melee.

After I finished the act, I did some bounties in Act 1, and that was a lot of fun. Then I started a new demon hunter and went right into adventure mode doing bounties and got enough shards to open a Rift at level...10, I think. Wow. Those are rough. Monsters from all over the game in the various levels. Apparently if you don't kill all the mobs when you trigger the Rift Boss, all of them comes running towards you. I died a couple times running away and trying to kill them all. Eventually I triumphed and got some purple thing that I did see what it was and some crappy blues from the rift boss.

[FireIceTalon]

Rifts are much better done with 2 or more people - they are pretty long and difficult imo to play solo. Bounties though are ok for solo play ofc.

[FireIceTalon]

Char progression update:



I have to say, I am having a blast with this game. Progression is steady and doing rifts and bounties is more fun than anything D3 vanilla ever had to offer. I've found a build on my char that I have become quite fond of, and I feel a greater connection to my char than I ever have before (in vanilla it was practically non-existent). I've found some really nice items, but so far I'd say this is tops:

[Occhidiangela]

I started Act V with my barbarian, at T1. My gear wasn't up for it. I reduced one, and worked through the act. I am at 69 and fighting Maltheal. My mouse is causing me some serious micro/control problems. Will either get a new mouse pad or a new mouse. It is important for me to have fine control, and it isn't working right now.

Crusader: I think I leveled up too fast. Enjoyable character, but I moved to Master Diff at ACt II and never looked back. He's in his fifties now in act V, about to go after Urzael. That boss is ... well ... a grind. My barb had to try a few different combinations, and the one that worked included summoning the ancients.

Can't use the same kit with Maltheal, the charge and leap stun do not go well with some of his attacks.

Act V, in general, was a grind, but I massively enjoyed the ride on the battering ram fight -- good fun the first time through -- and the weird fights in the eternal battlefield. The mood in Act V is superb. I optimized my graphics card the other day, for this game, and I am super glad I did.

About Maltheal's attacks: those white things, like Adria's pink blobs: magic or physical? Having trouble figuring that out. Am pretty sure my build/gear is somehow gooned up. I'll try a few other approaches, but only after I address the hardware issue. Came up a few days ago, and while I could put up with it fighting usual creeps, my fine control for this fight simply isn't cutting it. Grrrrr.

I agree with F.I.T. - Blizzard delivered on its promise to put out a better package with expac. Nicely done.

Also, being able to make a few adjustments to rares is a nice feature.

[FireIceTalon]

I don't think your mouse is the issue, apparently today the new patch 2.04 has resulted in a bug where there is cursor lag. The cursor is slow and goes kind of all over the place, making combat difficult and it entirely disappears in the middle of big packs. Hope they fix this soon cause the game is pretty much unplayable this way, for me anyways.

[Occhidiangela]

Ah, thanks, hope you are right and they fix it. Yes, it disappeared in the middle of packs. Annoying, to be sure.