11-03-2003, 01:16 PM
Diablo 3 Beta Test report #1 - 15.08.2012
The release of the beta of Blizzard's new flagship title is the culmination of a hype never seen before. North Korea admitted that '0% of our nuclear capability' is currently aimed at Seoul 'to minimize the risk of an accidental nuclear launch affecting the Asia 3 servers'. For the same reason, the United States reduced the number of nuclear ICBMs aimed at Cuba, where the USSouthSouthWest server is located, to '0.6234% of the maximum capacity', or a measly 1,447 missiles, and pointed the extra missiles towards Europe. 'If less than 50% of the European people play on an American server, we will launch a pre-emptive strike', Admiral Bush claimed, 'Their kids will come into contact with the great American culture by playing on our great American servers, and we expect an estimated 87.4% of the European people to surrender to our great American army within the first four days of the upcoming war'. He also stated that 'the European rogue states such as France and Belgium' were violating the treaty by 'totally owning us at Diablo 2'.
The announced beta release, four years and three months ago, was preceded by not one but three attempted terrorist attacks on the free people of the free country of the United Free States. A North Korean 'black ops' team captured a 737 with a 'suitcase nuke on board' and threatened to detonate it above Los Angeles if Blizzard would not increase the number of Asian servers to 8. A second terrorist from the independent state of Texas stole a Kenworth 'Chromeliner' and claimed he would drive it into the Statue of Liberty if Blizzard did not add a 'Block All Koreans' button in the chat menu. Finally, a Dutch terrorist threatened to fly his delta wing into Mount Rushmore unless Blizzard would enforce a strong anti-hack policy on the realms.
......
After receiving the box with the six game DVDs in the mail, we beta testers had to wait over two weeks before the Beta 1 server was finally up. I spent this time clicking Refresh Server List every five minutes and staring at the 'We are working hard to get the server online as soon as possible' message for days. Then it finally went up, and immediately back down again when 99,999 other beta testers logged on at the same exact moment. The connection was very unreliable all week long, but I did manage to make some progress.
There are 14 character classes, ordered by region of origin; the seven countries of Sanctuary have two character choices each. Kehjistan, the rainforest area of Diablo 2, offers the Cleric and Paladin, while the peaks of Arreat are home to the Savage and Beastmaster. Richu in the Far East is the new addition to the world of Sanctuary, and offers the Sorcerer and Monk.
After sitting in front of the computer screen for four straight hours unable to make a choice, I clicked at random and got the Sorcerer. After selecting a class, the game asks for a character name. There is a 'Random' button for the totally uninspired individual, which is colored red in the German language version, and there are powerful heuristic bad language filters in effect in the American English version. I named my Sorcerer Zhao Yin, which is Chinese for 'm3 pWnZ0rZ y0o', or so I heard.
A curious option in the character creation screen is the 'Alarm Clock' option, which is only available in the Korean version of the game. When enabled, the alarm clock goes off after 48 hours of playing the character in one session.
The next step in creating a character is customizing his or her look in the Fenotype menu. There are 20 body types, 40 heads, 40 haircuts and 15 voices available per character class. To Blizzard's credit, all of the available body parts fit the general theme of the class, and there are no useless 'deranged clown' or 'mutated sea monster' hairdos like in so many other games. After selecting what your character should look like, you can outfit him or her with clothes, jewelry and other trinkets. This option is not totally wasted once your character acquires some armor; parts of the selected clothing remain visible, such as the animal pelts of the Beastmaster.
This part of the game has been the target of certain neocon groups in the United States claiming that 'the game depicts blacks [clerics and paladins from Kehjistan -BL] as religious leaders... it is the tool of Satan and should be banned from our great Christian country', until a law was passed stating that 'anyone trying to hamper, delay, slow down, impede or otherwise screw with the release of Diablo 4 will be considered a traitor of the great American principles of Freedom and Independence, and will be hanged from Liberty's Torch'.
......
On to the actual game now. I started out as a puny level 1 Sorcerer with a level 3 Firebolt and four innate abilities ready to take on the world. These innate abilities are pretty useless for the Sorc compared to those of other classes. Beastmasters can buy animals or summon them from beast tokens, and mount them. Clerics can Heal themselves and their party members. And Sorcerers can open and close doors from a distance, woo-hoo!
My attitude towards Open/Close changed less than one minute after I entered the haunted forest, when I encountered my first scavenger beasts. Closing the door in their face would delay them long enough to get some distance and shoot them from afar as originally intended, and would coincidentally also cause 1-4 damage to the frontmost scavenger.
Those scavengers are creepy. In the perpetual gloom of the haunted forest, the black animals are very hard to spot. You can see the glow in their eyes, though. But with skeletons running rampant and spells flying in all directions, they manage to stay undetected prettty well. And when damaged, they scuttle back into the darkness to eat a nearby corpse and regenerate back up to full.
I found a neat rare robe with +9 to mana, my first cursed item [miserable dagger of dexterity, -45% damage, +1 dexterity] and my first unique, The Rainbow Cloak. It gave 25% to all resistances, but also increased light radius by 20%, which attracted more monsters towards me. It got sold.
Attack and defense rating are handled differently now. Defense rating is the chance of an incoming attack hitting armor instead of flesh. If the attack/defense check fails, the attack is deflected by the armor and the physical damage component is ignored. If the attack carries knockback or elemental damage, the secondary effect will still hit you. Attack rating affects the chance that a melee attack hits flesh instead of armor, and determines accuracy for ranged weapons, though the chance to hit with a ranged weapon is also affected by distance.
There is also a new stat, 'dodge rating', which determines the chance to avoid an enemy attack altogether, and is largely based upon your dexterity. Interestingly, wearing heavy armor decreases your dodge rating, in order to encourage players to choose one or the other. Dodging attacks is less effective than absorbing them, but for mage characters it is good enough, and it is easier to get a decent dodge rating by investing into dexterity than getting a decent defense rating by investing into strength and praying for a godly full plate.
Level up! When you level, you get five attribute points, one skill point and one ability point. The ability point goes to one of twenty-four passive abilities that improve various aspects of the character. Mine went into Increased Energy, which boosted my energy stat by 11%.
I invested my first skill point into Frozen Armor, which granted a 15% bonus to dodge rating and the ability to freeze attackers by 25% for 1-2 seconds, as well as inflict 1-3 cold damage. One major disadvantage about the skill is the fact that its casting sound seems to alert and 'wake up' all nearby creatures, which resulted in me getting repeatedly mobbed by groups of enemies suddenly emerging from nowhere. The freeze effect is low to begin with, and gradually decreases to zero over its duration, which made it pretty useless. The dodge rating bonus was very helpful, though.
I spotted a level 31 Sorc in a public game, outfitted in a nifty looking golden full plate. It was Shi Zi's Valor, which gave +15% to Sorc spell damage and increased cast rate by 2. Wow.
My play session was rudely cut short by yet another server outage Blizzard claims to have fixed four times already. Way to go, Blizzard. I also found out I had been fired, which did not matter much to me, as I had +204% extra gold from monsters, and 204% - 100% is still +104%.
Diablo 3 Beta Test report #4 - 29.08.2012
My Beastmaster hit level 62 in a random public game, and is now halfway through Nightmare difficulty, near the end of the haunted forest. I thought I was badass when I scored a level 49 spirit wolf mount (155-202 slashing, 40-87 cold damage) from a beast token dropped by a random banshee boss near the Lake of Tears, until I joined a public game and got to see a bunch of level 60-65 characters with level 70+ royal lions and frostsaber panthers doing upwards of 450 damage per hit with an attack speed of 20.
So I paid a visit to my old friend Hathar, traded in my 'useless' spirit wolf for a level 56 dire rhino with 259-402 crushing damage, replaced my old moon wolf pets with three brand new level 53-59 night panthers that do an average of about 300 damage per hit with +10 to their critical hit check, and bought a pair of Beastlord's Dire Claws of Devastation with +2 Beastmaster skills and +14% to my pets' crushing damage. Growl.
Unlike the Druid in Diablo 2, the Beastmaster does have full control of his minions. Skills assigned to the right mouse button are executed by the character, and skills assigned to the left mouse button by one of his pets - use Tab to switch between the available pets, or hit F12 to instantly select the character's mount, if any, and press both mouse buttons at once for a combo attack to impress the newbies.
Critical hits are the bane of the Beastmaster's existence. Unlike in Diablo 2 where monsters had 5% chance to land critical hits and characters had a percentage chance based on your skills and equipment, critical hits are now more related to the actual combat situation. Getting hit from behind greatly increases the chance of taking a critical hit. Getting hit while casting a spell automatically results in one, and interrupts the spell. This is usually not a huge problem for combat characters, but the Beastmaster is big and slow and gets blindsided quite often, taking a lot of critical hits. I took 9 critical hits in a row from a slayer boss in the Dark Cathedral.
With my new furry friends I checked out channel #TheAmazonBasin to find someone to help me get past the Sheolan Gates, the tricky bit between the forest and hell sections.
The other Basiners were leveling their newbie characters in Normal, so I started a NM/Hell game with Ruvanal, who to my horror was playing a Monk, a class not often played by beta testers, probably because it requires too much micro for the 12 year old kids that make up most of the beta tester pool, and also for another reason, one that I learned as soon as we met our first enemy.
His offensive skills are unique in this game. Set a combat skill under the right mouse button, a 'modifier' under the left, and your attacks will combine the effects of both skills. Use the 'Serpent' modifier, which adds life and mana steal, with the 'Storm' attack, a spinning strike not unlike Whirlwind in Diablo 2, and you will do a spin attack that steals life and mana, called 'Serpent Storm' in the skill bar. Every combination of attack and modifier has a different animation, and some of these are very Matrix-like.
The problem with the Monk in the current version is that it is the worst enemy of party play. Rogues and Sorcs can be a threat to other party members, but not to the degree of being rendered completely useless when trying to avoid friendly fire. Most of the Monk's melee attacks and modifiers have an area of effect, which all too often includes the other melee-based party members. To make matters worse, Ruvanal insisted on using the 'Earth' modifier, which made those big waves on the ground and launched me into the air every time I happened to attack the enemy he was already engaged with, or the other way round.
Within two minutes of each other, we found the unique banded mail, Sagarmatha, and a rare thunder hammer with +2 Holy Freeze [Cleric Only] on it, and 41-62 crushing damage when thrown. Holy Freeze is not very effective, but it is almost worth it for the graphics alone, slowing down the movement of flags, tapestries and other such objects, and freezing water.
The transition between the forest levels and the hell levels is a giant wall with a big gate in it, flanked by two statues. Having already been fired at with powerful laser beams by the statues in Normal difficulty, we cleared the immediate area of banshees and goat men first, then stopped to divide the loot and portal to town for potions before engaging them. A surprise awaited us when we returned through the portal: the statue had turned into a giant stone pteranodon of sorts, and proceeded to rain down fireballs upon us the instant we came back. The bastard chased us through three miles of unexplored forest before our shaman was able to down him with a well-aimed chain lightning bolt.
Recharge is a wonderful ability. All characters can learn it, it costs no mana, and it speeds up mana recovery to the point where an empty mana orb becomes a maxed out orb in fifteen seconds. Its drawback is that it requires the caster to stand dead still, leaving him or her prone to all sorts of critical hits, and it has a 20 second timer. It really helps reduce downtime for characters with low mana.
I accidentally killed Ruvanal's Monk in the Haunted Forest by running into him with my character, which happened to be riding a level 56 rhino (259-402 crushing damage). Seems like being in front of any character is dangerous now, not just trigger-happy Sorcs and Monks with a shockwave disorder (just kidding, Ruvanal!).
Crystalion had three more bug reports for Blizzard:
Firstly, it is possible to hit and destroy the haunted paintings in the monastery ruins from extreme range before the ghost has a chance to emerge. No ghost means no item drop, since the item drop occurs at the location of the ghost when the painting dies.
Secondly, there is a bug involving the banshees' corpse spirit attack; they can apparently target fallen Beastmaster minions with it, which will destroy the corpses permanently. Not only can they then no longer be revived, but they still count towards the Beastmaster's minion limit, rendering him unable to replace them and harshly corrupting the character.
Contrary to popular opinion, and confirmed by Ruvanal, the monsters have not become more aggressive towards weakened characters in the latest patch. The real cause of the large number of surprise deaths in 1.08 seems to be that even though the Recharge ability is silent, it has acquired a monster magnet effect similar to that of spells that do have a verbal component. Casting Recharge in 1.08 will instantly wake up all enemies within a large radius, and draw them towards you, and since you are low on mana and not expecting it, you will probably die. Geoff Fraizer confirmed this to be a bug, and it will likely be fixed in 1.09.
Diablo 3 Beta Test report #9 - 21.09.2012
My Sorc finally hit level 141! Only 59 more levels to go. There seems to be a war going on outside, but I have internet access via satellite and a power generator, so it will not affect me too much.
Zhao Yin is currently in Hell/Hell, Seventh Circle. I joined a random pubbie to push to the next waypoint. There were 14 other players in the game, including 9 Shamen. This definitely seems to be the big cheese class in the current beta.
The Shaman's Healing Ward is indeed a wonderful spell and saved the day against Dreadjudge's mob in Hell/Hell and their vicious fireballs. In Normal and Nightmare difficulty those lower advocates are not very dangerous, due to their lack of mana, especially if you have mana draining skills. They tend to cast a lot of buffs on each other before engaging, at which point they have about 30% of their mana left, quickly run out and retreat to use Recharge. And we know what to do when we see a stationary enemy in the process of casting. In Hell difficulty, though, they had at least 1,500 mana and high level Energy Drain, and threw non-stop fireballs at us. Ouch.
Our white-robed negro friend the level 139 Cleric was having serious problems keeping his followers alive at the bridge between the 7th and 8th circle. A goat archer boss named Blightfire the Burning had spawned in the exact center of the bridge, and no one could get near without taking several Bloodstar hits. Even though bosses do not have the insane stacking mods of Diablo 2, the Bloodstar attack alone was enough to drive us back from the bridge time after time. The poor Cleric was spending more time reviving his followers than actually attacking. Our Savage had been punted off the bridge and was trying to get close enough to his corpse, which had spawned almost right next to the goat boss, without dying over and over again. All our magic resist gear was on the floor beneath Blightfire's feet. And then we got to see: Doomcloud the Black, stormdemon boss, lightning enchanted.
We died, and died some more, and died some more trying to get our corpses back. Our Savage switched to thrown axes with acid damage, to take down the boss' defense rating, to make him easier to hit. I had given up on casting Empower on allies which died before they had the chance to cast one spell. In the confusion, someone managed to train the mob to the waypoint and then misplace the town portal right in front of Doomcloud. I used a staff of Bone Spirit to try and drain some of his hit points, but the bone spirits took off more like 1/50th of his hit points instead of 1/3rd, which made me wonder if there is some kind of damage reduction for percentage based attacks in Hell difficulty, in lieu of the 33%/50% cap on Static in Diablo 2. Finally, at long last, he dropped dead and a Thunderbellow, a neat unique helm that went to our Savage. Blightfire died soon afterwards, having already been harmed by a lot of area effect spells.
A level 162 [!] Beastmaster joined and offered us a portal to the grand finale, Diablo in Hell difficulty. Not quite sure of our chances, after getting owned so badly by two random bosses, we nevertheless jumped into the portal as fast as possible.
The party emerged in the final Circle at the bottom of the lava pit. There were a lot of magistrates, advocates, steel knights, vortex lords and soul burners, of which the knights turned out to be immune to everything except fire, and the soul burners were immune to everything except physical. Rather than drawing out the succubi one by one, cornering them and hitting them over the head with my massive 14-39 crushing damage melee attack, I let the melee characters handle them. Then the Savage click-locked a fleeing soul burner and got massacred by the 20 others just behind the screen. The Beastmaster chickened out and TPed away, and I teleported for dear life, leaving a mass of critters parked around the stairs and our only town portal. Hmm.
Back in town, we loaded up the party Monk with all the high dodge equipment we had, enchanted him with Frozen Armor and Tribal Fire, Devotion and Holy Shield, and sent him down. The rest of the party followed, and we managed to clear out the area around the town portal with the Monk tanking the entire mob of monsters. Wow. They dropped a mythical amulet of transcendence, plate mail of tears and 409 gold pieces.
Even here, in Hell/Hell, it's hard to break even money-wise if you aren't careful. Items do not sell for much, and the constant repairs drain a lot of gold. Mage items seem even more expensive to repair than melee items; Nehru wanted 23,400 gold pieces [!] to repair 3 durability on my rare robe. I contemplated waiting until Diablo's uberdrop to repair it, but I did not want it to break in the middle of a battle and be gone forever either.
We flipped the first switch, and out came Darktooth Fleshmaul and mob [told ya to stand back!], and from that very small and unimportant uncleared section of the level emerged a steel knight boss named Blackrend Irondeath. The Shaman lost his nerve at this point and accidentally cast a Flame Wave, waking up anyone and everyone else in the damn room. The Beastmaster Stampeded, and died instantly. Someone decided to flip another switch to make some more room, forgetting that we had already used all the switches but the last one, and set free the Lord of Terror.
'Your mortal souls shall scream with anguish for all eternity!'
Oops.
XR-Shaman04 has left the game.
ThatHolyPpl has left the game.
Brav3Savag3 has left the game.
Just me and the Beastmaster left, and he was having a hard time staying alive, let alone keeping his pets alive, and he was constantly running them into my Ice Storm. I was taking massive damage from Diablo's ice wave attack, but we persisted, and a long and hard battle later Diablo dropped dead. On the ground was a rare bladed staff, rare amulet, magic claws and unique full plate mail! The armor was useless and the staff had everything except enhanced damage, but the amulet was rather godly: +1 to all skills, +21 energy, +29 dexterity, 39% lightning resist, cast rate increased by 3!
Then the server went down!
OH NOOOOOOOOO!
BLIZZARD YOU #@&$£ù%!!!
I am sorry to report there will be a substantial delay before the next beta test reports, but I seem to have somehow broken all six of the Diablo 3 DVDs during that rage attack. The replacements are already in the mail, and they are 'coming as soon as possible'. Stay tuned...
......
;)
The release of the beta of Blizzard's new flagship title is the culmination of a hype never seen before. North Korea admitted that '0% of our nuclear capability' is currently aimed at Seoul 'to minimize the risk of an accidental nuclear launch affecting the Asia 3 servers'. For the same reason, the United States reduced the number of nuclear ICBMs aimed at Cuba, where the USSouthSouthWest server is located, to '0.6234% of the maximum capacity', or a measly 1,447 missiles, and pointed the extra missiles towards Europe. 'If less than 50% of the European people play on an American server, we will launch a pre-emptive strike', Admiral Bush claimed, 'Their kids will come into contact with the great American culture by playing on our great American servers, and we expect an estimated 87.4% of the European people to surrender to our great American army within the first four days of the upcoming war'. He also stated that 'the European rogue states such as France and Belgium' were violating the treaty by 'totally owning us at Diablo 2'.
The announced beta release, four years and three months ago, was preceded by not one but three attempted terrorist attacks on the free people of the free country of the United Free States. A North Korean 'black ops' team captured a 737 with a 'suitcase nuke on board' and threatened to detonate it above Los Angeles if Blizzard would not increase the number of Asian servers to 8. A second terrorist from the independent state of Texas stole a Kenworth 'Chromeliner' and claimed he would drive it into the Statue of Liberty if Blizzard did not add a 'Block All Koreans' button in the chat menu. Finally, a Dutch terrorist threatened to fly his delta wing into Mount Rushmore unless Blizzard would enforce a strong anti-hack policy on the realms.
......
After receiving the box with the six game DVDs in the mail, we beta testers had to wait over two weeks before the Beta 1 server was finally up. I spent this time clicking Refresh Server List every five minutes and staring at the 'We are working hard to get the server online as soon as possible' message for days. Then it finally went up, and immediately back down again when 99,999 other beta testers logged on at the same exact moment. The connection was very unreliable all week long, but I did manage to make some progress.
There are 14 character classes, ordered by region of origin; the seven countries of Sanctuary have two character choices each. Kehjistan, the rainforest area of Diablo 2, offers the Cleric and Paladin, while the peaks of Arreat are home to the Savage and Beastmaster. Richu in the Far East is the new addition to the world of Sanctuary, and offers the Sorcerer and Monk.
After sitting in front of the computer screen for four straight hours unable to make a choice, I clicked at random and got the Sorcerer. After selecting a class, the game asks for a character name. There is a 'Random' button for the totally uninspired individual, which is colored red in the German language version, and there are powerful heuristic bad language filters in effect in the American English version. I named my Sorcerer Zhao Yin, which is Chinese for 'm3 pWnZ0rZ y0o', or so I heard.
A curious option in the character creation screen is the 'Alarm Clock' option, which is only available in the Korean version of the game. When enabled, the alarm clock goes off after 48 hours of playing the character in one session.
The next step in creating a character is customizing his or her look in the Fenotype menu. There are 20 body types, 40 heads, 40 haircuts and 15 voices available per character class. To Blizzard's credit, all of the available body parts fit the general theme of the class, and there are no useless 'deranged clown' or 'mutated sea monster' hairdos like in so many other games. After selecting what your character should look like, you can outfit him or her with clothes, jewelry and other trinkets. This option is not totally wasted once your character acquires some armor; parts of the selected clothing remain visible, such as the animal pelts of the Beastmaster.
This part of the game has been the target of certain neocon groups in the United States claiming that 'the game depicts blacks [clerics and paladins from Kehjistan -BL] as religious leaders... it is the tool of Satan and should be banned from our great Christian country', until a law was passed stating that 'anyone trying to hamper, delay, slow down, impede or otherwise screw with the release of Diablo 4 will be considered a traitor of the great American principles of Freedom and Independence, and will be hanged from Liberty's Torch'.
......
On to the actual game now. I started out as a puny level 1 Sorcerer with a level 3 Firebolt and four innate abilities ready to take on the world. These innate abilities are pretty useless for the Sorc compared to those of other classes. Beastmasters can buy animals or summon them from beast tokens, and mount them. Clerics can Heal themselves and their party members. And Sorcerers can open and close doors from a distance, woo-hoo!
My attitude towards Open/Close changed less than one minute after I entered the haunted forest, when I encountered my first scavenger beasts. Closing the door in their face would delay them long enough to get some distance and shoot them from afar as originally intended, and would coincidentally also cause 1-4 damage to the frontmost scavenger.
Those scavengers are creepy. In the perpetual gloom of the haunted forest, the black animals are very hard to spot. You can see the glow in their eyes, though. But with skeletons running rampant and spells flying in all directions, they manage to stay undetected prettty well. And when damaged, they scuttle back into the darkness to eat a nearby corpse and regenerate back up to full.
I found a neat rare robe with +9 to mana, my first cursed item [miserable dagger of dexterity, -45% damage, +1 dexterity] and my first unique, The Rainbow Cloak. It gave 25% to all resistances, but also increased light radius by 20%, which attracted more monsters towards me. It got sold.
Attack and defense rating are handled differently now. Defense rating is the chance of an incoming attack hitting armor instead of flesh. If the attack/defense check fails, the attack is deflected by the armor and the physical damage component is ignored. If the attack carries knockback or elemental damage, the secondary effect will still hit you. Attack rating affects the chance that a melee attack hits flesh instead of armor, and determines accuracy for ranged weapons, though the chance to hit with a ranged weapon is also affected by distance.
There is also a new stat, 'dodge rating', which determines the chance to avoid an enemy attack altogether, and is largely based upon your dexterity. Interestingly, wearing heavy armor decreases your dodge rating, in order to encourage players to choose one or the other. Dodging attacks is less effective than absorbing them, but for mage characters it is good enough, and it is easier to get a decent dodge rating by investing into dexterity than getting a decent defense rating by investing into strength and praying for a godly full plate.
Level up! When you level, you get five attribute points, one skill point and one ability point. The ability point goes to one of twenty-four passive abilities that improve various aspects of the character. Mine went into Increased Energy, which boosted my energy stat by 11%.
I invested my first skill point into Frozen Armor, which granted a 15% bonus to dodge rating and the ability to freeze attackers by 25% for 1-2 seconds, as well as inflict 1-3 cold damage. One major disadvantage about the skill is the fact that its casting sound seems to alert and 'wake up' all nearby creatures, which resulted in me getting repeatedly mobbed by groups of enemies suddenly emerging from nowhere. The freeze effect is low to begin with, and gradually decreases to zero over its duration, which made it pretty useless. The dodge rating bonus was very helpful, though.
I spotted a level 31 Sorc in a public game, outfitted in a nifty looking golden full plate. It was Shi Zi's Valor, which gave +15% to Sorc spell damage and increased cast rate by 2. Wow.
My play session was rudely cut short by yet another server outage Blizzard claims to have fixed four times already. Way to go, Blizzard. I also found out I had been fired, which did not matter much to me, as I had +204% extra gold from monsters, and 204% - 100% is still +104%.
Diablo 3 Beta Test report #4 - 29.08.2012
My Beastmaster hit level 62 in a random public game, and is now halfway through Nightmare difficulty, near the end of the haunted forest. I thought I was badass when I scored a level 49 spirit wolf mount (155-202 slashing, 40-87 cold damage) from a beast token dropped by a random banshee boss near the Lake of Tears, until I joined a public game and got to see a bunch of level 60-65 characters with level 70+ royal lions and frostsaber panthers doing upwards of 450 damage per hit with an attack speed of 20.
So I paid a visit to my old friend Hathar, traded in my 'useless' spirit wolf for a level 56 dire rhino with 259-402 crushing damage, replaced my old moon wolf pets with three brand new level 53-59 night panthers that do an average of about 300 damage per hit with +10 to their critical hit check, and bought a pair of Beastlord's Dire Claws of Devastation with +2 Beastmaster skills and +14% to my pets' crushing damage. Growl.
Unlike the Druid in Diablo 2, the Beastmaster does have full control of his minions. Skills assigned to the right mouse button are executed by the character, and skills assigned to the left mouse button by one of his pets - use Tab to switch between the available pets, or hit F12 to instantly select the character's mount, if any, and press both mouse buttons at once for a combo attack to impress the newbies.
Critical hits are the bane of the Beastmaster's existence. Unlike in Diablo 2 where monsters had 5% chance to land critical hits and characters had a percentage chance based on your skills and equipment, critical hits are now more related to the actual combat situation. Getting hit from behind greatly increases the chance of taking a critical hit. Getting hit while casting a spell automatically results in one, and interrupts the spell. This is usually not a huge problem for combat characters, but the Beastmaster is big and slow and gets blindsided quite often, taking a lot of critical hits. I took 9 critical hits in a row from a slayer boss in the Dark Cathedral.
With my new furry friends I checked out channel #TheAmazonBasin to find someone to help me get past the Sheolan Gates, the tricky bit between the forest and hell sections.
The other Basiners were leveling their newbie characters in Normal, so I started a NM/Hell game with Ruvanal, who to my horror was playing a Monk, a class not often played by beta testers, probably because it requires too much micro for the 12 year old kids that make up most of the beta tester pool, and also for another reason, one that I learned as soon as we met our first enemy.
His offensive skills are unique in this game. Set a combat skill under the right mouse button, a 'modifier' under the left, and your attacks will combine the effects of both skills. Use the 'Serpent' modifier, which adds life and mana steal, with the 'Storm' attack, a spinning strike not unlike Whirlwind in Diablo 2, and you will do a spin attack that steals life and mana, called 'Serpent Storm' in the skill bar. Every combination of attack and modifier has a different animation, and some of these are very Matrix-like.
The problem with the Monk in the current version is that it is the worst enemy of party play. Rogues and Sorcs can be a threat to other party members, but not to the degree of being rendered completely useless when trying to avoid friendly fire. Most of the Monk's melee attacks and modifiers have an area of effect, which all too often includes the other melee-based party members. To make matters worse, Ruvanal insisted on using the 'Earth' modifier, which made those big waves on the ground and launched me into the air every time I happened to attack the enemy he was already engaged with, or the other way round.
Within two minutes of each other, we found the unique banded mail, Sagarmatha, and a rare thunder hammer with +2 Holy Freeze [Cleric Only] on it, and 41-62 crushing damage when thrown. Holy Freeze is not very effective, but it is almost worth it for the graphics alone, slowing down the movement of flags, tapestries and other such objects, and freezing water.
The transition between the forest levels and the hell levels is a giant wall with a big gate in it, flanked by two statues. Having already been fired at with powerful laser beams by the statues in Normal difficulty, we cleared the immediate area of banshees and goat men first, then stopped to divide the loot and portal to town for potions before engaging them. A surprise awaited us when we returned through the portal: the statue had turned into a giant stone pteranodon of sorts, and proceeded to rain down fireballs upon us the instant we came back. The bastard chased us through three miles of unexplored forest before our shaman was able to down him with a well-aimed chain lightning bolt.
Recharge is a wonderful ability. All characters can learn it, it costs no mana, and it speeds up mana recovery to the point where an empty mana orb becomes a maxed out orb in fifteen seconds. Its drawback is that it requires the caster to stand dead still, leaving him or her prone to all sorts of critical hits, and it has a 20 second timer. It really helps reduce downtime for characters with low mana.
I accidentally killed Ruvanal's Monk in the Haunted Forest by running into him with my character, which happened to be riding a level 56 rhino (259-402 crushing damage). Seems like being in front of any character is dangerous now, not just trigger-happy Sorcs and Monks with a shockwave disorder (just kidding, Ruvanal!).
Crystalion had three more bug reports for Blizzard:
Firstly, it is possible to hit and destroy the haunted paintings in the monastery ruins from extreme range before the ghost has a chance to emerge. No ghost means no item drop, since the item drop occurs at the location of the ghost when the painting dies.
Secondly, there is a bug involving the banshees' corpse spirit attack; they can apparently target fallen Beastmaster minions with it, which will destroy the corpses permanently. Not only can they then no longer be revived, but they still count towards the Beastmaster's minion limit, rendering him unable to replace them and harshly corrupting the character.
Contrary to popular opinion, and confirmed by Ruvanal, the monsters have not become more aggressive towards weakened characters in the latest patch. The real cause of the large number of surprise deaths in 1.08 seems to be that even though the Recharge ability is silent, it has acquired a monster magnet effect similar to that of spells that do have a verbal component. Casting Recharge in 1.08 will instantly wake up all enemies within a large radius, and draw them towards you, and since you are low on mana and not expecting it, you will probably die. Geoff Fraizer confirmed this to be a bug, and it will likely be fixed in 1.09.
Diablo 3 Beta Test report #9 - 21.09.2012
My Sorc finally hit level 141! Only 59 more levels to go. There seems to be a war going on outside, but I have internet access via satellite and a power generator, so it will not affect me too much.
Zhao Yin is currently in Hell/Hell, Seventh Circle. I joined a random pubbie to push to the next waypoint. There were 14 other players in the game, including 9 Shamen. This definitely seems to be the big cheese class in the current beta.
The Shaman's Healing Ward is indeed a wonderful spell and saved the day against Dreadjudge's mob in Hell/Hell and their vicious fireballs. In Normal and Nightmare difficulty those lower advocates are not very dangerous, due to their lack of mana, especially if you have mana draining skills. They tend to cast a lot of buffs on each other before engaging, at which point they have about 30% of their mana left, quickly run out and retreat to use Recharge. And we know what to do when we see a stationary enemy in the process of casting. In Hell difficulty, though, they had at least 1,500 mana and high level Energy Drain, and threw non-stop fireballs at us. Ouch.
Our white-robed negro friend the level 139 Cleric was having serious problems keeping his followers alive at the bridge between the 7th and 8th circle. A goat archer boss named Blightfire the Burning had spawned in the exact center of the bridge, and no one could get near without taking several Bloodstar hits. Even though bosses do not have the insane stacking mods of Diablo 2, the Bloodstar attack alone was enough to drive us back from the bridge time after time. The poor Cleric was spending more time reviving his followers than actually attacking. Our Savage had been punted off the bridge and was trying to get close enough to his corpse, which had spawned almost right next to the goat boss, without dying over and over again. All our magic resist gear was on the floor beneath Blightfire's feet. And then we got to see: Doomcloud the Black, stormdemon boss, lightning enchanted.
We died, and died some more, and died some more trying to get our corpses back. Our Savage switched to thrown axes with acid damage, to take down the boss' defense rating, to make him easier to hit. I had given up on casting Empower on allies which died before they had the chance to cast one spell. In the confusion, someone managed to train the mob to the waypoint and then misplace the town portal right in front of Doomcloud. I used a staff of Bone Spirit to try and drain some of his hit points, but the bone spirits took off more like 1/50th of his hit points instead of 1/3rd, which made me wonder if there is some kind of damage reduction for percentage based attacks in Hell difficulty, in lieu of the 33%/50% cap on Static in Diablo 2. Finally, at long last, he dropped dead and a Thunderbellow, a neat unique helm that went to our Savage. Blightfire died soon afterwards, having already been harmed by a lot of area effect spells.
A level 162 [!] Beastmaster joined and offered us a portal to the grand finale, Diablo in Hell difficulty. Not quite sure of our chances, after getting owned so badly by two random bosses, we nevertheless jumped into the portal as fast as possible.
The party emerged in the final Circle at the bottom of the lava pit. There were a lot of magistrates, advocates, steel knights, vortex lords and soul burners, of which the knights turned out to be immune to everything except fire, and the soul burners were immune to everything except physical. Rather than drawing out the succubi one by one, cornering them and hitting them over the head with my massive 14-39 crushing damage melee attack, I let the melee characters handle them. Then the Savage click-locked a fleeing soul burner and got massacred by the 20 others just behind the screen. The Beastmaster chickened out and TPed away, and I teleported for dear life, leaving a mass of critters parked around the stairs and our only town portal. Hmm.
Back in town, we loaded up the party Monk with all the high dodge equipment we had, enchanted him with Frozen Armor and Tribal Fire, Devotion and Holy Shield, and sent him down. The rest of the party followed, and we managed to clear out the area around the town portal with the Monk tanking the entire mob of monsters. Wow. They dropped a mythical amulet of transcendence, plate mail of tears and 409 gold pieces.
Even here, in Hell/Hell, it's hard to break even money-wise if you aren't careful. Items do not sell for much, and the constant repairs drain a lot of gold. Mage items seem even more expensive to repair than melee items; Nehru wanted 23,400 gold pieces [!] to repair 3 durability on my rare robe. I contemplated waiting until Diablo's uberdrop to repair it, but I did not want it to break in the middle of a battle and be gone forever either.
We flipped the first switch, and out came Darktooth Fleshmaul and mob [told ya to stand back!], and from that very small and unimportant uncleared section of the level emerged a steel knight boss named Blackrend Irondeath. The Shaman lost his nerve at this point and accidentally cast a Flame Wave, waking up anyone and everyone else in the damn room. The Beastmaster Stampeded, and died instantly. Someone decided to flip another switch to make some more room, forgetting that we had already used all the switches but the last one, and set free the Lord of Terror.
'Your mortal souls shall scream with anguish for all eternity!'
Oops.
XR-Shaman04 has left the game.
ThatHolyPpl has left the game.
Brav3Savag3 has left the game.
Just me and the Beastmaster left, and he was having a hard time staying alive, let alone keeping his pets alive, and he was constantly running them into my Ice Storm. I was taking massive damage from Diablo's ice wave attack, but we persisted, and a long and hard battle later Diablo dropped dead. On the ground was a rare bladed staff, rare amulet, magic claws and unique full plate mail! The armor was useless and the staff had everything except enhanced damage, but the amulet was rather godly: +1 to all skills, +21 energy, +29 dexterity, 39% lightning resist, cast rate increased by 3!
Then the server went down!
OH NOOOOOOOOO!
BLIZZARD YOU #@&$£ù%!!!
I am sorry to report there will be a substantial delay before the next beta test reports, but I seem to have somehow broken all six of the Diablo 3 DVDs during that rage attack. The replacements are already in the mail, and they are 'coming as soon as possible'. Stay tuned...
......
;)
Nothing is impossible if you believe in it enough.
Median 2008 mod for Diablo II
<span style="color:gray">New skills, new AIs, new items, new challenges...
06.dec.2006: Median 2008 1.44
Median 2008 mod for Diablo II
<span style="color:gray">New skills, new AIs, new items, new challenges...
06.dec.2006: Median 2008 1.44
