Diablo 3

[Nefaro]

My group ran into an insurmountable blue group this evening.   Besides the fact that they were blue which gives them more hit points and harder hitting attacks.  They were also plagued, molten and self healing.  So they would have a trail of fire, stand in a pool of poison and slowly regenerate health.  Did I mention they were FAST?  I cannot even imagine what Inferno level is like because this is only Chapter 1 of Hell.  It was the most frustrating 45 minutes, before we decided to move onto another area of the map board.

Some of those Blue groups have crazy extra abilities.  Don't forget those damnable Invincibility shields they like to keep up lots too!

Thanks for the Friend addy Bison!  Someday I'll figure out which class I want to carry past Nightmare first, and join the big boys.  ;D

[Kushan]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6018173/Game_Design_Update-5_28_2012#blog

Blizzard posted a small preview of changes that will be occurring in upcoming patches.

As I said in another thread, after getting my barbarian to hell, I've come to the conclusion that the game is currently broken for melee. From what I've read, barbs can't survive unless they go sword and board on hell mode. And in inferno they can't survive at all if they run into a blue/yellow mob. Think I'll switch back to my demon hunter for the time being. Its really a shame, I find using a 2H to smash undead/demons a lot more satisfying then shooting them with the DH. Don't get me wrong, I like the fact that the game gets really hard, but impossible to do is another thing all together.

[Nefaro]

Blizzard hates 2-handers, too.  :-\

[Nefaro]

Inferno is intended to be extremely difficult, but with some specific skills, a few classes were simply able to progress far more easily than intended. This made the classes, which were about where they were supposed to be, seem very underpowered. It also created the perception that the classes doing well were intended to rely on specific runes in all their builds, and the other classes were just broken. This is the opposite of what's true. If any single skill or rune feels absolutely required to progress, it means that skill is working against our goal of encouraging build diversity -- and those "required" skills need to be corrected.

Translation:  More nerfs. 
They should really looks at boosting some of the extremely crappy runes & skills.  There are a number of them that are just inefficient and worthless compared to the rest.

While the notes go on to say that Inferno has too many damage 'spikes' that need to be addressed, they mostly blame players' lack of good enough equipment going into it.  This may be true, but it can only get worse if they continue to nerf skills.  This is the typical Blizzard I remember from playing WoW years ago - nerf the strongest, let the weakest languish.  ::)

[Bison]

The gear part made me laugh.  For example (this is still only Hell level but proves the point): I pull 4 yellows across about 6 boards in total.  Not a single one is a match for my class and even if they were they were 10 to 35 levels below my current level.  That is an issue.

[Nefaro]

Indeed.

I suspect that they intentionally make the item drops 10-15 levels below your own, so that you're forced to use the AH when you eventually get desperate to fill lacking slots.  It's much worse than most MMOs so it had to have been intentional.   I still think they've shifted the loot drop situation to favor the AH more, in all ways, so that they can pull more into the RMAH if they ever get it fixed up.

[Bison]

Yeah maybe certainly folks are holding back the more uber gear for real $.  Your difficulty level and group size really factor into the loot drops too.  It's harder to pull good loot solo then in a group.  I really think it's a forcing function to group.  The problem is that two strangers aren't going to share drops.  Now my buddies that I play with we share loot all the time.  Hey look my Demon Hunter pulled yet another Barb piece.  :(  You need?  :D

[Kushan]

That was my issue on my DH all through nightmare. All the yellow's I was seeing were 10-15 levels below me. I was having a ton of issues dying and killing things compared to a friend of mine who was playing a wizard. I ended up breaking down and using the AH. Even Act 1 of hell mode saw very little useful drops. The drops were either stated wrong, at that level you can't gte away with having anything other then Dex and Vit on everything, or they were below the level hell should be droppping.

If anything class related needs to be nerfed its the death star wizards. I've seen wizards using the archon ability tear through mobs that require me to kite for a few minutes on my DH, or outright kill my barbarian by knocking me back and forth for 20 minutes.

In Blizzards defense they did say before release that in order to do inferno players would need to grind hell for awhile in order to get gear. Given the fact that the game has been out for only 2 weeks I don't think most of the players complaining on the forums are even geared for it yet. That being said, Blizzard needs to fix what level items are dropping from nightmare and hell difficulties. The AH also isn't nearly as bad as it was on release. I've seen items come down to alot more reasonable prices, and getting more gold from nightmare and hell helps alot too.

[Bison]

That is exactly what I'm thinking on the complaints too.  People are trying to jump ahead without the gear first.  And you are right there are many factors, like complete randomization, but Hell becomes a hell of a gear grind by design.

[Bison]

Sweet!  I just got this update now.  Need to review.


Diablo III Patch 1.0.2 - v.1.0.2.9749

Classes
Monk
Active Skills
Serenity
Skill Rune - Tranquility
Duration of immunity granted to nearby allies from crowd control effects reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second

Bug Fixes
For a full list of documented game and service bugs, please review the Known Issues sticky located in the Bug Report forum.
General
Players should no longer receive an "Error 14009" when logging in
The "Select a Hero" menu will now also display the difficulty level for each character
Several speed improvements have been made to the streaming downloader
Achievements
All players in a party should now receive "Till Death Do Us Part" even if they don't have Haedrig Eamon as their active follower
Acts
Act IV
Witch Doctors should no longer receive an error if they kill a Shadow Clone with a Damage-Over-Time (DoT) skill after it's launched a Firebomb but before it's reached its target

Auction House
The auction log in the Completed tab will now display a player's activity (bids, buyouts, sales, etc) in the proper order
When placing a new bid over a previous bid on the same auction, players will now be provided with the correct warning message: "Raising your maximum bid on an Auction you are already winning raises your current bid to just above your previous maximum bid. Are you sure you want to continue?"
Players will now receive an error message if they attempt to purchase an item after the 50 item limit has been reached in the Completed tab
The "Physical Damage" Preferred Stats option for rings has been renamed to "Bonus Minimum Physical Damage"
The "All Damage" Preferred Stats option for weapons and armor has been removed and replaced with bonuses of specific damage types
Items which have been purchased from a vendor and equipped by the player can now be sold on the Auction House
Listing items on the Auction House from a different character than the one currently selected should no longer cause item display issues
Battle.net
The public chat list will now sort alphabetically
Classes
Witch Doctor
Spirit Vessel (Passive) no longer clears debuffs when using waypoints or changing equipment

[Bison]

Sweet!  I just got this update now.  Need to review.


Diablo III Patch 1.0.2 - v.1.0.2.9749

Classes
Monk
Active Skills
Serenity
Skill Rune - Tranquility
Duration of immunity granted to nearby allies from crowd control effects reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second

WTF!?!?!?!?  1 gawd blessed freaking second!  Give me a break!

[Kushan]

I'm more worried about whats going to happen to balancing when PvP is introduced. Given whats happened to balancing since the introduction of Arenas into WoW, I'm a bit skeptical.

[Bison]

I honestly don't really get the point of PvP in D3 beyond an ego stroke.  There aren't different realms like WoW.  Frankly what pisses me off is that right now any decisions being made because of Inferno performance is being driven by farmers not the main stay of dedicated but casual gamers.  Like the Monk nerf.  Seriously?  The skill might maybe extend my life and another melee for 2 seconds before we die in a pool of poison.  Now 1 sec?  good grief.  Someone figured out a way to use it to farm something because it isn't about survivability of the normal players character even at Hell level and occassionally Nightmare.

[Bison]

Blizzard's quickly become an F at the server maintenance station.  Another server maintenance day that requires hours worth of post maintenance maintenance to fix whatever they broke while fixing the previous broken stuff.

[Nefaro]

I honestly don't really get the point of PvP in D3 beyond an ego stroke.  There aren't different realms like WoW.  Frankly what pisses me off is that right now any decisions being made because of Inferno performance is being driven by farmers not the main stay of dedicated but casual gamers.  Like the Monk nerf.  Seriously?  The skill might maybe extend my life and another melee for 2 seconds before we die in a pool of poison.  Now 1 sec?  good grief.  Someone figured out a way to use it to farm something because it isn't about survivability of the normal players character even at Hell level and occassionally Nightmare.

Same reason I was bitching about the previous skill nerfs.  One second long escape skills are crap.  Hell, the 2 second long ones were pretty quick. 

Bliz nerfs always pissed me off.  I recall some of those being the last time I rage quit WoW years ago.  Expect plenty more in future updates.  ::)