Diablo 3 review

[Silvergun X]

If anyone's interested, for the next hour or so i'm running a Diablo 3 Inferno Act 2 live stream.

Playing as a monk FYI

www.justin.tv/valvalion

[dataDave]

Get yourself involved with Dota 2 instead, FAR superior to League of Legends!

I was going to buy my way into the beta last week actually, but, I really like some of the champs on LOL.

[Silvergun X]

Act 3 is FOOKING hard.

Just taken down Belial on Inferno with a Barbarian and Monk combo (No idea how we managed that)



I'm getting completely wiped out on Act 3, it's nasty!

[Kaido]

Nice one, did it take many tries? I'm still on act 2 getting instakilled as Demon Hunter

[Silvergun X]

That was our second attempt. Belial was actually very easy.

Act 2 Inferno in its entirety became drastically easier, especially as a monk, once I'd realised a few things:

Mantra of Evasion skill - 80% damage reduction shield for 3 seconds when you get brought below 20% health

Near Death Experience passive - Instead of dying, you regain 35% health and spirit, with a cooldown of 90 seconds...

...unless you use a potion, which resets the Near Death Experience cooldown.

O_o

You can use your 3 second invunerability + heal, then use your heal skill, then wait for the Mantra defense skill to kick in, then wait for Near Death Experience to kick in, then use a potion, then wait for Near Death Experience to kick in *again*.

By this time you've already dealt a substantial amount of damage to any minion pack.

That Belial run was 5x NV.

I've got Crippling Wave set to 20% damage reduction on hit, all resistances at around 400, and my fellow Barbarian had his war cry set to Armor and Dodge rating - This seemed to sort us both out properly.

[Kaido]

Damn... DH with about 300 all resist + 25k health can survive only 2 hits from anything serious in hell 4+ and is instakilled in inferno 3+ although can dodge maybe 40% of the time.

I use shadow power twice if backed into a corner but that only gives me 6 seconds of likely survival for about 90 seconds worth of resource. I'm all about the 30k crits followed by running away very fast if they aren't dead.

[Supergoal]

Damn I'm on nightmare now and he'll that's a big gap from normal. I dread when I try higher difficulties.

[Silvergun X]

Kaido, what's your armor count looking like, what stats are you focusing on with gear?

I won't accept **** all if it doesn't have both Dexterity and Vitality on it.

Also are you on UK servers? I'll be happy to pull you through a few runs and tank some mobs for you.

Some interesting points have come up on the official Diablo 3 site - They held a 'Ask The Developers' thread on Reddit and some really good questions and answers came out of it. Specifically about building glass cannon ranged builds, and how they're trying to make defensive ranged more viable.

[Silvergun X]

Streaming again @ www.twitch.tv/valvalion

Act 2 Inferno, Monk Solo from Zoltan Kulle to Belial.

[dataDave]

Damn I'm on nightmare now and he'll that's a big gap from normal. I dread when I try higher difficulties.

Are you using the AH? I actually found it easier on each play through (apart from the Inferno Champs/elites, of course.)

[dataDave]

Damn... DH with about 300 all resist + 25k health can survive only 2 hits from anything serious in hell 4+ and is instakilled in inferno 3+ although can dodge maybe 40% of the time.

I use shadow power twice if backed into a corner but that only gives me 6 seconds of likely survival for about 90 seconds worth of resource. I'm all about the 30k crits followed by running away very fast if they aren't dead.

I'd recommend dumping all survivability for dex and attack speed, however they are dumbing attack speed down today so I don't know... Chances are if you're going to get hit just he once then getting hit a couple more times is a certainty. You may as well just zerg stuff down with a forced cookie cutter build. No way does Inferno grant leniency with skills sets or stats, it's totally regimented.

[Kaido]

I'll try and take a screenshot of stats later for full disclosure, its a combo of dex,crit,vit,res but I'm pretty sure glass cannon is the only feasible build. After some googling i found where a guy said he'd tanked res and vit on DH and still had instadeath on inferno and I've switched a skill out to lightning elemental arrow which stuns *some enemies* on crit and having a bit more luck in act1, far less deaths.

Also I'm 2h bow, no shield...

[Blaiz0r]

Woo hoo the first big patch it out!

http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/topic/227302-patch-103-now-live/

Features some really significant changes in there to make the game more enjoyable, top level weapons now drop in the last 2 acts of Hell, and more frequently in earlier acts of Inferno,

Crafting costs have been reduced for high end equipment for 50-70%!

Crafting jewels has been made cheaper too, with low end jewels only requiring 2 gems, and less gold.

Also Inferno monsters do less damage in acts 2, 3 and 4

[eastyy]

i imagine in a year diablo 3 will feel quite a bit different

as with diablo 2 the initial release and the latest patch there is a vast amount of stuff altered (though my bug bear was they made it far harder)

[Super Grover]

A few days old, so I dare say some/most of you are aware that a pro player by the name of Kripparrian has beaten the game on the hard core setting. Article here ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18532670