D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

[machinus]

D3: arcade game instead of an RPG?

From everything we have heard about the game, it really sounds like Blizzard is removing the aspect of pvp that I know many of us enjoyed the most, the part that happens before combat: building your character.

Blizzard is going to be adopting the wow talent system in a big way: capping how many points can be invested in each skill (less customization, I don't see what good comes out of this), and forcing players to spend their points in lower skills (less customization, could be ok depending on what they put at the top of the tree). If you thought pvp chars were "cookie-cutter" in LoD, wait until every player has their 5/5 points in Add Crit and 1/1 point in Good Combat Skill and no place to put the other 94 points but in skills about health globes and post critical hit bonuses. Is that supposed to be "customized?" Because all of these changes are for people who want to raid with their friends. I agree that the party system and team play sucked in D2. But I don't see why they have to ruin pvp just to fix that.

Eliminating stat customization and stat requirements is a huge blow to pvp, since you will NOT be optimizing your stats to carry your best items and complement the skills you will be using. Every barb is going to have the same str and vit and a bunch of energy sitting around doing little to nothing since Fury is irrelevant in pvp battles (useless). Every wizard is going to have a bunch of dex so she can "dodge" all the attacks she has to TP away from anyway (useless).

Forcing players to spend their stats and skill points in pvm skills is going to make pvp pointless and unfun.

This is because if both players have 100 points and 500 attributes to spend, we can pick our own items (since its impossible to get that eth breath, I have to pick something else and change my stats), put our 40 points into our main skills, and then decide how to optimize our passives, resistances, synergies, etc., for the equipment we have for pvp. If I don't even have to think about str and dex allocation, and there are only 3 pvp skills and we're both maxed out on those, the only thing that differentiates us is our equipment.

Now, let me ask you: In LoD, you were required to make a MF character and do runs just to get the equipment you needed to build optimal pvp chars. Most of the time drops were near-impossible, and the trading system was unreliable (spam your have list all night instead of actually playing the game), full of poofy items, and time consuming.

Character builds in LoD were too item-centric, because the best items were so much better and nearly impossible to get. After all the time you spent playing other characters just to get the right items for your main character, do you really want to play a game where you have no freedom to customize your character besides getting better items?

It sounds like pvp is going to be about two things: getting lucky and finding better items then your opponent, and being able to cycle through 10 different combat skills faster than they can. Which doesn't sound anything to me like an RPG.

 

[the V]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

I agree for the most part. I knew Diablo 3 coming after World of Warcraft could only mean bad things. I played D2 classic for about 6 years, and WoW for about 4. I really hope they don't try to turn D3 into an MMORPG like WoW, where everyone wears basically the same gear, has the same talent builds, life, and mana.

What made D2 great was you not only had skills to customize, but attributes as well. You could be a 400 dex amazon or a more balanced one with 275 vitality to complement your dex. Hopefully they at least keep that aspect of it. Hopefully there won't be any bullcrap questing for leveling either. Let's keep it hack-and-slash, please.

The WoW talent system is great...for WoW. The reason being you need all of those low level, forced talent points because it takes wayyyyy more time to level. In D2, you can go from level 19 to 30 before you even know where to put your attributes yet. They're different games, and it should stay that way.

 

[Telzen]

Re: D3: arcade game instead of an RPG?

Blizzard is going to be adopting the wow talent system in a big way: capping how many points can be invested in each skill (less customization, I don't see what good comes out of this), and forcing players to spend their points in lower skills (less customization, could be ok depending on what they put at the top of the tree).

Umm D2 also had a skill cap. It was 20. Now its 15 for passives and maybe 5 or more for active skills. The passives add a lot of benefits and make your character stronger, many of them affect multiple skills. So you're actually using 1 point to effect more than one skill, seems better to me. And I guess having to put points into skills you wouldn't use in D2 to move up the tree wasn't "forcing players to spend their points in lower skills"? At least now you can just put points into a passive that will help the entire game instead of having a bunch of 1 point skills.

If you thought pvp chars were "cookie-cutter" in LoD, wait until every player has their 5/5 points in Add Crit and 1/1 point in Good Combat Skill and no place to put the other 94 points but in skills about health globes and post critical hit bonuses. Is that supposed to be "customized?" Because all of these changes are for people who want to raid with their friends. I agree that the party system and team play sucked in D2. But I don't see why they have to ruin pvp just to fix that.).

I don't really see how 36+ passives per character to chose from to build your character is reducing customization. And plenty of those passives would be good for a pvp build.

Eliminating stat customization and stat requirements is a huge blow to pvp, since you will NOT be optimizing your stats to carry your best items and complement the skills you will be using. Every barb is going to have the same str and vit and a bunch of energy sitting around doing little to nothing since Fury is irrelevant in pvp battles (useless). Every wizard is going to have a bunch of dex so she can "dodge" all the attacks she has to TP away from anyway (useless).

Forcing players to spend their stats and skill points in pvm skills is going to make pvp pointless and unfun..

Don't even know what you are trying to say here. Players will not have the same stats. All of the same class will have the same base stats, but with items everyone will have a different total of each stat. And depending on what skills you pick, you will want items that give different amounts of each stat.

This is because if both players have 100 points and 500 attributes to spend, we can pick our own items (since its impossible to get that eth breath, I have to pick something else and change my stats), put our 40 points into our main skills, and then decide how to optimize our passives, resistances, synergies, etc., for the equipment we have for pvp. If I don't even have to think about str and dex allocation, and there are only 3 pvp skills and we're both maxed out on those, the only thing that differentiates us is our equipment.

Not sure what you're going for here either. But wouldn't it be great to not have to pick your final items before building your class? Not having stat requirements on items gives more options to players. Pretty simple.

Now, let me ask you: In LoD, you were required to make a MF character and do runs just to get the equipment you needed to build optimal pvp chars. Most of the time drops were near-impossible, and the trading system was unreliable (spam your have list all night instead of actually playing the game), full of poofy items, and time consuming.

Character builds in LoD were too item-centric, because the best items were so much better and nearly impossible to get. After all the time you spent playing other characters just to get the right items for your main character, do you really want to play a game where you have no freedom to customize your character besides getting better items?

Yeah because D3 = D2 right? You don't know what the drop rates on items will be or what the trade system is going to be.

It sounds like pvp is going to be about two things: getting lucky and finding better items then your opponent, and being able to cycle through 10 different combat skills faster than they can. Which doesn't sound anything to me like an RPG.

You don't have to cycle through skills, there's a hot bar. Instead of just spamming your strongest skill, now you can actually use tatics and have easy access to multiple skills to use against your opponent.

 

[Snarf]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

D2 made the illusion that your character was more customizable for pvp. This is true, you could make characters very different from others but if you wanted to be good you basically had to have minimal strength, dex, and mana, the rest was ALL vitality. I am very happy that you can now vary your character more from the cookie cutter builds and not SUCK....I hope

 

[akboy]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

Has Blizzard announced what all the skill caps will be? Have they announced what the stats for each skill will be? No. Most of the caps in the demos we've seen were temporary and won't be in the final game. So it's way too early to complain about cookie cutter builds because we don't know enough yet.

Eliminating stat customization and stat requirements is a huge blow to pvp, since you will NOT be optimizing your stats to carry your best items and complement the skills you will be using. Every barb is going to have the same str and vit . . .

No, that's false. You WILL be able to optimize your stats and every barb WON'T have the same str and vit. The stat customization will come from your gear. D2 had this, but D3 will have a greater focus on it to give more customization.

You want a pure str titan barb in D3? Fine, load him up with a bunch of str gear. Think of the auto stats in D3 like your base stats, like how the D2 Sorc starts out with a bit of dex even though she'll probably never use it. It's your choice what to add on top of those stats.

I find it kind of odd how people keep complaining about the supposed lack of customization in D3. The new rune system will give us the option to customize our skills in ways D2 never came close to. I think in the end, we will see more customization in D3 than we did in D2.

 

[Akse]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

Capping skills is ok. It was stupid to have every skill as 0/20 when many of the skills were just 1 pointers and a few key skills were to be maxed.

I seriously trust that they can make a 100 times better skill system than in D2.

 

[TarnishedHope]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

You got the idea.

Pretty much, someone will be creative and figure out one optimal way to build his/her character. Then, the rest of the gurgling idiots will proceed to copy his/her exact build. Soon enough, we'll have a clone war on our hands. My same complain for every game, really.

In all fairness, too little has been revealed for proper speculation, let alone for complains. The game itself isn't even finalized yet.

Stat allocation has been very popular in both Diablo 1 & 2, and was among the prime aspects of the Diablo series. Yet, until Diablo 3 is released, few can truly say the change is not for the best. After all, if the devs. found a better way to provide character customization, more power to them. :nod:

... However, I do agree that the new skill tree reminds me too much of WoW's talent tree system, where passive effects dominate. I can honestly say that WoW's talent tree system is probably one of the biggest piece of **** I've had the misfortune of experiencing.

Sure, customization is there, but really, in the end, everyone is forced to build their character the exact same, unspectacular way. To make it even worse, if someone found a way to play the system and actually create an effective, non-conventional build, Blizzard will immediate... remedy the "mistake", through various soulcrushing changes. (straying off-topic...)

Rather alarming to see Diablo 3 going in the same direction.

 

[Nighthavk]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

To make it even worse, if someone found a way to play the system and actually create an effective, non-conventional build, Blizzard will immediate... remedy the "mistake", through various soulcrushing changes. (straying off-topic...)

Reminds me of the Tri-Spec Hemo rogues or HARPs in WoW... Shame, really.

 

[Edairu]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

Has Blizzard announced what all the skill caps will be? Have they announced what the stats for each skill will be? No. Most of the caps in the demos we've seen were temporary and won't be in the final game. So it's way too early to complain about cookie cutter builds because we don't know enough yet.

Thank you for stating this, because many people on the forums need to read it. People are assuming the worst based on variables that can easily be changed for balancing, or even changed entirely based on Blizzard's experiences. Most of us know how Blizzard works, they try out several ideas and are constantly refining them. Don't take all of your information from one or two gameplay videos and moan and whine about what you see.

This was directed at nobody in particular.

Back on topic

I really hope they don't try to turn D3 into an MMORPG like WoW, where everyone wears basically the same gear, has the same talent builds, life, and mana.

Wait... so you think Diablo 2 isn't like this now? In some main channels I've seen 4 paladins next to eachother wearing the same armor, helm, and weapon. We all know they were the same items.

Personally I think runes messed everything up, they were far too rare to be taken seriously through legitimate means. Which resulted in massive duping and every hardcore PvP character would end up with an Enigma and Call to Arms etc. Handicapping anyone who tried to compete without buying their equipment online or duping.

 

[Kiroptus]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

Personally I think runes messed everything up, they were far too rare to be taken seriously through legitimate means. Which resulted in massive duping and every hardcore PvP character would end up with an Enigma and Call to Arms etc. Handicapping anyone who tried to compete without buying their equipment online or duping.

I said on another thread I say it again, Enigma and CTA are among the most unbalanced things to disgrace the already weak balance that D2 has. Something must be done to adress it (Removal would be a good choice).

Wait... so you think Diablo 2 isn't like this now? In some main channels I've seen 4 paladins next to eachother wearing the same armor, helm, and weapon. We all know they were the same items.

QTF. Everyone wears the same stuff now. I still dream with the day that crafted items (and maybe rares, once again) rule the D2 items and have the chance to become the most powerful items in the game instead of boring preset runewords.

 

[GoldenBird]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

...

In case you haven't noticed, every build is pretty well minimum str for equipment, minimum dex for equipment or max block (since you usually get AR from items I believe), and the rest into vit...

And man, the game isn't done yet, don't make so many assumptions.

 

[Snarf]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

(off topic) What's duping?

 

[Edairu]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

(off topic) What's duping?

Duping is copying an item through a game exploit or other means to get unlimited runes/uniques/what have you. I'm sure exactly how it's done though.

 

[wizAdept]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

D2 made the illusion that your character was more customizable for pvp. This is true, you could make characters very different from others but if you wanted to be good you basically had to have minimal strength, dex, and mana, the rest was ALL vitality. I am very happy that you can now vary your character more from the cookie cutter builds and not SUCK....I hope

Somewhat, but not completely true.

Most chars in d2 are base str/dex all vit. This is by far the majority of pvp builds. The only excuse for dumping points in str for most builds is due to a lack of proper gear to supply +stats.

However that is not the case for *all* builds.

-There are also maxblock builds. Hard point investment in dex to support maxblock with a shield.
-Then there are 95% es sorcs which benefit more from points in energy than vit.
-Then there are a bunch of classes which benefit from from splits. Bowazons come to mind. There are vita bowzons, glasscannon all dex bowzons, and dex/vita split bowzons. Other stat split classes exist as well.


Although at first glance you could say that *most* competitive pvp builds are pure vit, there still is a certain amount of customization allowed in stating your characters allowed in a few select builds.
I think it's a bit too early in d3 to be assuming that there will be a lack of character customization due to auto-stating. Im sure there will be plenty of different skill/item/skillrune combination to have a variety of customized characters. But as far as d2 is concerned, stating does allow for some different variations on some builds. Although, yes, most work out best as pure vita and are a no-brainer to stat.

 

[Akse]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

D2 pvp became garbage after LOD came.. it became too much item dependant which meant that you had to MF all the time.. which sucked balls.

preLOD you were able to beat people with better gear if you knew what you were doing.

Also I liked the fact that BVB was more variant than now.. now you pretty much have to have shield and then you have the nr1 1hand item that has been calculated over and over to be the best choice. Back pre-lod you could just pvp with all kinds of different weapons and be at least somewhat successful.

 

[wizAdept]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

D2 pvp became garbage after LOD came.. it became too much item dependant which meant that you had to MF all the time.. which sucked balls.

preLOD you were able to beat people with better gear if you knew what you were doing.

Also I liked the fact that BVB was more variant than now.. now you pretty much have to have shield and then you have the nr1 1hand item that has been calculated over and over to be the best choice. Back pre-lod you could just pvp with all kinds of different weapons and be at least somewhat successful.

Complete nonsense.

You beat people in 1.10+ LOD by outplaying them. Nothing changes. If anything I would say classic is more item dependent.
With LOD and the current chars its not hard to get a "standard" build with enigma/cta/etc. After you have your character's basic bps you do not need a perfect build to win at pvp. In fact you can outplay most players with just a bare bones build if you know what you are doing. A simple wizardspike and enigma can be enough to outplay someone geared in much better and more expensive gear.

 

[teh_Thrasher]

yeah dont rag on the skill system yet, its not all worked out.
they havent even announced how they are going to do pvp since unconcensual pvp is out.

and if everyone has the same build u should be able to find a counter to it... no1 build should be the end all be all build of ownage. everything needs its counter balance.


i REALLY hope they show a glimpse of some pvp action at blizzcon.

You beat people in 1.10+ LOD by outplaying them. Nothing changes. If anything I would say classic is more item dependent.
With LOD and the current chars its not hard to get a "standard" build with enigma/cta/etc. After you have your character's basic bps you do not need a perfect build to win at pvp. In fact you can outplay most players with just a bare bones build if you know what you are doing. A simple wizardspike and enigma can be enough to outplay someone geared in much better and more expensive gear.

lol easy to get if ur trolling d2jsp or buying ur items online... highest runes ive found legit were Sur and Lo.
oh and enigma is lame. seriously... WAY too overpowered. need to remove the +1 teleport. leave that skill for sorceresses and +skill charge rings/ammys. nuf said

 

[jhtvman]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

oh and enigma is lame. seriously... WAY too overpowered. need to remove the +1 teleport. leave that skill for sorceresses and +skill charge rings/ammys. nuf said

As far as D2 goes, Enigma was a necessary inclusion. Without it, sorcs are the only class that can key run/mf efficiently, and they go back to pretty much owning PVP.

 

[wizAdept]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

lol easy to get if ur trolling d2jsp or buying ur items online... highest runes ive found legit were Sur and Lo.
oh and enigma is lame. seriously... WAY too overpowered. need to remove the +1 teleport. leave that skill for sorceresses and +skill charge rings/ammys. nuf said

Unless you play solo or have some philosophical reason for staying "legit" and not trading I think enigma or any runeword is very inexpensive compared to how much rare/crafted jewelery and charms go for. Highrunes are the least expensive items when it comes to pvp builds.

Whats the problem with +1 teleport oskill? It makes gameplay a hell of a lot of fun in pvp as well as it actually balances d2 classes a lot more than gameplay without enigma (which would be mostly offmap guided/bonespirit spam) because of how players can chase each other.
Im not saying d3 has to have everyone teleporting, it will be a new game and Im sure every class will have their own evasion/mobility tactics, but as far as d2 gameplay goes enigma levels the playing field quite a lot because most classes do not have sufficient mobility tactics. Not overpowered because it is open to most classes. It actually balances the game well by creating counter classes and minion stacking.

Im sure this is difficult to see for players who are outside the pvp community however, because you are right that it is near impossible to self-find highrunes. personally I believe this is a mistake blizzard made and perhaps the game would be more newbie friendly if there was some sort of uber like quest to get highrunes.
But game balance is not determined by what you can and can not afford, game balance is determined by what exists and what final builds can be constructed from those items. Enigma is a class defining item that is *required* for competitive pvp play, however it is not overpowered because the variety of builds that can use enigma (winddruid/hammerdin/smiter/bvc/bva/trapper/necro/etc/etc/etc) all counter balance each other and in the end the game is pretty fair. Calling enigma way overpowered is like calling anni and torch overpowered. Yes every char uses them, yes they are required for pvp builds or you'll be at a massive disadvantage. But they do not create game balance problems between the classes, enigma is similar to that, in fact it helps solve many balance problems between classes.

Runewords were a nice addition to d2 because they help solidify core builds. Grief/enigma/cta/spirit and many other runewords (along with staple items like arach/trangs/dracs/gores/tgods/dungos/etc) help create the cookiecutter molds, which is actually not a bad thing like most pvp newbies make it sound. This means that as long as you can afford these basic pvp items (which arent expensive as long as you have no problems trading with hr items) you can have fully functional builds.
Of course the rare/crafted items and charms are what really crank out high hp values and other perks (res/faster bps/other various stats) for characters, these are the most expensive part of pvp builds, but they are not necessary to have a functional build meaning pvp is more accessible to players without a huge budget. (although you have to be able to afford at least the core items for the build of course)

Runewords in a way help to balance the game and make it easier to have a functional pvp build without having a huge budget. The difference between rich and poor is a lot greater when comparing different rare weapons as opposed to comparing a low grief vs a high grief.

 

[Akse]

Re: D3 PvP = no mix/max, all APM ?

the whole 1.10 and its synergy + new runewords made the game suck balls. Good meter for this is that all the pvp leagues in 1.09 pretty much stopped existing.. or they have rules not to have enigma and this and that and oh this one too. So much new crazy stuff came along in 1.10 which made the gameplay awful.

Yeah crafted and rare items are expensive because they can't be duped.. doh! All the even slightly higher runewords would be extremely expensiv if the runes haven't been duped for zillion times.

As far as D2 goes, Enigma was a necessary inclusion. Without it, sorcs are the only class that can key run/mf efficiently, and they go back to pretty much owning PVP.

THe problem isn't sorc teleport. It is the whole game itself and what it became when LOD was released. It became an MF game. You didn't have to do MF runs before LOD, you could equip 100-200 MF to your main character and go leveling up and wholalaa rares drop all the time no matter where you were playing.

You didn't have to run 1 damn boss all the time with teleport. You could take a barb and clear act4 faster than any sorc and gather the loot and exp.