Author: Simulacrum  <nub>    107.201.120.172 Use this link if you want to link to this message and its entire thread of discussion. Post a Msg
Date: 2/20/2015 6:16:36 AM
Subject: RE: Important Diabroloblo milestone notice

Well, I've given a cursory look at the Patch 2.2.0 Preview. Here are my thoughts:

Pooh.

1. Legendary Updates.

Some of the regular legendary changes might be nice, but once again, Blizzard is focusing on sets. I like sets, but completing them is so time-consuming that you might as well not bother with them. You can exploit Asheara's and get it pretty fast, but the "competitive" ones like Firebird and Marauder might take months unless you constantly group with people in T6. On the one hand, I guess this is working as intended because sets can be OP and should be hard to get. On the other hand, they've become commonplace, de facto equipment for the 24/7 crowd, and unfortunately this is the player base that Blizzard pays attention to.

Anyway, the new sets in 2.2.0 could be very OP. From a wizard's perspective, however, Delsere's Magnum Opus is crazy. The buffs are to weird things like Energy Twister, Slow Time, the ridiculous secondary Arcane Orb and the even more ridiculous Shock Pulse. The idea is to encourage people to use these abandoned spells. Well, they're abandoned because they're stupid. Only one Energy Twister rune gets rid of the random travel path. Only one Arcane Orb made the damage/effect worth the Arcane Power expense (Frozen), but Blizzard nerfed that.

But that isn't the main problem. Blizzard's original class designs need to be thrown out and redone, especially the wizard. This is not the place to go into how broken the wizard is, but she is the best example of how Blizzard continues to insist that players try out orphaned skills. What they should be doing is fixing those skills or replacing them, not creating items that force you to use them. The Diablo 3 team seems to think that the original class designs are sacred. For this reason, you get attempts to compensate for their brokenness in the form of cookie-cutter builds like Firebird/Furnace.

2. Adventure Mode Updates (New Rift Layouts and New Bounties)

The new layouts are welcome. Don't care about bounties. The only reasons people went back to bounties for a while were to get Royal Rings of Grandeur and run into goblin treasure portals.

3. Class Updates

De lamentations of de women (and men) have been deafening here. The wizard is especially needy, but again, this isn't the place to go into that. So what does Blizzard do? Not much. They say they won't pay much attention to skill buffs but instead introduce "Quality of Life" enhancements for classes.

4. Quality of Life Updates

These include interface changes like a little notice for the demon hunter re: how many turrets are up. I'm sure demon hunters are dancing in the streets because it's so hard to remember whether you have two or three turrets active. Also, inventory space will no longer be used for cosmetic doodads like those silly angel wings. Hey, how about a button for auto-arranging inventory tabs, or a choice about whether to pick up potions and other things -- maybe an option to auto-collect gems and all that crafting clutter? Newp. The developers argue that not clicking on every gem and yellow crafting tchotchke would be "boring." Yes, boring. This is your Diablo 3 update development team talking. Well, anyway, there are three new goblins to run after. Unfortunately, none of them seems to be worth running after except maybe the gold-related one. The rest, I'm sure, exist solely to run into the middle of 85 elite packs and get you killed.

5. New File System CASC

This promises more efficient and reliable updates. Okay. *yawn*

In sum: please wake me up when they fix class skills and the broken RNG. Meanwhile, I will continue to play D3 because I really like it, even though the developers live in some Elysium bubble world that has nothing in common with earth.