PSA: Diablo III Open Beta WeekendFollow

On a side note it is also the TERA open beta weekend so I got two games to dink around with. At least I figured out the problem with my super slow download. Sub 100 kb sucks hard.

Guess I'm playing Tera this weekend, too.

is there a server folks will be on? I might check it out myself.

You might be able to run it on whatever you have--it's worth checking out, right?

You won't be able to log in right now anyway, so you can always download it for later.

I posted a whole rant on that (plus the way they changed stats) in the Bored Druid Thread, so I'll spare the rest of you. But yeah, I'm very, very unhappy with the changes they made there.

For now I'm holding out hope that the higher level content will be a great deal more difficult, because I was mostly just bored and easily dispensing everything in 3 hits.

Not a chance, I'm still running a single core.

Yeah, what Bliz needed was more interactive/tactical encounters. It feels like instead they gave us a very tuned item quest.

Really? I felt it was, by a huge margin, the weakest of the classes. Everything else just ripped through everything. Witch Doctor was slow, and had a much higher percentage of "meh" abilities.

Demon Hunter is, imo, significantly better than the other classes in terms of quality. Monk, Wizard and Barbarian just involve blasting your way through mobs--every fight was easily won that way for me, with little to no heed paid to my safety. Wizard was powerful enough to mow down nearly everything that came his way, and Frost Nova was more than sufficient to deal with the rest. Monk took down the gold mobs easily just spamming his spirit or extended punch move. Barbarian is just typical hack n' slash in general.

But Demon Hunter required strategy and finesse. You needed to adapt to the situation, rather than just force your strategy on the game. I actually switched skills in the middle of battle once, as I transitioned from AoE to boss kiting.

A big part of this, though, is that the other classes are just too strong. A significant nerf to their default damage might be enough to salvage the strategy aspect of the game that's missing. Unless they are balanced for the higher difficulties, in which case DH actually needs a buff.

Witch Hunter also felt way weaker to me, because it was in some weird midpoint between blasting through and using strategy, except that its spells seemed much worse to me. Jar of Spiders (*shudder*) ultimately seemed useless in every situation I tried it with (and I can only imagine it isn't really meant to be used, ever, unglyphed). That bat storm was powerful, but in just about every situation it seemed way better to never let an enemy get that close, especially since you can't easily spec for armor without seriously compromising your damage.

You can't change the solo difficulty, but you can join public games to increase the power of the mobs in relation to the number of players in the world. It lets you simulate higher difficulties (as long as you aren't plowing through WITH the group).

I forced myself to try it, and thought it was terrible. And I feel more than justified after looking up the math. It's one of the least efficient DPS skills in the game, apparently, AND faces the issue that it spreads its damage haphazardly through a group of enemies--just as likely to attack the least threatening as the most.

CS summons 4 spiders that do 16% weapon damage as physical damage per hit, and hit twice before dying. They DO come with the added bonus of potentially blocking enemy pathing, but this is also fully capable of preventing another spider from attacking twice. Total potential damage is 128%.

PD hits the enemy for 100% weapon damage as physical damage, plus 40% weapon damage as poison damage over 2 seconds.

So, first we have the fact that PD does more total damage. Then we have the fact that it does 40% of its damage subject to resistances, not armor (which might work for or against it, but gives it a wider breadth of usefulness).

Now consider the fact that PD is capable of taking out weak enemies in a pack by itself, potentially without even depending on any (or both) of the poison tics.

In a group of 5 enemies, the spiders are going to be spreading out damage. This would create a potential issue even IF they did better dps. It also makes them a liability. A PD-user can potentially lock up a kill with each cooldown period, which may or may not be delayed. That decreases the threat the group poses as a whole. Spiders will continue spreading out damage, and potentially not even living up to their optimal damage by failing to land 2 hits if blocked by your zombie dogs or other spiders. There is also a larger cast time lag with the spiders--it takes longer to throw the jar than shoot the dart, and there is additional delay as the spiders spawn and find a target. Leaping spiders helps mitigate some of this, and makes them more likely to land both attacks... Oh yeah, and CS will die to AoE attacks, which maaany stronger opponents have. Like the Skeleton King.

Plus, the PD glyph gives you 3 darts, effectively making it a better AoE skill than the spiders anyway. And it does more damage with one dart... So why the hell would I ever use CS?

They do have utility in glyphed forms. But they are a super weak skill unglyphed.

Searching online tells me that they actually nerfed spiders quite recently, but that the change was almost certainly too drastic, at least where certain glyphs are concerned.

I see zero reason to ever use the spiders. The grasping arms attack does AoE damage and snares, which helps ensure that every Poison Dart you fire outright kills the enemy without even requiring poison. MUCH better strategy in literally every situation I can think of.

They can still be very useful, I imagine, with some of those glyphs. But Leaping Spiders and default CS aren't worth using atm.

Every ability is balanced using a percentage of weapon damage, which scales fairly evenly as stats increase because it's based on weapon damage (which is balanced accordingly) and a specific class-relative stat. The only thing that changes how OP/UP an ability is comes from the other combinations you have access to.

The problem with this ability is a problem that will apply at every level. The Leaping Spider glyph increases their chance to score 2 hits, and increases their total damage to 19% per hit, which pushes them over PD's unglyphed damage, but leaves all the ability-specific issues behind.

Widowmaker glyph lets them return mana to you (3 per hit, so the spell will return 24. Dunno what it will cost at higher levels). Poison Dart's similar glyph returns slightly more.

Blazing Spiders are the first that actually become a legitimate damaging tool, but even they only do 168% damage (less than Poison Dart with the first glyph by a large margin).

So far, because of this nerf to the base ability, each of these glyphs remain fairly useless across levels.

There are only 2 that might make up for it:

Spider Queen, which does true AoE damage, which might make it useful in AoE situations.
Medusa, which gives it a chance to stun/snare, which makes it useful for utility.

Because of the issues discussed here, yes--it does matter. We aren't talking about something specific to low levels.