Sir Xsarus wrote:
I still think their skill system will give a lot of flexibility in allowing people to have very different playstyles. You can only use 6 skills at a time. There is nothing inherently good about locking people out of trying different things unless they are willing to level a new character. I always hated that part of D2. You were completely locked in. If you add in the ability to respec in towns, then I don't really see why limit it at all. The current setup literally lets you pick any 6 skills you have, with any rune for each spell and come up with your own combination of 6. Given the options, I'm thinking characters will feel very different depending on what skills you pick and what gear best compliments it. This is way more variety then a talent tree option that locks you in far more.
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I'm trying to remember that the difficulty is likely to go up with each chapter. But when I can just use the default ability and massacre everything in sight, then I'm extremely bored.
Compare it to D2. Play on the beginning difficulty to blood raven. The complexity in D3 is significantly higher then in D2 for the same period. It's been a while since I've played but I don't really remember being challenged much by anything in the first act.
Edited, Apr 22nd 2012 2:38pm by Xsarus I
completely disagree. As an example, earlier I was playing a Demon Hunter. I was fighting a gold mob surrounded by trash mobs. I used that "seeks others" arrow to take out all of the basic skeletons, then switched to the snare arrow to deal with the boss (all the while trying to tactically place my trap).
That was the ideal strategy in this case. Literally
nothing could have been better. Instead of trying to appraise a situation according to my own build choice, the best case scenario had me switching builds mid-fight to deal with it. Because you choose 6 skills to have on your hotkeys, not to have available.
That is NOT a build, then. Builds in a D3 context are artificially limiting your ability by choosing not to use the best strategy for the situation. You're not going to choose to build a melee Wizard or a ranged Barbarian. You might just happen to use that strategy for one moment, then move to a different one as soon as the situation says you should.
This is the exact reason why you can't change talent specs in the middle of combat in WoW--it destroys your ability to adapt to a situation based on your build, and would instead lead to you adapting to a situation based on your
class. That's a very, very big distinction. And that's my issue with D3's system. There's no reason a skilled player couldn't switch out an ability in under 2 seconds.
Locking in builds when you leave town would require you to think about creating a character equipped for any situation (or, if you knew you were heading out for one specific encounter, that situation). But you'd have to make due with that choice. It requires you invest something in your character. Maybe you only intend to use it for 10 minutes, maybe or the next hour. But, either way, it's more actual customization and choice-making than you have just choosing which ability you're going to show.
It's the illusion of it for those not willing to develop the skill to allow for mid-battle switching.
You can argue about combinations all you want, but that has nothing to do with it. Yes, you can end up with a large variety of 6-ability sets. But the problem is that you aren't addressing is the fact that there's no reason to limit the ability pool to those 6, because switching on the go is easy and viable.
If that wasn't a possibility, I'd be much, much less disappointed with the game. The stat thing is going to bug me for a long time, but I'd get over it eventually. But there's absolutely no reason to claim D3, in its current state, has build diversity. It's no different than pretending that Warrior Stances or Druid forms in WoW were separate builds. They weren't. It only takes 2-3 more clicks in D3 to change out an ability as it takes in WoW to switch your combat set.
And I know I died before beating Blood Raven in D2. And I had a hell of a lot more close-calls. D3 is ridiculously forgiving. I have yet to die, nor have I actually gotten close to it. If the potion CD was 2.5-3x longer, then maybe. But not now. Playing through on my Monk was actually boring, because it was so simple.