Tiens si vous voulez, un bon retour d'un béta testeur (en anglais) qui a testé toutes les classes et les a mené au lvl max de la F&F :
This post is designed to be a summary of all my experiences from playing the beta thus far. Including positive aspects, negative aspects, suggestions, things that felt buggy etc.
This is getting long so..
TL;DR - Great game thus far! If nothing changed before release I would still buy it in a heartbeat. Amazingly fun. I feel that a few little tweaks could make it spectacular though! However, it's hard to tell everything just from the little content we see in beta.
Here goes:
I got access to the beta on Friday evening of last week (less than 5 days ago as I write this post). I spent what most might call an unhealthy amount of time playing it this weekend, and it was awesome Overall, thus far I have had an absolute blast playing the game.
General notes:
- When I first started the game I was immediately impressed. The combination of sound effects, graphics, interaction with environment, and fluidity of the game were actually causing me to 'lol' as I effortlessly decimated undead and other creepy monsters
- I never even came close to dying on any of my characters. I'm not saying that it's necessarily too easy (I have done a lot of gaming in my day, and this is only the beginning of the game) but it's definitely worth noting
- The ability to interact with the environment needlessly (through smashing random things mostly) seemed to vary greatly with area. For instance, in the cathedral, interaction with the environment is almost constant. Pillars falling, tables crashing, etc etc. Adds a great effect to fighting monsters when you smash both them and the railing of a staircase falls too. Really cool. But when you go in an area like the defiled crypts, it doesn't seem like there is much environmental interaction at all besides things that actually do something (opening sarcophagi, hitting walls to have them fall on enemies, etc were all still there). As I said, you're still getting some environmental interaction, but you can really tell the areas where they spent more effort. Just something I noticed
- The system of using numbers on the hotbar in addition to left click / right click is a great improvement over DII. I was also impressed with the 'auto-targetting' of some abilities when used simply on the hotbar. However, I do think it would be great to have some sort of hotkey that would swap hotbar abilities onto mouse clicks. Especially thought this would be useful on the barb, demon hunter, and witch doctor. Currently hitting X swaps right click out for auto attack, which is certainly useful, but it would be nice to have just a bit more control over all your abilities.
- The most fun event in the game right now, in my opinion, is the trapped jar in the defiled crypts. By far! It's really fun trying to get a high massacre streak and seeing how many you can kill in one blow. I think my highest massacre streak is like ~170 on my wizard. As for one blow I think I'm at around 30. Seriously this event rocks, too bad it's randomized with the way-not-as-fun event with the ghostly woman.
- Skipping cinematics seems to take forever for some reason.
- The chat log window is really small and not very customizable currently. If you're salvaging items it makes holding a conversation with a friend extremely difficult
- Any ability that pushes monsters and deals damage is really satisfying
- Crafting system is sweet. The level reqs not matching what it says is kinda frustrating tho. But the system in general is great.
- There are a couple instances where the summoning of a monster is really dramatic and cool, then the monster ends up getting one-shot. Feels like when it's all dramatic the monster should at least be somewhat tough!
- Hardest monsters in the game right now are arcane enchanted by far
- Currently the random drop crafting recipes seem to drop really often and there's not a ton of different drops. This is probably going to change post beta, but I'm sure I've sold over 30 recipes now
- Pathing seems to have some issues that would be awesome if they were fixed! Clicking a bookshelf and then walking to a spot where u can't grab it definitely happens.
- The way damage is calculated for dual wielding weapons right now seems a little bit odd. I'm just not sure what the formula is exactly. I've equipped an offhand weapon and seen my DPS go down. Some sort of explanation in-game for how that works would be really awesome
- Would be really nice to be able to see DPS of different spells on wizard/witch doctor. How much damage I deal with my wand (or axe, in my wizard's case ) is not nearly as important as how much damage I deal with spells
- The new system of attack/precision seems awesome. Nice and self explanatory.
- Right now it seems like precision doesn't do a whole lot. Small increases in crit compared to attack increasing damage by quite a lot. Of course, it's hard to say for higher levels how this would play out, but perhaps there could be some adjustments made at low level to make precision useful.
- a hotkey for the salvaging box/selling box when you have inventory open would be an amazing time saver
- Many of the monsters seem really, really, really, stupid. I understand they're zombies, but shouldn't they at least smell my brains and want some or something? I once channeled a town portal in the middle of 5 skeletons and finished the channel without any of them touching me. Maybe this will be much appreciated in the higher difficulties though
- An in-game explanation of exactly how crafting works would be awesome
- Without runes in beta, it is really difficult to comment on the balance of many abilities. Runes look extremely significant. I will make comments on the balance of abilities, but I guess they should be taken with a grain of salt since we don't really know how they're going to play out with runes.
- Would be nice to have 'cast times' displayed on each spell. The cast time is really important for how the spell ends up working - it would just be cool info to have.
- It is hard to tell exactly how much hero 'customization' runes are going to allow. I feel like DIII is on the opposite end of the spectrum from DII with regards to customization. Once you have a high level hero, there is really no incentive for creating a new one - you could always just swap gear/runes. Unless you were swapping runes so often that it became extremely expensive. But now it sounds more like a WOW with a warrior switching specs. Anyway, it is hard to tell currently, but I really wouldn't complain if there was another layer of customization added.
Alright, now for the class by class breakdown. Presented in the order that I played each of them in to level cap:
Wizard
- Immediately extremely powerful and fun
- Electrocute feels amazingly strong
- In beta, lacks mobility (no teleport yet)
- I love the wave of force ability. Really fun!
- It seems like there is only one spell that can be used with a melee weapon, and then one other spell that makes it a little stronger. If a melee capable wizard is something that is desired, I would think that some more spells to use the melee weapon could greatly improve the depth of a melee wizard's gameplay
- I like how disintegrate works. When I initially saw this skill on the website I didn't think it would be useful, but it can be both really fun and useful! With runes this will be seriously cool.
- Highest massacre streak and single spell kill streak achieved on the wizard.
- Doesn't seem to feel the impact of items nearly as much as other characters, much like the sorc in DII
Barbarian
- Immediately hilarious and fun
- Hammer of the ancients AOE seems really small w/o any runes. Didn't really feel like I had aoe until lvl 4 cleave. This honestly wasn't a problem though cause it was still fun to bash the hell out of things
- Leap attack is awesome
- Smashing things with almost all of the skill is extremely satisfying. Fantastic sound effects too
- Perhaps it's cause I'm still low level, but I don't really use my rage for anything. Seems more efficient to just cleave/leap and use a battle shout every once in a while. I imagine this will change with runes + levels, but that's how it currently is
- I tried to use revenge but nothing would ever hit me before I would kill it. So I never really got a chance to use it! Could be fun later on though
- Barbarian specific belts are interesting and seems like there could be some potential there
- Can use leap attack through doors and stuff. Seems potentially abuse-able
- Weapon throw is a bit hard to use without anyway to quickly swap it to the mouse keys. You really want leap attack and cleave/fury/whatever your base attack is on your mouse keys, and using weapon throw just on the hotbar seems to miss a lot
- Very powerful with good weapons
Monk
- Initially seems a bit slow and weak, but gets way more fun with additional items/abilities
- Compared to other classes, the 'mana' (spirit) regenerates pretty slowly. It doesn't seem to have any natural regeneration, you only get it through your attacks. While on other classes I would never have issues running out unless I was spamming abilities, on the monk it can run out just over the course of time
- Lashing tail kick (lvl 3 spirit spending ability) kinda sucks (w/o any runes of course). It has a cooldown, doesn't deal a terrific amount of damage, and the knockback doesn't really synchronize with any of your other moves as far as I can tell. Maaaaybe exploding palm (apply debuff then kick them away?). I found that knocking the enemies back was just slowing down my killing progress and the fact that I couldn't spam the ability made it a weak interrupt from my normal attacks. Deadly reach (spirit generating) has 125% extra damage, and the roundhouse kick is only 130%. Also the aoe doesn't seem that large. Again, maybe runes will change this but this one wasn't super exciting to pick up.
- Healing seems like it could be useful but it's impossible to tell in the beta right now since I never need healing
- Once you get dashing strike, the monk becomes WAY more fun. However, for me when i first picked it up, I didn't realize that the range on it was really much larger if you click on an enemy rather than just clicking air. Seeing as it deals 50% damage and moved slower than running when I clicked air, I didn't initially even think to use it much on mobs. I didn't realize it had larger range until a bit later, and then it became really helpful to use. It looks like rune effects will help this, but right now the way it applies damage is kind of slow and boring (hits the target after you charge, but for very little damage). That was just my impression of it, with some of the runes it sounds like it will be awesome
- Crippling wave is awesome and fun
- Lethal decoy is pretty neat when your weapons aren't very good. As soon as I picked up something with decent damage, it became much more obsolete. Still, a cool ability. And useful for getting high massacre numbers on the trapped jar event
- Exploding palm is a really cool and fun idea, but unfortunately it's hard to see it's usefulness much in the beta. You don't pick it up until level 12, and at that point I'm 1-2 shotting almost everything anyway, so crippling wave just dominates exploding palm for everything but single target damage (Leoric doesn't like that dot). I do like that you can hear the heatbeat though after you use it. Great design, hopefully it will be useful post beta
- Mantras. In beta, since it's pretty easy, the defensive skills are not really shining through to their full potential, and mantras are no exception. None of them have really helped me much in the beta, but hopefully they'll be more useful in release. There's an interesting post about why exactly we have to cast a mantra every 2 minutes with a 30 second cooldownhttp://us.battle.net/d3/en/foru ... 3123318339 - it makes sense with the runes but I feel like maybe this is worth another look. Unless you have that one rune that has an effect on cast, why not just have it as an aura?
- Fleet footed = passive 10% movespeed increase >>> other passives. So happy when I got this one!
- Monk at level cap might be my strongest hero. I have her dual wielding axes (odd for a monk, ya?) and she rolls around punishing everything in sight. Really quick to initiate fights with the dashing strike. That + fleet footed = super mobile hero. Crippling wave dishes the aoe out hard. She wrecks. And it is quite fun!
- At level cap, all I really use is dashing strike and crippling wave. This is fine, but basically if I switch to use any other move it lowers my kill rate.
Demon Hunter
- A bit slow to start, never really had that moment where I get really excited about the hero
- Hungering arrow is decent, as are most of his hatred shots. But nothing really seems SUPER awesome yet... Maybe I need runes on them...
- Marked for death is helpful for bossfights, but obviously not worth casting otherwise
- Fan of knives has a really short range and deals very little damage
- Hatred depletes rather quickly. Most of his abilities cost quite a lot of it, and your pool isn't particularly large. This makes moves like chakram and grenades not quite as cool cause you can't really spam them for long at all. Then when you run out of hatred, you just have your normal attack since discipline doesn't give you any direct damage until turret at 22 (I guess your raven familiar at 14, but you can't spam that)
- I really liked vault. That move makes the fighting interface on the DH much more entertaining. It's quite a fussy spell though, if there is even the slightest obstruction it completely fails. Also it's pretty heavy on discipline so you can only really spam it 3 times to move around quicker. Still, it speeds things up considerably.
- DH is definitely my weakest level capped hero right now. Perhaps it's because you can't really craft a great bow with level req under 14, so I feel like he's just a bit weaker than my other heroes. He does have the ability to completely avoid any damage through quick moves and range, but he is by far the slowest at clearing large waves of mobs, and his single target is maybe about the same as the others if not worse. I feel that it's a 'cool' class, but I just haven't had that "AWW YAA JUST DOMINATED EVERYTHING *grin*" moment on him.
Witch Doctor
- Immediately greatly entertaining. His abilities are beyond unique right away, and had me giggling like a little school girl within minutes of play.
- With runes this hero is going to be really customizable - from the looks of it more so than the other heroes.
- Grasp of the dead is awesome! Powerful with a cool idea. I heard tell on the forums that apparently the sounds used to be louder on this ability and they were toned down. I didn't even notice it had sound at first, so if I were blizz I'd turn it up a bit!
- Haunt is great. I like that the duration of the ability scales with level, although I didn't realize that it did when until I looked the spell again at like level 10. "WHOA THIS LASTS A LONG TIME NOW!" That was my reaction. I'm all about more information rather than less - it would be cool to know that that is how it scales with levels, instead of finding out by memory + looking at my abilities often (ok so maybe once every 6 levels isn't often, but that's when I noticed!).
- Zombie charger is seriously funny, i wish it went a little farther though!
- My playing experience on witch doctor was fun, but not extraordinary until I got to about level 9. I'm not sure exactly what it was, maybe firebats, maybe just getting used to the hero, but I felt like my abilities starting synchronizing and I was swapping spells around constantly and keeping the gameplay very fresh. Truly a great hero design.
- My only issue with witch doctor was in that his casting times on some of his spells (firebomb, jar of spiders) seemed really long. This was one of those things that made me really want to see spell cast times on the spell description.
- At level cap, this guy rocks. I can clear large waves of mobs in satisfying and unique fashions and can even apply crowd control if I want (not that I have needed to). Obviously WD is a little weaker against single targets, but that's the nature of the beast! Fantastic hero design
That's it. My extremely long-winded summary. TL;DR, critique, criticize, comment, or whatever! Enjoy.
(on se rassure comme on peut)
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