Does Diablo III Need Variants?
Posted 21 April 2012 by FluxVia his twitter, Bashiok replied in literal fashion to a fan who was (I think) asking a more metaphorical question about play styles and variant options. At any rate, I’m going to assume the fan was asking it in the larger sense, since that leads right into an issue I’ve been meaning to write up for you guys to debate. First, here’s the twittercourse:
Right click the weapon to equip it, or drag and drop. DHs can equip most 1h melee weapons. –Bashiok
As we’ve seen skills and runes change during Diablo III’s development, the issue of variants has been kicked around by the fans. Diablo 2 was notorious for supporting a wide-variety of variant builds, many of which weren’t exactly end game masters, but most of which at least provided some interesting variety for fans after a different play experience.
Thanks to the tremendous variety of items, weapons with +skills, customizable attributes, and the numerous skill options, every class in D2 could be played in “battle” style, with heavy armor and some sort of melee weapon. The reverse was also possible with Hammerdins and more creative options like “Singer” Barbs who used Warcries and equipped wands, and most classes could specialize in ranged weapons or throwing weapons as well, if they wanted an additional challenge.
Most of those options are not going to be available in D3, at least not at launch. Melee classes can’t use bows, there are no throwing weapons, no items have +skills or “oskill” bonuses (granting skills from another class), stats can’t be customized to make high strength Wizards or high Intelligence Barbs, etc. That said, D3 does have a wide variety of rune effects that grant some unusual effects to skills, and there are some passive skills that can enable some alternative builds.
Do you care, though? Do you think it should be possible to kick ass as a Battlemage, or a melee Demon Hunter (without infinite patience), or a Barb who relies on ranged attacks, etc? Or do you think those types of builds, ones that run counter to the central theme of the class archetypes, are out of place and/or unnecessary?
On the Other Hand…
When you look in any of our class forums and see the huge variety of quite sophisticated builds players have planned out in advance, you might conclude that D3 will actually have more variety of builds than D2 did. No, there probably won’t be so many odd variants that completely change the play style, but there should be a huge number of variations on common themes. Most wizards will be ranged spell casters, but while D2′s Sorc skill combos gave about half a dozen options for that type of build, D3′s skills and runes should give dozens more than that.
Also, there will be hundreds of narrowly-focused builds that do one or two things very well, while giving up other abilities. For instance, you can make a Wizard that’s invincible, or a stealth ninja Demon Hunter who can’t be caught (but can’t kill), or a dog-killer Witch Doctor, or a ranged Monk (maybe), or an Axe-Throwing Barbarian.
All of these builds are quite precise, demanding multiple skills and passives to create, but isn’t that the whole point, for players who are looking for an odd variant?
So I guess this article asks two questions, ultimately. 1) Do you want/need/care about variant builds, and 2) do you think Diablo III delivers them adequately, as they’re almost entirely from skills and passives, without requiring/allowing much difference in equipment, which is where most of D2′s variants got their ultimate power.
Bla Bla Bla, Flux D3 is going to rock your sox off! Chill out bro. Lets just meellooww and let the demons come on May the 15th and reck house! OOOOO Yeah!!!!!
Although that is very true, it’s hard not to speculate when a long awaited game is so near to opening
. I can see what Flux is trying to say but it hard to know how much we will be able to do with the lack of end game items. Think about how Diablo was before runewords and after: totally different games almost…
I agree with Flux here. There is nothing wrong with a pre-game intelligent discussion. Might as well learn the game as much as we can before actually playing it rather than complaining and whining when the game comes out.
On topic, I do believe that D3 has more variety in D2. Builds in D2 require signature skills, like Zeal, Whirlwind, Berserk etc, and other “filler” skills. It felt that as long as you are getting the skill that you’ll be using, you’re choices are limited to those “filler” skills that you just take up becasue they are either prerequisites or synergies.
But with D3, you can literally pick 6 skills at random and that build will be viable. What with that and the removal of passives as skills, rune choices and gems gives us an unbelievable amount of variants. Unlike in D2 with each class at least have 6-8 builds, the possibilities in D3 is endless.
And about the fact that we cannot go too far from our class theme (i.e. Wizard still use ranged spells, Barbarians still melee), well, I guess that goes back to the old-age saying that “If you wanna do Y, go play X”. Blizzard intended for us to stick in our class roles. They want us to know that this guy is gonna melee or ranged as soon as we see his/her appearance. D3 isn’t about ‘What will this guy do?” but “How will he do it?”.
Mr Potato Head – it’s a topic for discussion not an opinion piece. He offers up the germs of ideas and readers’ run with it. Or not in your case.
I think the question is meant differently. I had the same problem. You need to use your basic attack “skill” for melee weapons because all other skills need class-specific weapons. How do you select basic attack? I couldn’t find it in the skill window (not even in elective mode). I think the only way is to drag and drop an active skill out of the skill bar to change it “back” to basic attack. Needed some time to figure that one out. :\ They still have work to do!
Yeah, I’m fairly sure this is what the question was asking as well. Pretty sure it wasn’t a complicated meta-question about variant builds.
Yeah, but that’s no fun. Besides, it just points to another failure of the new skill UI: that you can’t leave basic attack on left click and that you’re forced to put a skill on the left click since you only have six hotkeys for six skills.
This forces you to use the shift key a lot, lest you misclick and run towards something you only wanted to fire a skill at, or near. It also limits the skills you can put on the left click, since if you select something with limited range, your char will stand still and cast spells instead of moving into range.
The skill UI is indeed quite awful, and I’ve posted about those limited-range skills in the official bug forums, but those issues don’t have a lot to do directly with variant builds.
I do think it’s odd that you can’t bind “basic attack” to anything, though it won’t be an issue 95% of the time.
I actually was able to bind basic attack to left mouse in beta, you just have to not bind a skill to it. How you do that, is you take what’s in your left mouse and bind it to what’s in your right. Since you can’t have the same skill twice this empties your left, so it defaults to basic attack if you don’t bind it.
Be that as it my, I still personally consider bash and Magic Missile to be “basic attacks”
I’ve been thinking on this too Flux. I think its all about the end game. I’ve doing some modest experimenting with the DH and WD which will likely be my mainstays. They are cool no doubt, but will take some creativity AS WELL AS skill in the endgame/inferno. I did some supercore runs (3 other people in the game but doing it by myself) and its a little difficult to crowd control and kill effectively with any build combo. Mind you, we have very limited options for twinks in the beta but i am a bit daunted by the prospect of that first NM playthrough and others should be as well.
I think a big factor that sorc/zon/nec fans- if they are playing their D3 equivalent- are missing (imo) are that there are no really really good spamming attacks. If anyone has any thoughts on this do share. There is no go-to spam it till they die (AND they WILL die) skill/spell. I think barb/monk have the advantage here. Weaponry will obviously play a huge factor as well and we’ll just have to see how the economy/drop rates go. I’ve got maybe 20 hours in the beta and i’ve gotten maybe around 8 rares.
In the end, this games seems moderately prepared to pickup where D2x left off. It is too early to tell about goto builds vs niche builds imo. There will be a learning curve.
Also, the in game etiquette seems lacking. i know everyone is geeking like a kid in a candy shop but this random public game garbage sucks. People don’t seem interested in playing together which i find weird because i thought at least one good thing about having a nation of WoWers in sanctuary would be the social/play together atmosphere. Ive never played WoW but don’t you all team up and “guild” or “raid” or whatever it is? I know Diablo is thunderdome, but for the first playthroughs and all, we would still co-op. Oh well, I’ll have to buy some friends on the AH. :]
I agree with your sentiments about public games.. I think this is mostly due to the fact that the matchmaking still has issues. The last few days I tried starting a new character in a public game and it kept putting me in games with people who were lvl 10+.. after about 10 tries I just gave up and played solo.
I will likely be playing this game solo unless my friends are online.
I noticed this too. Join a game, people are all over the place, some don’t talk, some talk but are somwhere else…reminded me of some of the problems back in D2. I guess over time you’ll find some people who cater to your play style and stick with them, but the beginnings might be tough.
There is no social aspect in WoW anymore, apart from pre-existing guild relations. You can be mr anonyous all the way now. DIII uses the LFG / LFR style of match making. It is fast but there is no social interaction at all.
I think one of the show-stoppers right now is the fact that auto-attack takes up a slot in the action bar. I think it would be fair if you could toggle between a skill and auto-attack on the LMB. You could put some long-duration skill/buff on the LMB, then switch when attacking. You get an “extra” skill that way, but I think that compensates for the weakness of auto-attack.
I tried a melee wizard in the beta using diamond skin and frost nova. It worked, but losing a skill over auto-attack just seems like handicapping yourself too much.
Different/odd builds, variant/theme builds are so much fun. I’m not the biggest fan of items that give you skills from other classes (i.e. zeal, werebear), but some item affixes in D2 allowed for unique builds in other ways, which I liked.
Edit: That said, I’m not super worried about variety in D3 though. I think there will be a lot of unique builds. There’s a lot of unknowns in terms of skills and runes, not to mention item affixes. I think we will discover a lot of unique builds once we get the chance to test the skills in-game.
The same thing has bothered me since they put in the new skill UI. It’s stupid since it could be fixed in 1 second; just put in a 7th hotkey. Optional; you can use LMB and RMB 1234 if you like, but people who knew what they were doing and wanted to leave basic attack on LMB wouldn’t be gimping themselves. Or running into problems (literally) that come with having a targetable ranged attack on the LMB.
You might wanna play the whole game first, before you start ripping on the lack of options.
Items will have +skill bonuses.
I have to confess the entire last 10 years I’ve only played one or two classes through the entire Diablo II + expansion. I’ve hadn’t had time to really experiment with all the other builds out there.
Although I feel for those who believe DIII will be restrictive to their game play experience, in my particular situation, I’ll probably never get to that point. Even though I’ve really liked all the characters from experimenting with them in the beta, I’m sad to say I probably won’t even get around to playing all of them (to the end, at least) in reality! Waaaa! -I know, but that’s kind of the reality of it.
-But I sure will try my best!
Maybe I’m wrong, but why are we looking to Diablo to save all of our gaming needs? There is also Torchlight II which actually looks pretty good -much, much better than it’s predecessor.
-And don’t forget about Grim Dawn, the game in development by several of Iron Lore’s previous development team (makers of Titan Quest). They are specifically pandering to those hard-core gamers who really want to get into customizing different builds.
Grim Dawn is on Kickstarter right now vying for extra funds for a few extra team members so they can finish the game faster. After 6 days, they are already at half their goal! Go support them!
Each of these games will bring something different to the board -a variety I’m actually looking forward to.
I don’t spread myself between 12 games per season, it’s as simple as that. If I want Hack’N'Slash, I’ll play one..
I also don’t find myself with much time to play two games. So it’s definatly a problem in that sense.
And Path of Exile.
But since D3 costs at least three times as much as any of those, I can see why people feel they should get three times the gameplay out of it.
I definitely think creative players will come up with viable alternate builds with the system as it stands. When D2 came out, (and later LoD) who would have thought melee sorcereress’ and Singer barbs would be viable classes? Once the mechanics of D3 in all difficulties is fully understood, there will be no shortage of creative builds.
One of my biggest thrills in D2 was trying oddball combinations and I’m planning on repeating that with D3.
Agreed. The skill rune system is a different way of handling build variety than D2 – builds become much less dependant on having the right items to make them possible – but I don’t think that means there will necessarily be any less variety overall.
let’s wait for the first exp pack. d2 lod gave d2 a completly new face… oskills, rws and all the stuff
Earlier on I thought the x-pack wouldn’t need to add skills. Now I think that, as far as improvements to the first two classes go, I think the x-pack should focus on adding previously restricted weapons and a few skills/passives specialized for them (melee for DH for example, ranged for barbs, etc.).
3-5 extra skills per exp that allow for more types of builds would certainly be great…
there are many options in D3, DH for an example is very viable in meele even though he/she won’t need a meele weapon for it.
Monk already has a few ranged attacks thanks to certain skills and runecombos.
I don’t see those roles to be as limited as they were in D2.