View Full Version : Prediction: Top-ranked PvP teams in DIII will use Ground Stomp barbs
Please view the barb skill Ground Stomp here:
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/barbarian.xml
Ground stomp stuns its targets. I predict this will be highly effective in team PvP.
Imagine a 4v4 PvP match in DIII's PvP arena - in arena map 2 of the 3 arena maps which will initially be available in DIII (my speculation). One team has a ground stomp barb and three wizards. The other team has whatever you like, preferably melee-heavy. Here's how the match will go: Ground stomp barb will go in, stun lock opponents by continually casting ground stomp, and then the three wizards will nuke until dead the stunned players with disintegrate or a yet-unknown spell better than disintegrate. The match is now over, and the 1B3W team collects the 16 million gold (4 million gold each) high-ranking 4v4 PvP victory purse. The losing team heads immediately to make numerous posts on Internet forums calling for ground stomp to be nerfed.
Granted that the answer is yes to this question: Will the barb in DIII be able to cast ground stomp fast enough to stun lock other players? , then this conclusion is a foregone one:
When DIII comes, and there are team PvP ladder rankings which may be viewed by clicking a button in DIII's Battle.net 2.0, the majority of the top-ranked PvP teams seen in those rankings will include a ground stomp barb.
Gigashadow
10-11-2008, 02:29
There was Stun in Nox. If you were stunned as warrior (melee class), even for a very short time, you were as good as dead. So what did they do? The warrior is immune to cast Stun. If he was to be stunned, you had to use a summoned animal... which can be stunned by the warrior's Battle Cry... yeah.
Rule of PvP: If you want to make PvP from a PvE game playable and balanced, you will have to implement special PvP rules, make some skills useless, nerf/buff half of other skills, and do something funky with the classes.
You just can't take all skills available, chuck them into PvP, and think the game will be balanced. Not possible. See Diablo II PvP.
You can't speculate on abilities so early unless you assume that Blizzard a) will ignore balancing in regards to PvP or b) doesn't know how to balance games.
HappyAssassin
10-11-2008, 04:41
What was unbalanced about diablo2 pvp? Besides the fact that certain characters could be negated (their own fault), it was pretty balanced.
@ the op: We have no idea what PvP will look like. Stunning skills were very effective in Diablo 2 PvP (leap and traps + mind blast were 4v4 staples) but there were plenty of ways to deal with them. There were always counters for stun (mostly not getting stunned in the first place) and I expect D3 will be no different.
Gigashadow
10-11-2008, 12:25
What was unbalanced about diablo2 pvp?Everything? From items that some people didn't have to builds that canceled out other builds. DII was playable, (just like RTS besides SC are sorta playable), but it was horribly out of balance if you take it to tournament level.
Besides, it was boring. Run around teleporting casting Bone Spirit/Hammer/add skill here... do you find yourself using 20 skills in one duel? And in Classic everyone was a barb.
You can't speculate on abilities so early unless you assume that Blizzard a) will ignore balancing in regards to PvP or b) doesn't know how to balance games.
Fun facts the OP missed in his speculation about "overpowered" Ground Stomp Barbs:
1. You can raise your stun resistance in Diablo 3, as already evident by a barbarian skill.
2. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has diminishing returns on disables/stuns/etc. in PvP.
3. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has ways to become immune to disables/stuns/etc or remove disables/stuns/etc.
4. As giga pointed out, we don't know if stun on players gets replaced by something like a daze or a slow on players.
I mean seriously, it's one thing to assess a game's balance a week after it came out, you can at least see what super-obviously-broken aspects of gameplay. It's completely different to predict balance based on a freaking pre-alpha, a 10% complete game with even less than that known about it..
Fun facts the OP missed in his speculation about "overpowered" Ground Stomp Barbs:
1. You can raise your stun resistance in Diablo 3, as already evident by a barbarian skill.
2. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has diminishing returns on disables/stuns/etc. in PvP.
3. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has ways to become immune to disables/stuns/etc or remove disables/stuns/etc.
4. As giga pointed out, we don't know if stun on players gets replaced by something like a daze or a slow on players.
I mean seriously, it's one thing to assess a game's balance a week after it came out, you can at least see what super-obviously-broken aspects of gameplay. It's completely different to predict balance based on a freaking pre-alpha, a 10% complete game with even less than that known about it..
Good points konfeta. I see this barb skill Iron Will you mention. I did not know of this skill before. Iron Will "Provides resistance to stun, slow, and freeze attacks." Indeed, this skill increases stun resistance, which hurts my soundness of my prediction. And it is likely that there will be +x to stun resistance items in DIII if there is a barb skill that can raise stun resistance. Such items would also hurt my prediction.
However, what really hurts/ruins my prediction is the actual skill description of ground stomp. I'm surprised you missed this one konfeta, what with your knowledge. I failed to read ground stomp's description prior to issuing my high-prevalence-of-ground-stomp-barbs-in-team-PvP decree. I had assumed that ground stomp would be able to be cast as fast in DIII as the 105 faster cast breakpoint of war cry was able to be cast in D2. I loved that 105 breakpoint in D2. Bring back breakpoints in DIII! Breakpoints are fundamental to the franchise!
http://www.diablowiki.net/Juggernaut_Skill_Tree states... that the skill ground stomp "Knocks back and stuns enemies for 3 seconds. 5 second cool down."
Heh. My prediction is ruined. A stun lock is not possible with a 5 second cool down on a 3 second stun.
Unless... two (or more) ground stomp barbs are used in team PvP to alternate the casting of ground stomp at the right timings to create a stun lock. One barb could ground stomp then immediately do melee attacks, then about 2.5 seconds later the other barb does ground stomp, then melee. 2.5 seconds later the first barb ground stomps, then melee, 2.5 ground stomp melee, 2.5 ground stomp melee, stun lock melee stun lock melee repeat until gg. I suspect this strategy will be a possibility in team PvP in DIII - assuming, of course, that ground stomp stuns instead of slows PvP opponents in DIII, which is not yet known. Much speculation indeed!
Gigashadow
10-11-2008, 20:59
Well, it all sounds very fun for PvP, I just hope they balance it properly.
HappyAssassin
11-11-2008, 00:03
Everything? From items that some people didn't have to builds that canceled out other builds. DII was playable, (just like RTS besides SC are sorta playable), but it was horribly out of balance if you take it to tournament level.
Huh? The top duelers in the 1.10-1.11 era of d2 played 4v4 games, usually between clans. Tournaments were at most gimicks that people put together on message boards.
Besides, it was boring. Run around teleporting casting Bone Spirit/Hammer/add skill here... do you find yourself using 20 skills in one duel?
This is just totally inaccurate. Even the Bone Necro, a pretty simple class used Bone Prison, Teeth, Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Unsummon and Teleport as active skills in most duels, not to mention maintaining Bone Armor and Clay Golem all the time (lotta recasts). There were more complicated classes too. Yeah it's not 20, but 20 skills would be a nightmare. 12-15 is the most hotkeys you can work easily with one hand and still use a mouse (and yes, I know that because my pvp char used all the hotkeys).
Anyway, I've gotten pretty OT, but the main point that's come from this threat is it's way too early to start deciding on PvP builds. We don't even know if there are tier 5 skills, and what they will be if they will be implemented.
Gigashadow
11-11-2008, 00:29
Huh? The top duelers in the 1.10-1.11 era of d2 played 4v4 games, usually between clans. Tournaments were at most gimicks that people put together on message boards.I only accept 1v1 duels in all games of all types. The rest is nonsense for me. You may not agree but that's just how I look at it.
By tournament level I meant something like WCG or PGT. Official leagues.
This is just totally inaccurate.It's what I saw.
Even the Bone Necro, a pretty simple class used Bone Prison, Teeth, Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Unsummon and Teleport as active skills in most duels, not to mention maintaining Bone Armor and Clay Golem all the time (lotta recasts). There were more complicated classes too. Yeah it's not 20, but 20 skills would be a nightmare. 12-15 is the most hotkeys you can work easily with one hand and still use a mouse (and yes, I know that because my pvp char used all the hotkeys).
Yeah it's not 20, but 20 skills would be a nightmare.Unless you are attributing that to Diablo's control system, it's not really a nightmare. But, I agree, it's hard to manipulate too many skills in Diablo because the control system isn't too great. It's about 15 keys on the keyboard you can access?
I guess that's just not what I saw or heard most of the time about Diablo PvP. Usually it looked incredibly boring and slow, with one-two skill spam, teleport, and passives. You got an example of a good DII PvP on youtube or something?
So, DII:
Active skills:
Bone Prison/Teeth/Bone Spear/Bone Spirit/Unsummon/Teleport
Passive skills:
Bone Armor/Clay Golem resupport. Instant summon.
Weapon: Do you use any as a bone necro?
Potions: 1-2-3-4 if applicable
Mana: ?
Con:
Active skills:
Blink, Fist of Vengeance, Force of Nature, Burn, Slow, counterspell + inversion, Poison, Lesser heal (self and other)
Passive skills: Resupport of Summon Creature recast/ singular for Mechanical Golem/ double for Ghouls/ quadruple for Ghosts (requires time to summon); pixie swarm
Weapons
1st + 2nd (V) (crossbow [includes reload delay], bow, fireball staff, force of nature staff (cast delay).
Z-X-C for potions of 3 types
+ need mana crystals to recharge mana
Wiz: meh, I won't go there.
It's OK I guess. But I want my 20 things to do lol.
World of Warcraft uses a very specific stunlock killing system that makes each reduces the duration of every subsequent stun suffered by a target. Assuming Blizzard implements the same or a similar system, the ground stomps (or any other stunning move) will not actually do anything to their PvP targets after a third (or something similar) stun.
My point is simple - everything you know about D2 PvP might and probably will be irrelevant. D2 PvP is has incredibly poor overall balance, and while WoW's PvP balance isn't anything special, it is still miles ahead. Chances are, they will use elements of WoW PvP that worked, axe those that didn't and add completely new elements to it.
Speculating that "stunlock Barb starts will rule PvP" is already a flawed theory based simply on the most recent PvP interpretation by Blizzard. And even then, you cannot entirely use WoW PvP as prediction because Diablo 3 does not have class roles, it might have a completely different lethality:survivability ratio, etc. Sorry for the snarky response, but balance speculation based on less than 10% of the information available about the game irks me to no end.
HappyAssassin
11-11-2008, 05:29
Okie, point taken. I'm just saying, D2 had a lot of quality PvP even if it was mostly out of the public view (impossible to get an organized team game going in a pub). There's a ton on youtube, check out tienje or my (I think it's under Ollietehg) ghost vids, harryhallers trappers etc. I played assassins mostly so they're the ones I know, I'm sure there are others out there. Not a lot of recorded team vs. team, lotta clans are so concerned that they'll be recorded lossing they won't agree to fraps.
teh_Thrasher
11-11-2008, 05:55
d2 pvp was FTL with all the hacking and runeword bs and ugh it just lamed the game out totally. and stun lock was a joke. all the other stunning skills like smite or the barb skill stun did nothing. mind blast or whatever that stupid skill was called for the assassin was retarded. bad manners pretty much. mind lock and let traps slowly drain hp. took forever and was worst duels ever cause they just ended up running around. YAWN.
back to d3. the barb skill ground stomp is still mainly a melee skill. the casters arent just going to stand still for u to run up and stomp on their face they are going to be running around and, god forbid, teleporting.
planning a build around one skill wont work in d3 is what im seeing/hoping. i want to see a wide array of skill use in duels. and i also want to see cool character deaths, and not just a naked scream lol. decapitations, dismemberment, explosions and the like = thumbs up :D
HappyAssassin
11-11-2008, 06:04
Blah, give em and inch and they take a mile. I guess it's pointless to try and defend D2 pvp, but :
d2 pvp was FTL with all the hacking and runeword bs and ugh it just lamed the game out totally. and stun lock was a joke. all the other stunning skills like smite or the barb skill stun did nothing. mind blast or whatever that stupid skill was called for the assassin was retarded. bad manners pretty much. mind lock and let traps slowly drain hp. took forever and was worst duels ever cause they just ended up running around. YAWN.
This just proves that you were bad at pvp in D2, and that's it. Not that that's such a terrible thing, it was just a game after all. Anyway, this thread is pretty much rapped up:
It's too early to know.
teh_Thrasher
11-11-2008, 06:24
lol yes i wasnt too good against the people that bought their gear or used hacks or cheap builds. i find and use my gear. i even made my own fortitude :)
d3 pvp will not be d2 pvp. end topic.
Gigashadow
11-11-2008, 12:14
Anyway, this thread is pretty much rapped up:Which is why we can go offtopic.
d2 pvp was FTL with all the hacking and runeword bs and ugh it just lamed the game out totally.The game is not responsible for its hacked content, nobody forces you to play the hacked version of the game... although, I wasn't very happy about the fact that finding proper PvP was hard for the starter person.
I should make a noobish Nox video some day.
P.S.: watching all that stuff makes me think: Maybe FF wouldn't be a bad idea in PvP.
just like all the pvp barbs in D2 used Warcry (http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Barbarian_Warcries#War_Cry)?
HappyAssassin
14-11-2008, 01:33
Well, it depends whether ground stomp ends up more like leap or more like warcry. The stun on warcry sucked because it was a limited range. Every good PvP barb in D2 DID use leap because of the giant KB radius.
just like all the pvp barbs in D2 used Warcry (http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Barbarian_Warcries#War_Cry)?
Successful solo PvP barbs in D2 indeed did not use war cry. My post though was about a predicted effectiveness of ground stomp barbs in team PvP. I predict ground stomp barbs will be effective in team PvP in D3, though due to ground stomp's cooldown, not as effective as I initially thought when I made my original post.
xchrisbobisx
21-11-2008, 23:02
What the OP was talking about basically is what a trap assassin did in D2. stun and nuke. Anywayz D2 pvp was too simple, because of its simplicity it was exploited. what would be more OP than your stomping nuking team? 4 auradins teleporting everywhere.
If you could all think back to old school d2. what was more OP than a knockback bowzon? with that speed you get knocked back faster than you could run forward. im confident every class will have its time. and due to many many patches D3 will eventually be balanced. Im putting money that the witch doctor will be the 1st OP class. because usually the ugly ones are always better.
rikstaker
03-01-2009, 04:17
pvp in d3 wont be the same as d2-3d makes everything different,there is a lot of animation & everything,I cant explain it,correct me if I am wrong,everything feels a bit loose overall.
I would definitely love to see more skill variety,they have given the barb a crowd control skill apart from ww,and that is a welcome improvement over d2.I'd love to see some mega damage skills for our baba for single enemies(bosses)-something like berzerk but more powerful with a cool animation.
You probably see that barb leaping to you far away.. just hit whirlwind to his presumed landing spot :) and 1 barb will stun all 4 opponents? .. ok yeah if they are dumb and sit in the same spot.
satheron
27-01-2009, 16:08
If you have a team composed of mainly casters, the LAST thing you want to be caught doing against a melee focused team is being bunched together.
Specially if these melee builds have different AOE or cleave abilities. Your team is just asking to lose.
On the break you and your other casters need to break instantly for optimum distance. Whilst if you do have a melee, it would be your prerogative on if he should run as interference for your casters, specially if they target your weaker ones. Or if he goes into heavy offense.
With proper strategy, and planing, only teams with their pants caught down are going to be overcome by this ability.
Here's the end all point: Even if two or more barbs co-ordinated their cooldown, they still have to worry about Fury. Blizz will probably make it so you can't get enough fury in 2.5 seconds to use stomp again. And if 3 or 4 barbs stomped together, the other team will just squish the bunched together barb grapes.
What I am wondering is what PvP between 2 barbs will be like. I imagine it will be more than constant melee. Probably engaing and disengaging repeatedly to use charge or leap or slam or WW.
i dont think it's possible cuz there will probably be cool down timer on skills, just depend how short.
and i dont see battle order as a d3 barb's skill, dats the biggest drawback if they dont bring it back but that makes the game more balance as well.
World of Warcraft uses a very specific stunlock killing system that makes each reduces the duration of every subsequent stun suffered by a target. Assuming Blizzard implements the same or a similar system, the ground stomps (or any other stunning move) will not actually do anything to their PvP targets after a third (or something similar) stun.
i can still kill you with my stunlock rogue with you crying and not being able to do a thing until its over :P
anyway so far i didint hear anything about an arena....i hope you mean player made arena....cause if there is arena like in WoW it will suck badly...making pre-made vs pickup another problem again...if they do this they might as well just not make any pvp in D3...not that i use pvp often in D2....mostly griefer that go kill low lvl and talk **** and when you kill them they leave the game saying nothing or stuff like "so unfair,you're so pro huh"..../rolleye if they make pvp they should actually make it fun like the first system of WoW pvp...you were rewarded for getting better and being good at pvp....not just afk and say that you own cause you got arena or bg gear.....
god WoW turned into a boring easy mode game because everyone wanted to be geared as well as everyone else but not put any extra effort in it...now everyone look the same and everyone think they own everybody.....too bad i actually miss the day when pvp meant something in WoW and not just another grind
I wouldn't bother further discussing this topic until we start hearing and seeing the effects of stun abilities of human players. In the meantime, lets guess the Barbarians middle name or something
Sparker Wolfripper Jetson.
[cK]Extreme
25-02-2009, 07:50
Everything? From items that some people didn't have to builds that canceled out other builds. DII was playable, (just like RTS besides SC are sorta playable), but it was horribly out of balance if you take it to tournament level.
Besides, it was boring. Run around teleporting casting Bone Spirit/Hammer/add skill here... do you find yourself using 20 skills in one duel? And in Classic everyone was a barb.
Spoken by someone who never did any high level dueling. Clueless.
But to the OP, this skill reminds me of a Warcry barbarian in D2. How good were those? :thumbup:
MysticDragon
26-02-2009, 03:46
Judging from the comments in this thread, I can tell the majority of the posters here have not team dueled competitively in Diablo 2.
Everything? From items that some people didn't have to builds that canceled out other builds. DII was playable, (just like RTS besides SC are sorta playable), but it was horribly out of balance if you take it to tournament level.
Besides, it was boring. Run around teleporting casting Bone Spirit/Hammer/add skill here... do you find yourself using 20 skills in one duel? And in Classic everyone was a barb.
1. Who the hell plays classic.
2. Diablo2 was and still is the best pvp experience for me. Team duels are loads of fun, but it gets pretty hectic in 4v4.
Doctor Salvador
01-03-2009, 22:12
1. Who the hell plays classic.
2. Diablo2 was and still is the best pvp experience for me. Team duels are loads of fun, but it gets pretty hectic in 4v4.
Actually I think lots of people play D2C, but I still agree that ignorance is bliss.
vBulletin® v3.8.4, Copyright ©2000-2009, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.