Diablo 4

[JGP]

 

Voice over: Yet, as it turned out, it wasn't that great

[JGP]

I mean, it could be great, but I got to play round with some stuff.

Using it right now means I got to drop my 76% chance that a Thorns hit will also hit everyone in my immediate area, which procs more Thorn hits and those Thorns proc... you see. When there's lots of mobs it just decimates them, then there's all my Bleeds, Bleed collapse as Physical procs, and my Overkills Deathblows [jfc loI] I helped a lvl 96 Necro do an Event this morning and they were all, yo, that was impressive lol

If I can land a Razorplate I can drop an Aspect or two that'll let me keep all that and use Overkill. 

Edited June 19, 2023 by JGP

[Ser Not Appearing]

Ran into the Butcher again today. Decided I wanted to see how it went if I just stood and traded blows.

He couldn't break through my barrier, fortify and earthen bulwark. Meanwhile, I melted him in about 20 seconds.

"Look at me. I'm the Butcher now."

[RumHam]

I need to do more nightmare dungeons. There are no legendary glyphs, right? I was holding off because I didn't want to upgrade blue and yellow ones if I was gonna get better ones. 

[JGP]

You grind pretty good, Soylent.
 

Half ass intrigued by the HotA build, myself. Not enough to swap without collecting and upgrading complimentary gear, but I might start. Never gave it much thought when I was crafting mine because HotA is so resource intensive  [70 Fury, heeeeey] but there’s ways around that apparently.

Edited June 19, 2023 by JGP

[JGP]

Maaaaaaaan, so I was like a c-hair away from purifying a metric shit ton of Seeds of Hatred in the pvp area [for Grim Favors, was also getting the Lilith Altars therein] and I got jumped by a lvl 100 Rogue that I still almost killed.

Prickface.

 

edit: but hey, at least no repair bills in pvp

Edited June 20, 2023 by JGP

[Arakasi]

Is there any sort of enemy additional scaling for multi player like there was with d2? I read around and most it seemed to focus on how players of different level group and such. It doesn’t seem that monsters get stronger when I do 2p but then again our 2p boss fights are so much harder. It might just be my rogue is OP.

 

Edit: apparently dungeons scale but open world is flat. That makes sense.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Arakasi

[JGP]

20 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

Edit: apparently dungeons scale but open world is flat. That makes sense.

Yeah, it does. 

---

I'm getting two to three messages from gold sellers a day. 

It has begun.

[Mexal]

Finally killed Lilith on my main character (arc lash/chain lightning sorcerer). Think because I was already level 50, it was fairly easy. Looking forward to pushing forward and getting a feel for the end game content. I have so much left to do just on side quests, aspects, altars - might focus some time there before pushing forward. I do want to convert to ice shards at some point too so building paragon board with that in mind. 

[Arakasi]

Completed a bunch of stuff last night. I completed the regular campaign and then did a first tree of whispers in world tier 2. Then I did my first world boss and then did the capstone dungeon for world tier 3. Then did one dungeon at world tier 3. I guess for now I’ll just use tree of whispers to get bonuses for completing dungeons I’ve not completed before and keep levelling. Not sure when I can start doing sigils.

[Darryk]

How do you get Jewelers to upgrade chipped gems further? Do you need special items or something?

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, Darryk said:

How do you get Jewelers to upgrade chipped gems further? Do you need special items or something?

Just need to go up to a higher level as far as I can tell. 

That said it's almost never actually worth the stupid high cost. 

[Ser Not Appearing]

50 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Just need to go up to a higher level as far as I can tell. 

That said it's almost never actually worth the stupid high cost. 

I didn't realize how expensive it was and started upgrading all my banked stuff to Flawless when that unlocked. Burned through $1 million before I realized ... and hadn't hardly scratched the surface of my backlog.

[Argonath Diver]

Gems probably will eventually have value - higher tiers have been datamined and they'll likely be in some sort of D2-level cube crafting. By then I expect we'll all be in our seasonal characters and our current guys will be in the scrapyard. That's my assumption of course but ARPGs are heavily swinging in a seasonal-reset format companies can monetize.

I'm very old-hat ARPG gamer and prefer an almost exclusively solo grind experience, so I'd like my current characters to eventually be truly endgame kitted.

I've lost most interest leveling my druid further in T4 due to this. It's been the same game play since I re-specced at 55ish and won't change with upgrades. So there's no carrot-on-a-stick, except the very rare Druid helm that enables a super OP endgame build. That can wait til Season 1.

I've tinkered low level with a few alts, but the campaign is really tiresome to me with all the travel and unskippable cut scenes. Again this is a severe flaw of the area leveling. Another campaign experience, despite a compelling plot, is not immersive due to the open-world core of the game. I want to get my fledgling chars into the excellent moments in later acts, but it's a real drag getting there again.

Still generally think a compelling game will arise out of what we see now. Lots more endgame content to make the 70-100 grind have some sort of meaning. God willing some more QOL changes (a barebones loot filter for fuck sake). Maybe they can make PVP remotely balanced or compelling, but the PVE experience needs more work from both a casual gaming viewpoint, and a guy that wants 1k+ hours of mindless gambling reskinned as demon-exploding.

[Arakasi]

Hmm weird you can’t skip cut scenes. On console there is always an option to press circle to skip through cut scenes. Or x to skip through dialog.

I do think they need to add a lot more uniques. Surprised they didn’t have some low power ones for world tier 2. I’d like to see sets again and more of the uniques being cross class. I can understand why they don’t want class X to get class Ys ability but that was one of the funnest things in D2. At the least more things that lucky hit do that. I don’t think Enigma was actually a good thing for D2.

[JGP]

42 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

Still generally think a compelling game will arise out of what we see now. Lots more endgame content to make the 70-100 grind have some sort of meaning. God willing some more QOL changes (a barebones loot filter for fuck sake). Maybe they can make PVP remotely balanced or compelling, but the PVE experience needs more work from both a casual gaming viewpoint, and a guy that wants 1k+ hours of mindless gambling reskinned as demon-exploding.

Agreed, though I seem to like the game a bit more than you.

Compelling PVP, for me anyway, you need an arena type deathmatch format with 2v2 and/or 3v3 at least, and larger warzones with limited objectives so you can get team play a bit more comprehensive and cooperative that'll still allow the leet killers to get their dps farm going on. Last, I think you also need some healing and perhaps tank specs/classes for a truly enjoyable PVP experience to promote more strategy, but imagine trying to level a heals in Diablo lol

Edited June 20, 2023 by JGP

[Kalbear]

27 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

Hmm weird you can’t skip cut scenes. On console there is always an option to press circle to skip through cut scenes. Or x to skip through dialog.

You can on the computer. You either hit left mouse to advance dialog or if it's a full cutscene you can hold escape. 

That said, there's a lot of just...waiting for people to talk randomly in the real world that you can't skip, and it's pretty tedious. I'm very much hoping that we don't have to do too much of that because it's kind of old already. The storyline is weirdly filled with all sorts of dead spots where you're just running around and not killing shit, and that's trash. 

Edited June 20, 2023 by Kalnak the Magnificent

[Argonath Diver]

5 hours ago, JGP said:

Agreed, though I seem to like the game a bit more than you.

Compelling PVP, for me anyway, you need an arena type deathmatch format with 2v2 and/or 3v3 at least, and larger warzones with limited objectives so you can get team play a bit more comprehensive and cooperative that'll still allow the leet killers to get their dps farm going on. Last, I think you also need some healing and perhaps tank specs/classes for a truly enjoyable PVP experience to promote more strategy, but imagine trying to level a heals in Diablo lol

Yeah, I should have been more positive. I am actually really impressed how much I enjoy it. I am pretty much retired from POE's graduate-student-level complexity but still want something far more interesting than D3's atrocious itemization, progression, and skill systems. D4's paragon boards are a great compromise at something daunting for newbies, but not as nuts as POE's multiple colossal passive trees. I think by the first paid expansion, D4 is going to be a game I can log a lot of hours with. For now, I am pretty content spending my time elsewhere til season 1, but I should have emphasized that I don't consider that a bad thing. This part, season zero or what have you, is essentially a paid 2 month open, 1.0 beta until the true game drops. I'll probably dive hard into it then.

It's a great game to throw Twitch on my second monitor while I surf, etc.

[Argonath Diver]

5 hours ago, Arakasi said:

Hmm weird you can’t skip cut scenes. On console there is always an option to press circle to skip through cut scenes. Or x to skip through dialog.

I do think they need to add a lot more uniques. Surprised they didn’t have some low power ones for world tier 2. I’d like to see sets again and more of the uniques being cross class. I can understand why they don’t want class X to get class Ys ability but that was one of the funnest things in D2. At the least more things that lucky hit do that. I don’t think Enigma was actually a good thing for D2.

Most cut scenes are skippable with an ESC click, but some take place while your character waits (some you can at least look at your skill tree or inventory for, but some are change-of-camera conversations not skippable for some reason).

I absolutely don't want D3 sets, but I do wish there were more build-enabling uniques.  I generally think the legendary affix system is a super janky way to shoehorn in build diversity that should be in a more complex skill system, not baked on items. Then more interesting uniques! I mean come on, D2 twenty years ago has all sorts of fun uniques to use til you find a superior item! The legendary affixes do that as well, while completely removing any sort of personal connection to my gear. Remember your great-rolled Skins of the Vipermagi you named with the quest, upgraded and lent to your alts? My character has some well rolled legendaries, sure, but they're all just Rare items with the BiS affix tacked on. Snore.

That druid helm that allows storm spells casting in werewolf form is really rare and makes a whole new build possible! That's awesome! Have more of those, not just these AI generated D3 Primal Rares. Zzz.

(Okay sorry it's my day off I'll stop ranting about itemization, I'm just a RPing a fat flightless dragon wanting a shinier hoard.)

[Arakasi]

Ahh yeah I’ve noticed that but that’s when I just chat with kids or check baseball score or look at my build.