Diablo 3 Beta Hands On Report: Zamazi

Tags : diablo 3 beta, diablo 3 report, diablo 3 news

Here’s another hands on report from Zamazi, a new tester in the Diablo 3 Beta. He wrote this one after literally one day of play time, so they truly are first impressions.

His first comment is that the game is awesome, before he goes into suggestions for improvements to a variety of game features. Here’s a quote from his forum thread; click through to read the whole thing.

3. The ordering of low level skills could use some work. Wizards get frost armor and frost nova as extra skills at level 2, which basically means they auto attack until level 3-4 where you get arcane orb. A similar problem exists with the monk, where you get blinding flash and a mantra at level 2. All classes should get some kind of second attack or spamable attack at level 2, not buffs or long cooldown spells.

4. Not enough skill slots. This wasn’t an issue i ran into with the beta, but I definitely see it happening in the future. On my witch doctor, I got great pleasure from slashing baddies in the face while using my spells. However, 6 skills and a potion slot take up all available slots, leaving no option for auto attack. This kinda sucks. If you want a dedicated potion button, add in a potion button similar to what was done with town portal, don’t take away from the existing skill bar. Or alternatively, add back the quick swap for the mouse skills. I know this was in the game at one point, but could find no reference to it in game.

All beta testers are invited to write up their own experiences and opinions with the Diablo 3 beta; post them in the Diablo 3 forums and we’ll try to get them quoted on the main page as well. Click through for Zamazi’s full post. Original forum version here. Opinions expressed are those of the poster, and not necessarily those of Diablo.IncGamers.com.

Impressions from the Beta

Hello Diablo Incgamers! I got into the beta on Tuesday, and played a bunch of Diablo 3 yesterday. I thought I’d share my thoughts on the game. So far, I’ve played through to the Skeleton King with the Witch Doctor, and about halfway through with the Monk and Wizard. I also posted this thread on the D3 forums.

1. Its awesome. It was definitely the most fun I’ve had playing a video game in a while. The classes felt very different from each other, but each felt fairly balanced. The skill system was also a joy to use.

I did want to start with this comment, because I feel it is the most important point to take home on reading about experiences in Diablo III. Now, for some criticisms.

2. The online only requirement. Lag was a serious issue yesterday while i was in a single player game, to the point where I only played for like 5 minutes at first before giving up. Pings were about 700ms in game. I understand this is a beta, and I understand the servers were being stress tested, but I still felt like this was a totally unnecessary problem to run into.

On the bright side, the lag greatly reduced later in the day, (down to about 200ms) and was absolutely playable. Hopefully this reduction was from Blizzard fixing some issues with their servers, and this problem will not be encountered further.

3. The ordering of low level skills could use some work. Wizards get Frost Armor and Frost Nova as extra skills at level 2, which basically means they auto attack until level 3-4 where you get Arcane Orb. A similar problem exists with the Monk, where you get Blinding Flash and a Mantra at level 2.

All classes should get some kind of second attack or spammable attack at level 2, not buffs or long cooldown spells.

4. Not enough skill slots. This wasn’t an issue I ran into with the beta, but I definitely see it happening in the future. On my witch doctor, I got great pleasure from slashing baddies in the face while using my spells. However, 6 skills and a potion slot take up all available slots, leaving no option for basic attack. This kinda sucks. If you want a dedicated potion button, add in a potion button similar to what was done with town portal, don’t take away from the existing skill bar. Or alternatively, add back the quick swap for the mouse skills. I know this was in the game at one point, but could find no reference to it in game.

Finally, a general comment related to the recent changes in patch 10.

5. Difficulty seemed appropriate, maybe a little on the easy side. The skeleton king fight felt equivalent to the fight against blood raven in D2. Monsters with affixes were deadly, especially to my monk who could not kite and avoid damage.