D3 Analyst - my first analytical post

I've written a long post looking at Skill Doodling over on my new blog. If you're looking forward to Diablo 3 I hope you'll give it a look.

Blog reorganisation

I'm reorganising my blogging a little.

First, I'm splitting off my Diablo 3 blogging into a separate blog: http://d3analyst.blogspot.com/

It makes sense to do this for several reasons. I want my D3 blog to be a commercial blog with adverts. This blog is mainly about MMOs. I want my D3 blogging to eventually lead on to more advanced forms of communication such as podcasting or Youtube or a gold guide.

I'll continue to maintain Stabbed Up and will post about MMOs as the enthusiasms come and go. At the moment I'm just playing Eve in maintenance mode, otherwise it's all Diablo. I'm playing a lot of D2 and planning a lot for D3.

Next I'm disabling anonymous comments. I simply get far too much spam and it's a pain. Having said that I've had some excellent anonymous comments and I don't want to discourage you. If you've posted a quality comment here anonymously please don't feel unwelcome, just make an account somewhere and keep sharing your opinions.

And let me take this opportunity to thank the blogging community in general and my readers in particular for your support over the years. The number of hits seems quite staggering to me and the quality of the comments is a delight. I had no idea when I started blogging how much I'd grow to appreciate the dialogue. You're all quite wonderful.

Note that this isn't an exit post, in fact I think I'll be blogging a LOT more although for now that's mainly going to be on my new blog.

Thanks!

Diablo 3: Witch Doctor progression up to 30

I've been planning out my Witch Doctor using this excellent tool (many thanks to the author!). I'm constructing my builds towards a layout of
Single Target nuke
Multi-target Nuke
Opener
Utility
Summons
Summons

This aims to support a playstyle of run up to the monsters, drop the opener, nuke, loot and onwards.

Here goes:

Level 1 Poison Dart

Level 2 Poison Dart, Grasp of the Dead

Level 3 Poison Dart, Corpse Spiders (a single target spell and a multi-target spell)

Level 4 Poison Dart, Corpse Spiders, Summon Zombie Dogs (the dogs are effectively a passive)

Level 5 Poison Dart, Plague of Toads, Summon Zombie Dogs (the toads are clearly annoying to use but hit harder and instantly and there's no issue at this early stage running up to the mobs to spam it).

Levels 6-8 Splinters, Plague of Toads, Summon Zombie Dogs (big upgrade to the dart making it competitive with more powerful high level spells when considering it's also cheap to cast).

Level 9 Splinters, Haunt, Plague of Toads, Summon Zombie Dogs (our fourth slot gets used for a spell that's useful if cast early in a long fight).

Level 10 Vermin, Splinters, Haunt, Plague of Toads, Summon Zombie Dogs (at this stage of the game given a defensive passive or a damage passive we may as well take the offensive option).

Level 11 Jungle Fortitude, Splinters, Haunt, Firebomb, Life Link (at last a hard-hitting aoe to replace the horrible toad spell. Also an upgrade to the dogs. We'll swap passives if we're not using any of the spells affected by Vermin).

Level 12-3 Vermin, Splinters, Haunt, Firebats, Life Link (because of the passive the bats beat the bombs and at this stage I'm assuming it doesn't matter foregoing some ranged safety).

Level 14 Vermin, Splinters, Haunt, Explosive Toads, Life Link, Horrify (arggh bloody toads. Still 169% weapon damage times 1.2 is just too strong to pass up).

Level 15 Gruesome Feast, Splinters, Haunt, Firebomb, Life Link, Horrify (I have no idea whether sometimes having +10-50% extra Int beats 20% extra damage but it applies to all spells and it lets us drop the toads for the much safer option of lobbing bombs from a safe distance. Even if the damage isn't better it gives us mana).

Level 16 Gruesome Feast, Splinters, Haunt, Firebomb, Life Link, Spirit Walk (Spirit Walk sounds like it lets us walk through walls, across rivers etc which seems pretty useful).

Level 17 Gruesome Feast, Splinters, Spider Queen, Firebomb, Life Link, Spirit Walk (straight replacement for our opener option).


Level 18 Gruesome Feast, Splinters, Spider Queen, Fire Pit, Life Link, Spirit Walk (straight upgrade).

Level 19 Gruesome Feast, Dire Bats, Spider Queen, Fire Pit, Life Link, Spirit Walk, Gargantuan (the big guy seems like another spell that's effectively passive, the bats are a very long range very powerful spell that reads like it's single target).

Level 20 Gruesome Feast, Vermin (or Pierce the Veil if mana is a non-issue), Dire Bats, Spider Queen, Fire Pit, Life Link, Spirit Walk, Gargantuan

OK let's review it now. Our two passives give us damage and some mana regen, also occasional resistance boosts. Life Link and Gargantuan are close to being passives, they may just occasionally need to be recast if the summons dies. Our offensive spells are Spider Queen at the start followed up by Dire Bats (single Target) or Fire Pit (multi-target).

Level 21 Gruesome Feast, Vermin, Dire Bats, Spider Queen, Fire Pit, Rabid Dogs, Spirit Walk, Gargantuan

Level 22 Gruesome Feast, Vermin, Dire Bats, Spider Queen, Acid Cloud, Rabid Dogs, Spirit Walk, Gargantuan

Level 23 Gruesome Feast, Vermin, Dire Bats, Toad of Hugeness, Acid Cloud, Rabid Dogs, Spirit Walk, Gargantuan

Levels 24-7 Gruesome Feast, Vermin, Resentful Spirit, Toad of Hugeness, Acid Cloud, Rabid Dogs, Jaunt, Gargantuan (I'm told that Resentful Spirit runes Haunt into a much shorter duration dot or even a nuke. It's worth trying it at this point and seeing if it's an improvement over the Dire Bats).

Level 28 Gruesome Feast Vermin, Resentful Spirit, Toad of Hugeness, Acid Cloud, Rabid Dogs, Jaunt, Humongoid.

Level 29 Gruesome Feast Vermin, Resentful Spirit, Toad of Hugeness, Acid Cloud, Final Gift, Jaunt, Humongoid.(Losing a bit of damage for more health globes seems a reasonable choice at this stage. This is around the end of normal/start of Nightmare so things may be getting a little harder).


Level 30 Fierce Loyalty, Gruesome Feast, Zombie Handler, Resentful Spirit, Toad of Hugeness, Acid Cloud, Final Gift, Jaunt, Humongoid. It's important at this stage to be picking gear that supports the Fierce Loyalty passive - attacker takes damage and health regeneration. We'll also drop Vermin for Zombie Handler so that we can face Nightmare difficulty with tougher minions).

Review at level 30. Stronger minions that benefit from our equipped items. Jaunt is likely to be the most useful utility spell, if not we've got lots of other options including Horrify, Mass Confuse and Big Bad Voodoo. I don't know which our best nukes to be, my next blog post will look at mana costs, area of effect and damage in the Witch Doctor nukes up to 30.

Diablo 3: Tactical evaluation - Holy Trinity

Back in the day Diablo multiplayer was firmly an Everyone is Dps game. This was principally due to the lack of a decent heal. The Paladin class had a weak heal but it was unreliably and hugely over-shadowed by other methods of healing such as life leech and potions.

It's also true that the community was less aware of trinity possibilities. The internet only really became widespread for gaming in about 1996 so in 1999 when Diablo 2 came out most players had just moved from single player offline games where of course dps is the default playstyle (perhaps with self-heals).

I think Diablo 3 will see a lot of trinity gameplay. It's possible to make a decent Barbarian tank based on Threatening Shout which with the Demoralise rune becomes a spammable aoe taunt. For example this one has very high armour, stuns, damage reduction, resist bonus and self-healing.


It's certainly possible to make a decent Monk healer. This one relies on high spirit generation to supplement a formidable range of heals with heal on demand Cyclone Strikes.

What's more the other classes have methods of becoming more group friendly. I'll explore in more depth in later posts but to start with the Wizard and Demon Hunter can crowd control and the Witch Doctor can not only crowd control but adds that nice wall of meat to hide behind.

Regarding treasure generation there are two elements to the equation - kills per minute and magic find (or gold find) bonuses. Being in a group may allow you to sub in some magic find gear over other options because other people have got your back.

Regarding difficulty, well, if a monster is challenging to a soloer, is it really challenging to a very high armour Barbarian who is getting healed? Perhaps not. And the challenge can be reduced by burning the monster down fast.

We've been warned Inferno level D3 will be exceptionally difficult. The devs have reported that they're dying a lot in internal play tests. Perhaps one way to handle that challenge is with the Trinity.

A game designer friend is quite convinced that the Holy Trinity is an exploit that became a feature, that originally games were not designed to cope with a team that presents the best armour, the highest dps, and the maximum healing at the point of contact.

Diablo 3: My excitement is growing

Over the last week I've been playing a lot of Diablo 2. I've got past its datedness and been sucked right in by its fascinating range of possibilities and addictive loot generation system. Of course it helps that it's possibly quite a good way to prepare for Diablo 3.

So what have I learned playing Diablo 2 that might be relevant?

First, melee is harder than ranged. While we can't quite be sure that Diablo 3 will play similarly to its predecessors that's a view which is shared by some of those who've tried D3 in Beta. Initially in D2 the person I played with choose a melee paladin with a two-handed sword - he died constantly in Tal Rasha's Tomb at the end of Act 2 Normal. So we changed it to a trapper and a zookeeper and that seems like a combination that will do well in Diablo 3.

Both classes have off-screen ranged power. To get maximum range in Diablo 2 you need to set the display to 800 * 600; fire a spell that lands in a corner of the screen and which damages mobs off-camera. He uses traps to do this I use bait golem. Chuck a golem in and if nothing wakes up and attacks it, that spot is safe so move there and repeat. There are plenty of offscreen options in D3 (including summonses and traps).

One of the interesting differences between the games is the ease of respeccing. I've realised playing the modern version of Diablo 2 how fundamentally being able to respec has altered the game. Diablo 3 goes even further. Want to jump over that river? Swap in Leap Attack or Teleport and off you go.

This means that the "here's my build!" threads that I and others have made are slightly skewed in concept. You need several builds and should be prepared to alter them on the fly. Rather than being a "Whirlwind Barb" or a "zookeeper" a master Diablo 3 player will be able to use any skill situationally and will know the synergies.

Synergies brings me on to another fundamental difference. In D2 most people constructed their characters in a void. The game is based on a everyone is dps paradigm anyway plus there were few social skills and they were weak (eg Holy Bolt).

In D3 synergies between classes can be very powerful. Combined with the ease of respeccing you should be ready to swap skills in to suit other people. That's fairly explicit for the Monk where people are obviously going to ask for particular mantras. I also think many people coming from WoW is going to expect a Barbarian player to tank for them.

Here's my impression of what people will generally want from other players:

Barbarian - tank. My guess is most people who play Barbs will consider the class dps and most people who don't play Barbs will consider them tanks. People may ask you to use the shout that makes mobs drop extra treasure.
Demon Hunter - dps, snares
Monk - healer, buff. Expect to hear the most abuse if you join random games and don't heal people or buff them with the right mantra.
Witch Doctor - tank. People will expect you to keep up summons for them to hide behind (possibly while simultaneously complaining about how laggy you are to play with and how over-powered you are).
Wizard - dps

As ever playing within a more understanding community will insulate one from the horrors of the internet public.

SWTOR: parting thoughts

I tried to log into SWTOR earlier and discovered, with relative indifference, that my sub has expired.

SWTOR is in many ways a good game and I hope it does well and entertains a lot of people. I think it will, perhaps not quite living up to its hype, but stable enough to keep a lot of people having fun for a long time. It appeals to a new generation of MMO players and those of us who cut our teeth on pre-Wrath WoW or older MMOs have on the whole not enjoyed SWTOR. I don't think this is a mistake or a cockup by Bioware, it's just the fracturing of the MMO market into games that suit different tastes.

So first, why isn't it my kind of game?

Part of it is the economy. I was actually considering starting a SWTOR gold site, an advice site like Just My Two Copper or Marcko's new Diablo 3 blog. But when I played it I found that the best advice was Just Do Slicing. It failed to make an interesting economy. (To be fair, there is a little more to it than that - there are arbitrage opportunities in certain missions like Underworld Trading missions for instance - but not much more). I also really dislike short duration auction houses. After playing Eve where I can place my auctions for 3 months a 2 day upper limit feels like a tedious micromanagement chore.

Part of it is the socialisation. Meeting people, making friends, arises from sharing experiences. I spent the weekend with a friend and his family with several young children and thought analytically about how relationships are formed with kids. So much of it is simply doing things together - any old thing. "Have you brushed your teeth?", "Hurry up, it's time to go" all of these lead in the end to love. It's the time spent together, solving problems, living lives, that establishes our social bonds, something that's been hardwired into us since we were primates. And it's also true of primates - grooming, searching each other's fur for insects, is a crucial part of forming social bonds in animals like chimpanzees.

And there's just not enough incentive to socialise for people who are borderline social. Very social outgoing people can spam for groups, find group quests and instance groups but unless you are willing to be outgoing it's hard to find the group you need after about level 12. And it's also very easy to skip socialising because the solo game is utterly easy and highly rewarding. People did use to form bonds making groups the old fashioned way in vanilla WoW and EQ and games like that but they did so because the path of least resistance was to form a group. In WoW for instance you got much better loot from dungeons and it would last you a long time because you leveled slowly. It was worth getting the cloth hat from Scarlet Monastery because you'd still be wearing it at 50 which would be 3-4 weeks. In SWTOR if you get an upgrade at level 40 you'll probably outgrow it within 2 days.

However those elements only really matter to veteran MMO players. For someone coming to SWTOR from single player games just the fact that there's an auction house is great. The fact that you can group with others for bonus more rewarding content is awesome. And the things I've complained about would, if designed for my taste, be less attractive for newbies. A cutthroat auctionhouse that allowed me to manipulate large amounts of money off newbies? A brutal efficiency oriented cross server LFD tool where people get shouted at if they're sub-optimal? Sophisticated macro and addon options that allow veterans to differentiate themselves from newbies? SWTOR probably made the correct choices for the market it's aimed at.

So let's finish with some positives. I like many of the touches in SWTOR. I like it that they took a leaf from Rift's book with aoe looting and wholesale selling of grey junk items. I thought the time-based crew skill crafting system was clever and innovative. I think the cut-scenes were superb and the stories well-written. It's hugely innovative to base a mmo so much on solo story and was a brave decision to take. SWTOR is probably the best game for people new to the genre and I think it will bridge the gap between people who find MMOs a bit too involved and us veterans, attracting new audiences to other MMO games. I also like it that it's another game voting against the notion of hybrid tax - the idea that it's unfair for hybrids to hit as hard as pure dps.

Being part of something bigger

One of the most interesting design choices in Star Wars: The Old Republic is the incorporation of a Game Over factor. It's actually one of the first MMOs to do this, a point which makes me smile at the people who occasionally claim the game isn't innovative. SWTOR is a highly innovative game on the basic framework of WoW-style UI. No one has set up a character's progression in terms of story before and ended it but in this game you can progress through, say, the Sith quests and become a Darth. You even (apparently) get some kind of game over for now screen.

However, and this is perhaps something for the people who have been asking for innovation in MMOs to consider, this is not the innovation we were looking for (to paraphrase Alec Guinness).

SWTOR is a game that will do very well and be a pivotal game experience in many people's lives. It's clear that there are a lot of people in the community who never played WoW or any other MMO game before.

So SWTOR represents a new branch on the MMO tree, a different direction, a parting of ways with old notions of game design. What this game is, crucially, is a finite consumable experience. You can play it for a while, then you win. There's stuff to be going on with if you want to continue in the game world after winning like Huttball and Operations (aka Raids). But really you finish once you've done your class storyline and that's something completely new.

And it's not just the casual newbie gamer who can enjoy this. There's veteran gamers who this suits perfectly.
Tesh said today:
As much as I like Star Trek Online, I’m looking forward to finishing it and moving on.  I suspect it’s similar to how I’d approach Star Wars The Old Republic, inasmuch as I want to play the story and then move on to another one.  
Spinks too is highly immersed in her Sith Warrior's story:
The levelling game in SWTOR has been one of the best CRPG experiences I’ve had in any game since Planescape.


For me it's been different.


MMOs spoiled me for other games. I used to play games like Planescape, Baldur's Gate, Master of Orion in the 90s. After I moved on to online games, first Homm 3 and Diablo 2 then Star Wars Galaxies and WoW I found these offline experiences too shallow. It felt hollow making a trade in a space trader game when there's no one else playing the market, it felt silly to master a craft in a universe with no customers, it felt empty to slay a dragon in the privacy of my own private world.

I need to be part of something bigger.

Raph Koster once pointed out that the much-admired harvester mechanic in Star Wars Galaxies was basically the same as the (then) much-derided farming mechanic in Farmville. The point though, is that in SWG we were collecting materials to make something which would cause someone to win a fight which would effect the world in some way. Just as a clock is something more than a handful of cogs an online world can be something more than a single game mechanism.

SWTOR's story-telling is the most polished, most expensive and almost certainly the best game mechanism ever seen as part of a MMO. However its flaw is that it's not really just part, it's the whole MMO. I find myself not logging in because the game just doesn't grab me. This is particularly sharp when I (in my story) cause massive galaxy-changing events.

This feels pretty healthy to me because I see SWTOR as the launching pad for what I truly want - a genuinely diverse MMO market where it becomes standard practice to make games for a part of the market rather than the whole, for, say, military stategist grognards rather than just "every MMO player ever".

What I'm saying is SWTOR will be a success but it will also clearly alienate a significant market sector and leave us uncatered for, wanting to spend money but unable to find a suitable MMO to spend it on.

Because we need to be part of something bigger.