Developer Insights 1/28

[Edgeta-1668]

@KyubiVal-2445

I am mostly a solo player, and i find it really difficult (and time consuming) to do or finish the seasonal journey, just by playing casually in my spare time (like 3-5 hours a week maybe) without the help of some overpowered player that plays Diablo like it was a job. Would you introduce some items, or a new legendary gem, something that could help more the solo player (or maybe something to buff significantly the followers and make them more helpful)?

This could easily be done by giving followers a buff that increases their overall damage (and maybe toughness) by a percentage of your main stat.

[Knightmare65-1768]

If Blizzard wants to put a stop to stop skill animation and snapshotting, which is aimed at the crusader and wizard bazooka build, then make changes in the gear so to better serve in the 4 player meta. Like as in with the bazooka wizard, make a LoN build that uses the Legacy of Dreams gem, but not have to hit skills in a convoluted sequence in order to do its job. The meta needs a trash killer, so enable the gear to do so, but not in a set. I hope you understand what I’m thinking. Love playing this game solo and in groups.

Side note: I would like to see every build from every class set be viable in solo and group play on the offensive side only. Demon Hunters and Witch Doctors are getting the shaft on higher group meta play, please fix that.

[Decay-1639]

@KyubiVal-2445

I am mostly a solo player

@Shadout-2849

you should look at balancing solo better vs groups

@Callamity-2128

im a solo player and boredom kicks in way before i even get anywhere near 5000 paragon. dont even think i have half that non season. there is no balance between solo and group at all. solo play is not rewarding.

@lightstorm-6232

Solo players have been crapped on

@Laurcus-1712

If I had to try and ballpark it, I would say that farming in a group is about 5x more XP than playing solo. This is including both the intrinsic XP buff for being near group members as well as the ability to farm higher GRs faster. Group play is also much more effective at key and bounty farming.

If you want to min-max your character, time spent playing solo is quite literally time wasted.

You get the picture.

[Broodax-1163]

Promising blog post. I am glad they’re giving some context and explaining their vision a bit. That is unquestionably good.

There are two things about it that make me continue to worry, however. First, the aforementioned 5000 paragon. This is just laughable. Sure, you can do math, but the fact that they look at that total and even think it’s in a representative middle is insane. I play far more than most. I’m 1780-ish this season. After the season is over, my non-season paragon will be… ~2750.

The second is that they appear to be looking at balance for an entire class, and for even more than the 1000 spots on the leaderboard, which… just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Essentially they’re muddying the water so much that it’s going to cause any measurement to regress a tremendous amount. Even if one class has a set that allows them to outperform all other classes, that effect is going to be severely dulled by not only other sets, but player skill, the community gravitating toward certain classes/sets, etc. It’s just a terrible methodology.

I lied there’s a third, they talk about single player and designing around both when it’s just clearly not true. As others have pointed out, the advantage of grouping gets bigger and bigger all the time, for multiple reasons, and they do nothing at all to address it.

[D3excess-1904]

The buffer for the nerfs to come. Like this season the most out of all seasons because the paragon i gained is 700 more than i usually get. Still cant keep up with the fishery. I hate wasting keys to fishing.
Hope next season theme is 1k bounty mats rain from the sky when you die.

[Love-11178]

Make the game more friendly for single players, and an option for auto pickup on death’s breaths would increase population of players.

[MeganeSenpai-1314]

Well, this will do exactly nothing to the situation.
Most of the damage output isn’t from the damage stat, but from the massive multipliers of items and sets. So even giving the follower 10x of your dps RAW stat won’t make them contribute any damage at all.
People always use the immortal relic on the follower so more toughness doesn’t mean anything either.
My solution:

1. Let the follower equip The Executioner.
2. Introduce a follower’s specific item which add a percentage of your most current crit hit damage to their attack (and possibly spells).
3. Let the player benefit from the follower’s legendary equipment (not gonna happen, but still…).

[MaxCarnage-1211]

Great insights. However there is a huge difference between a player and a bot playing the game! Might as well call it “Season of the Bot” lol

[Kilometer-11340]

Since Blizzard is using 5k paragon as benchmark…ever think of having 5k paragon cap for D3 Season? I think putting cap for the season will give those streamers a reason to play the game for quite some time because streamers love to reach the level cap before others.

[gsquirrel-2643]

Thanks for that blog post, got the only question about do you have any plans about GR balancing? It’s weird that 95% of rifts are real crap, so players spend a lot of time fishing not even perfect rift but at least fine one. Bastion keeps and Corvus, Westmarch, caves and etc are run ruiners in most cases, especially for solo builds that depends on density like Chantodo wiz. Hope that you will look into this because that “ng next map” problem is really annoying.

[CyberDoc-1494]

@Keyblade-6785

When can we expect the BLOG post of how you are going to combat botting as its currently out of control and nothing grand scale is being done or so it seems

I believe either Nev or Matthew C. said in a previous thread that they will not say publicly their (Blizzards) intentions\actions against botters and overlay (ie THUD) users as that gives them a heads up when action(s) are about to be taken. The exception to the overlay usage is ‘Discords’ which was said we are fine to use since it doesn’t read memory and the info shown is not considered an unfair advantage.
source:

Is the Discord Overlay allowed?

Hey rbroz73, This overlay is perfectly fine.

For us common folk, we may never know anything other than noticing gaping holes in the leaderboard ranks of those who deservedly got hit with the ban hammer.

[Edgeta-1668]

@MeganeSenpai-1314

Most of the damage output isn’t from the damage stat, but from the massive multipliers of items and sets. So even giving the follower 10x of your dps RAW stat won’t make them contribute any damage at all.

So give the followers a huge multiplier to their damage based off your main stat. Make the multiplier 100x, 1000x, 10 000x, whatever is big enough to make their DPS relevant and then as your power grows (especially in late paragon levels) theirs will grow to match. Balancing their DPS afterwards is just a matter of adjusting the multiplier up or down.

@MeganeSenpai-1314

People always use the immortal relic on the follower so more toughness doesn’t mean anything either.

You’re exactly right. No one uses either of the other two relics. So instead of just a dmg multiplier have their toughness scale somewhat too. It doesn’t have to be a crazy amount; just enough to make the immortal relic less of an automatic choice so that the other two become at least a consideration.

@MeganeSenpai-1314

Introduce a follower’s specific item which add a percentage of your most current crit hit damage to their attack (and possibly spells).

At it’s core this is no different from my suggestion. Using your suggestion, as you get stronger your crit dmg gets stronger so your followers get stronger. My suggestion just scaled them based on a different stat.

[Malachite-11689]

It was a very informative and (mostly) encouraging post for sure.

I’m a little dismayed however at their approach to support. I understand their apprehension towards making zDPS sets, but it would still be nice to see some more love for support. The closest thing we’ve gotten is Inna’s which incidentally is a wonderful set that adds some nice group utility, but would be even better with some more legendary powers to lean on. The closest I’ve been able to get is to pair it with all the lightning + stun synergy items which results in less damage but allows me to stunlock targets.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite builds in Diablo 2 once they added synergies. I basically kept Meditation up all the time and used Holy Bolt as my primary skill, with a maxed out Prayer (because it was active simultaneously with Meditation as was Cleansing and it increased the healing power of HB) so my teammates effectively had infinite mana, were more or less immune to status effects and always had a little bit of HP regen (or a lot for the squishier heroes)

Main problem was I could only really hurt Undead lol. Actually had a guy rage quit on me one time screaming at me to “kill stuff” even though the only reason he was even alive was because I was healing him lol.

Speaking of healing though, it’s largely garbage in D3 due to enemy scaling having gotten way out of hand. It does not matter how much healing you have if you can’t survive even a single hit or 2, and that’s kind of where this game falls apart as around GR 50+ enemies start hitting obscenely hard.

While I intend to make a separate post later about what skills and sets I’d like to see buffed, in the meantime I’d like to make an honest plea to the devs now that we know the GR cap will remain at 150 (which is good btw, reminds me of the 7 year period in FF11 where the level cap stayed at 75) could you possibly look at some of the different enemy types and nerf their damage output?

In particular the goat spearmen, the leaping dudes that latch on to you (sorry don’t have names handy atm) and the succubi’s stupid ranged orbs of loldeath immediately come to mind as those are the usual OHK offenders. The poison left behind from dead Lacuni is also rather aggravating to deal with but not quite as bad as the others.

It really feels like most of the time we have to grind far too much Paragon just for a modicrum of survival and I’m especially happy that it looks like D4 will rectify this but that shouldn’t mean abandoning any and all efforts to salvage D3 in the interim.

[Metro-1753]

Great post, Slaine, and I could not agree more with your sentiments. After reading the Developer Insights yesterday and seeing Rhykker’s video as well, it really made me feel great about D3. So many posts here are toxic, and all of us – myself included – need to remember the old saying that your parents probably drilled into you: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I am having more fun this season than I have in any previous season. The theme is amazing. So much fun. Well done, Blizzard.

[NerdRage-12622]

As a long-time all-around Diablo player, I have a few comments about the balance. I loved the initial release and the difficulties that Inferno actually brought. Legendaries were rare (although were absolute trash most of the time), content actually warranted grinding through A1 Inferno to get gear for A2 Inferno, etc. The Auction House, in actuality, ruined how the game should have progressed at that point and forever changed what D3 would become.

IMO, changes over the next couple years moved the game into a bad spot until the release of RoS. The Rift system, A5, and loot changes were a massive boon to the game. Sader brought a little bit of that Paladin nostalgia back.

My displeasure with D3 since that time has stemmed primarily from a strong lack of versatility, particular for Solo players as many here have mentioned. My primary comments are:

1. Sets are Everything
   You use a Set, you use LoN, or you’re literally useless. The power creep over the last six years has been so exponential that the addition of 10 Torment levels were necessary to keep a challenge which has made using anything but the aforementioned sets impossible to do anything past T1-2.

2. Lack of Content / Grind
   Many (obviously) enjoy pushing leaderboards, but after a certain point you’re not really grinding for some “chase” item that will enable new and different builds to enjoy the game e.g. D2 Griffon’s Eye, Windforce, high runes. You simply build gem levels, enhance gear, gain Paragons, and try to figure out how to shave five seconds off the grift time to beat the next person. For the last few seasons I have played, moderate play (4 hrs/day) has gained me all my character sets (sometimes multiple characters) and season journey complete in less than a week. That’s too fast to get all that gear, finish the season, and be running T16s. The content is literally over at that point if you don’t push leaderboards. Literally nothing left to “shoot” for.

I’m hoping they learn from all of D3 (good and bad) for D4 that keeps players engaged and doesn’t just give the entire game away in the first weekend of a season/ladder. The “center” needs to be moved between hardcore and casual players. Casual players should not be able to do the most difficult content in a handful of play sessions. To me, it’s like playing a PvE game where you cheat and give yourself all items and max stats on a new character. That crap is going to get boring REAL fast. A la current state of the game.

[ParaBellum-2652]

we have no plans to increase the Greater Rift level cap beyond 150

glad to hear it, thank you!

but I hope you keep adding Torment levels

[dob02-2921]

Thank you blizzard it’s of a best season all time …!!!