From the March 17-19 beta. I played each class to 25 and beyond, pretty much entirely with gamepad, all solo.
General:
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The shrine effects (conduit, etc.) are fun and novel, and I like that they come with a speed boost to really double down on the chaos.
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The ability to migrate legendary aspects is nice, and probably the only part of equipment enhancement that feels worth the time and money before max level (as opposed to item upgrades and, to a lesser extent, gems). The only thing keeping me from using the system more is the fact that an imbued rare is still inferior to a “natural” legendary because it has one less affix, but I guess you could always just imbue a legendary.
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Vendors could use mass sell options a la salvaging at the blacksmith – I found myself reaching for the mouse when selling my inventory because it’s so cumbersome on gamepad. Hopefully this will also encourage people to sell more and cut down on reported dissatisfaction with the gold economy.
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Cellars are, on average, not worth the time (load in, walk a bit, do thing, walk out, load out). Gimme a good fight and a shiny chest.
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Active skills feel a bit like one-point-wonders, and I typically avoided dumping more points into them unless they were shouldering most of the burden (Hydra).
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I think Strongholds were my favorite bit of content.
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Ran into the Butcher once, but his apparent disregard for CC meant that my Rogue couldn’t really keep up. Knocked off maybe a good 25% of him?
Barbarian: (Double Strike, Deadly Blow, lot of survival)
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Overall: started out great, fell off a lot in the middle, came back around hard at 25 with a good lineup of legendaries. When it was good, I was largely able to “barbarian my way through problems” by trading blows and using my defensive skills well.
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The only really frustrating encounters were ones that featured a lot of CC (including those snowball projectiles that might as well cause root) or filled the floor completely with hazards (Den Mother). With other characters, it’s usually my fault if these things get me, but with barb, it’s sort of inevitable, and I can either survive it or I can’t.
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The fury economy felt a bit off, and I was running on empty a lot even when using a relatively inexpensive skill (Double Strike). Eventually I pieced together a few synergies to alleviate this a bit (like adding more stun to trigger the rage refund on Double Strike), but it made those middle levels a bit of a slog.
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I like the weapon-swap perks. The two I had effectively came out to +10 fortify/swap and +10% overpower chance/swap. The fortify one could probably use a little boost, but maybe that’s because…
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Out of the box, Fortify didn’t feel great. We’re talking a small amount of damage reduction and limited uptime, but I think the bigger problem is that since it’s all-or-nothing, you either invest a little in it and potentially get nothing out of it, or overdo it on building Fortify and waste all that extra capacity (I guess the Overpower angle of Fortify offers a less binary benefit, but I haven’t run the numbers on what sort of effect it has – maybe it’s enough to make the rest of this moot). I appreciate that there are ways to spec into Fortify to give it more value, and I’d like to see some bonuses that come online when your fortify is 2x your health, like gaining unstoppable, and maybe have the base effects scale at certain fortify ratio thresholds.
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The recovery on Steel Grasp is a little too long. The fantasy of pulling everyone in and dropping a Deadly Blow right as they arrive is great, but the process is juuuuuust slow enough that it doesn’t feel great. Consider it a small buff that will pay great dividends in player excitement!
Rogue: (Forceful Shot, Penetrating Shot, lots of mobility)
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The 3-1 cadence of Combo Points felt good. I wouldn’t say no to maybe a slightly more favorable energy economy, but overall the rhythm of this build felt good, it hit hard enough (Penetrating Shot legendary putting in some work here), and it captured the feel of the vaulting Demon Hunter. Pretty cool.
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I’d love to be able to disallow abilities from consuming imbuement charges – I don’t want Dash eating those poison charges that are meant for my big hitter skill! UI-wise, this could live in the skill assignment widget a la the barbarian arsenal.
Sorc: (Fire Arrow, Frozen Orb, Hydra, Ice Armor)
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But who are we kidding here: it’s just Hydra and Ice Armor. Hydra carried this build, but it kind of had to – I felt underwhelmed by the rest of the kit. The original plan was burn with Fire Arrow and keep people away via Frozen Orb chilling until they burn to death, but that didn’t really pan out. Speaking of which…
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Burning. DoTs are always a tough nut to crack in a fast-paced game with a whole bunch of enemies to cut through. So while I appreciate that burning is a great value against bosses, it really felt bad against trash mobs, hence my reliance on Hydra direct damage. To make burning work on the reg, I’m also committing to spending points on CC, at which point I just get a better return putting those points into direct damage.
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Enchantment on-hit effects don’t seem to trigger as much as I’d expect (specifically, I tried out both the Fire Wall and Frost Nova enchantments). Possible that the proc rate is reduced for Hydra triggering Frost Nova, but I was surprised at how rarely Fire Arrow burning would trigger Fire Wall.
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Sorc’s definitely got the highest number of gamepad-unfriendly skills (direct targeting stuff like Teleport and Blizzard), but I never got so frustrated with my kit that I switched back to KBM.
Big Picture:
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I’m not looking to turn this into another thread about respec, so I’ll just say: I see a lot of cool stuff I want to try and I’m bummed that I’ll have to go through an onerous process to make it happen. It’s not the quantitative burden of the repec, it’s that the existence of the cost means there probably won’t be a means of saving and loading (aka tinkering with and quickly reverting) builds.
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Hard to tell from the beta, and I’m sure this has been answered elsewhere, but I really hope that there’s a way to fully progress additional characters without just running the campaign again. From the beta, it appears that, aside from the tutorial and the one-time effects like unlocking the capstone dungeon, the main story quest is no different from any other side quest, and doesn’t lock up features or locations, so additional characters can take or leave the main story quest at their leisure. If that read is correct then that’s great!
All told, best time I’ve had with a gamepad ARPG since the great Victor Vran. My only lingering doubts are the bigger structural ones I mentioned, but I guess time will tell.