Early Access Time Played
Day 1 - Servers did not like a lot of players. I got to play in fragments but spent most of my time in queue than testing the game. It was very annoying however it was to be expected, beta after all.
Once I was in the game the pacing of start to finish for Act 1 was a bit lackluster. Did more traveling than actually fighting. Story was so so. Go here talk to this NPC, travel there kill things, more reading and kills some more things. The hardest part was surviving the bosses with low levels and not so decent gear. Over all the locations you had to go to was pretty cool. Characters seemed a little dull, the voice acting was pretty good. As it stands I had a fun time testing out the classes and fine tuning what I could. As for time played I maybe got a full day’s worth of gaming total out of the 4 days possible. This was due to the server issues.
Sorc
This class was broken from the start. Once you got chain lightning it was easy mode up until you got hydra. There isn’t anything bad I can say about this class, talents and traits. Sorc continued to excel all the way to lvl 25 and then became a god once the legendaries started to fall. There were no real bad choices. I found no matter what I played Sorc’s dmg held fast. A lot of players figured out the hydra build was the way to go. It became the meta quickly.
Day 2 - Rogue
Depending on what direction you went with really made a difference. Melee rogue was pretty bad from start to finish. After I had reached lvl 25 and got a couple legendaries that aided in pretty much the only build that did any dmg and life sustainability. Ranged Rogue was far superior. The dmg output on the range build just dominated most everything. Could have upped the dmg on bosses a bit more but I didn’t manage to get any good legendaries in that department. Overall the talents and traits really mattered on this class. Sorta put this one in the middle of the pack. Its very balanced and even when you decide to do a hybrid of melee/range it would play okay. Again tho range still was far better. I didn’t really find a meta build on this one. I played more so as melee once I got certain legendaries to support the build.
Barbarian
This class was a nightmare to level up. I went ahead and did so up to level 19. I just couldn’t stomach how poorly this class played. Attacks were a joke. You could sit there and spam fury and still not do any decent dmg. Leveling up was so boring, the pacing was that of a sloth. The talents were all over the place and I just couldn’t figure out how I was suppose to play this class. It couldn’t do dmg, it couldn’t tank. I was just at a loss for words on this one. I’m sure others figured it out after getting decent gear but I just didn’t like playing one.
Day 3 and 4 - Tinkered with farming some gear on Sorc and Rogue. Fine tuned some builds and ran a bit of the end game which was dungeon farming for legendaries, unlocking the full map, doing the side quests and the most fun was clearing the strongholds. Those were pretty good. I like the idea of them and that they unlocked waypoints, dungeons and side quests. Once you unlocked all the waypoints traversing the map was pretty fast. Definitely did enjoy what end game I saw. Plenty to do to keep interest, well at least for me.
Open Beta
Day 1 - Spent most that day in long queues. Servers just fried from the look and sound of it. Lots of errors, crashes, resets, queue into queue only for it to fail to load and back into the queue line you went. I may have managed to get in and make some characters. Didn’t really get to test much that day.
Day 2 - Necro
This class was a little slow from the start but once you unlocked your minions it was game on. This was by far the easiest of the classes. You literally could just afk and let your minions do all the work for you. lol What got even more interesting was the fact that you could customize the minions with sub specializations. Choosing from them you would get 3 more choices which enhanced your gameplay even further. I really enjoyed that aspect for this class. I found that gear rained down on this class the most. I have a stash box full of just legendaries for just necro build after build. And like the sorc there was a go to meta build, corpse explosion. Once you got that one legendary to auto explode corpses it cleared up a button slot to put another point where you wished. This build is so comically broken and OP but some of the most fun I’ve had this entire beta. I ran more dungeons on this class than I did with any of the other classes as a whole.
Day 3 - Druid
I have to admit that I hated this class from the jump. I even spread some hate in the forums and toxic replies just crapping all over this class. HOWEVER I sucked it up and gave this class a chance. I really wanted bear druid to be viable. I ran with that with leveling and it was okay. Where it flopped was against bosses. I ended up having to change away from were forms for about 10 levels. I fiddled around with stone/storm builds and even ended up getting some decent legendaries that supported dmg and crit chances that paired the two nicely. It was at level 15 that I discovered Werewolf build. That poison dot and the bonus dmg to poisoned enemies felt pretty nasty. You combine that with some attack speed and using Howl for you healing. It ended up being my go to UNTIL I landed a weapon that made Pulverize count as a stone skill and when an enemy gets hit will cause tectonic spikes to radiate around the slam zone for seconds. This was a game changer 100%. I decided to make Werebear MY meta. With the combined gear I had gotten in early game, once I hit lvl 25 I made myself the most enjoyable bear build. Dmg wasn’t better than Werewolf build but I didn’t care. I spammed dungeons testing out this build and low and behold I got a legendary to drop where Debilitating Roar counted as a werewolf skill. Bam this item made my build unkillable. I now had 2 forms of healing with Howl and Roar and putting in points into fortify I couldn’t be killed not even by The Butcher. Yes his dmg did chunk my HP but I only shrugged it off, popped a cooldown and just face tanked him. It did take a while to down him but felt so good once I did. Overall this was a damn fun class to play, despite my early thoughts and rage moments about it. I did die the most on this class testing out my build but well worth it.
THE BUTCHER
Having him just show up at anytime in a random dungeon was a surprise. At lower levels it was 100% death. At those times it was just annoying and had me raging when it happened. BUT I like that added feature. Its something I never experienced in a Diablo game before. He could use a bit of a nerf when he shows up below lvl 15 tho. He hits like a truck and WHY IS HE SO FAST!? lol Was a great feature for sure.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Game does need some work. Mostly on the servers but I’m sure that will happen before launch. BALANCING - Melee classes feel very inferior to the ranged classes by a mile. Buff up the dmg output on melee attacks. Having to take 3-4 strikes to kill mods compared to just 1 button kills by range just doesn’t feel good. Outside of Necro being brokenly OP once you get corpse explosion its still technically a ranged class. Early game can use more to it. It starts off okay and then it just gets boring doing it over an over again. May I suggest random start locations? Since scaling is a thing I don’t see why it couldn’t be done. There are plenty of areas that could work. It will also keep things fresh and you don’t start off bored cause you already know what to expect. The world is far too empty. Trash mobs are spaced out too far. I’d rather have to fight group after group than kill a pack walk for 5 mins to the next pack. Fill that map up with trash to kill! The Lilith Statues - That’s a nice feature. Gives me a reason to go out and explore for them. Seems to be 1 statue per zone and the little bonuses it gives is pretty nice. The emote shrines are also a nice touch for temp buffs from emoting to them. Pretty unique idea there Blizzard. Other players being around competing with kills may end up becoming an issue later on. What I saw while out and about, especially on melee classes, was low level range just 1 tapping everything I had tagged. Normally that doesn’t bother me but I was trying to test build out while leveling (dungeons are the best way to test builds btw) it was annoying at times. Random lvl 35 mobs that spawned on the map. Ouch if you ran into one below lvl 20. I enjoyed the challenge of trying to survive and kill them tho. Didn’t get any gear I could use from them but still was fun. I feel what issues I have with what I tested was more of me being nit picky but the ability to fix some class talent issues is there and you have some time to work that all out before release.
I really enjoyed my time testing out what you gave us players. Even with the brain drain of not connecting, server issues and all that jazz I can’t wait to play the full version. We didn’t get to test out the mount system, curious on how that would work out. We’ll see! Until next time keep up the good work and please read the feedback and take it to heart. I read a lot of good points and ideas players have suggested. Thank you for reading.