Playing on an Xbox Series X.
Initial thoughts:
The game is fun. Feels visceral. Slight delay in items being picked up or creatures being hit after a swing, but this may be due to network latency from the flood of new beta players. Aside from one hiccup this morning that dumped me out of the game and made me wait in an hour-long queue to get back in, things have otherwise been smooth. This is worth noting in caps, however: THESE QUEUES CANNOT MAKE IT INTO THE LIVE GAME IN JUNE. There are still enough of us around who remember the launch day apocalypse for Diablo 3, and an inability to get into the game the instant it’s installed is going to result in an entirely avoidable river of tears on the forums and elsewhere, and mar what feels right now like it could be a very solid ARPG and worthy addition to the franchise.
Barbarian Specific Thoughts
The arsenal system is not currently well-explained, and also features confusingly similar language. “Assign Skill” on the Skill Tree puts the skill on your hotbar, and clicking the left thumb stick will let you assign the skill to a particular weapon set (2-handed blunt, dual wield, two handed slashing), but it isn’t well explained that assigning a given skill to a weapon set, then using that particular skill, is how you “switch” weapons. It’s a natural inclination to look for a controller input to actively swap weapons. Having the word “Skill” in both assigning and weapon-association feels confusing. Changing the UI to say “Assign to weapon” would be more intuitive, and a popup window quickly explaining the Arsenal system to new players would help alleviate the confusion.
A Nice-to-Have Suggestion for Barbarians
Since we have the ability to dual wield weapons as one of our weapon sets, being able to choose which of the two slots a given replacement weapon goes into when one drops for us would be nice. Otherwise, right now we’d need to unequip an old one first and then equip its replacement in that slot.
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For dual slot items like weapons and rings, it seems like you hold y/triangle down to compare to the other slot, then it should equip there. Got dced so I can’t test atm though.
If I have a slashing weapon in the dual wield slots and a slashing weapon in my 2 hand slot. The skill seems to default to the dual wield. Are you saying I have to assign which set of weapons onto the skill?
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I agree with the weapon changing system, it took a minute, but then once used to it, I found it to be pretty fun and useful. Quick hit with the axe get some bleed going, then hit with the hammer or frenzy, bleed as I need.
The assign weapons to a skill seems to work pretty well with auto assign I notice, had no real need to change it yet,
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I need to look more in-depth at how to assign skills when I get back in game. To me the game seems to auto choose which weapon I am wielding when I do my basic actions generally opting for my most powerful weapon. I found it strange that I couldn’t choose on the fly. It’s the one thing I initially don’t like about the combat system. I’m sure it will just take some time to get used to.
Combat for me felt responsive. Had some issues aiming certain skills and firing them the wrong way. That will probably clean itself up once I get more comfortable with the character movements and move set of each of the weapons and skills.
Melee combat on some of the bigger bosses is tough but manageable. The only boss I’ve struggled with so far is Broodguard because of the constant stun when trying to control adds in the room. The damage is overwhelming especially for a melee character. Probably going to have to try this one at a higher level as my lv10 barbarian just didn’t have to power to cut through the adds fast enough.
Started out with magic as my main, but agree high level here! Love the feel of the game, and now that im level 10 with all ability slots available, I’ll probably spend Saturday experimenting with ability mapping on the Dual Sense Edge to see if i like any custom mappings more than the default. 