So, first, I enjoyed quite a lot about my time playing over the weekend. For some context, I took a small taste of all 5 classes, getting everybody past the church flash-back cutscene, on average reaching level 6; I took a Sorc to Kyovashad (level 7); and ran a Necro up to level 20. During the time on each character, I was constantly moving around skill points to try out things. Even in the very early stages, my issues with the system were clear - and it only became even more so once I started finding Legendary items on my Necromancer.
For certain, I am grateful that a system to respec skill points exists. The hard pivot from the freedom to change any slot at any time in Diablo 3 back to a progression tree does not bother me in and of itself, but the mechanism for swapping points is clunky at best. Everytime I wanted to try out new skills, I either had to manually find each point I had spent, walking backwards up the tree, or respec all - which unsummons minions on Necro, and often refunded points I was just going to put right back where they had been anyway. I know that the cost to respec starts at 0, and seems to climb fairly slowly, but it still DOES climb, and I’m certain could get prohibitive at some point. If it were simply a case of “find a skill set/build you like and stick to it” - this might not be a major issue, but for how many diverse build options presented themselves in just the very small slice I played, and each time I found a new Legendary that buffed a skill (that I wasn’t currently using) in a unique way - it seems intended that the player should try out new skills/combos/builds periodically. But if I have four major nodes unlocked, and find a new Legendary that buffs a Basic skill, I have to jump through way too many hoops to switch things around.
I understand that there are things in place to prevent causing an “illegal” situation, where you have no Basic skill selected, not enough points invested to unlock a node, etc. I don’t know how difficult things would be from a programming perspective, but I would MUCH rather be able to freely move points around, then have a “confirm” button to apply them, and get an error message if I don’t have points in the right places, rather than the current system. Even a level locked system where you can only spend points in a certain node after reaching a specific level, something to loosen the restriction that exists currently. I want to swap around skills whenever I get a new hotness Legendary to take it for a test drive, but I don’t want to spend five minutes in the skill screen every single time. There HAS to be SOME way to make this easier. Please. Enough said about this though.
The other thing I noticed was that two of the four Necromancer Basic skills - Hemorrhage and Decompose - do not consistently affect breakable world objects. As I am 100% one of those folks that want to break every barrel, pulverize every tree stump, crush every stalagmite, demolish every derelict wagon… etcetera, I was quite disappointed to find that my early favorite Necro skill - Decompose - only very rarely would actually hit those objects. Reap, and Bone Splinters had zero problems hitting everything; and I noticed no standout exceptions among the other 4 classes’ Basic skills, either. But those two Necro skills, no love. If I wanted to consistently smash all the smashables, I either had to waste essence casting something that WOULD hit them, or respec into a different basic. Which is what I did for most of my play-time, and it worked fine, especially when I got access to the Aspect that buffed Bone abilities towards the end of my time. But still, I was very disappointed in this, and hope it is something that might be easy to fix before launch.
I’m sure that at least one of these things has been brought up by someone else, but I wanted to add my voice. Better said too many times than not at all.
Thanks to everyone who has worked so hard to make this possible so far, I hope that all the necessary polishing and adjustments goes smoothly, and I am looking forward to playing more of the game on launch!