I have no idea this is my first Diablo. Is one better then the other? From videos I've seen of gameplay it looks like I'd enjoy a ranged character more
Well, as to whether some characters are better than others, that's not really a discussion that matters much until you hit max level (70) and start talking about ideal gear set-ups. Right now the Witch Doctor is probably in the best place for end-game, but 2.1 is adding a lot of buffs and smoothing out a lot of rough edges, so that may soon change. Personally I've played mainly Monk, and more recently got into the Wizard (I've got all characters to 70 on PC). But really, as you would expect, the characters are reasonably well-balanced, and it will just come down to your personal preference. Be aware that it can be tough to solo a ranged class. They tend to be better when there are more people in your party to distract enemies away from attacking your squishy self (although the WD is helped here by all his pets). But that's not to say you shouldn't play a ranged character solo if you really want to.
Wall of text incoming. :grin: First of all, a few quick facts you need to know for this stuff to make sense: 1) You can scale the difficulty at will. Raising the difficulty up means the drop rate of legendary items will be higher, and you get more gold and experience. Thus, even if you play a "bad" class or "bad" build, you can still make it work by scaling the difficulty down. I play some non-optimal builds for fun, myself. It's not always about playing the highest difficulty. 2) While it's definitely possible to play without "set" items in end-game, for the most part the sets are so powerful that they dictate how you play in end-game. A "set" is several equipment pieces that, when worn together, give you particularly powerful effects. That stuff said, here's my personal run-down of the characters in end-game, if you want to aspire to eventually conquer the higher difficulties: Barbarian: Very strong damage, but the downside is he's pretty gimmicky in end-game. There are two top builds. One of them is based on Lut Socks + Earthen Might set, where he leaps repeatedly, causing a big damage-over-time earthquake effect each time (called the "Leapquake" build). The other top build is the Immortal King build, where he calls 3 Barbarian companions to his side... permanently. The upside is that these builds are very effective. The downside is, you get to feeling silly when all your damage comes from jumping on people, or just letting your companions do most of your damage. Thus in end game, he is barely a "melee" character at all. Crusader: If you want a big, beefy, pure melee character, you want the Crusader, period. He's the guy that can stand with enemies, take a ton of damage without breaking a sweat, and just wreck whatever's in front of him. His only set cuts the cooldown of his god-mode ability in half, so you spend half your time as this herculean monstrosity. It's kinda awesome. He's not gimmicky like the Barb. There are multiple effective ways to play him. Highly recommended. Monk: Kinda the red-headed stepchild of melee characters. If there's one character to avoid, it's probably the Monk. He does some things well... he's probably the best overall in terms of buffing others in the party (especially with the Inna's set), and he's also pretty capable when it comes to crowd-controlling enemies (blinding them, stunning them, etc). His best set is decent but fairly gimmicky... it causes an explosion when he spends a certain amount of mana. Again, play any character that looks like fun to you since you can always adjust difficulty, but Monk isn't that great right now. There's always hope he'll get a huge buff in a later patch, though. Wizard: When D3 was first released he was considered overpowered. He's now been nerfed to where he's considered to have the lowest damage output of any ranged character outside of one build/set... but that one build/set is pretty awesome. It combines the Firebird set with the Mirrorball item, which ultimately lets you sit back and sling fire at enemies for massive gobs of damage. It's both exceptionally simple and exceptionally effective. Some think it's overly simple, but I'm not knocking it. Demon Hunter: Maybe the best combo of damage and survivability in end-game of any class, but gimmicky in that your turrets do most of your damage. This is because Demon Hunter's best set (Marauder) allows him to plant turrets - up to 5 at a time - which each do as much or more damage as he himself does. Then he just runs around while his turrets maul things for him. Devastatingly effective in end-game. If you're not tickled by the idea of your turrets doing most of your damage for you, you're sorta out of luck. Demon Hunter just doesn't have any other builds that are effective at high difficulties. Witch Docter: To me, clearly the best class when it comes to overall build diversity. You can do a lot of neat things with the Witch Doctor. You can make an uber-powerful pet build, which is overall one of the best builds in the game... you can also do a "Jade Harvester" build, which allows you to plant damage-over-time effects on enemies then "blow them up" (the set deals all damage from the damage-over-time effects at once). There's also a mask that creates clones of yourself, a mask that makes all your followers shoot poison darts whenever you do... just tons of great stuff. The Witch Doctor is so powerful right now that the developers have actually said something to the effect of "we feel the Witch Doctor is ahead of everyone else, but instead of nerfing him, we're going to try to bring the other classes up to his level." When the devs say that, you know it's a good class.
Just pre-ordered D3 last minute because a lot of my friends are playing it. =/ Anyone know if you can co-op in person and play online with friends?
It's been a while since I've cracked open D3, but my DH build doesn't use turrets at all and she does a ton of damage. She's a bit squishy, but she kills most everything before they get close to her anyway. Going to have to start it back up again, I'll see if I can post my build of her.
Crusader, Demon Hunter, and Witch doctor all sound intriguing. Thanks for the info I'll have to ponder this over night. I like the sound of the setting up turret mechanic. And just the sound of being a demon hunter class sounds bad ass. I'm excited for tomorrow :grin:
Thanks, I was initially going to wait for Targets buy 2 get 1 free on video games before I picked it up. Now I don't feel so bad paying full price for this. Being able to play local with online co-op is an amazing feature.
:grin: Keep in mind that's his end-game build, so you'll have to put in a lot of hours to get all the pieces you need for it (it's a 6-piece set). But it's sick when you get it. I run my Demon Hunter with all stun abilities on his turrets, so not only are the enemies getting torn up, they spend half their time dazed. :grin:
How long has it been? Was this prior to patch 2.0? Because if so I'd agree with that. Demon Hunter was awesome, turrets or no, prior to the expansion. Back when the difficulty slider was "Monster Power" 1 through 10. I had a DH that was viable at MP7. Have a friend who could do MP8. Things have changed since then though. Lot of rebalancing in the expansion. You can play a Demon Hunter fine without the Marauder/Turrets build, but you're probably not going to get through the higher difficulties with any kind of speed (probably Torment 4 difficulty, tops). If you want to play the high difficulties (Torment 6 is now the max), you pretty much want the Marauder set. Not trying to be negative, that's just my experience. If you got a DH build that works in T5+ without the Marauder set, I'd love to see it. I'm always interested in creative builds.
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I went Crusader, but at some point I will do a Demon Hunter or Wizard for sure. Wish I had more time to play today, haha
Bloodborne lookin' great. Whoever was playing it actually seemed to know what they were doing, too. Looked like some co-op going on about two-thirds of the way in. I wonder if it'll work like it did in the Souls games.
I played through the expansion and 2.0, but I'm not sure where I'm at difficulty wise. I know for sure I haven't done the super difficulty stuff yet.
Got Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare today. Played only a couple of times. It's pretty cool so far but I'm getting destroyed out there. Spoiler I mean it's a shooter OF COURSE I'm getting destroyed.
I'm amazed at how much more fun a game I've played a billion times is when you play on a big screen with a controller. Definitely worth buying again just to play on PS4 (to be fair I haven't played reaper of souls yet).
Yeah I'm having way more fun then I expected. Watching videos does not so this game justice. I can't wait to get to some of the higher levels with my character