Guess us W/D fans will just wait and see...eh? hmmmm....just might get myself Torchlight to see if they've already implemented some of your ideas.Athanasios..the wizy looked good 2 me 2 at first, but he's appears to only be melee...i think the W/D will have both options which will make him rock
Have faith that the developers are now re-thinking the W/D and realize he/she was looking pretty "weak" and needed to beef him/her up (under compensate/over compensate). After W/D gets the royal treatment and when the game is finally released, W/D will rock the house (until the first patch is released). They have no choice, unless they pull him totally, which in that case, i doubt.|||hello my bird loving friend!I too have deams that the WD will be awesome and full of fun just like you
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Athanasios..the wizy looked good 2 me 2 at first, but he's appears to only be melee...i think the W/D will have both options which will make him rock Have faith that the developers are now re-thinking the W/D and realize he/she was looking pretty "weak" and needed to beef him/her up (under compensate/over compensate)
The wizy is hardly only melee.
I hope the W/D will have multiple builds that viable, and i hope that a melee one is in there. I dont think the W/D could be thought of as "weak" either, he has plenty of skills brought up in earlier posts that can make him a hardy foe for any enemy. I dont know if the developers are rethinking the W/D as a whole but im sure they are gana go over his skills at some point and maybe theyll consider adding an melee based attack skill. This imo will give him a better chance in pvm, and be his only chance in pvp..
Now im not suggesting the WD become some crazy-super melee class that dominates monsters and helpless gamers alike..he is not the barb, he is the WD, a melee build for him should be a challenge imo but do-able
feel me homes?|||Hi!
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Let's see .. there are really some skills that would be very practical fro a melee/caster hybrid WD ... there goes some of them.
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*Mind and Body - A passive skill; regenerates mana and health. (naturally a must to max)
*Spirit Sense - Increase damage against targets with low health by X% percentage. (Excellent for a melee character)
*Spirit Walk - Traverse your physical body into the spirit realm, allowing unhindered movement for a time. (to escape when swarmed or low on health)
*Death Pact - Induce momentary invulnerability whenever you are reduced to 10% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once every 60 seconds. (another excellent skill for melee WD, the temp invincibility will help you bash your way out of tight situations)
*Jungle Fortitude - Increase your Vitality by 5% of your Strength, 5% of your Dexterity, and 5% of your Willpower. (Since Vitality is a high priority for a melee this one is a must too)
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Those will be the core skills to any melee/caster WD .. but they will need to be complimented by few magic skills to back them up .. and which exact skills to back them up is really left open for preferences as each tree (specially Spirit and Voodoo) have lots of useful attack spells).
Now add Melee oriented gear (high DPS spear/sword/Axe with armor that gives STR bonus and gloves that give extra attack speed and such) you will end up with a very viable melee WD (not pure melee of course but still melee will be your main method of killing enemies) .... all that without mentioning anything about skill runes or the new customization systems they didn't announce yet ... i say a melee WD has a very high probability of being very viable and a build class to use.
I'm still not sold for the idea that melee oriented WD would be a viable build. The biggest problem that i see is that none of his skills gain from stacking str or ias.The damage will be so low that it won't just be viable. Tho i also think that survivability will be pretty low eaven with WD having some of the best survival skills. They are just too few and most likely on a pretty long CD. Remember that something that can beat the game on Normal doesen't mean it will be viable in Hell.
One of the scaling problems with stats is that spells to be viable with STR build they can't scale with INT. Skills like Horrify, Mass confusion and such are skills that could be like this. But these are all CC skills. All of the damaging skills will be scaling with INT to be viable, thus giving useless spells for melee doctor. If damaging spells don't scale with INT it would make INT pretty useless once again and what would be the guarantee that STR would actually mean anything eather? It's pretty good bet that you can't CC any bosses and killing them with only autoattack will be quite boring job.
Also one scaling thing is how STR will scale with WD. It's not said that every class scales the same way. In D2 Vit/Energy gave different amounts of HP/Mana for different classes. Now when INT will most likely will be useless for a Barb, why would STR be viable for WD? Will they make it so that you also gain other stuff from STR than damage? One example could be faster stun recovery or something.
Restrictions to WD weapon selection could also play quite big part. I can see them restricting 2h swords straight out. Maces and axes could be usable, but they could be restricted also.
Also thinking that the "new not yet announced" systems would do miracles is pretty silly. It's always the same thing. People think that those systems will fix everything and in the end they will get dissappointed. Pretty much the same as mantra "It's still in Beta! IT WILL BE GOOD WHEN IT LAUNCHES!"(not referring to D3, it's not in beta).
I still don't see why melee doctor would be a viable build. Barbarian running around with only autoattack and defensive skills won't be either. Opening up passives for melee would help alot on the damage (Vit=sp -> Vit=x% damage), but still you need to have active skills to do damage or dps will be too low.
PS: Rune that makes spells scale with STR instead of INT? THAT would be pretty nice, wouldn't it? ;P|||Yes Athanasios, i am a dreamer somewhat on cloud 9, but that's one of the reasons why i play rpg's
i'll still dream on of my W/D becoming the best that she can be and that includes as much of hell, if not all of it, being do-able in melee. there's gotta be a way and if i can't figure it out (with respecs), then i'll just wait for those W/D guru's who just love a good challenge, like myself, to offer suggestions. who knows, it may become an even greater obsession with me than the sin. either way, it's all about fun u only get out of it what u put in it and i don't plan to put too much garbage in it that i can't take out lolTypoko....please help me to understand what INT is ... so that i can try to understand (with my over zealousness of the melee W/D) why bosses can't be controlled by the W/D. Are you saying the W/D usefullness will only be viable in low level game play and could never sp through hell...from the looks of things thus far? Since i'm just a newbie in game strategy and terminology, but i do/did spend many, many hours playing D2, i'm trying to plan out my charc and the only way i know how to get ideas is through the chat boards and ppl with different ideas. Thanks!|||I think you are starting to get somewhere in terms of teh melee WD ideas and I have a couple of things to add.
1. By melee, are you meaning a PURE melee? Or would you allow summons as well? A "wolfpack" build with all the additional CC might be more effective, with added damage and what is essentially ablative armour.
2. Something like Wall of Zombies could be used to separate the enemies (complete with angry wall in the way
) while you cut them down "Divide and Conquer" style.3. I would be very wary of something like Death Pact. What it is is a "temporary" invulnerability, with duration likely based on level. Having something like this could lead to overconfidence which is definately not a good thing (especially for hardcore players).|||Quote:
1. By melee, are you meaning a PURE melee? Or would you allow summons as well?
You'll need to be able to do a sizable portion of the damage with your melee weapons. Otherwise it is not a true melee build. If you just follow your minions around a kill nothing then it is not a melee build.|||Quote:
3. I would be very wary of something like Death Pact. What it is is a "temporary" invulnerability, with duration likely based on level. Having something like this could lead to overconfidence which is definately not a good thing (especially for hardcore players).
Right now, Death Pact scales with the number of points in it, reaching a pretty amazing 9 seconds of invulnerability at its highest level.
Also, since Bashiok has spoken of rare runes doing amazing things to skills, I am now wondering if there will be a rare rune out there that would change a ranged spell to a melee spell. For example, perhaps Spirit Barrage, or other similar ranged spell, when cast, would do a % of weapon damage plus the spell's damage, at the cost that it would activate on a melee hit, and consequently have a greatly reduced range.
What makes me think that this type of modification would be on a rare rune is that the modified effect is so much different from the original spell effect. If it is the case that there are runes out there that will do this and that those runes will be hard to find, then it is equally possible that a melee WD will be difficult to pull of as a player's first character.|||Hi!
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Typoko....please help me to understand what INT is ... so that i can try to understand (with my over zealousness of the melee W/D) why bosses can't be controlled by the W/D.
a) INT stands for Intelligence, stat that increases your damage with spells
b) It would be really stupid if you could Horrify a boss or do pretty much anything so that he couldn't hit/cast in to melee.
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Right now, Death Pact scales with the number of points in it, reaching a pretty amazing 9 seconds of invulnerability at its highest level.
Also, since Bashiok has spoken of rare runes doing amazing things to skills, I am now wondering if there will be a rare rune out there that would change a ranged spell to a melee spell. For example, perhaps Spirit Barrage, or other similar ranged spell, when cast, would do a % of weapon damage plus the spell's damage, at the cost that it would activate on a melee hit, and consequently have a greatly reduced range.
What makes me think that this type of modification would be on a rare rune is that the modified effect is so much different from the original spell effect. If it is the case that there are runes out there that will do this and that those runes will be hard to find, then it is equally possible that a melee WD will be difficult to pull of as a player's first character.
Those stuff on Death pact are (A), wich means Assumed. No one has seen what the skill does if you put more points to it and it's most likely subject to change if it would be correct.
And yes, if runes make skills scale with STR/weapon damage. IMHO only ones that eaven could be done like this are spirit/poison skills and maybe wall of zombies!? (Jesusninjapirates!?!) As i said before, CC won't be enough. Skills that can scale with your gear/stats are needed. I just don't see it coming up as a good build. :/|||Quote:
At this point, we do not know if the escape skill will be more viable offensively or defensively, or how and when the Striking rune will activate. For instance, if the damage is applied when the skill is activated instead of when it ends, then the WD would explode upon entering the spirit world. This would maintain a defensive focus on the skill, but when would players use it and how much damage would it do? Strategically, it would not make much sense.
If the damage is applied upon reentering the real world then you would use Spirit Walk offensively. You are consciously making a trade off between the damage you do and the protection you have, which I think strategically is very interesting, and far more logical.
A third option would be to apply the damage before and after entering the spirit world, giving the player the option to use the skill both offensively and defensively. The fact that there would be two bursts of damage means positioning and timing would be more difficult, which is also quite interesting from a game play perspective.
You are absolutely right that balancing will be tricky. HP gain from Soul Leech could be imbalanced if the amount healed was far more than the damage being taken. It will be up to Blizzard to decide if putting health leech on a spell is viable or not. We know the Necromancer had a curse which gave life leech, but I do not believe any of the Diablo casters have ever had a spell which directly gave the caster health. Diablo II leech was based off a percentage.
I do know that the Warlock in World of Warcraft has a spell called Drain life which gives an integer amount of health to the Warlock per second, something which was unheard of in Diablo II. Since Soul Leech is an AoE and cast instantaneously, the integer amount would be very small.
Let us say that the health received at level 1 is 3 health. The WD has 100 health. The WD casts Soul Leech on a group of 5 enemies and gains 15 health, a fraction less than quarter of his health back. This is not enough to be at full health all of the time, in fact, it is more like a small supplement to Health Globes. Additionally, if the WD is taking 30 or 40 damage every few seconds, this amount of leech is not enough to survive indefinitely. What it is enough for, though- especially when used tactically- is keeping your health high enough to hit the next health globe while simultaneously doing close-range damage.
Im a big WD fan already but i just dont think im sold on it being possible to make an viable melee WD build : (....Looking at a class like the wizard..you can find many melee skills: all the armor skills, lethal eng, weapon mast, ston skin, conjured health..
Looking at the WD, i dont see ANY skills that are ment for melee, and i dont think that runes would alter a skill on a high enough level to make it worth while in close combat. Idk maybe im wrong, but i would like to see the WD with at least one skill thats melee oriented..maybe like the necro poison dagger? I think that would make a WD melee build more do-able.|||You are absolutely right about the WD having no melee oriented skills. In the end, what it is really going to come down to is rune effects and gear choices. Unmodified skills all seem to be geared towards casting, except for the few passives and defensive skills mentioned here.
I really hope they do not bring back any skill like poison dagger for any class (except for Monk, where it would make sense, seeing as he only has two weapon choices). Skills based on a single weapon type annoy me.
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