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Q: What happened to imbuing the witch doctor’s zombie dogs with fire and poison?
A: One of the struggles we had with the Witch Doctor, Zombie dog in particular, was figuring out why would I choose to plague my dog or light it on fire, what are the situations that I would choose one verses the other. Is the gameplay supposed to be that the player is trying to keep the fire on the dog all the time but it keeps falling off or is that for some situations I want a fire dog and for others a plague dog? There were also issues where sometimes players would see this loud fiery dog on their screen and not really know how it got there because they didn’t realise it was their skill that did it. However, when we toned down the fire effect it made it hard to know if it was on fire or not so we had a bunch of difficulties with it, mostly in terms of communicating it to the player and having it be a meaningful gameplay decision. We still want to keep the idea of customising your dog in different ways and one of the ways we will probably look at doing that is through either additional skills or the rune system which we were unable to show at Blizzcon this year. That is a whole other level of customisation on skills that isn’t even being shown right now.
So, they took out one of the coolest parts of the WD because people couldn't figure it out? Hmmm. I think you light the mongrels on fire or poison them because they are better that way. And, if you cannot figure out that the poisoned/burning mongrel belongs to you, then you ought not play the WD.
Combined with more corpses/zombies appearing without deaths (zombie wall and now carrion spider, summon zombie and so on), a bunch of frogs and a puny char body, the WD's visuals are starting to really suck, as are the concepts behind them.
The worst part of it is that the WD's mechanics best fit my play-style. I mean, in terms of mechanics he is awesome. So, I am stuck with severely not-epic visuals and a mechanic I like or epic visuals (with the exception of the arcane tornadoes) and mechanics that are not my style.|||Quote:
One of the struggles we had with the Witch Doctor, Zombie dog in particular, was figuring out why would I choose to plague my dog or light it on fire, what are the situations that I would choose one verses the other.
Well, allow me to see what I pull out of my top hat. Monsters having a higher resistance to plague instead of fire maybe? There could be other effects such as plague doing little damage but affecting a lot of creatures, while fire does high damage but affects a single one?
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There were also issues where sometimes players would see this loud fiery dog on their screen and not really know how it got there because they didn�t realise it was their skill that did it.
Then make sure the skill description mentions that mongrels can be set on fire or given plague. If they can't be bothered to read the description they are morons and should be banned from playing. Don't cut a good idea because of blundering idiots.
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We still want to keep the idea of customising your dog in different ways and one of the ways we will probably look at doing that is through either additional skills or the rune system which we were unable to show at Blizzcon this year.
Additional skills is the cheap way out and allows them to easily fill the WD skill tree. It also goes directly against their idea that the summons are nothing more than cannon fodder. Placing points in a skill designed to support the mongrels is only useful if they are reasonably sturdy and stick around for a while. Otherwise I'm just wasting points on a skill that augments minions I am constantly resummoning. I won't be getting my skillpoints worth.|||So they dumbed down the WD because people were too thick/lazy to understand what they were doing? *sigh* This is the exact direction I didn't want D3 to be taken in. Reducing options and variety like this leads to a stale game.|||That's just silly. While D2 wasn't a perfect game, certainly there were things going on behind the scene that weren't exactly obvious and yet people managed, especially with the help of online guides which will spring up as early as a few months after release. Dual-wielding Whirlwind, variable Valkyries etc. This is far more apparent than the calculations and variations going on in that game. These players would eventually realize that their own skills are setting the mongrels on fire, and give them that "Oh ****, that's cool!" moment. They're taking away the player's moment of discovery of something awesome, e.g. higher levels of skelly mastery change the look of skellies.|||This game starting to be dumbed more and more instead to figure how make things interested and different they remove it or cap. They are creating second wow.
Removed Stats customize is the best example, look on Fallout 2 how stats can be interesting.|||If they want to make it less confusing, then they ought to tone down the animations of skills a bit. I like the animations, but with four characters on screen, it got confusing... and sometimes it wasn't one of those "confusing's" that I think will go as the game becomes more familiar.|||Quote:
It also goes directly against their idea that the summons are nothing more than cannon fodder.
Did anyone actually think that this idea would last or work in a game like D3? I admit when I heard about it I thought it was very, very cool. I even hoped that they'd be able to pull if off, but I've always been skeptical. It just seems, to me at least, to contrast their plan to get rid of the one button spam of Diablo 2. I mean if you have a lot of summons to pick from but they all essentially serve the same purpose, to keep the enemy from hitting you while you pelt the enemy with SoF or something similar, then what's the point of having options? Most people would simply pick the toughest, most aggro inducing summon and use it ad nauseam with one or two ranged attacks. I guess we'll all have to see once D3 is actually released, but I've got a very strong impression that the WD is going to end up with a combination of weak summons and strong summons that will each have a use in a given situation.|||I noticed the dogs weren't burning from my firebombs, but I never had a poison skill (didn't put a point into locusts) to try that out.
There are a bunch of zombie dog passives; +hps, faster attack, etc. all further down the tree. they were acceptable tanks in the blizzcon build, but couldn't really kill anything by themselves, with just 2 points in the basic skill and no passive boosts.|||It sucks balls to think that they're taking away customization options from us, and yes, the reasoning behind their doing so also sucks. But have faith guys, when Blizzard taketh away, usually they giveth right back, two or three-fold.|||Quote:
Did anyone actually think that this idea would last or work in a game like D3? I admit when I heard about it I thought it was very, very cool. I even hoped that they'd be able to pull if off, but I've always been skeptical. It just seems, to me at least, to contrast their plan to get rid of the one button spam of Diablo 2. I mean if you have a lot of summons to pick from but they all essentially serve the same purpose, to keep the enemy from hitting you while you pelt the enemy with SoF or something similar, then what's the point of having options? Most people would simply pick the toughest, most aggro inducing summon and use it ad nauseam with one or two ranged attacks. I guess we'll all have to see once D3 is actually released, but I've got a very strong impression that the WD is going to end up with a combination of weak summons and strong summons that will each have a use in a given situation.
Yeah I agree. They are more meat shields anyway, so no real point taking the time to hit them with spells just to give them effects. And now that you can't enchant them their basic damage has probably been raised to offset that loss.
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