Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.
The past week I have been doing two things in terms of my video game time. I have been tanking heroic Dragon Soul, and I have been playing a barbarian in
Diablo III. And frankly, they bleed together, because although
World of Warcraft's story draws directly from the
Warcraft RTS and setting,
WoW had
Diablo in its DNA. Don't believe me? Roll a paladin in
Diablo II, then go take a look at what paladin talent trees looked like when vanilla
WoW launched.
So for the past week, as I contemplate the
Mists of Pandaria revamp to talents and specializations, the huge rage redesign, and how the class is going to work, I keep casting covetous eyes onto the barbarian I keep rocking faces on. Now,
Diablo III and
World of Warcraft are different games with different design philosophies.
WoW tries a lot harder for balance between competing classes because it has more classes.
D3 has five classes, and no two of those classes does what it does the same way. The witch doctor and the wizard and demon hunter all fight from range, the barbarian and monk both fight in melee, but
how they do these things is thoroughly different, and
D3 doesn't have the tank/DPS/healer trinity to consider. You chug potions, you spec for survival, and you blow stuff up.
Still, there are things I
really want to see
Mists steal from
Diablo III. Like, say, its version of
Revenge. That thing is sweet.