Posts with tag diablo-iii

If you find there's a lack of demon-smashing in your life, never fear: Diablo III and its expansion Reaper of Souls are on sale for 50% off on the Blizzard store. Note: This sale only applies to the PC and Mac versions. Sorry, console players!

Considering jumping on this deal? Jump quickly. The sale ends Monday, October 6 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

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Last week, we had our first glimpse at Grommloc, the BlizzCon 2014 in-game pet. Today, Blizzard has revealed the remaining in-game rewards.

• Hearthstone Blizzard Entertainment-themed card back. The design incorporates elements from the compass inlaid around the infamous orc statue.
• StarCraft II New portraits and a Heroes of the Storm-themed decal. One portrait depicts Hierarch Artanis. The other is yet to be unveiled.
• Diablo III Warlords of Draenor-themed weapon transmogrifications. Each class will receive its own weapon, but only the demon hunter, barbarian, and monk are displayed. Kargath's bladefist and Blackhand's hammer are easily recognizable in the image. Only available for Windows/Mac version of the game.
• Heroes of the Storm Nexus Mount and Nexus Brawler portrait

The official BlizzCon site has a more detailed image of each than you see in the header above. It being BlizzCon and all, we can't help but wildly speculate a little: given the protoss theme of the StarCraft portrait, and the fact that one of the portraits is still veiled in mystery, could we finally see a Legacy of the Void announcement? Nearly three years passed between the launch of Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm. Half of that time has passed since Heart of the Swarm's release, which would make this pretty good timing for an announcement -- though certainly not a release date.

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The Diablo III: Reaper of Souls expansion changed the game from top to bottom. With the extra 10 levels came an almost complete reimagining of how Diablo 3 would play: from the relentlessly on-rails story mode to the free-form adventure mode, from wheeling and dealing on the auction house for the items you wanted to hoping for those items to pop out of a freshly slain enemy.

In the wake of the game's sweeping changes, the new Crusader class has been something of an afterthought for many. However, Blizzard hasn't been shy to make adjustments to the newest member of their demon-slaying team. A patch just two weeks after the expansion's launch brought major buffs to the Crusader. This week, another patch featured a long list of changes that revamped the class from top to bottom.

If you're wondering whether you should invest the time to level a Crusader, join me past the break for my impressions. The class has come a long way in just seven weeks, and this latest patch has been a gamechanger.

Theorycraft Thursdays is a new feature over on the Diablo 3 official website that highlights interesting player-submitted builds in the game. Today's inaugural post features an "Unholy" monk build from Diablo player ZiPS#1834, a fun attempt to turn the monk class on its head. ZiPS explains that the inspiration for the build came from "the idea to stack many 'Chance on Hit' effects with Life on Hit and a fair bit of Attack Speed," as well as a way to make the most of the Legendary effect from Andariel's Visage.

The article details the list of active and passive abilities, plus items required to fit the build, and explains which abilities synergize well with each other and with different armor pieces. There are also a list of build variations, which offer suggestions on how to focus on different aspects of the build such as crowd control, high damage, or greed.

If you're a Diablo 3 player who's interested in some outside-the-box builds for your monk, this would be a great place to start. I think it's fascinating that Theorycraft Thursdays has opened with such a unique idea, and I'm looking forward to seeing what its next installment brings.

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Today we posted a rundown on PAX East information. and one of the pieces of information was that Diablo III's transmog system is not coming to World of Warcraft. This made me sad, of course. Today, Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas tweeted the following update on that.

@perculia Not in 6.0. We do have major plans to make transmog more elegant as a collection game in the future, though.

- Watcher (@WatcherDev) April 14, 2014

Now, this doesn't tell us how they plan to make transmog more elegant. It doesn't even tell us for sure that there won't be a Diablo III style approach to it - it just tells us that it won't be in Patch 6.0, whatever it ends up being. Still, it's nice to know that it's still being worked on. The extra void storage tab is a nice feature. Until we know what it is going to be I'll just be over here staring wistfully at my complete lack of bag space.

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This isn't me being all hyperbolic.

This is actually what will happen to you if you use the combination Blessed Shield and Shattering Throw. Your character will die, and for hardcore players, that means your character will be dead forever.

Grimiku - PSA: Avoid Blessed Shield - Shattering Throw

Hello, Crusaders

I wanted to help spread the word that there is currently a very ugly bug with Blessed Shield - Shattering Throw that will result in your Crusader instantly dying if you use this skill.

Hardcore players should avoid using this skill for now!

We're working on a hotfix for this issue and we'll update the Patch 2.0.4 Hotfix thread once that happens. Thank you all for your patience and understanding while we work on fixing this as soon as possible!

source

As my Crusader has both of these and likely would have blown himself up (a mere annoyance for me, but the end of that character if you play on Hardcore) I thought you all should know.

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Seriously, there's a lot of press out there about Diablo III. We've even done some here. But no one is going to top this piece over at Games.on.net, I promise you that. It simply cannot be done. How amazing is this piece, ostensibly about Reaper of Souls, that brought together interviewer Tim Colwill, senior character designer Paul Warzecha, and some pencils and paper to absolutely rethink some classic Diablo characters (and also a clown)? It's this amazing.

Paul: You know what – let's go ahead and... I don't think he needs a shirt. Does he need a shirt?

GON: Whenever I picture a clown, I always take their shirt off.

Paul: Yeah?

GON: We've all been there.

Paul: Well we're going there today, anyway. And I like these pants but I would... he needs some mobility. I would go full-on hammer pants. Remember in the 80's when they used to wear potato-sack pants? Remember those? With the things?

I don't see how I could add anything that would better encapsulate the brilliance of this article. Never before have I laughed quite this much at the notion of screaming decapitated heads being hurled at enemies by an evil clown with a lacrosse net, and I doubt I'll ever laugh that much at it again. This is, simply put, the best press you're going to see for Reaper of Souls or any Blizzard game this year, and I take the hat I don't have (probably made of snakes) off to you, Tim Colwill.

I now desperately want to see this happen for the Warcraft setting. I wonder what the clowns of Azeroth would look like. They'd probably have much bigger shoulders.

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If you're trying to pick up your own copy of Diablo 3's soon-to-be-released Reaper of Souls expansion from Blizzard, you may have run head-first into a "500: Internal Server Error" message. The big downside to this error -- beyond your inability to buy the expansion -- is that though you don't get anything, you may still see the charge pending on your credit card. According to Blizzard support, because the charge didn't successfully go through, it should vanish within a few days. However, it doesn't leave us inclined to, as the error suggests, try again later.

Fortunately, Blizzard is on the case:

We're experiencing difficulties with pre-orders for Reaper of Souls. These issues will be resolved ASAP. Thanks very much for your patience!

- BlizzardCS (@BlizzardCS) March 21, 2014

Hopefully we'll see a resolution sooner rather than later -- with Reaper of Souls due out on the 25th, there's not much time left to buy for release-day gameplay. In the meantime, we're holding off on clicking "buy" until @BlizzardCS gives us the all clear.

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First off, let me say that I'm not agitating for WoW to copy all of Diablo III's improvements. A lot of the stuff D3 is doing now since the 2.0.1 patch are things WoW absolutely should never, ever do. But as valuable as it is to say that WoW should copy some of D3's better innovations, some times it's even more valuable to be absolutely clear on what would never, ever work if it were ported to the MMO space. (And vice-versa, as I think some of the problems that patch 2.0.1 solves are problems caused by trying to make D3 too much like an MMO). So, then, what can we learn from patch 2.0.1's successes?

Well, both WoW and D3 are loot based games -- at their hearts, you kill monsters for their loot in both. Diablo III's Loot 2.0 is an amazing system for itself -- it's fun and exciting when the loot you get from monsters ends up being awesome. But for WoW I think a system this personally rewarding would be insane. World of Warcraft is not set up for you to have some of the coolest, best items you'll ever see just drop from random trash, because WoW isn't a game designed around the idea of constantly going on reaping trash stomping dungeon crawls. The social aspect of WoW, with communal play of small 3, 5 and larger group content isn't the same as D3 and its multiplayer. If anything, Warlords' item squish is already a cautionary tale of the kind of excess that Diablo III not only rewards, but exults in. Nothing helps drive the lesson home that these are different games like their different approaches to loot.

That said, WoW can learn something from D3 in terms of the way loot works.

Last night, fittingly premiering during The Walking Dead, the Diablo III: Reaper of Souls commercial aired for the first time.

Reaper of Souls takes the player back into the conflict between heaven and hell, where the Black Soulstone is stolen and will soon be used to unleash the final end unto humanity. Diablo III's first expansion pre-patch is already live and features an absolute ton of goodies, many of which are bring players back to the game in droves.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls releases on March 25. Hit after the break for the full opening cinematic and more RoS video goodness.

Though there's still some waiting to do before Reaper of Souls arrives, if you've been twiddling your thumbs hoping for the latest patch to hit Diablo III, you're in luck -- Lead Producer Alex Mayberry has announced on Twitter that patch 2.0.1 will be live today. This patch brings some big changes for Diablo players, including social groups Clans and Communities, itemization updates, paragon updates, class updates, crafting updates, difficulty updates... and more. For all the details, check out the patch notes.

If you're one of the players who grew tired with Diablo III after launch, this laundry list of changes -- combined with a quiet, patch-free time in World of Warcraft right now -- may give you good reason to revisit the game in advance of Reaper's release. We know that's where we're headed!

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At BlizzCon 2013, I was lucky enough to sit down at one of Blizzard's demo machines and play through the first part of the new Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls expansion as the new class, the Crusader. This article will have some spoilers for the new content, so if you're trying to avoid that, beware.

Crusading

The demo character was a male Crusader, set at level 33. He came with a few powers preset, which I used for the demo. For the left mouse button, a single target Slash attack struck the enemy with holy power. For the right button, Fist of the Heavens sent a huge beam of Holy Energy from the heavens around the Crusader, followed up by electric bolts that split off and attacked any enemies still standing. This right click, of course, cost Wrath, which is the Crusader's resource and regenerates like a combination of a rogue's energy and a death knight's runic power from WoW.

On the second day of BlizzCon 2013, the Diablo 3 team hosted a gameplay systems panel in which they covered some of the new systems coming to the Reaper of Souls expansion, including not only the Crusader class, but information on changes for the existing classes and some of the new itemization tweaks we can expect to see in Loot 2.0.

Crusading for a new class

The first section of the panel introduced the new class, the Crusader. Designing a new class is one of the most complex tasks in an RPG, but it starts with a simple concept. In this case, the team wanted a righteous paladin type, which would work as a good answer to Malthael, the angel of death and main villain of Reaper of Souls. The idea came together of having a dark paladin, full of righteous wrath, a "knight in battle-scarred armor" to stand for humanity in its darkest hour. This lead to concept art. They knew they wanted the Crusader to be bulky and blocky, but it took many weeks of reiterations before they settled on the look of today, with the shield, the flail, and the tabard.