Gör’s Opinion of Diablo III

A punch in the neck.  I never played the previous releases, but everyone in my WoW guild was like Gör, you got to get Diablo III because we’re all getting D3 because it’s a badass game; we’ll be playing it for months!  I was like “orly now”.  So, a few days before release, I bought the digital download and was ready to go on May 15th at 3am EST along with the rest of my guildies.  Servers didn’t officially start working until 3:45am tho, but nonetheless I created my witch doctor and enjoyed all the lore … well that was until I hit Act 2 Inferno and found out the hard way that witch doctor’s were a pos broken class; look it up on Urban Dictionary if you don’t know what pos means.  My witch doctor couldn’t stay alive for two seconds if it meant any kind of hardcore kiting from fast or teleporting elites.  I had to go Splinter Bear spec to even kill anything before it killed me but after seeing my friends progress, beat the game and quitting before me and me still being stuck on Act 2 I had had enough.  I abandoned my witch doctor, stripped it of its gear and rerolled a wizard that flew through the content like no other.  I thought to myself such a waste of time, I should have rolled a wizard first.  The Black man always being held down.

I haven’t played my witch doctor since the IAS nerf and I don’t even know if they still suck or not.  But my opinion of the witch doctor is this … it’s trash. It reminded me of the Shaman class in WoW;  a class with the best spells in the game but the worst designed.  It’s constantly plagued with mana issues.  Sure you have wonderful spells, but you’re going to pay dearly in mana for it, so what good is it to have the best spells in the game if you don’t have the mana long enough to cast them.  The other main problem with Witch Doctor was survivability.   WD is essentially a ranged class forced to play in melee range with no usefull defense in place whatsoever. Pets? Yea they get 1-shotted right along with you after Act 1/2 Inferno. Completely useless.  Elite packs just push them out the way. Oh you’re 1-shotted again? Working as intended.  Bottom line WD’s were trash.  I don’t know about now, maybe they have improved, but at the time of release they were hot garbage which is a real disappointment because I had been following the Witch Doctor class before release and was hell bent on playing it because it looked epic.

Wizard has been pretty lulzy and it’s what I’ve been playing since I rerolled.  There’s nothing I can complain about the class; good damage, good defense, good crowd control and good kiting/escape skills.  Although there are still some bugged/broken skills, it’s a robust class.

Diablo III I felt could have been way better.  What I don’t like is the quest line is too short, you are limited to this same quest line even in Inferno when you’ve done the whole quest line 3 times before. Did the developers think we’d not get tired of it?  Fatigue from doing the quest line again is the only thing that’s keeping me from making a third toon.  I just don’t want to save Tyrael again. Another thing I don’t like is your progression in the game is dependent on the real money auction house (RMAH) whether you are single playing it or not.  I have single played most the game and the biggest downfall was that my toon was too undergeared to even survive Act 3/4 Inferno but at the same time the crappy loot drops (which is another problem I have with D3) prevent you from going any further and you must buy gear off the RMAH to progress.  I think it’s dumb and a ripoff.  All my friends who beat the game had bought their gear, otherwise I’m pretty sure they would be still trying to farm up gear.  In D3, you are more likely to get struck by lightning than to get a good gear drop.

Also the constant bugs that plague the game even after more than 2 months after release, has rendered it almost unplayable for me; I can forget ever trying to do hardcore mode and Public Games for me are a myth because I as soon as I join one, my lat goes into the red or yellow.  As long as I’m in single player mode, my lat stays in the green.  I can somewhat play with friends as my bar stays mostly in the green there too. But Public Games I can forget it, not happening.  The amount of lag and rubberbanding is jus too tremendous.  When the game first came out, it ran fast and smooth with all settings at max.  But then, Blizz started doing hotfixes and patches and my game performance gets worse every week.  I now dread every patch or hotfix as I have to now play the game with mostly low settings.  It’s jus horrible.  I am convinced its the updates they are doing that’s the culprit as like I said, the game hadn’t lagged or stuttered at all until the first patch.  And then the rubberbanding didn’t start until about 2 patches ago.  I have died mostly to game performance issues than anything else.

There’s more I can go into about this game that erks me so much, I want my $60 back.  It seems apparent to me that the game was released incomplete and now Blizzard is just trying to put into the game what should have been there in the first place.  Although the Wizard invulnerability was nice while it lasted, this was something that should have never been seen outside the beta stage whatsoever.

I still play D3 occasionally though to play with friends but overall I am done with it; I am tired of fighting performance problems and it’s boring, dry, too repetitious, no usable gear ever drops and once I killed Diablo on Inferno, there is nothing to do to have any kind of replayability except to reroll and do it all again, which is not happening.  Alternative games I play are Torchlight and still some WoW every now and then, and even more recently Age of Conan, but I’m awaiting on Torchlight II and Guild Wars II.  Overall I give Diablo III a C … for Count on Boredom & Frustration.

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