After spending some time playing the Wolcen beta, I couldn’t avoid mentally comparing it to the game which was responsible for my creating this blog in the first place, Diablo III which I put aside after BlizzCon 2015 (the only time that I played D3 again after that was during the Necromancer beta test). Likewise, I haven’t kept up with whatever patches that have been released since then.
I’m not a normal Redditor but I learned about the 2.6.5 PTR after seeing the post about the Diablo II unused guild hall and arena maps on the Diablo subreddit. Reading a brief synopsis of the PTR notes, some of the notable changes were things MANY players brought up YEARS ago including not locking additional stash tabs behind a seasonal wall and a search function for it.
I debated whether or not I should bother even trying the PTR since I knew the core issues that caused me to stop playing in the first place, would never be addressed for this version of the game. I decided however that this was one of those “never say never” moments and to just take it in stride and play the PTR for what I last referred to the game as; a decent action combat arcade game (as opposed to a proper ARPG). As with the necromancer beta test, I made sure to be cognizant about not going down the rathole of providing feedback even if I came across issues.
I created a seasonal character (wizard) on my non-main account (I know Blizzard likes to keep track of metrics and want to keep my loaded collectors edition account offline for as long as possible) and hit 70 fairly quickly running rifts in adventure mode (less than 2.5 hours which I know is slow compared to power leveling where you can get there in under 20 minutes). Not going to lie; the increased legendary drop rate felt (dopamine fix) satisfying. There were legendaries introduced since the last time I played which I didn’t recognize; I ended up with this oddball build due to my wizard source, an Etched Sigil whose legendary property automatically casts any arcane spender (on your skill bar) while channeling Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost. Some of my other legendaries reduced the resource cost of fire skills (Cindercoat) and Arcane Torrent by 64%. The end result was that I could sit there and channel my spender while it spammed off my other spenders (barely using any arcane power).
And it got more humorous once I hit 70 and used some set pieces (4 Firebird for the increased fire damage and damage over time plus 2 Tal Rasha for the meteor) for this fire damage channeling spammer build (had RoRG and Aether Walker cubed). Using sets is far more efficient than this but I’m not interested in the dev designed meta. Decided to roll with it and see if I could get to Torment VI (the original highest difficulty at Reaper of Souls launch) quickly which turned out not to be a problem due to the ease of getting gear (from the increased drop rate of legendaries and blood shards). The combat is mostly pushing one button (Arcane Torrent) and teleporting/potting as needed since my twister, meteor, and hydra (all fire based damage to take advantage of Firebirds 4 piece bonus and Cindercoat fire damage and resource reduction) are auto-cast every second by the legendary effect on my source. Unsurprisingly glass cannon but still not bad considering the lack of optimal rolls, lots of missing resistances, low level gems. The multiplicative aspects really kick in (where you rapidly gain Paragon levels and gold) from T6 and higher (this patch introduces Torment 14-16).
As I noted, great action combat arcade style game play before you get into the Greater Rift grind part of the game (where the dysfunction of the power creeping bigger numbers gets out of hand). Again, I realize this is all aided by the increased legendary drop rate plus the fact that you can purchase PTR bundles of all set items for each class as well as legendary weapons, armor, off hands, and accessories in order to test things in the short period this PTR will be up (1 week).
I will say the QoL additions (long overdue) will be good for those players who are continuing to play Diablo III. None of these changes are actually compelling me to consider playing the live game again once this patch goes live though. This ultra-fast game play of mowing down monsters is fun for a short period but not enough to keep me engaged (I’ve become spoiled by the big sprawling open world aspects of the MMO’s that I’ve been playing not to mention the more in-depth life skilling aspects). In the end, I’m actually glad I gave the PTR a try since while I do miss the transmog system as well as the ability to use cosmetics account wide, it also reminded me that I no longer really miss most of the game as well as the franchise (or more specifically, the way things exists in D3).
And given the state of the game industry (BioWare with Anthem as an example) as well as Blizzard Entertainment in general, I’m not confident their actual design for D4 will be any closer to it’s ARPG roots or that the team handling it, will be immune from the crunch of getting everything working. They’ve clearly taken a different approach compared to Jay Wilson’s more open/transparent style early on with D3 where everyone could see the constant iteration (which became more polarizing as time went on) so while I am still expecting to be blown away by the cinematic unveil (when that happens), I’m also going to be very skeptical that the game play will actually come close to matching whatever is hyped when they finally do the initial reveal (that’s how much I no longer trust even established AAA studios).
