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Does anybody have any idea if you will be soft-forced to wield class-specific gear?
i.e. Will your Wizard be nigh-unplayable without Wands and Orbs? Will Monks be able to do just as well with, say, Sword as their Claws?

I'd very much like to play a Sword & Shield Wizard & a Poleweapon Monk, while still being able to use all the skills effectively.

Thanks in advance!

So, staffs and monks?

GawainBS wrote: I'd very much like to play a Sword & Shield Wizard & a Poleweapon Monk, while still being able to use all the skills effectively.

I wonder, what's with you and Staff-wielding monks? I remember them coming up in discussions about Risen, Neverwinter Nights, and now Diablo III. You seem to have a preference towards them, and I'm genuinely curious, I figure there's be an interesting story behind that. So, assuming I'm right (I have a tendency to be wrong), do you mind sharing?

I just think that Poleweapons are the coolest kind of weapon. Historically, they're also close to the ultimate weapon. That, combined with the fact that I love martial arts, is the reason I want Staff/Poleweapon Monks. Or Wizards. I also love Battlemages.

GawainBS wrote:I just think that Poleweapons are the coolest kind of weapon. Historically, they're also close to the ultimate weapon. That, combined with the fact that I love martial arts, is the reason I want Staff/Poleweapon Monks. Or Wizards. I also love Battlemages.

Uhmmm. I'll admit that was a bit anticlimatic. Still, it makes for interesting roleplaying. I'm tempted to go through Morrowind again with a staff, lance or halberd. Interestingly, I NEVER tried that. I'm a big fan of HUGE hammers.

The bit about the ultimate weapon... I always thought hammers were specially useful against armor, until archery leveled the playing field for peasants to become as deadly as full-armor knights. Besides, aren't lances and halberds a bit clumsy in a real-life battle? I may be completely wrong about this, my weapon's expertise is limited to a couple fencing courses during my teenage years.

Poleweapons are good against armour because of the same reason hammers (and axes) are: a long handle which multiplies force, which then gets concentrated in a small hit area, as opposed to, say a sword, where the force gets spread out over a wider area.
Another advantage of poleweapons is the versatility: look at a halberd: a pike for thrusting/receiving charges, a hook to trip & dismount, and a heavy blade for cutting & chopping. The long staff allows for parries (as long as you block the opponents arms instead of his cutting weapon, although some poleweapons have steel slats on the shaft for this purpose) and close-in work.
Polearms are a huge group of weapons, though. Lances were practically only usable from horseback, pikes required bigger blocks of men fighting in unison to be effective, spears have the reach, but lack the versatility, etc.

Of course, all this assumes you have a bit of room: in very tight quarters, daggers are probably better, for example.
Other things play as well: a onehanded weapon allows for a shield, while a sword is easier to carry around.

Archery wasn't exactly the peasant's way to level the field: the only ones that ever managed that, were the English Longbowmen with bodkin arrows, long, thin shafts with an equally thin steel tip, whereby all the forced got concentrated again in a VERY small area. The longbow required a lot of training, and quite some skill to make. They were not your average peasants that got drafted and fought with their hunting bows. Such bows could hardly penetrate good armour. Also, these men probably didn't have the training & morale to stand their ground while shooting charging knights.

Anyway, sorry to have disappointed you in this. I wish there were a more intresting story behind it too.

GawainBS (if you're still looking for an answer), from what I saw during my time in the open beta, it looks as if there is a set of weapons and armor that everyone can use, and then, another, smaller subset that is reserved only for a particular class.

You can use this [url="http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/#filter=wizard"]link[/url] to see what items each class can use by simply selecting their picture.

As Diablo III uses weapon damage to calculate skill damage, two handed swords would make sense. Also, orbs have been removed as a weapon and have been re-added as an off-hand, much like necromancer's idols in Diablo II.

Thanks! That's great news, actually.

Pikes were probably the last melee weapons to be used as a mass in times of war and were used right alongside firearms. One fairly common formation was to have a block of pikemen with two blocks of guys with handguns behind them facing sideways and have these formations go down the line. The pikes are very hard to dislodge at close quarters as you have to get to the pikemen and that is really hard to do if you are forced to come at them from the front. An unmodified pike was sixteen feet long, but many would cut a couple of feet off to make them easier to carry. Assuming full length anyone taking on a block of pikes face on would have to make it through a minimum of four sets of pike tips if the pikes are in a loose formation before they get to the guy at the front where they would meet yet another pike tip. The rifles could shoot diagonally from just behind them. Pretty much everyone had a small melee weapon, but the pike was the last real example of European troops taking to the field of battle with only a melee weapon by design. Eventually the pike was fazed out as mass frontal charges with any sort of weapon that wasn't a firearm or utilizing cavalry ceased to be, but was still seeing use up into the 1700s.

It's pretty easy to see the setup with a visual, but I don't have one on hand to share. If using abstracts to illustrate an example of real world application then take a block of men armed with pikes and face them North. Take one unit of muskets and face them East with their flank touching the rear of the soldiers armed with pikes and their front lining up with the flank of the pikemen. Take a second unit of muskets and do the same, but turn them to face the West. This is a general block and the pattern is repeated down the field with just enough space between each block for the muskets to fire out of. With this setup the pikes could take a full frontal charge and the rifles would shoot at what was in front of the block next to it. This was an evolution of the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_and_shot"]Pike and Shot[/url] formation and one of the last variants seen.

On Diablo III, my characters used whatever the best weapon that happened to drop for them was aside from class restricted weapons. I played a couple of monks up through the little bit they permit and both were using every melee weapon available to them aside from the one only available to their class as I just happened to not find one that I liked better than whatever I was already using. Most of the time this meant I was using an axe or a sword, but I didn't shop for weapons or anything either. My witch hunter on the other hand only used the hand crossbows specific to the class because the class is very ranged heavy and I kept finding nice hand crossbows with only basic versions of the other ranged weapons. My Wizard was using melee weapons more often than wands because so much of the damage is spells and the weapon tends to become more about what extras it brings.

i have learned new stuff ...ty all of u .!!


mmogarden