Diablo III Previews

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Written by BuckGB on October 25th, 2010

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As a barbarian, our first inclination was to run immediately towards the enemy team and inflict as much damage on their players as possible, letting the witch doctor focus on individual opposing players that stray from their pack. The problem with this was that barbarians get absolutely obliterated before they even get close enough to do any serious damage. The leap attack can help close the distance a little more quickly, but if you whiff, then you basically jump right into a trap where the witch doctor can cast horrify and then the wizard can blast you with disintegrate.

The other issue with this particular combination of classes on our team was with the design of the arena itself. Pits made it easy for classes with numerous projectile attacks to take a step back and chip away at classes that had no long-distance answer. With the pillars, barbarians could run behind them to seek cover and wait, but members of the other team knew better than to pursue, yelling (Play defensive!)

Bola Shot is best used in conjunction with another skill, called Entangling Shot. She shoots out a long, shadowy-looking chain, which clasps around up to three enemies at once, severely lowering their mobility for several seconds and causing light damage. This is what people mean when they say the words (crowd control.) It does exactly that, and the Entangling Shot / Bola Shot 1+2 punch is a potent one for the Demon Hunter. Using this combination, she can immobolize large swaths of enemies, and then blow them up. From pretty far away, too. Awesome.

The only other Demon Hunter skill I was able to try out during the demo is fittingly titled (Grenade.) When triggered, the Demon Hunter lobbs a few grenades (shaped like coconuts), which explode for some moderate AoE damage. I didn't get these until later in the demo, but they work just as well coupled with Entangled Shot. The principle is the same: immobilize your targets with (gadgets) (as Blizzard described it during the panel), and then take them down with ranged attacks.

If Blizzard can balance this PvP, I could see it easily becoming an eSport. The matches are extremely intense and require tight coordination to succeed. It quickly led to taunting and cheering as we all figured out the game. The arena was square-shaped and full of pillars and barriers for cover. In the middle of the round, four health orbs will spawn in the center providing the only healing available to players.

There is some crowd control, but each class has an ability--with a long cooldown--that will break any roots, snares, and other effects. Additionally, each class has an ability that helps them move quickly around the map be it teleporting or sprinting. The spells at my team's dispel worked well together and we could easily kill opponents if we caught them unaware in a stun.

With at least seven creatures coming at me, one of which is a boss, Entangling Shot is a godsend. Kiting is a huge part of the Demon Hunter's tactics, running backwards and shooting while the slowed enemies stumble after you.

Killing the zealot increases my level from nine to ten, and I get to choose a new skill. My skill list pops out from the left side of the screen, giving me the option to level up my existing powers, or add a new one. Clicking the plus sign to add brings out another pop out, and Multishot is mine.

On my first run through the demo I had chosen to take Fan of Knives upon hitting level 10, so on my second run I opted to take Molten Arrow which could be swapped in as my right click attack with a simple press of the Tab key. Rather than exploding to cause some solid AoE damage like Bola Shot, Molten Arrow would leave a trail of fire between your character and its target, causing some mild damage over time to anything that stepped into it. Alternating between the two attacks it became fairly easy to wipe out massive amounts of enemies in little time, so long as you weren't confronted by any that had a natural resistance to fire damage.

One thing I didn't get to experience during any of my runs through the demo was the rune system, so unfortunately I wasn't able to see the different enhancements or effects that could be added to the handful of skills at my disposal. However, the loot certainly piled up quickly, giving me the chance to swap out various bows or melee weapons in place of the dual crossbow pistols the demon hunter began the demo with. The salvage system took care of the rest, letting me break down items into core components that could be used later on and clearing up my scant inventory space so that I could begin grabbing even more loot as I crept deeper into the dungeon.

Some of the Demon Hunter's most impressive skills weren't usable on the build I played, but had been shown off previously during BlizzCon. Multishot, a returning favorite from Diablo II, does an impressive spread attack, harming a whole group of enemies at once. The Demon Hunter will also set traps and use Grenades, an ability that shows off the new fully 3D maps in Diablo III. You'll be able to bounce grenades off walls and around corners using realistic physics to get the jump on unsuspecting enemies.

I must admit that I don't normally play a ranged class in Diablo games, but I was really impressed with how the Demon Hunter played. Figuring out the best way to mix Entangling Shot and Bola Shot had me thinking more strategically than I expected, and throwing traps into that equation will increase the number of options.

Just as with the other Diablo 3 classes, the Demon Hunter really starts to shine once you mix and match its abilities. It's fun to try to just bolo a bunch of enemies, sure, but temporarily hinder their advance with a slow shot -- enough time to lay down a trap -- and then bolo them, and then vault away just as they reach you (only to be ensnared in your trap -- and, of course, engulfed in the bolo explosion) and you realize that Diablo 3's combat requires a little more thinking than most hack-n-slash games. The Barbarian, for example, can use his Ancient Spear to pull a target close, ground stomp to stun, and then swing for the fences; and the Monk can sprint into the middle of a crowd, whip out some kung-fu, and then use a new ability called "Wave of Light" to finish off the monsters and heal himself from the damage.

This stacking strategy goes even further with the new Rune system, which has evolved in the new build. Runes are special gem-like items that augment skills rather than gear, so the Monk's electric fist might be turned into a poison fist, or the Barbarian's Leap might grant a stun or a knockback. Runes are great fun, especially since Blizzard has done a lot of work to make the "Rune-shaped" abilities very diverse. My Wizard found a rune that turned his Hydra spell (usually just a summoned hydra that shoots fireballs) into a fire wall, and it completely changed the way I used the spell and played the class.

Once you pick your class, you're stuck with them for the duration. My team soon wished that was not so, since our group of two wizards and a witch doctor were getting destroyed by a barbarian and two wizards. Player skill seemed to have something to do with it; the Witch Doctor on my squad was clearly very new to the game and spent several rounds standing in a corner, throwing firebombs at a wall. This wasn't an especially effective tactic, surprisingly. The barbarian was much better than our witch doctor though, since he was a tank and kept chasing our wizards around, while the other side's wizards were able to hurl Meteors and keep up a constant death beam of Disintegrate non-stop.

The character equipment was all plain stuff. Nothing on my wizard was even magical; it was just low level (white) plate mail type stuff. Nothing to boost my stats at all, and the weapon was a plain staff as well. I don't know if the Barbarian had a magical weapon, but I doubt it. The skills were preset, and all had runestones as well; all of the damage spells were socketed to lower their Arcane Power cost, while my Diamond Skin defensive skill had a rune to increase the damage absorption from 100 to 150.

Limbs fly. Heads roll. Blood fountains stain the walls and floor. Severed zombie torsos refuse to give up the ghost and continue to crawl towards me, swiping out with their cold, undead fingers. They fall under a few viscerally satisfying swipes from my sword. I focus on the summoners. Do I want to fight an unending stream of flaming zombie dogs? No sir, I do not. Luckily, summoner robes aren't the most protective armor against a giant broadsword.

It's about now, as appendages bounce around the room and blood spurts from every new orifice I create in my enemies, that I realize just how detailed and beautiful DIII is. Fire spells produce their own flickering light, casting new shadows across the floors on the way to their targets. The zombies animate just how I'd expect a real zombie to act, complete with a tenacious tendency to continue attacking long after they should have ceased to move. Screenshots cannot capture how good it looks, how good it feels.

In this show-floor demo build, it's immediately apparent that she's fun to play. Applied to the left mouse button was a skill called Entangling Shot, which modifies ranged shots to damage and slow three enemies at once. On the right mouse button was Bolas Shot, a ranged attack which attaches to enemies and explodes for major damage after a short delay. That's how skills work as effect-modifiers applied to your weapon's basic attack and damage statistics.

The combination of the two is pretty visceral. Large groups of enemies are soon reduced to a slow crawl, exploding in a shower of body parts as the bolas shots do their work. In pretty short order I levelled up and unlocked a new ability called Multishot, which essentially turned my crossbow bolts into a shotgun-scatter cone of meat-shredding murder. And so it went, as I carved a bloody path to the centre of the dungeon and Leoric, the undead boss at the heart of the maze.

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