Please view the barb skill Ground Stomp here:
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/char.../barbarian.xml
Ground stomp stuns its targets. I predict this will be highly effective in team PvP.
Imagine a 4v4 PvP match in DIII's PvP arena - in arena map 2 of the 3 arena maps which will initially be available in DIII (my speculation). One team has a ground stomp barb and three wizards. The other team has whatever you like, preferably melee-heavy. Here's how the match will go: Ground stomp barb will go in, stun lock opponents by continually casting ground stomp, and then the three wizards will nuke until dead the stunned players with disintegrate or a yet-unknown spell better than disintegrate. The match is now over, and the 1B3W team collects the 16 million gold (4 million gold each) high-ranking 4v4 PvP victory purse. The losing team heads immediately to make numerous posts on Internet forums calling for ground stomp to be nerfed.
Granted that the answer is yes to this question: Will the barb in DIII be able to cast ground stomp fast enough to stun lock other players? , then this conclusion is a foregone one:
When DIII comes, and there are team PvP ladder rankings which may be viewed by clicking a button in DIII's Battle.net 2.0, the majority of the top-ranked PvP teams seen in those rankings will include a ground stomp barb.|||There was Stun in Nox. If you were stunned as warrior (melee class), even for a very short time, you were as good as dead. So what did they do? The warrior is immune to cast Stun. If he was to be stunned, you had to use a summoned animal... which can be stunned by the warrior's Battle Cry... yeah.
Rule of PvP: If you want to make PvP from a PvE game playable and balanced, you will have to implement special PvP rules, make some skills useless, nerf/buff half of other skills, and do something funky with the classes.
You just can't take all skills available, chuck them into PvP, and think the game will be balanced. Not possible. See Diablo II PvP.
You can't speculate on abilities so early unless you assume that Blizzard a) will ignore balancing in regards to PvP or b) doesn't know how to balance games.|||What was unbalanced about diablo2 pvp? Besides the fact that certain characters could be negated (their own fault), it was pretty balanced.
@ the op: We have no idea what PvP will look like. Stunning skills were very effective in Diablo 2 PvP (leap and traps + mind blast were 4v4 staples) but there were plenty of ways to deal with them. There were always counters for stun (mostly not getting stunned in the first place) and I expect D3 will be no different.|||Quote:
What was unbalanced about diablo2 pvp?
Everything? From items that some people didn't have to builds that canceled out other builds. DII was playable, (just like RTS besides SC are sorta playable), but it was horribly out of balance if you take it to tournament level.
Besides, it was boring. Run around teleporting casting Bone Spirit/Hammer/add skill here... do you find yourself using 20 skills in one duel? And in Classic everyone was a barb.|||Quote:
You can't speculate on abilities so early unless you assume that Blizzard a) will ignore balancing in regards to PvP or b) doesn't know how to balance games.
Fun facts the OP missed in his speculation about "overpowered" Ground Stomp Barbs:
1. You can raise your stun resistance in Diablo 3, as already evident by a barbarian skill.
2. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has diminishing returns on disables/stuns/etc. in PvP.
3. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has ways to become immune to disables/stuns/etc or remove disables/stuns/etc.
4. As giga pointed out, we don't know if stun on players gets replaced by something like a daze or a slow on players.
I mean seriously, it's one thing to assess a game's balance a week after it came out, you can at least see what super-obviously-broken aspects of gameplay. It's completely different to predict balance based on a freaking pre-alpha, a 10% complete game with even less than that known about it..|||Quote:
Fun facts the OP missed in his speculation about "overpowered" Ground Stomp Barbs:
1. You can raise your stun resistance in Diablo 3, as already evident by a barbarian skill.
2. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has diminishing returns on disables/stuns/etc. in PvP.
3. World of Warcraft, a game from which D3 already is borrowing, has ways to become immune to disables/stuns/etc or remove disables/stuns/etc.
4. As giga pointed out, we don't know if stun on players gets replaced by something like a daze or a slow on players.
I mean seriously, it's one thing to assess a game's balance a week after it came out, you can at least see what super-obviously-broken aspects of gameplay. It's completely different to predict balance based on a freaking pre-alpha, a 10% complete game with even less than that known about it..
Good points konfeta. I see this barb skill Iron Will you mention. I did not know of this skill before. Iron Will "Provides resistance to stun, slow, and freeze attacks." Indeed, this skill increases stun resistance, which hurts my soundness of my prediction. And it is likely that there will be +x to stun resistance items in DIII if there is a barb skill that can raise stun resistance. Such items would also hurt my prediction.
However, what really hurts/ruins my prediction is the actual skill description of ground stomp. I'm surprised you missed this one konfeta, what with your knowledge. I failed to read ground stomp's description prior to issuing my high-prevalence-of-ground-stomp-barbs-in-team-PvP decree. I had assumed that ground stomp would be able to be cast as fast in DIII as the 105 faster cast breakpoint of war cry was able to be cast in D2. I loved that 105 breakpoint in D2. Bring back breakpoints in DIII! Breakpoints are fundamental to the franchise!
http://www.diablowiki.net/Juggernaut_Skill_Tree states... that the skill ground stomp "Knocks back and stuns enemies for 3 seconds. 5 second cool down."
Heh. My prediction is ruined. A stun lock is not possible with a 5 second cool down on a 3 second stun.
Unless... two (or more) ground stomp barbs are used in team PvP to alternate the casting of ground stomp at the right timings to create a stun lock. One barb could ground stomp then immediately do melee attacks, then about 2.5 seconds later the other barb does ground stomp, then melee. 2.5 seconds later the first barb ground stomps, then melee, 2.5 ground stomp melee, 2.5 ground stomp melee, stun lock melee stun lock melee repeat until gg. I suspect this strategy will be a possibility in team PvP in DIII - assuming, of course, that ground stomp stuns instead of slows PvP opponents in DIII, which is not yet known. Much speculation indeed!|||Well, it all sounds very fun for PvP, I just hope they balance it properly.|||Quote:
Everything? From items that some people didn't have to builds that canceled out other builds. DII was playable, (just like RTS besides SC are sorta playable), but it was horribly out of balance if you take it to tournament level.
Huh? The top duelers in the 1.10-1.11 era of d2 played 4v4 games, usually between clans. Tournaments were at most gimicks that people put together on message boards.
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Besides, it was boring. Run around teleporting casting Bone Spirit/Hammer/add skill here... do you find yourself using 20 skills in one duel?
This is just totally inaccurate. Even the Bone Necro, a pretty simple class used Bone Prison, Teeth, Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Unsummon and Teleport as active skills in most duels, not to mention maintaining Bone Armor and Clay Golem all the time (lotta recasts). There were more complicated classes too. Yeah it's not 20, but 20 skills would be a nightmare. 12-15 is the most hotkeys you can work easily with one hand and still use a mouse (and yes, I know that because my pvp char used all the hotkeys).
Anyway, I've gotten pretty OT, but the main point that's come from this threat is it's way too early to start deciding on PvP builds. We don't even know if there are tier 5 skills, and what they will be if they will be implemented.|||Quote:
Huh? The top duelers in the 1.10-1.11 era of d2 played 4v4 games, usually between clans. Tournaments were at most gimicks that people put together on message boards.
I only accept 1v1 duels in all games of all types. The rest is nonsense for me. You may not agree but that's just how I look at it.
By tournament level I meant something like WCG or PGT. Official leagues.
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This is just totally inaccurate.
It's what I saw.
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Even the Bone Necro, a pretty simple class used Bone Prison, Teeth, Bone Spear, Bone Spirit, Unsummon and Teleport as active skills in most duels, not to mention maintaining Bone Armor and Clay Golem all the time (lotta recasts). There were more complicated classes too. Yeah it's not 20, but 20 skills would be a nightmare. 12-15 is the most hotkeys you can work easily with one hand and still use a mouse (and yes, I know that because my pvp char used all the hotkeys).
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Yeah it's not 20, but 20 skills would be a nightmare.
Unless you are attributing that to Diablo's control system, it's not really a nightmare. But, I agree, it's hard to manipulate too many skills in Diablo because the control system isn't too great. It's about 15 keys on the keyboard you can access?
I guess that's just not what I saw or heard most of the time about Diablo PvP. Usually it looked incredibly boring and slow, with one-two skill spam, teleport, and passives. You got an example of a good DII PvP on youtube or something?
So, DII:
Active skills:
Bone Prison/Teeth/Bone Spear/Bone Spirit/Unsummon/Teleport
Passive skills:
Bone Armor/Clay Golem resupport. Instant summon.
Weapon: Do you use any as a bone necro?
Potions: 1-2-3-4 if applicable
Mana: ?
Con:
Active skills:
Blink, Fist of Vengeance, Force of Nature, Burn, Slow, counterspell + inversion, Poison, Lesser heal (self and other)
Passive skills: Resupport of Summon Creature recast/ singular for Mechanical Golem/ double for Ghouls/ quadruple for Ghosts (requires time to summon); pixie swarm
Weapons
1st + 2nd (V) (crossbow [includes reload delay], bow, fireball staff, force of nature staff (cast delay).
Z-X-C for potions of 3 types
+ need mana crystals to recharge mana
Wiz: meh, I won't go there.
It's OK I guess. But I want my 20 things to do lol.|||World of Warcraft uses a very specific stunlock killing system that makes each reduces the duration of every subsequent stun suffered by a target. Assuming Blizzard implements the same or a similar system, the ground stomps (or any other stunning move) will not actually do anything to their PvP targets after a third (or something similar) stun.
My point is simple - everything you know about D2 PvP might and probably will be irrelevant. D2 PvP is has incredibly poor overall balance, and while WoW's PvP balance isn't anything special, it is still miles ahead. Chances are, they will use elements of WoW PvP that worked, axe those that didn't and add completely new elements to it.
Speculating that "stunlock Barb starts will rule PvP" is already a flawed theory based simply on the most recent PvP interpretation by Blizzard. And even then, you cannot entirely use WoW PvP as prediction because Diablo 3 does not have class roles, it might have a completely different lethality:survivability ratio, etc. Sorry for the snarky response, but balance speculation based on less than 10% of the information available about the game irks me to no end.
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