Diablo 3 - What I Want Wizards To Be

Patch 1.0.4 temporarily reinvigorated my interest in Diablo 3, which is good because I want this game to succeed. There's still a slew of issues that weren't addressed in this patch and most likely, it was because Guild Wars 2 was right around the corner that they rushed it out. But that's okay; we knew the game wasn't going to be completely fixed in this particular patch alone. In fact, my guess is that Blizzard will take at least another year of patching before Diablo 3 becomes the game we want it to be. So until that day comes, we are left wanting. Here's what I want from what was supposed to be my preferred class to play and why they need a lot of work.

In Diablo 2, the Sorceress was my favorite class. I loved covering the screen with Frozen Orbs and zapping everything with Chain Lightning or blasting Fireballs into crowds of monsters and watching them drop in unison. There was this distinct feeling of overwhelming power when playing a Sorc in many ways; some subtle, others more pronounced. For example, there was no cooldown on Teleport so you didn't run unless you were out of mana, because you're too fucking awesome to physically exert yourself for the menial task of bipedal transportation. When you didn't want to die in 2 hits, you usually learned a powerful defensive spell called Energy Shield, which mitigated a percentage of incoming damage directly to your mana pool instead of health, because you're too fucking awesome to give a damn about what kind of defensive stats your equipment provided. You also had a spell called Thunder Storm that periodically struck a nearby enemy with a powerful lightning bolt from the sky, because you're too fucking awesome to allow a monster within close proximity of your presence without dire repercussion, whether you wanted it dead or not.

In Diablo 3, the Wizard is the new Sorceress and although some of the spells are familiar, the feeling of power isn't.

Blizzard apparently didn't want us endlessly spamming our most powerful spells like we used to so they instead went the route of a resource system that quickly runs out and quickly regenerates. What this meant was that when our Arcane Power was depleted after a salvo of devastating spells, we needed something to do while our reserves replenished. This lead to the implementation of Signature spells.

I don't mind this system. The concept works fine and it provides some variety, albeit forced. The problem comes with the selection. There's four Signature spells. So with the addition of Arcane as an element, you'd think the Wizard would get four different elemental Signature spells: Fire, Cold, Lightning, and Arcane. Instead, you get two elements and one physical. Why didn't they make Spectral Blade do Cold damage that slows and call it Frost Blade? I think the idea that you coalesce ice swords into existence from thin air to slash enemies into ribbons is an badass idea. Also, why is the added range on the Thrown Blade rune seem to be nonexistent? Why not make Thrown Blade a complete ranged version of the spell, to give Wizards the ranged Cold Signature spell that we deserve? Kill two birds with one stone, I say.

Also, Why is Shock Pulse so utterly useless? Get rid of that shit and add a Fire Signature spell. No, the Fire Bolts rune doesn't count. The problem is the method of damage delivery: short and random. No one likes random directions, let alone short distances. The only useful versions of this spell is Piercing Orb and Living Lightning. And Living Lightning is only useful to proc Critical Mass. How about changing it to something called Fire Wave that propels an expanding wall of fire, damaging all enemies and applying a damage-over-time effect (DoTs for short). Simply change Piercing Orb to Blazing Orb and Living Lightning to Living Inferno or something like that. Cool? I think so.

But it's not just Signature spells that lack elemental variety. A majority of our spells deal Arcane damage. If I wanted to build a Fire Wizard, my selection without runes narrows down to Hydra and Meteor. That's it. If you want to include runes, you get the fantastically useless Fire Bolts in the mix. Boring. Why isn't Disintegrate Fire damage? Doesn't that makes sense considering you're turning enemies to ash? The lack of awesome Fire spells leads to passives like Conflagration being overlooked completely. When I think of any Fire spell hitting me, I think of the continual burning effects it might have on my clothes, my hair, even my skin. Fire spells should separate itself from other elements in its unique ability to apply DoTs. So why isn't this a mandatory passive on all fire spells? And what, then, should we do with Conflagration, which is completely and utterly out-shined by Cold Blooded? What if we make it so that it allows you to stack the DoTs from any Fire spell, to a cap? After all, the longer something is exposed to fire, the more likely it is to burn more intensely, correct? Too many questions. Need more answers.

The same goes for Cold spells. Including runes, you get only three Cold Spells: Ray of Frost, Frost Hydra, and Blizzard. I just want more variety. Is that too much to ask? The Cold Blooded passive is actually pretty awesome, but I wish the theme of Cold spells was better exemplified. Cold spells are unique in their ability to debilitate: to slow things down; to freeze them. The more things are exposed to cold temperatures, the more brittle they become. And when enough force is applied to brittle objects, they shatter. So in the way that Conflagration would stack DoTs, why not make Cold Blooded stack a debuff that increases damage-taken and increases amount slowed? And once it reaches the maximum stacks, the next spell shatters them, causing it to deal an additional 100%(?) damage that can also crit and refreshing only the damage-taken component of the stacks. Yeah? Of course, we'd have to adjust the initial slow amount of Cold spells to compensate for the stacking slow, but I'd love to see more thematic passives like this.

Diamond Skin is awesome. No argument there. But that doesn't mean we can't make it awesome'er. Defensively, Wizards are pretty good. We have a great escape, so-so diversion, and a good temporary shield. And while Wizards would never die if we could utilize all three spells at any given time, the fact is we only have enough room to take one of these, two at max. Diamond Skin is unique from the other defensive spells in that it caters especially well to melee Wizards. And what melee Wizards lack that other melee classes have is temporary Crowd Control immunity (Crowd Control spells are any spells that cause you to lose control of your character, CC for short). I think it would be really awesome if Diamond Skin provided CC immunity while the skin holds. Also, I think we should lower the base amount slightly and scale the shield amount to a percentage of our health. That way, tanky melee Wizards would have extra incentives to have a massive health pool.

Did I say so-so diversion? Of course, Mirror Image needs some love, as well. In short, they need to not get killed so easily and there needs to be more of them in order to warrant its use over Teleport or Diamond Skin. Why? Because while Teleport and Diamond Skin guarantees your safety at least temporarily, Mirror Image does not. It's Russian roulette where you have to hope that the monsters are dumb enough to go for your decoys instead of you. It's also virtually useless against Wallers with AoE affixes. Mirror Image is a gamble, especially with the chicken-shit AI of the images. When you try to run, they try to run as well. What the fuck? Stay there and take hits, stupid images. I get why they did this; so that Mirror Image isn't useless in PvP. But honestly, I doubt Mirror Image will see any PvP action anyway, mainly because they die almost instantaneous but also because they pose no real threat to the opposing player. They deal no damage (even with the crappy Mirror Mimics rune) and everyone will know that you'll be the guy in the middle. The only reason why I say it's a so-so spell and not a useless one is because it is useful against some Bosses. But here's the kicker: Bosses are a joke.

I could probably go on about what Wizards need but this post is already too long. Perhaps I'll continue this rant another day.

‹^› (': ' ) ‹^›

A Tiny Cause For Celebration

A little over a month has passed since my first post about how my blog is going to be "THE SHIT". Up until two weeks ago, I have also kept up with my own goal of writing at least once per week. The reasoning behind the effort to maintain this endeavor is simply so that you have a place to regularly visit (even if it's once a week) for a worthwhile read. And why do I bother with all this?

Back in high school, shortly before starting my senior year, I was directed to this article on The Best Page In The Universe by a friend. At the time, it was the funniest thing I ever read. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I stayed up the rest of the night reading all the articles on the site, unfortunately waking my parents in the process due to uncontrollable laughter. Even the posts that I disagreed with were still worth reading because they were well composed and hilarious regardless. This singular event is what sparked my desire to write.

But writing isn't something you do in 5 minutes. At least, not for me anyway. Before I even start typing, I simmer on a few topics for several days or even a few weeks. By the time I start constructing sentences, a majority of what I want to say is already in my head. When the actual post is completed, I proceed to revising the shit out of it. Is this the best vocabulary? Am I punctuating correctly? Does the sentence even belong here? This process is a never-ending one. Sometimes, I even find myself reading over posts that are few years old and still find ways to improve them. And aside from the one Writing Composition class I took in college, most of what I know is self taught.

I love writing. Even when the process can be a pain in the ass at times, I've been doing it on and off since the day I discovered Maddox's site. When I started consistently blogging again on Facebook (which has a convenient Notes feature that almost no one uses) back in September of 2009, I did it mainly for myself; to see how well I can arrange my thoughts in a unique and/or humorous manner. In a similar fashion, I draw as a hobby primarily to see what kind of imagery can be cooked up with my imagination. None of this was really to garner attention but I left that option open for anyone curious about my rants.

Interestingly enough, however, I learned that the people enjoying my posts on Facebook weren't just my friends, but also friends of my friends who I barely know or don't know at all. Then I started thinking that maybe I should create my own blog apart from Facebook, to promulgate my writing not just to Facebook junkies but to internet junkies everywhere. I chose to go with Blogger because Google will probably own everything in the future but feel free to share any blogging tool that you think is better.

Maddox did a AMA (Ask Me Anything) on reddit a few years back and I found a lot of what he said in terms of publishing content to be compelling. I say "compelling" because his points appear to be such obvious standard practice yet the reasoning behind them seem to be understood by so few and eluded by too many.

"I self-edit because I respect my readers. I have written or started to write 13 articles last year, and only published 1. That's because I don't think everything I write is worth posting, and I wish more web authors followed suit. There's way too much bullshit out there; too many half-assed assertions, uninteresting observations, long, tedious fiction tomes and an endless supply of shitty photo blogs. Being able to point a camera at something and snapping a photo doesn't automatically make you an artist, and no nobody cares about your stupid link dump with a clever name. If it took you 5 minutes to make, it'll probably take me half as long times zero seconds to lose interest. If half these dick holes stopped flooding the Internet with so much shitty content, it wouldn't be so hard for genuinely talented up-and-commers to get noticed. Then again, if your goal is fame, you're in it for the wrong reason to begin with. Nobody cares about the quantity of articles, it's the quality that counts. If you post a thousand shitty articles and one good one, you think anyone will remember the shitty ones and say "hey, that one article is really good, but the reason I go back is for the shitty daily updates!" No, you cocks. Nobody remembers the shitty ones. All they care about are the good ones."

- Maddox

As for the cause for celebration, I just wanted to share that as of this writing, Droll Logic has received 189 visits from United States and 97 from other countries since its inception a little over a month ago. Now, I know for a fact that these visits are not unique and that there's a good chance more than 50% of the hits from United States are probably from myself. That's okay because there's about 100 hits from outside the US that can't possibly be from me! I know these are very small numbers but as someone who started this blog with the goal of sharing his thoughts with a broader audience, it's pretty exciting.

For anyone who's following closely, thanks for sticking around. I promise there's plenty of stupid awesome things to look forward to in the near future. And if anything, you could just watch me fail! Watching people fail is usually pretty funny.

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Some Games I Like

One of the best things about growing up in the 90s was witnessing firsthand the evolution of video games. I began my journey in the SNES era, which ended up being a great time to start because to this day, three of my top five favorite console video games of all time are on the SNES.

Fast forward about two decades and you have one hell of a different environment for the medium. Video games have grown up with us and they're no longer considered an entertainment venue exclusive to children and/or teenagers. As a matter of fact, Kotaku reported that the average age of a gamer (defined by the Entertainment Software Association as anyone who plays a video game for more than an hour a week) is 30. This is even after the median age dropped 7 years due to the inclusion of a broader range of platforms.

So here I am, in the latter end of my twenties and wondering what the future holds for this amazing industry. Where will video games take us in the next five or ten years? We could think about that all day... OR you could just read up on some of the games I play, played, and will play.

Current - League of Legends

League of Legends is a Mulitplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) or Action Real-Time Strategy (ARTS) game that currently has one of the biggest followings despite the fact that the genre is relatively new. If you have never played a MOBA/ARTS before, imagine playing a typical RTS game like StarCraft except you control just one of the units out of an army. This one unit, which we will nickname McBoss going forward, can level up, buy items, and learn spells to decimate enemy units, enemy structures, and other enemy McBosses controlled by opposing players.

You usually do this with a team against a rival coalition in a fight to destroy each other's base. There's a lot more to it than that but discussing the more advanced tactics of the game could take multiple posts (we will save those for another day). LoL is a lot of fun with friends, especially when you find the right champion for the role that best fits your play style.

I play LoL primarily.

Current - Diablo 3

If you've read my post about the current state of Diablo 3, you might get the idea that I hate the game. That just isn't true. I only talked about the negative things about the game because I was expecting so much from it.

For starters, I really like the attention to detail in the aesthetics of the game. Have you zoomed in on a Wizard when they use Diamond Skin? Ever see your enemies melt to the bones when killing them with poison damage? What about the dust effects of the Barbarian's Seismic Slam? Even melee abilities like Fists of Thunder look pretty awesome. I personally find the game to be incredibly easy on the eyes. And while we're on the topic of aesthetics...

Armor looks awesome! I remember how my Sorceress looked like a stupid hobo in Diablo 2, even with really great gear. In contrast to that, all my characters in Diablo 3 look badass, with the exception of my Monk's helmet. I hope Blizzard will take it a step further and allow us to skin lower level armor pieces onto the higher level ones. Some of the earlier armor sets look better than the endgame equipment. The same goes for weapons. I would love to be wielding a sickle on all my characters.

Skill swapping is also pretty intuitive and easy to do, which will come in handy when they buff the crappier spells to improve build diversity. I just wish the option to enable Elective Mode was more pronounced.

The Auction House, albeit a pain in many ways, still establishes a legitimate means for a player to easily offer up his or her items to thousands of players. There's some of work to be done, especially in search functionality, but I find the Auction House to be a step in the right direction.

I still play Diablo 3 but very sporadically. Looking forward to the coming improvements.

Past - Terraria

Terraria hit me out of left field. I haven't heard of this game until my friends started talking about it incessantly on Ventrilo. Once I gave it a chance, there was no turning back. Ever play with Legos as a kid? Imagine a world built entirely of Legos except in 2D. You start in this world with nothing but some clothes, a pickaxe, and a regular axe. Using these tools, you take apart the environment to scavenge the necessary elements for a myriad of items. Your mission? Whatever the fuck you want.

Want to explore caves for treasure? Go ahead. Want to build houses and shit? No problem. Want to kill monsters, including epic bosses? There's only about 100 different weapons to choose form. Want to PvP with your friends? Better have the gear for it. There's little you can't do in Terraria and all of it starts simply with digging, slowly dismantling the untamed world so that you can rebuild it as you see fit. My love for this game is further justified by how affordable it was, so much so that I had to buy it for a couple of my friends. Terraria, as far as I'm concerned, is a sufficiently enjoyable solo experience but it only gets better with more players.

I was sad to hear that development on Terraria has come to a halt, with the creators moving on to bigger projects. This is highly unfortunate, because I felt Terraria still had plenty of unlocked potential and I would have easily spent another $20-$30 if it meant another year of patches. Nevertheless, this game is incredibly fun and I don't regret any of the 300+ hours I spent on it.

I don't play Terraria currently because there's little left for me to do in the game. That's saying a lot. But if the itch to dig ever returned and someone was willing to join me, there's no guarantee those zombies will remain unharmed.

The Den of Evil: My 3rd House

Makeshift fire effects via my Flamethrower.

Past - Minecraft

Minecraft is basically Terraria but in 3D. I didn't invest nearly as much time into it as its 2D counterpart but from what I remember, building massive structures is quite difficult unless you have Creative Mode on, granting you infinite flight and infinite blocks of any kind. Oh, and beware of motion sickness and fear of heights.

While the 3rd dimension definitely aids in immersing the player into the game world, the downside to Minecraft is that there's a lot less variety in terms of combat, both from lack of specialized equipment and monster types. And I found Creepers to be more annoying than anything.

The coolest thing about Minecraft, which I didn't even play around with because my brain would explode, is that you can automate your structures by utilizing wires, levers, pistons, and a slew of other mechanical components. This means you can build automatic doors, escalators, roller coasters, and all kinds of crazy shit. I guess that's Minecraft's end game?

Need a ride?

Future - Skyrim

Can't say all that much about a game I haven't even played yet but from what my friends tell me, Skyrim is an amazing Action RPG where you kill dragons, yell at everything, and look badass with epic armor. I like doing all these things individually but when you perform these acts concurrently, that's a recipe for success. Also, this video explaining how you should beat the shit out of everything makes me wonder why we ever started resolving disputes with words.

Future - Mass Effect 2 & 3

Ever watch Star Trek: The Next Generation? If you have, you already know why this game would resonate with me so well, being a fan of the show and all. In this Action RPG, you basically play the role equivalent to Captain Jean-Luc Picard except there is no Prime Directive. The only directive you follow is that of your penis and your gun. Unless you took on the role of a female Shepard, in which case, you'd be following the directive of your nipples and your gun. I played Mass Effect 2 very briefly before taking a break from this sci-fi universe but I eagerly anticipate a chance to return to this series once I manage to peel myself off my current games. I hear that 3 wasn't so hot with the fans. Doesn't matter, because I'll be playing it anyway.

To anyone who's been following this blog, I apologize for the late and lengthy post. I intended to have this up last week and thought it would be a quick write-up but halfway through, I realized this entire article could be broken down into at least 3 parts. OOPS! =D

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