Blizzard Unveils Diablo 3 Skill Calculator

[Logan Westbrook]

Blizzard Unveils Diablo 3 Skill Calculator

The new calculator lets you craft your Diablo 3 character at every stage of his or her career. Well, sort of.

Building your Diablo 3 is, as they say on the internet, serious business, and definitely not something that you want to leave until the last minute. Thankfully, Blizzard has given eager Diablo fans the chance to plan out their level progression months ahead of the game's release with the Diablo 3 skill calculator.

Using the calculator is easy: You choose a class, and then you chose six active skills and three passive skills. You can also modify your active skills by slotting one of the five runestone types. Players get two active skills at level one, another at level six, and another ever six levels after that until all six are unlocked. Passive skill slots are unlocked at levels 10, 20, and 30.

The skills themselves also unlock at different times, but all the mathematical heavy lifting is done for you as the calculator also works out what level you will need to be to achieve the build you've made. The calculator also notes that the level cap in the beta is 13, so if you're one of the lucky beta testers you can get a head start there as well.

It's not going to be the most accurate version of your character though, as Blizzard notes in an easily missed disclaimer at the bottom of the page that all the numbers are based on what a level 60 character can achieve with rank seven runestones. Still, it's interesting to see all the different abilities that the various classes get and how the runestones modify each one. You can try the calculator out for yourself here [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian].

Source: IGN [http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/119/1194148p1.html]




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[El Luck]

Pretty interesting skill sets. If I do buy it (and at the moment its an if, still on the fence regarding the always online drm and the auction house) I'm rolling a Witch Doctor!

 

[Hisshiss]

All of the skills and passives are just..so beautiful..and balanced...and interesting. It really is everything one would expect from a blizzard game.


..Now I have to stare at this thing for the months to come until they actually release the game.


Sadness.

 

[Ghengis John]

So what? What the heck is the point of building a character you can't play and buying talents you can not determine the value of? Besides the obvious anticipation building.

You now:
"I bought plus 30% damage with all lemming based attacks! Alright!"

You later:
"Hmm, turns out lemmings suck compared to marmots."

You now:
"Sweet, a chance to proc hay fever on all crits!"

You later:
"Turns out a chance on a chance is a pretty rare occurance."

You now:
"I've built the most awesome witchalock ever! Look out servers! Here I come!... eventually."

You later:
"What is up with the vorpal rabbit class? They kill faster than I do on my witchalock and all they have to do is spam titanic leap?! On top of that playing a witchalock isn't even fun... NERF VORPAL RABBITS! /forumpost"

 

[Inkidu]

So what? What the heck is the point of building a character you can't play and buying talents you can not determine the value of? Besides the obvious anticipation building.

You now:
"I bought plus 30% damage with all lemming based attacks! Alright!"

You later:
"Hmm, turns out lemmings suck compared to marmots."

You now:
"Sweet, a chance to proc hay fever on all crits!"

You later:
"Turns out a chance on a chance is a pretty rare occurance."

You now:
"I've built the most awesome witchalock ever! Look out servers! Here I come!... eventually."

You later:
"What is up with the vorpal rabbit class? They kill faster than I do on my witchalock and all they have to do is spam titanic leap?! On top of that playing a withalock isn't even fun... NERF VORPAL RABBITS! /forumpost"

I laughed at that. That's so true.

 

[kurokenshi]

So what? What the heck is the point of building a character you can't play and buying talents you can not determine the value of? Besides the obvious anticipation building.

You now:
"I bought plus 30% damage with all lemming based attacks! Alright!"

You later:
"Hmm, turns out lemmings suck compared to marmots."

You now:
"Sweet, a chance to proc hay fever on all crits!"

You later:
"Turns out a chance on a chance is a pretty rare occurance."

You now:
"I've built the most awesome witchalock ever! Look out servers! Here I come!... eventually."

You later:
"What is up with the vorpal rabbit class? They kill faster than I do on my witchalock and all they have to do is spam titanic leap?! On top of that playing a withalock isn't even fun... NERF VORPAL RABBITS! /forumpost"

Best post I've read all day!

 

[Soods]

Lets see how many posts it takes before someone mentions always online single player and how he is going to buy Torchlight 2 instead.

To OP: Finally I can check out the spells and start planning my skill build!

Edit: It's nice to see that not every class uses the same old mana, I especially love Demon Hunters discipline/hatred power.

 

[gCrusher]

So what? What the heck is the point of building a character you can't play and buying talents you can not determine the value of? Besides the obvious anticipation building.

You now:
"I bought plus 30% damage with all lemming based attacks! Alright!"

You later:
"Hmm, turns out lemmings suck compared to marmots."

You now:
"Sweet, a chance to proc hay fever on all crits!"

You later:
"Turns out a chance on a chance is a pretty rare occurance."

You now:
"I've built the most awesome witchalock ever! Look out servers! Here I come!... eventually."

You later:
"What is up with the vorpal rabbit class? They kill faster than I do on my witchalock and all they have to do is spam titanic leap?! On top of that playing a witchalock isn't even fun... NERF VORPAL RABBITS! /forumpost"

This post fills me with glee and tears. Much like the coming of Cthulhu. Well played.

 

[William Jung]

Okay... for World of Warcraft I can understand why you'd have a "calculator", seeing as you actually can spec your character into different things, giving him whatever little variance you can afford.

But really...? A skill calculator for D3? You KNOW you are getting all those skills, you KNOW you'll always will have them, and you never have to spec a certain way to get them, so what's the bloody point? It's just a glorified, interactive skill preview.

edit:
just because I can (dont want the guy above me waiting long) something something online-only single player something something Torchlight 2 instead.

Because you'll only be able to equip 6 skills at a time, and the runes added to each skill changes the skill a lot more than runes ever did for WoW.

Like looking at the barbarian, for ancient spear, you could rune it for it:

- knocking back your target instead of pulling
- making it pierce in a line dragging anything that happened to be in the line
- making you shoot out a spread of 8 spears that drag back any that get hit
- making it so it heals you on hit
- make it generate more fury on hit

So with that in mind how much a skill can be modified, not only do you gotta figure out which skills you want to use, but which ones you want to do which effect. Maybe you want a stunlock barbarian? Or a knockback barbarian? A draining barbarian? A barbarian that has his ranged attack dmg buffed but his melee skills turned into utility. No specific theme, just whatever skills feels best to have a certain attribute (like having a knockback melee so you can charge or ancient spear them at ranged?) What skill are you willing to use to manage your resources (like the witch doctor has runes that can make his mana regen an active thing rather than passive)

That said, without a game to see the context (i.e. Do I want to use bash or cleave for my fury generation? Does having passive fury generation make a difference if I have jack for fury generating abilities? Is cleave even worth using period?) yeah it's just a glorified preview, but you can't say it makes less sense to have than WoW.

 

[toomuchnothing]

I may have missed it somewhere in all the available D3 info but I really hope they let you have multiple presets of Active/Passive skills that you can change between when not in combat. I'd imagine I'd use a drastically different set up when mowing through the masses of random baddies vs going up against a boss on the more difficult settings.

*shudders at the thought of Immune to Physical, Lightning Enchanted Hell Mobs while playing D2 Barb*

 

[Briney-]

A skill calculator is nice. A release date would be better.

 

[Eric the Orange]

It's neat to look at all the skills, but I'd get a better Idea of what they do if they had videos of them in action rather than just text descriptions.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

The big problem I can see with this skill system is that it will just get completely boring after you hit level 30. Everything becomes available, you can just deck yourself out (if you feel so inclined) with all the highest level options, and then you'll have an entire aspect of the progression cutting out by the time you get to Nightmare difficulty.

 

[Vault101]

sorry blizard..you wil NOT get my money MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! how does THAT feel?

(to be fair I wasnt THAT interested to begin with, always online sealed the deal..and their attitude to it)

 

[Signa]

Does this mean there will be no respec options in-game? That was D2's worst fault in the end.

 

[ElBozo]

Does this mean there will be no respec options in-game? That was D2's worst fault in the end.

On the contrary. Thus far you can respec even in combat. Makes you wonder, why even limit the amount of skills you have at the beginning... You can switch them in and out all the time, so why not have all 6 slots available from the get go, at least you won't have to fiddle with the menu whenever you screw up the skill choice. Not that i like freespecs. Just my thought on the matter.

 

[Marmooset]

sorry blizard..you wil NOT get my money MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! how does THAT feel?

Uh oh. They may now go broke.
Luckily, I'll be their China.