Diablo 3 diary: Monk reflections in the desert

As a monk is wont to do, I reflect on my travels in Diablo III to this point in Act II. Warning: Spoilers may be included, so read on at your own risk.

John Keefer

May 18, 2012 10:00 AM

I have traveled a good 17 hours into Diablo III and am now wandering the desert of Act II. As a monk, I must reflect on what I have learned an observed in my travels and impart that wisdom to those that may follow. Be warned: These reflections are not meant for those queasy about spoilers. Again, do not read these ramblings if you want to remain unenlightened about key boss battles from my early adventures. There is something oddly familiar about the boss fights in the game so far. The culmination of Act I has me going against a steroid enhanced version of original Diablo nasty, The Butcher, and while the fight was relatively easy, I had this faint feeling of deja vu. Why was it easy? I had not seen the fight before and I was still not particularly adept at using all my abilities other than mashing the left and right mouse buttons. Then it hit me: I had seen this fight before in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard had recycled some of the mechanics from fighting Icehowl in the Trial of the Crusader raid with other fights that require you to take visual environmental cues and not stand in the fire. While I can understand one fight pulling from the Blizzard hive mind of creativity, I was not expecting a second fight to plagiarize from the hugely popular MMO. Sure enough, a fight in Act II has me crossing daggers with the demon witch Mahgda, who chooses the form of a spider to try to finish me off. After the first third of the fight, she disappears and send a wave of spiders after me. Rinse and repeat at two-thirds. Sound familiar? The final boss battle of Azjol-Nerub going toe-to-toe with Anub'arak. While I understand there can be subconscious design similarities from developers in the same company who probably love their World of Warcraft, two major fights in less than two acts seems a bit blatant. It didn't take away joy I had in killing either boss, or looting all the rare goodies and gold that gushed from the corpses, but the challenge is a minimized when players who have played too many hours in WoW can choreograph these Diablo III boss fights almost immediately without ever having been through the game once. It almost felt like cheating.

Dual-wielding these 'daggers' can lead to high cholesterol.

While the creativity may be lacking in some boss fights, I must give them props for little bits of unexpected flavor they add to the game. While perusing through the auction house to add a few rare items I had found, I stumbled across a legendary item (pictured above) that can only be described as high in saturated fat. No word on whether you can socket a veggie version. The auction house functionality, though, has me a bit frustrated. While I had opined previously that I love the way the out-of-game AH sends stuff to your stash without the mailbox go-between of WoW, the search functionality is limited to legendary or set items, or looking for a max buyout price. I'd much rather be able to search by keyword. Is a WoW-style AH system too much to ask? I had commented in an earlier dissertation that I had disdained using followers to try the game as a solo experience. I rethought that position and added the Enchantress follower when I met her. Being passionate about the story and lore in any game I play, I found that NOT having a follower had robbed me of certain insights and stories these three extra characters (a Templar and Scoundrel are also available) can provide. Some of it is colorful banter, while other bits offer a bit of history from the follower's perspective. Unfortunately, the randomness of the game also applies to these conversations as I am now hearing the same stories and comments multiple times throughout the course of my travels. My monk takes it in good-natured stride, but as his alter ego, sometimes I just want to bash them in the face with my mace, especially when they start talking over the recording of a key diary or tome I have found. One character whose dialogue I have not minded is my new best friend, the jeweler Covetous Shen. His voice reminds of character actor James Hong and some of his whiny yet witty exchanges have made me chuckle. His prices can be 'ungodly' expensive, but unsocketing items and combining gems is a necessity to get the most out of the gear I find. I'll be back again next week with more musings for my Monk diaries. Hopefully I can find the ingredients to get me to Whimsyshire. Also, Indie Jeff plans to bring his Demon Hunter this weekend so we can try some multiplayer.

John Keefer

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May 18, 2012 10:00 AM

John Keefer posted a new article, Diablo 3 diary: Monk reflections in the desert.

As a monk is wont to do, I reflect on my travels in Diablo III to this point in Act II. Warning: Spoilers may be included, so read on at your own risk.
- Keefinator
  
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  May 18, 2012 12:07 PM
  
  I have been listening to every character's story, exploring every bit of random map and dungeon and usually portal back to sell stuff when my bags are full. I'm level 22 at 17 hours in. To be honest, I may have left my comp once for an hour and still been logged into the game, but either way, I am getting my money's worth out of it, that's for sure.
- PointlesS76
  
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  May 18, 2012 12:14 PM
  
  I'm pretty much at the same point as you, and I was really surprised to see how interesting each character's story is. For such short lines of dialog, they really fit a lot of information when you talk to a character.
- Barnahog
  
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  May 18, 2012 12:42 PM
  
  James Hong has become an archetype of old asian characters. Dude is awesome, I thought Covetous Shen was James Hong at first.
- rtrson
  
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  May 18, 2012 3:20 PM
  
  Does anyone feel like the followers in D3 are absolutely useless? I play demon hunter and use the tank guy follower. It never fails, run into a pack of mobs and they all completely ignore the follower and head straight for me. I don't expect every mob to ignore me. That would make the game too easy. But what's the point of a tank that doesn't get the attention of the mobs?
  - Keefinator
    
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    May 18, 2012 4:04 PM
    
    The Templar has an ability that will taunt them off of you if you are low on health, but you have to choose that ability.
- dh_jin
  
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  May 19, 2012 5:41 AM
  
  monk is stupidly under animated. you can't use weapons with any animations, only if you use first weapons because all other weapons go from held in hand to holstered during animation when you start fighting
- _Ipecac_
  
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  May 19, 2012 8:34 PM
  
  I played a little WOW at one point. level 40-something. To be honest, I don't see any WOW parallels, and I certainly don't want Diablo to imitate any aspect of WOW, auction house or otherwise. My only real beef so far is that I'm about 12 minutes from finishing the game and I feel like, on normal mode, I have only died by accident, when I wasn't paying attention. The game is too easy on normal mode and I'm sorry it was so easy to play through. It should be about 20% tougher. I'm sure it'll be a blast to replay, though. I have repeatedly said to my co-players "I think they nailed it.. I wish it was harder though."
- Keefinator
  
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  May 19, 2012 9:52 PM
  
  Just finished the game on normal difficulty. Level 31. I'll try to have a writeup on Monday. Without giving any spoilers, the story was really interesting. The beginning of Act III was incredibly intense, and while there were some aspects of the story that I was able to guess, the lead into Act IV was a surprise.
  
  Overall, and very entertaining 29 hours.
  - MOOMANiBE
    
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    May 19, 2012 11:34 PM
    
    Do you plan on going through nightmare? Curious to see if your opinions on bosses and such change once you get to the harder stuff.
    - rottdcorpse
      
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      May 20, 2012 6:09 AM
      
      I just started Act 2 Nightmare...not that much mopre difficult than Normal.
      
      In normal I died 3 times in the whole playthrough, Act 1-4.
      
      On Nightmare I died 5 times in the first act.
    - Keefinator
      
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      May 20, 2012 7:06 AM
      
      I just started Nightmare and died outside the Cathedral to an Elite and his mobs. again, I will have to adjust my play style, but I want to check out the new smithing and jewel crafting stuff
- ManiacalMoose
  
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  May 21, 2012 5:39 AM
  
  It doesn't bother me that they reused boss fight mechanics from WoW. Actually, I don't even think its possible for them to avoid doing that because they've done just about everything they can do with boss fights in WoW.
  
  What's disappointing is how easy bosses are on Normal. For most of them, I would ignore their gameplay mechanics entirely and just beat them down in as little as several seconds to as long as a minute. They don't get much harder on Nightmare either; it's the rare spawns you need to watch out for.
  
  Normal difficulty feels like it was designed for people who have no experience with games whatsoever.
  
  Bear in mind that I think the game is absolutely awesome overall.
  - Keefinator
    
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    May 21, 2012 7:04 AM
    
    Yeah, some of the elite individual and Elite group fights are worse than the actual boss fights in Nightmare. Skeleton King fight was just as easy with the same tactics. We'll see how the boss is when I get to the end of Act I in Nightmare.