Diablo 3 Open Beta Weekend Review and Early Strategy

This past weekend starting from April 20th (4-20... ye) Blizzard opened the Beta realm to the public for a grand test and tease. Members of SOF took little time to get in with 2 of us breaking through the wall of server hammering and beating the Beta completely that very Friday night. We're well aware of how difficult it was for most people to access the beta, with such errors as 37, 32, 300005 etc... We just kept on trying until we got in and were able to play. We began playing separate games to get a feel for how it would work solo. One of us played the Monk, the other playing the Wizard.

All in it took about 3 hours to complete the Beta for each of us and defeat the Skeleton King. It was truthfully an action packed 3 hours full of lots of learning, and even some glitch finding too.

Through-out the Beta I found myself asking "Why am I picking up gold? if it's all going to be erased in 3 days..." but it didn't matter. We picked up everything, explored every cavern and over-turned every loose stone and jar. With the Wizard having defeated the Skeleton King already, I still continued to do open game 4 man King runs over and over until the level was maxed at 13, just to see what kind of item drop variance we would see. although I had some Magic Find gear (about 28% MF) I still didn't see much more than 2 or 3 magic items each King drop, which mostly lead to Salvaging them at the Blacksmith anyway.


Crafting was particularly neat, can't wait to see the full use come May 15.


By the end of level 13 I was able to get a really hard hitting Wizard formed, never even died once, throwing about 48.83 damage using the wand pictured below:

It quickly becomes apparent that in Diablo 3 items will play just as important a role as they did in LOD if not more so, take note that each class receives damage bonuses based on either Strength, Dexterity and as for the Wizard Intelligence. This made me favor items that added to Intelligence, like Crafting up a +4 Intelligence on a set of Bracers that also had + Vitality was awesome.


With the Wizard being a distance caster I was less concerned with armor and focused more on doing as much damage as possible, part of that meant getting extra damage from rings purchased at a merchant. Rocking 2 rings, both with + 2-4 damage and 4% Magic Find. Shout out to Force Strategy Gaming on the damage rings, he mentioned it in one of his videos.

This got me thinking, it may be advantageous to hoard different sets of gear, say a whole set of gear that has level requirements across the board that focuses on maximizing + Experience Gained, for use when trying to Super Level, seems the Radiant Star Ruby would be good for that.

Or, perhaps another set of gear maximizing Gold Find, since Gold will play a role at the Auction House. The Radiant Star Emerald looks good here too, but there's an error, blizz... Also, left wondering if it says "Can be inserted into Armor with sockets" but lists only Helm and Weapon, what about body armor? Tunics? etc...

Naturally of course, some people will have a Magic Find set of gear for item hunting, similar to D2 the Topaz looks to be the Gem here.

When it came to Skill Strategy I favored the Magic Missile until I could finally use Spectral Blade for Primary. Using Arcane Orb with Obliteration Rune modifier was Secondary. I found myself attack most groups by blasting a few Orb's into them and cleaning up the stragglers with the Missile. At times when I would get surrounded by enemies I would resort to Wave of Force if they were skeletons or the like which were likely to be all killed in one shot. Saving Frost Nova with Shatter for when I really got into trouble and needed to escape.

In general the Graphics were excellent, the Sound was great, AI very interesting and will be curious to see how it progresses through Nightmare and Inferno,