Obviously, I play a Demon Hunter so I lost quite a bit of DPS on account of the increased attack speed (IAS) nerf that Blizzard did a month ago.
Before the IAS nerf, I was pulling off 2.5 attacks in a second with a bow, which wasn’t anything spectacular. I’d imagine with a better bow (20% IAS), I could’ve passed 3 attacks per second.
At first glance, it does look quite excessive. English longbowmen were renowned for being able to shoot a dozen arrows in the span of a minute.
Here’s the counter-argument! Just replace the handgun with a handbow:
Yes, that’s right – two shots from a handarm can be done in a split second (technically, about 2/100 of a second). Blizzard, give us back the attack speed!
It’s Athene again, annoying is ever but showing how Diablo can be killed with blue gear only.
The video furthers my point about French players having amazingly low latency thanks to Blizzard’s datacenters being in Paris. On my computer, the five cages come up almost simultaneously while in Athene’s version, they appear almost in slow motion.
If you are following game casters on Youtube, you might have heard about Athene who is the self-proclaimed “best gamer in the world”.
I believe he was the first one to down Diablo in Diablo 3 – abound with rumors that Blizzard actually gave him super-equipment. I doubt this is the case, he has a ton of followers on Youtube, so it’s easy to see how every nice item went to Athene to speed up his kill. It’s the same with the first hardcore kill by Kripps & Co, who got incredible items for free from their loyal fans.
So why is Athene so good? Of course, he is pretty hardcore, so that is a big part of the explanation. However, having played Diablo 3 since it’s release, I can tell you my best guess. Athene is good, because he’s French!
No, I’m not prejudiced against certain nationalities (though you know the saying that in Starcraft, the only imba race is Korean). It’s just that Blizzard servers are based in France (Paris suburb Velizy). So while I am lagging and misclicking even at my lowest ping (100ms), he is probably enjoying sub-20ms gameplay.
In other words, he’s playing Diablo 3 like it was meant to be played – as a singleplayer game! While most of us (being not French) are playing a super-twitch game on a lagging connection.
Anyway, check out his speed kills – boasting a DPS of over 400,000.
Btw, mine is steady about 100,000k with full Natalia set which gives me a TON of survival with discipline regen of 3/sec. I need to give credit to Athene for this build – as he demonstrated in a video that a Demon Hunter can stay in shadows for over a minute with Natalia and Preparation. Trust me, you need that much discipline to survive on a lagging connection.
I don’t always need to stay a minute, I use it for Caltrops (damage rune) to clear quickly the pony level as well as act rare and elites that give chase.
Finally, Diablo 3′s error code 1 has been revealed to us in what seems to be a massive EU server meltdown. All servers in the EU are down without any warnings and a bit later, we’re hit with another maintenance update.
So here it is:
Error 1: There was an error creating your own party!
Of course, a vocal minority at the forums feel that error N1 was buying Diablo 3 in the first place. Most would agree however that server uptime in the EU has been terrible. The server busy errors start around 4pm and don’t go away until 11 or 12!
Diablo 3′s release date has finally been confirmed by Blizzard – it’s MAY 15. You can purchase Diablo 3 as a regular edition for about $60 or Collector’s Edition for $100. Of course, you can also get it for “free” by purchasing a full year of WoW. You can also get a digital edition straight from Blizzard, keep in mind in Europe the price is 60 euro!
Mike Morhaime, Blizzard’s CEO said in a statement:
“After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch. We look forward to putting the final polish on Diablo III over the next two months and delivering the ultimate action-RPG experience to gamers worldwide starting on May 15.”
A bit more details on the rollout, country by country:
Starting May 15, gamers with a thirst for fast-paced action and adventure will be able to purchase Diablo III at retailers throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. In addition, gamers in the regions above as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil will be able to buy Diablo III digitally via Blizzard’s Battle.net website.
Players in the listed Latin American countries and in Russia will be able to purchase Diablo III at local retail locations starting June 7. Digital availability for the Russian version of the game will also begin June 7. In addition to the English version, Diablo III will be fully localized into Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, European Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Korean, and Traditional Chinese.
There’s a still slim chance that you can still get in the Diablo 3 closed beta?. Wanna know how? Take a pencil and paper (kiddin’) and follow the instructions posted by the BlizzardCS®:
1. Have an active Battle.net® account
2. Be a registered user of Twitter®
3. During the Contest period become a follower of BlizzardCS® by visiting http://twitter.com/BlizzardCS and clicking “Follow;”
4. Use the hashtag #DiabloBeta and @BlizzardCS in a Tweet,
5. Send an email of the tweet to cstwitterfeedback@blizzard.com. With a link to your tweet
The way I understand the rules, there will be 100 beta keys sent out every week (for the next 5 weeks). You should hurry up and do it ASAP, because my guess is that the longer you wait, the more tweets (and emails) there will be at Blizzard’s marketing HQ.
