Diablo 3 Demon Hunter was announced last, so it stands to reason that it is the archetype in most need of fine-tuning. After all, the Barbarian is almost identical to it’s Diablo 2 counterpart. The Wizard looks very similar as well.
Blizzard, however, has been sending mixed signals when it comes to the scope of the changes to class – as a result of user feedback during the closed beta.
First, they said that the Demon Hunter is all fine and dandy and that the only changes will be to the skill unlocks:
We’re not overhauling the class, just changing up what skills unlock at which levels and fixing some of their resource starvation issues. It’s easy to change this kind of stuff. Spreadsheet stuff.
However, on the Italian Battle.net forum, they posted:
We are radically changing the resource management of the Demon Hunter, including changes to unlocking skills, use of resources and more. (Translated)
I think both of these could actually be true.
The demon hunter is the only class where the player has to manage two resources at the same time: hatred and discipline.
In an ideal world, it could have worked but when you consider everyone of the other character has a single resource, you realize that might be a losing battle for the game designers. There will be pressure from players to see a streamlined character.
There have been enough complaints already from beta testers about the healing orbs falling too far away for ranged characters, requiring constant going back and forth. So you add dual resource management to the health management issues already present, it becomes a bit too much.
