While all his arguments seems valid, I failed to see why a comparison between two classes need to be made. Does it mater if another class can do something that you cannot do with your class? Does it event mater if another class is much more powerful than your class?

I'm reading people complain all over the place because their class is so underpower and some other class is so overpower. And that goes on both sides. Some people say X class is UP and Y is OP and some other the exact opposite, Y is UP and X is OP.

OK, he didn't say that the DH are OP, but he did say that DH can have a certain play style and he want the same for Wiz. For me that alone is invalid. And it is the base for all his arguments. D3 is not an MMO and comparing classes (play style/power/whatever) is invalid in my eyes.

The only valid argument for me is if a class can have (or not) valuable builds to progress. A variety of valuable build should be available for each class and for a wide range of prices. Some of them will only allow you progress to a point where a more pricey or more complicate to execute build is need it to progress further.

So to conclude:
- Do Wizards have a variety of valuable builds to progress?
- Do Wizards have a variety of play styles to progress?
- Do Wizards have cheap builds/play styles for Act 1, more expensive for Act 2, even more expensive for Act 3, and so on?

From what I understand the answer for all the above questions is Yes. The same goes for Monks but I cannot speak for Demon Hunters or Witch Doctors.

my current skills: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/w ... aUf!YYacYb
mainstats are increased armor, resist to all schools and hp/s.
avoid dmg by simply kiting around throwing arcane orbs to slow and dmg use hydra w/e i like, usually place them in tactical posistions so i can kite around the hydra. use diamond skin as a oshit button barely use it tbvh. energy armor to increase armor and resist aswell as hp regen. frost nova to generate walls enemies cant walk through( very reliable in caves or small areas), the 15% crit rune on frost nova makes arcane power on crit usefull without having crit on gear. electrocute becouse its a freaking sexy arcane power regen for when its needed which doesnt rly happen that often.

my current stats are 72% armor 71% resist in all schools 26k hp and 8.5k dmg 1500 hp/s.
dmg taken from special moves that ingeneral onehit someone do about 8k to 20k dmg normal attacks from small mobs are around 800-1500 dmg bigger ones deal about 4k per hit.
i often end up fighting an elite till its enrage due to my low dmg im lacking intelect but hey my gear cost me less then 200k on ah.

i think this build is prolly not the best later on but sofar so good ive soaked many elite smashes that should be deadly.

something i noticed as i have very specific stats on my gear, nearly every rare/magic drop has stats that i have on my gear.. and sometimes i think it would be great if i had more MF to actually upgrade my items xD.

You should always leave a space after a punctuation mark, it works great!

lazy bum ^

The same points about the shortcomings of wizards could have been made without comparing to a demon hunter:

• Massive cooldowns on escape skills (there are more available, but they're usually not worth mentioning):
  
  • Frost nova: 12s (9s with Cold Snap), 3s duration.
  • Diamond Skin: 15s, 10k absorb for 6 second (20k with Crystal Shell or 8s duration with Enduring Skin).
  • Teleport: 16s.
  • Wave of Force (knockback): 15s (12s with Force Affinity).
  • Mirror Image: 15s, 7s duration (10s duration with Extension of Will).
  
  While not truely escape skills I think they're worth mentioning:
  
  • Illusionist passive: Reset the cooldown on Teleport and Mirror Image when taking +15% damage in one hit.
  • Temporal Flux passive: Provide 30% slow on arcane damage done to target.
  • Blizzard: 30% slow in a targetable area.
• No burst actives/passives designed to be used optimally with kiting. In fact wizards have several short range and channeling abilities.

Wizard is a kiting class. They need to be able to escape taking damage. I'm sure everyone can agree on that (melee specs that require you overgear the content do not count).

I think cooldowns are in place on escape skills - it should take some degree of skill to be able to escape, not just "lololo faceroll escape abilities with no cooldown non-stop", but the cooldowns are their current values seem a bit over the top.

One could argue you could just chain multiple escape skill, but how many skill slots does that leave to damage abilities? That's right, not a lot. On top of that many of those skills have some disadvantages, for instance: Diamond Skin (removed in one hit in inferno), Mirror Images (does not guarantee a loss of aggro, dies in one hit), Temporal Flux (only lasts 3 seconds so needs to be reapplied often).

Then there's Illusionist - it's a great passive, but at it's core it's completely diametrical to the workings of a kiting class: You have to get hit in order to escape? What's that about?


With the shortcomings mentioned above I think the answer to the first two questions is no. We're shoeholed into one build:
Blizzard + hydra, weapon enchant/familiar and rest escape skills of your choice. Possibly a signature spell.

Definitely no exciting builds (no, I don't think casting blizzard/hydra and then running around in a circle is exciting).

The answer to the third question is yes, however. With enough gear you can start dropping some escape abilities for more damage abilities or you can go all out and spec for archon farming.

I agree there's a lot of "The grass is greener on the other side" mentality because people haven't played other classes and realised they have issues too. But I don't think it's invalid to compare classes. Diablo isn't an MMO, but class discrepancies should still be adresses, because they will ultimately lead to a less enjoyable game (I don't think classes need to be balanced to the same extent as they are in MMOs thought).

You can't compare apples to oranges, however. For instance, it's pretty stupid to compare a wizard to a barbarian and them complain that you can't tank stuff as well... You can't compare a skill of class X with a skill of class Y and conclude anything based on that - you have to look at the full package.

Comparing wizards to demon hunters is, however, pretty close to comparing apples to apples. They're both kiting classes, both rely on escape skill to survive as opposed to gear or healing abilities and they can both deal a high amount of damage when given time on target. The difference between them is - when looking at the full package - demon hunters seem to have better abilities for kiting, escaping and dealing damage.

I write "seem" because I haven't played a demon hunter and don't know for sure if it's really better - but the guy who wrote the thread was able to draw some more objective conclusions after playing both.



....................................

All the moaning aside, I'm doing ok in act II right now - I still die at times, but I can handle all but a few trash mobs (fuck mobs that can avoid hydra/blizzard) and most champion/elite packs (there will always be some combinations that are horrible for certain classes). I've started using Blizzard as a defensive skill instead of damage (using the increased area of effect and duration rune instead of reduced cost rune) and dropped a defensive skill for a signature spell (surprisingly enough the one mentioned in Winkles link - Magic Missile with seeker) which makes things a bit more interesting. Swapped to crit hit/crit damage gear which seems to be the way to go for wizards (more burst, better for kiting).

This was, however, only possible because I managed to sell an amulet for 4M and buy some decent gear - up until that point act II was one long session of anger management.

Tl;dr

Don't read it if you cba.

I have no problems with my tank build that is abit overgeared for act2 but i can tank any attack and diamond skin stays its full duration. downside rly is i need more int to deal dmg.. But im working on that as my gear was really cheap.

I disagree that wizard need to escape taking dmg. With my current gear i can stay put and soak the dmg for about 10sec then kite for 5 and soak again its getting tough when elites hit their enrage timer but even then i have high survivability staying alive for atleast another 30-40sec.

One might say wizard arent supposed to tank but when u look at the abilities and the amount of survivability u can getmout of that it rly is a viable way to go.

I agree that its boring to farm one place over and over again as a tank wizard. Everything takes long even normal mobs. But when a good dps joins in its like an immortal team rampaging the area.

Wizards do have an oddly high number of "tanky" skill making them capable of sustaining a bit of damage. I think it's a bit of fun flavor Blizzard decided to add, but didn't really intend as the "main" playstyle of wizard.

Do you die to the enrages or do you manage to get them down in the 30-40 seconds? Tried Belial yet?

WTB armory for D3 so I can see people's setups :S

While you are correct on all your points and agree with you, you have the option to go for a more tanking build, as Henk mention, something that DH cannot do, as far as I know. So you actually have different play styles available.

Because D3 is a single player game at the core, it doesn't mater if you like the available options for a class or not. You have other classes that can provide you with more play styles. You should play whatever it feels better for you and your play style. If a class does not give you that option it is OK because you have 4 other classes that may do. If at the end you cannot find anything that you like or its close to your play style, then I don't know what to say. Maybe it is Blizzard's fault, maybe it is just you (not you you but you in general).

But yes, I think you are correct that some escape skills need adjustments. Not because you need to keep kiting and escaping, but because you should never need more than 1-2 escape/defensive skills when you are doing content appropriate for your gear, and this is true for all the classes.

A little off topic but I think the main problem in D3 is the GAH/RMAH. Don't get me wrong I like them both. But this is what happening currently:
- good and near perfect items are mostly on RMAH or for crazy amounts of gold on GAH
- some good items are still in GAH and cost several millions
- mediocre items are extremely cheap and cost some thousands
The gap between mediocre and good items is huge. You can buy a mediocre set and farm Act1 for some thousands of gold. Then, to be able to upgrade one item of your set you will need millions. This is happening because so many people can farm Act1 and so few Act3/4. There is an abundance of mediocre items with almost no demand, and absence of good items with huge demand.

You cannot possibly know that. I'm not saying that you are wrong but that unless Blizz come out and say we didn't intent for you to play like that, as long as it is viable option I can only guess that was Blizz's intent.