The Other Three Characters

The Wizard, Witch Doctor, and Barbarian were all playable as well. (Cleverly, only those three characters were visible to select when the show first began at 10am, but around 12:30pm, when the opening ceremonies ended, the Monk was suddenly added to the character selection screen.)  Each of the other three characters were improved and refined from last year's version, with huge changes to their skill trees and the order of their skills. This year's demo characters were higher level as well, allowing players to experiment with a wider variety of spells and techniques. "New" characters started out at level 6 last year. This year they started at level 12, and could be leveled up to 14 or 15, in the much larger "dungeon" area.

The Wizard was a great deal of fun, and is both the most familiar and most challenging of the characters to new players. The Male Wizard was a playable character this year, and picking the gender was the easiest of a player's decisions, since the Wizard had a dizzying array of offensive skills and spells. New characters began at level 12, with a variety of offensive, defensive, and passive skills already selected and hotkeyed. (This helped players get right to it, rather than wasting their limited play time setting up their character.) Wizards had half a dozen offensive spells to start, all with radically different ranges, mana costs, casting rates, and damage types. Many more were available once your new wizard started to level up, and by level 14, as I finished clearing out the beta area, I had already filled my hotkeys and wanted more, as I tried to experiment with options as diverse as Spectral Blade, Explosive Blast, Magic Missile, Wave of Force, Arcane Orb, Charged Bolt, Frost Nova, Electrocute, and Energy Twister.

Of course you don't know what all of those do, but neither did I! New players to the Wizard are going to have a wild time trying out different builds, loading up different skills to see how they improve at higher levels, and using the game's planned respecing feature to change their skills around. I felt like I got a good flavour for how the other three characters played at the mid-levels, during my demo time.  I spent an hour with the Wizard and felt like I'd hardly scratched the surface.

Playing the Witch Doctor was almost a relief after the barrage of options the Wizard presented. A new Witch Doctor has just as many spells, but there are more passives early on, and his active spells are clearly divided between summoning and offensive attack spells. Both must be used to succeed, since his offensive attacks aren't as powerful as those of the Wizard, and his summoned creatures (at least at these early levels) aren't strong enough to do much killing on their own.

The Witch Doctor is somewhat similar to Diablo 2's Necromancer, in that both have summoned creatures, limited offensive spells, and some mind control abilities. The Witch Doctor's mental powers are much more direct and less powerful than were the Necromancer's Curses. Early on the Witch Doctor is able to frighten away enemies, but little more, and none of his Mind Control spells have the offensive potential of some of the Necromancer's Curses. Compensating for this are his offensive spells, which are considerably more effective than those of the Necromancer, if less destructive than those of a true mage, like D3's Wizard or D2's Sorceress.

As a result the Witch Doctor is a tricky juggling act for the designers. He's got to have minions good enough to be useful, but not so strong he can just sit back and watch them go. And he's got to have spell attacks powerful enough to dispatch the enemies, but not so strong that he can survive with just those, Wizard-style. This delicate balance was working fairly well in the BlizzCon build, though I would have liked a few more low level offensive spells. Firebomb and Plague of Toads were the two main options, and both were fun to use, but Firebomb was more effective in 90% of situations, and it got a bit monotonous, endlessly hurling the explosive, fire-grenades. Especially when compared to the Wizard's huge array of low level attacks. There are higher level Witch Doctor spells that sounded like a lot of fun, but they were either too deep down the skill tree, or were disabled in the BlizzCon demo.

The Barbarian, like the Wizard, will be immediately familiar to any experienced action RPG gamer. He's the archetypal warrior, huge and crushing, a master of brute force attacks. He can dual wield weapons, use a weapon and a shield, or confidently use the largest two-handed polearms and axes. Even his basic Attack is impressive, not that you'll want to settle for that very often, with a variety of melee attacks such as the mega-damage Bash or the multi-target striking Cleave, or... well actually, those two were pretty much it, at BlizzCon. The Barbarian has a surprising number of low level passives and defensive skills, virtually none of which were of any use or need in the BlizzCon demo. Playing the Barbarian was actually somewhat disappointing, if you'd seen him demonstrated in panels or gameplay movies, since those always show off his awesome higher level offensive skills, none of which were usable in the BlizzCon demo.

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