Diablo 3 Fan Creation of the Week

The heroes of Diablo are men and women of action. From the smooth teleports of a skilled Wizard to the impressive acrobatics of a cunning Demon Hunter, these heroes know how to get the job done. Some particularly gifted fan artists have even taken up the challenge of crafting these dynamic heroes of Sanctuary in the flesh.

The second figure is a throwback to an earlier era in Sanctuary’s history. It’s an action figure based on the game version of the Diablo II Assassin. TeknoKyo Customs used contour putty in order to further modify the figure in the ways he wanted, and the results are quite intimidating!

This week’s community spotlight shares the work of TeknoKyo Customs and his fully articulated Diablo action figures.The first of these figures is a four-inch replica of a Diablo III Demon Hunter. It took TeknoKyo Customs around four months to complete this figure, and it includes many intricate details, including two ornate crossbows that are ready to shed some demon blood.

The second figure is a throwback to an earlier era in Sanctuary’s history. It’s an action figure based on the game version of the Diablo II Assassin. TeknoKyo Customs used contour putty in order to further modify the figure in the ways he wanted, and the results are quite intimidating!

This week’s community spotlight shares the work of TeknoKyo Customs and his fully articulated Diablo action figures.The first of these figures is a four-inch replica of a Diablo III Demon Hunter. It took TeknoKyo Customs around four months to complete this figure, and it includes many intricate details, including two ornate crossbows that are ready to shed some demon blood.

Want to see more of TeknoKyo’s custom action figures? Make sure to scope out his website’s extensive 

Diablo 3 The Road to Alcamus

As you explore the area north of the Black Canyon Bridge, you will encounter additional monsters including Fallen Overseers, Fallen Hounds, Sand Wasps,  Dune Threshers, Dune Stingers and various others.

Cross into the Stinging Winds area, head north-east and carefully scout around.  Look for Cain’s Last Satchel lying somewhere on the ground, which contains a green story/lore item regarding Belial, Lord of Lies. This entry is added to your journal.

As you explore the area north of the Black Canyon Bridge, you will encounter additional monsters including Fallen Overseers, Fallen Hounds, Sand Wasps,  Dune Threshers, Dune Stingers and various others.

You should now be able to cross the bridge and enter the Black Canyon Mines. To the north-west, there is a Lost Caravan. You might also end up fighting elite bosses here, particularly Beyatt The Elusive One. It is not guaranteed that Beyatt will appear, but this area is the only zone that he can possibly spawn in throughout the entire game.

There are also several side dungeons and event quests to be found in this area, including Sirocco Caverns, Tunnels of the Rockworm, Deserted Cellars,  Blood Cellar, The Ruins, Chamber of the Lost Idol (The Idol of Rygnar), The Crumbling Vault and the Restless Sands. 

Diablo 3 City of Blood

The barricade the Cultists set up on the Road to Alcarnus has forced you to take a detour through the Khasim Outpost and has given Maghda more time to fortify her position. You should proceed without delay.

Captain Davyd unlocked a gate leading to another section of the Stringing Winds that is separated from the previous area by a large ravine. Gradually make your way south while crisscrossing the Stringing Winds desert to accumulate as much treasure and experience as you can from monsters in the area. Make your way south-east towards the Road to Alcarnus.
Shatterbone is a very big Berserker-type creature with a powerful mace that it can swing across or down at you. He also has a lot more health than typical Dark Berserkers because he has the Extra Health trait. His horizontal mace swings land quiet quickly, but you can weather those. What you must really avoid, however, are his vertical mace swings, which are Berserker Power Hits. These inflict 3x the normal amount of damage, but they also cause his mace to become stuck in the ground for a brief moment when he swings and misses his target, which leaves him open to a counter attack for a few seconds. Because of this, your strategy should be to watch carefully for when he raises his mace far behind his head to perform his vertical swing, then dart to either side to avoid the descending strike and, while he’s pulling his mace out of the ground, circle around him and strike Shatterbone from behind.
There’s a waypoint nearby in case you want to return to Hidden Camp to stock up or do anything else. Take the time to explore the western region of this area before heading east. The entrance to Alcarnus is only steps away, right through the gate, but there are enemies to overcome first. Lure all the surrounding enemies away from the creature called Shatterbone and kill them first so that you’ll have health globes available in case you have need them when you fight Shatterbone.

Proceed across the bridge into Alcarnus. Maghda is not far, but her minions have this town very well fortified. Your strategy should be divide and conquer. Advance through the town slowly and draw enemies away from their comrades and pick them off one at a time or in small groups. Fight your way eastward past the cellars along the southern part of the town. You can use your surroundings to your advantage by keeping the buildings between yourself and those enemies that case magic at you.

Maghda won’t be fleeing this time; she’s finally going to stand and fight. Don’t think she’ll be doing it alone, though. At the start of the fight she will summon five Dark Cultists to aid her. Eliminate these minions as quickly as possible and then target Maghda. For the rest of the fight she will summon Berserker pets in groups of three. Maghda’s gauntlets are inset with the Teeth of Diablo, which allow her to buff the minions she summons, making them tougher to kill than standard Berserkers. Attack her minions only when necessary to defend yourself; you need to keep dealing as much damage to Maghda as possible.

Continue to move eastward, then go up the stairs to the north where several groups of cultists are standing in ritualistic circles. Try to kill the Corrupt Vessels before they can be transformed into Tormented Thralls.

Maghda is located in the north-east corner of Alcarnus. Before going there to face her, you might want to use the Town Portal to return to the Hidden Camp and Caldeum Bazaar to stock up on supplies and see to the condition of your equipment. This will make the coming battle with Maghda go much smoother.
Maghda has numerous attacks and abilities, but does not possess any elemental resistances or special traits. Many of her attacks utilize her control over moths and other insects. If Maghda is attacked at close range, she will open her mouth and spew forth a swarm of tiny moths that inflict periodic damage for as long as you remain engulfed in the swarm. She’ll also throw an energized cloud of moths at those who attack her from distance with ranged attacks and powers. This attack will not harm her summoned Berserker pets.

Maghda will teleport all about the battlefield throughout the fight, particularly when she receives heavy damage. She’ll vanish for several seconds while teleporting; use this time to attack her minions and to pick up any health globes lying about.

The hardest thing about this battle comes when Maghda raises her Forcefield. When this happens, she is completely protected against all attacks. In order to make her lower her Forcefield, you have to kill all her summoned minions currently on the battlefield. When they’re all dead and she lowers her Forefield to make her next move, hit her with your most potent attacks and abilities.

When Maghda lies dead, use the Town Portal to return to the Hidden Camp where Tyrael is waiting for you. He tells you that while you were off hunting Maghda, Belial abducted Leah. Without Leah, only Asheara can help you enter the city. You’ll need to go and talk to her at once. 

Diablo 3 Witch Doctor

The Witch Doctor is the only pet-oriented class in Diablo 3 and the natural successor to the Necromancer from Diablo 2.

While the Witch Doctor does not have nearly as many summons as the Necromancer did, the Witch Doctor does have by far the most powerful pets in game. It is also the class with the most damage over time effects.

The Witch Doctor also excels at crowd control, having a variety of effects such as charm (enemies attack each other), fear (enemies run away in fear), and hex (enemies are unable to act).

In this Diablo 3 Witch Doctor guide, you are going to get an overview of Witch Doctor gameplay, learn its strengths and weaknesses, see its skills and abilities, and discover the best stats, builds, and leveling path available for the class. Here are the sections for the guide:

The rest of this particular page of the D3 Witch Doctor guide will focus in on gameplay and the strengths and weak of the class so you can know whether or nit this class is right for you.

Diablo 3 Witch Doctor Guide – Gameplay

As mentioned in the introduction, the Witch Doctor is a pet class. While you do not have to use pets, it certainly helps this class out.

The reason pets are so essential for this class is that until higher levels, the Witch Doctor does not have a good method for handling swarming enemies – that is fast melee enemies that attack you from all sides.

Instead, the Witch Doctor is able to deal a lot of damage to enemies in a line or cone. Pets along with spells like Grasp of the Dead help keep enemies on one side in particular so you do not get surrounded.

At higher levels, you get better skills for handling swarmers, but even then the Witch Doctor does not have many true escapes (i.e. knockbacks, teleports, movement speed buffs) but rather relies on pets and control effects for defense. As a result, you can count on pets being an extensive part of your Witch Doctor experience.

This is not to say that the Witch Doctor is helpless. In fact, it can dish out as much damage as any class in the game, particularly with its Soul Harvest buff. It also gets a variety of damage reductions through passive skills and it can use a shield without a major damage loss. Combining these can make this class quite beefy.

At the end of the day, you should expect to spend most of your time dealing damage from range and using your pets as tanks. At level 60 with high level equipment and skills, you may be able to ditch the pets and take a more aggressive role.

D3 Witch Doctor Guide – Strengths

The primary strength of the Witch Doctor class is its raw damage output. The Soul Harvest ability allows you to literally double your damage and it can be kept up nearly 100% of the time. As a result, the Witch Doctor’s damage is off the charts by default.

In particular, the Witch Doctor deals excellent single-target damage. This is due to its Poison Dart ability. With the Splinters rune, this skill dishes out 180% weapon damage and has a mana cost so low you can cast it indefinitely. When you combine a practically free to use, high-damage skill with a huge self buff to damage, it is not surprising the Witch Doctor’s strength is single target damage output.

Another strength of the Witch Doctor is its pets and snares. Between these two things, it is not very often that the Witch Doctor actually gets hit by enemies. When you consider the large amount of Intelligence the Witch Doctor has increases its magic resistance significantly, it turns out the Witch Doctor takes very little damage in general.

Finally, the Witch Doctor gets access to a lot of control abilities which will come in handy in PvP. It has an AoE fear, an AoE charm, and the Hex ability which causes nearby targets to be unable to act and take extra damage.

However, all classes have their weaknesses, including the Witch Doctor. In the next part of this Diablo 3 Witch Doctor guide, we are going to reveal the Witch Doctor’s weaknesses so you know exactly what pitfalls to avoid as a WD in D3.

Diablo 3 Witch Doctor Guide – Weaknesses

There are a few weaknesses to the Witch Doctor class. As mentioned in the previous part of the article, the Witch Doctor lacks escapes and as a result can get in trouble if it gets surrounded by enemies. The Horrify skill can help you escape these situations, but that leads me to the second Witch Doctor weakness.

The next weakness of the Witch Doctor class is that it feels the most constrained by only being able to equip 6 abilities to its hotbar. If you decide to use the Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan pet, you will only have 4 skills left to choose from. If you use Soul Harvest (which you should) that leaves you with three skills left. This means that you have only 3 skills to pick out your primary damaging abilities as well as your defensive skills of choice!

Due to the low number of skills the Witch Doctor has, you tend to suffer in either AoE damage or survivability. Most players will have to choose between an AoE skill or a defensive skill for their final slot, which either slows you down when it comes to AoE or makes you a bit vulnerable if you get caught in a bad position.

One solution to this would be to just play in groups or only choose one pet to play with. I would not recommend tossing out Soul Harvest as this skill provides too much of a DPS buff to justify giving up for any skill. 

Diablo 3 on PlayStation will have exclusive Sony-related items

Diablo 3 on PlayStation 4 will have exclusive Sonyrelated items
Diablo 3 on PlayStation 4 will have exclusive Sonyrelated items

Sony has announced that Blizzard’s release of Diablo 3 on the PlayStation 3 and 4 will boast some exclusive, Sony-related items, including something called Drake’s Amulet (named after none other than Uncharted’s Nathan Drake).

A few of these items will be available when the game launches on the console, but Sony said more items would be coming in the future.

Sony has announced that Blizzard’s release of Diablo 3 on the PlayStation 3 and 4 will boast some exclusive, Sony-related items, including something called Drake’s Amulet (named after none other than Uncharted’s Nathan Drake).
A few of these items will be available when the game launches on the console, but Sony said more items would be coming in the future.

 

Diablo 3 for consoles may be different, but it’s still Diablo

Diablo 3 for consoles different, but still Diablo
Utter the phrase “Diablo for consoles” to anyone that has some familiarity with gaming history and you’re bound to hear some Sideshow Bob-style shudders in response. Blizzard’s skeleton-clicking series didn’t have the most graceful entry into the world of console gaming, and after a disastrous 1998 PlayStation port Diablo hasn’t dared to leave its PC home.

This year, however, Blizzard revealed Diablo 3 would make the transition with versions coming to Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4, finally giving console players a taste of the magic they’ve been missing out on for well over a decade.

Thankfully, Blizzard has been much more thoughtful this time about transitioning a mouse-and-keyboard-driven experience to console controls.

This year, however, Blizzard revealed Diablo 3 would make the transition with versions coming to Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and PS4, finally giving console players a taste of the magic they’ve been missing out on for well over a decade.