Back when BW1 had its international release, I had a go at him for his bizarre opinion on it, and over a year later things haven't changed in the slightest. This time the subject is none other than Diablo 3, and the IAS nerf that came in patch 1.03. The heart of his complaint is that he claims Blizzard is trying to force players into a certain playstyle, but if you stop and look at the situation you'll see that it makes no sense. BEFORE the patch was when the game tried to pigeonhole you into something, it basically told you to stack up on IAS or die. It was THE affix everyone wanted to stack up on, and anyone with even the slightest notion of game balance can tell you that it's really, really bad. Now that it's less effective, the other good affixes became that much more desirable by proxy, so you have many more affixes you want to look for when farming or buying.
To make a Pokémon analogy, it's like when Smogon bans a Pokémon because you're forced to have it and/or dedicated counters. Remember the Swift Swim embargo? That's the perfect example, most teams were Politoed, Manaphy, three Swift Swimmers (usually the Kingdra + Kabutops + Ludicolo trio) and Ferrothorn, and the rest were super-dedicated counters to that team. This is basically what happened with Diablo 3 just now.
But here's where Buckley's complaints get really bizarre, though: they come from a MONK player. Sure, the IAS nerf affects Monks harshly because they generate Spirit slower, but at the same time the endgame was made substantially easier with the patch, which ultimately ended up with Barbarians and Monks actually being able to play it without being pigeonholed into a purely defensive skillset just to survive a single one of those blasted bees from Act 2. Right now it's the Wizards and Demon Hunters that are QQing like crazy, because the IAS nerf (along with the previously gamebreaking Nether Tentacles being nerfed to oblivion) affected glass cannons much more harshly.
So let's recap: Tim Buckley complains that a patch that vastly opens up many more possibilities both in terms of skills and equipment is pigeonholing him into something. Sure, seems legit.
This doesn't surprise me in the least bit. Not the Diablo part. The part where Tim Buckley says something stupid.
ReplyDeleteOf course he would complain about Blizzard nerfing the easy way to play. He already takes the easy way out "drawing" his awful comic, so why wouldn't he complain about something that nerfs the easy way out? God forbid he'd have to use skill and finesse for something.