If you can't wait for Diablo 3...

[lucassot]

Cool thanks for the clarification Marius.

[revengous]

ima be a witch!

just finished downloading now, who wants to be my friend in game?

[Mythor]

And it's the 0.98 patch, which indicates it's fairly close to release.

The version is just a number, doesn't indicate it's close to a release. They've only got two acts in the game thus far and are wanting to add more.
It's getting closer to an Open Beta, which is why they're running a stress test this weekend, but release is still quite a ways off.

[revengous]

been playing as a witch, only died twice so far - pretty proud of that

Ive got 1 of each elemental spell, and together its easy to deal with swarms of things

[Marius]

Here's a very Diablo 1-ish shot of my duellist. He's pretty fun, though it's mostly run up to swarms and cleave them all down.

[revengous]

whats melee like marius? Im glad I picked witch, its pretty much op at everything, decent dps, amazing life

I tanked the boss that you are (probably passed by time you read this) with ease

Im in act 2 and its hard, parties help though, heaps of extra loot too.

[Marius]

Melee you just run up and click on things to kill them, usually in small groups, sometimes one by one.

You do a lot of damage per hit, though.

It's not harder than witch, though. I have a witch as well, and she just goes around firestorming everything. But it's no easier than melee.

Ranger is the hardest of the three, I'm finding. Though that could be because I've not yet built her area effect up yet.

[Mythor]

I find Ranger pretty easy. Ranged attacks ftw! It does pay to pick up some kind of area attack skill asap with them though. Or get used to backpedalling a lot!
I had a bit of a go at the ladder race thing today and got my Ranger to 11. Might've got to 12 but I got disconnected when they did the backup.

Tried a Templar earlier but the Strength/Intelligence split feels a bit weird. And the awesome sword I found isn't real useful for Templars, who seem to favour blunt weapons early in their passive skills.

[revengous]

I find Ranger pretty easy. Ranged attacks ftw! It does pay to pick up some kind of area attack skill asap with them though. Or get used to backpedalling a lot!
I had a bit of a go at the ladder race thing today and got my Ranger to 11. Might've got to 12 but I got disconnected when they did the backup.

Tried a Templar earlier but the Strength/Intelligence split feels a bit weird. And the awesome sword I found isn't real useful for Templars, who seem to favour blunt weapons early in their passive skills.

the passive skill tree is too big, trying to find +mana regen is really hard

1 more skill point and Ill be running with 300+ health regen a minute, my aim before the open beta closes

[wyver]

I've been playing this for most of the day! its pretty fun, I found my self losing 6 hours to it when it felt like 20 minuets.

My only problems are, the bartering system it feels odd to me how there is no coin involved, it felt like I had to give up all my scrolls of identify just to buy some armour or a better weapon and and selling items gave me nothing of real value like a single scrap of scroll or part of a gem, and the fact that killing so many zombies, monsters and "bad" guys, just felt pointless as most did not drop loot at all or any "money", where I did feel like I levelled up quite quickly but progression felt lack lustier as skills are passive and from I can tell you only get skills when you level up a certain number of levels. I was playing as a duellist and it was till level 6 that I gained any sort of "perk". I don't know about the other characters you can play as but I found the one I chose was a bit, for the lack of a better word, boring...

as a highlight, the game looks great (grimdark) and feels like Diablo but not to the point were you feel like your just playing some hack 'n' slash knock off. its loads of fun and I can really recommend it for people who are really craving a fix while waiting for D3.

It's sad though, as I can see a lot of the community on PoE (including my self) is going to leave the day Diablo is released, shame really because overall the game is pretty solid and fun from what I have played. I guess once I am done with Diablo I might come back to PoE.

Edit: Also how crazy is that passive skill tree, **** me I haven't seen some thing that big since FF10

[Marius]

where I did feel like I levelled up quite quickly but progression felt lack lustier as skills are passive and from I can tell you only get skills when you level up a certain number of levels. I was playing as a duellist and it was till level 6 that I gained any sort of "perk". I don't know about the other characters you can play as but I found the one I chose was a bit, for the lack of a better word, boring...

I got my first duellist skill at level 2... by level 6 I had three active skills to use.

To use active skills you get given skill gems and have to slot them into the armor gem slots.

I also find the loot OK in general. I exchange most of the magic items I find for scraps of transmutation gems, and find a lot of useful things. By level 16ish my duellist was running around in mostly rares.

[Marius]

My hardcore ranger died at level 17. Encountered a champion bear thing in a cave that had the extra fast/extra strong/cold damage combination. Couldn't kite it.

Though at least it frees up an opportunity to try out a different sort of build.

I like the ranger as it is a bit more targeted than the duelist or mage. Mage is just area spam. The duelist is sword area spam. The ranger area skills require you to target something first.

[Mythor]

I need to give Hardcore a shot at some point, usually just play Default league. Is it only the one-death kind of Hardcore? Or do things get a boost in difficulty as well?
Maybe I'll start a Hardcore Marauder and see how far I get just smashing things.

Started a dual-wield Duelist after lunch to make use of an orange quality sword I looted off Hillock. Rounding up enemies to smash with Cleave is good fun.

[Marius]

Hardcore is if you die your character gets moved to the normal league, but no extra difficulty.

This means you can't access your hardcore stash anymore since the stash is exclusive to each league.

When a hardcore character dies I just delete them and start over.

[Cyrinno]

I do like that the hardcores get moved over to softcore though just incase you want to continue