Cyrene Wrote:Bah!
I have a sneaking suspicion they (grenades) aren't going to scale properly (yay old blizz employees)
--Cy
Oh my God you couldn't be more wrong. Not only does the damage scale with Skill Points, it scales with level, automatically. I played a Marksman right up through 18 in the Beta, and despite everyone's bitching and whining about Grenades and Precision Strikes, I went for them hard. I loved every single moment of my gametime on that Marskman, almost entirely because of Grenades and Precision Strikes. THEY ARE INCREDIBLE. Powerful enough to suffice (although I hear some weapons outdo them in spades; I'm anti-cookie cutter and anti-power build, so I avoided such things, and stuck with more mundane items), scale with your level, and just SO MUCH FUN. You don't know fun until you've bounce an Explosive Grenade 30 ft. up a hill, only to have it explode RIGHT in the face of a Zombie, and watch as his body blows into flying, bloody, burning chunks of rotten flesh. I haven't spent this much time just plain LAUGHING during a game since Dungeon Runners, and even then it didn't compare.
Room FULL of monsters? Napalm Strike or Concussive Strike (forget the actual name - the physical Precision Strike), mop up the survivors with Explosive Grenades and rifle fire. Boss pack chasing you? Run away with Sprint, turn and fire a Precision Strike just in front of you, wait for the mobs to come at you and watch them die right in front of you while you pelt them with full-auto fire.
I'm serious. I'm going to be playing a Marksman almost exclusively, and it's precisely because of Grenades (and they're incredibly whacky physics, which EVERYONE but me hates) and Precision Strikes (think big AoE grenades with less distance, but way more damage). I would literally be running along, slinging grenades left and right, trying to kill as many baddies as I could usely solely Grenades and Precision Strikes. It was a game, and it was fun as hell doing tricks with those things. Oh, and Phase Grenades make all those stupid shelves with all the boxes on them a piece of cake - they stick, and explode shortly afterwards. :D
The game has its problems, but I assure you, they DID learn some lessons from Diablo. Skillpower scaling with level is definitely one of them, and as far as I got in the game, I never had a problem with damage with only 1-point investments. That may not hold up forever, but it sufficed for the early areas.