Last week we talked about Diablo 3, and some of the amazing things that I love about it. This week, I am going to have to dip my toe into the dark side. After all, as much as I love the game, and will continue to play it, there are some pretty serious issues that need to be addressed. I intended to write one article and fill it with both love and hate, but it turned out I loved too much about the game. Is the same true for the things I hate?

Blizzard issued a patch for the game a little over a week ago that fixed some things, and made some things worse. I was hoping that after the patch I could completely cancel the "things I hate" article, and everything would be perfect, but sadly, that is not the case. In fact, the patch actually created a completely new entry on my hate list.

Overpowered Mob Affix Combinations

For those who do not play Diablo 3, affixes are modifications that will spawn on the harder enemies in the game. They give them special abilities that make them more difficult. For example, you may encounter a mob with fast, invulnerable minions, mortar, shielding and some other affix.

Blizzard has admitted that some of these are overpowered, and they plan to patch them, but for now, they can be a royal pain. For example, shielding happens too frequently, and lasts too long, making these enemies a real problem. Enemies who have minions that you cannot hurt have the same health as enemies with minions that you can. This needs to be changed because the invulnerable minions absorb so much of the damage.

Once Blizzard fixes this, I will have one less thing to complain about, but there is nothing worse than having to quit a game because you were unlucky and met a mob with impossible affixes. You lose your Nephalem Valor stacks when you quit.

Legendary Drops Are Weak

Let’s say you have never played Diablo, and I told you that there are items in the game that are legendary. Would you think these are the epic items? Wouldn’t you assume that would at least be usable? The sad fact is that the legendary items in Diablo 3 are generally garbage. Not only do they drop incredibly infrequently, (Blizzard may patch the drop rate) but when you finally get one, it is unusable and barely worth selling.

Legendary drops are not necessarily meant to be the most powerful items in the game. They are meant to enhance the lore and be fun, but they should also be useable, and other than a select few, most are utter garbage that no high level character would ever use.

Repair costs

Before the patch, I could have said the repair costs are too low. There was almost no punishment for death. You would respawn until your gear breaks and pay a paltry sum to get it fixed. Blizzard realized that this was a problem, and they addressed it by raising costs tenfold. This is just ridiculous. There are times when I will meet up with a couple of the bad mob affixes I mentioned earlier and die a couple of times. That run will lose most of its profit because of how much it costs to fix my gear.

I think an increase of four or five times the previous cost would have been reasonable, but as it stands, I think Blizzard went a little overboard, and until they decide to lower it a little (they have mentioned that it is a possibility) this will continue to be one of the things I hate.

Public Games

A public game is great when you are under geared and need help getting through a part in hell or nightmare, but in inferno (the hardest difficulty), most people who join your game do not belong there, and they just end up holding you back. For whatever, the option to kick them is always unavailable, and if you already have five stacks of Nephalem Valor, you are stuck carrying this person through the game.

All I want is to be able to kick someone out of the room who does not belong. If I am working on act 2, and a person comes in and is getting one hit killed by everything that moves, that just is not fun, and I want to be able to remove them from my game and get someone who actually belongs there.

Conclusion

Diablo 3 is a fantastic game, and the casual player might not even notice any of these issues. However, as you progress and eventually reach level 60, they will become an issue for you. None of them are enough to make me want to stop playing the game, (I am 150 hours deep at this point) but they are certainly worth taking note of.

Thankfully, it is the modern era of video games, and these issues can (and probably will) be addressed with a patch.

In the end, between the things I love and the things I hate, the love wins. If you are a fan of video games, you should at least give Diablo 3 a chance.  Let us know what you think in the comments below.