All of the classes are still hosting roughly the same skills we've seen in the past, but the class resources have been tweaked and balanced out. Wizards now run on Arcane Power, and have a few spammy damage spells counterweighed with more costly status spells like Slow Time and an Arkon form that transforms both the character and her skills. Monks have Spirit, which slowly fills as you carry out his quick attacks and is then used up with big skills like a group heal, or a wall-creating skill called "Inner Sanctuary." Demon Hunters use two resources, Hatred and Discipline, and they play off of each other, pushing you to balance ranged attacks with traps and prep skills.
Skills themselves are given to players every level or so (which means every class has plenty to play with), and then they're simply chosen from a list to fit into up to six slots, slowly opened up through the progression. At level 5, for example, you might have four skills, but only two slots in which to put those. The Trait system we've seen at past BlizzCons has been simplified, and is now just called "Passives" -- three different passive abilities that you can choose for your character. Skills can be switched out at any time, which makes for a lot of experimentation, letting you try one skill at a time or see how it combines with others.
There are no skill points or talent trees at all, which marks an interesting diversion in the series. Cheng says Blizzard did a lot of testing, and found that the number of choices players made wasn't as important as which choices those were. "Would you rather have one percent bonus crit that you choose five times, which is a system that we could have gone with, or would you rather just pick one passive and say I'm good at critical hits?" asks Cheng. "Would you rather make 20 small decisions or three big ones? What we find, especially when it comes to defining your character, is that three big ones is more interesting and compelling."
Polish also means that Blizzard is smoothing out the flow of gameplay, and one new choice that they've made is that players will no longer have to return to town to sell items. Early in the game, you'll get a "Cauldron of Jordan" that sits in a permanent inventory slot and will pay out vendor price for anything you don't want. There's also a "Nephalim Cube" that will grind unwanted items into the game's raw crafting materials, so any time you need to clear your inventory you can do it right where you stand, instantly.
"Bottom line, we're an action RPG," says Cheng. "And we want to keep the action flowing. Obviously there are objections, like shouldn't there be some reason to go back to town?" And there still will be, at points. Quests return you to town, your (account-wide!) stash is there, and the vendors, repair, and crafting NPCs are all there. "But at the end of the day we want to do what plays best and what played best was the ability to decide at any time, do I want to make this item into gold or do I want to make this item into crafting materials."
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