Diablo 3 - Week 2 gameplay stats

As part of the announcement of the game design updates in the upcoming Diablo III patch, the D3 team released some interesting gameplay statistics, two weeks after the game's release.

Are you one of the 1.9% of players who have unlocked the Inferno difficulty? Or did your female hardcore character die in Act I Normal like 35% of the characters did?

In a long post about the upcoming changes to Diablo 3, Blizzard talked about the patch, the Inferno difficulty, the balancing of skills and the legendary items. They also really released some fun gameplay stats.

• On average players have created 3 characters each
• 80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30
• 1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty
• 54% of Hardcore players chose a female character
• The majority of Hardcore deaths (35%) occur in Act I Normal
• The most common level 60 build in the game is only used by 0.7% of level 60 characters of that class (not including Passive diversity) *This means that level 60 characters rarely use the same set of skills
• The most used runes for each class at level 60 are:
  
  • Barbarian
    Revenge: Revenge has a 15% chance to become active each time you are hit. Inflict 220% weapon damage to all nearby enemies. You heal 5.0% of your maximum Life for each enemy hit.
    Best Served Cold: After using Revenge, your Critical Hit Chance is increased by 10% for 12 seconds. 
  • Demon Hunter
    Smoke Screen: Vanish behind a wall of smoke, becoming momentarily invisible for 2 seconds.
    Lingering Fog: Increase the duration of the effect to 3 seconds.
  • Wizard
    Diamond Skin: Transform your skin to diamond for 6 seconds, absorbing up to 10853 damage from incoming attacks.
    Mirror Skin: Reflects 50% of damage absorbed back at the attacker.
  • Monk
    Serenity: You are enveloped in a protective shield that absorbs all incoming damage for 3 seconds and grants immunity to all control impairing effects.
    Peaceful Repose: When activated, Serenity heals you for 6202 - 7752 Life.
  • Witch Doctor
    Poison Dart: Shoot a deadly Poison Dart that deals 100% weapon damage as Poison and an additional 40% weapon damage as Poison over 2 seconds.
    Numbing Dart: Toxins in the Poison Dart reduce the target's movement speed by 60% for 2 seconds.

I wish the D3 team revealed more of these stats for players to look at and compare their progress with. Anyway, I've summarized below the important points in that post:

• patch 1.0.2 will come out next week to address service issues
• patch 1.0.3 will contain the first game balance changes, outside of hotfixes
• Player-versus-player (PVP) will come out in patch 1.1. Before that, a Public Test Realm (PTR)will be opened for players to test the PVP arena first.
• the monk's Mantra of Conviction - Overawe skill is "too good" for many players but the D3 team says it's ok
• D3 team implies that Inferno is too hard. "..we’re keeping a close eye on Inferno. The intent of incoming damage is that it should be a very consistent drain on your health, and mitigating that drain is a major part of what makes Inferno mode difficult. Right now, there’s a lot more damage 'spikiness' occurring than feels right, and that’s one major area we’re looking to adjust in patch 1.0.3." (Yes, it is)
• D3 team says "legendary items are not designed to necessarily be the best items in the game". Still, they are planning to rework the legendaries to make them worth the time of players finding them.
• in patch 1.0.3, the item levels (ilvl) of 60+ items will be exposed