Diablo III-2: It's Normal to have Nightmares of Hell in Inferno.

[otakuryoga]

A few helpful links to start:

http://us.blizzard.com/diablo3/
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/

Obligatory wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_III

comprehensive list of random dungeons: http://orcz.com/Diablo_3:_Random_Dungeon

just getting this one started since we went over in last thread


I actually fought one of these mobs as my wizard with my 20k DPS build (LOW for Inferno.) It was hellish, I died like.. 4 or 5 times.

Of course they also had Nightmarish which forces you to run away SLOW because Inferno.

I abandoned 5 Nephalem Valor to avoid fighting these things.

i was luckily able to fight em on a narrow stair so only one at a time could hit me..still died 4x
so, yeah, if i see fast/shielding again i will probably just restart the quest i am on

[leafman]

Has anyone had problems with Vampiric Plagued champions? I've gotten them twice on Nightmare so far and they regen super fast, to the point they are unkillable.

[AgentPaper]

Has anyone had problems with Vampiric Plagued champions? I've gotten them twice on Nightmare so far and they regen super fast, to the point they are unkillable.

If vampiric is a problem, your DPS is probably too low, or you're not avoiding their stuff sufficiently. More likely the former, I personally never had any problem with vampiric mobs on any difficulty. (as a barbarian)

[Anarion]

I think teleport, fast, molten is pretty darn unfair. Particularly when the mobs get smart and make a full circle around you. Shield, mortar, imprison mobs have also caused me a lot of problems.

[Artanis]

*grumble*

My internet is working better than it has in nearly two weeks, to the point where my ping might be below 750ms for once, and what happens? The crew at my rig finally gets their s*** together and starts making me work instead of slacking off and playing D3 my entire shift.




:smalltongue:

[Corlindale]

Has anyone had problems with Vampiric Plagued champions? I've gotten them twice on Nightmare so far and they regen super fast, to the point they are unkillable.

The only time I had serious trouble killing a vampiric+plagued champion was when I was trying to run a summon WD and it leeched from all my summons at once. But without minions it's usually not too much trouble to take them down, as long as you make sure not to stand around in their zones.

I just reached Inferno with my WD. Act I seems fairly manageable so far, but champion packs are evil. Had to give up on a group with mortar + invulnerable minions + other stuff (I HATE invulnerable minions!).

[Avilan the Grey]

I am beginning to suspect that Blizzard has stacked their randomizer. The official explanation for some elite mobs being virtually unbeatable is that the combinations are completely random, but it seems like 90% of all Melted mobs are also Teleporters or "Fast"...

[Amiel]

Here's something I've wondered about; what has happened to Leah?
Was her body rent by the possession by Diablo? Was her soul destroyed by Diablo's vile intrusion? Or displaced into the aether so that her spirit may be around?

[pffh]

Here's something I've wondered about; what has happened to Leah?
Was her body rent by the possession by Diablo? Was her soul destroyed by Diablo's vile intrusion? Or displaced into the aether so that her spirit may be around?

I'm guessing the same thing that happened to the Dark Wanderer happened to her. She was consumed by and became Diablo

[Traab]

Here's something I've wondered about; what has happened to Leah?
Was her body rent by the possession by Diablo? Was her soul destroyed by Diablo's vile intrusion? Or displaced into the aether so that her spirit may be around?

Another possibility is in the final cinematic there MIGHT have been a chunk of diablo that didnt disintegrate. Means leah might still exist in some form now that we kicked the prime evils ass. Sort of like how tyreal fell to earth, she may have done the same.

[Meta]

Another possibility is in the final cinematic there MIGHT have been a chunk of diablo that didnt disintegrate. Means leah might still exist in some form now that we kicked the prime evils ass. Sort of like how tyreal fell to earth, she may have done the same.

It's the black soulstone that doesn't burn up.

[leafman]

If vampiric is a problem, your DPS is probably too low, or you're not avoiding their stuff sufficiently. More likely the former, I personally never had any problem with vampiric mobs on any difficulty. (as a barbarian)


The only time I had serious trouble killing a vampiric+plagued champion was when I was trying to run a summon WD and it leeched from all my summons at once. But without minions it's usually not too much trouble to take them down, as long as you make sure not to stand around in their zones.

I'd avoid their green circles if I could, but when there is two or three of them they like to spam those so I can't stand in melee and hit them, which on a barb is about my only choice. My dps is probably low though, I was lvl 48 or 49 when I encountered them last night and I had a dps at ~1220. I bought a new axe that bumped me to 2600, but my barb is 51 now, I don't know if that is good DPS though (doesn't include temp buff from berserker).

[MammonAzrael]

It's the black soulstone that doesn't burn up.

Was the Black Soulstone even there? From what I could see Adria did her little ritual, Leah was possessed by the seven Evils, and then went off to the High Heavans. The seven were no longer bound in the Black , unlike the situation with the Dark Wanderer.

Additionally, it's possible that Leah's body/soul has been completely subsumed by Diablo; she was created explictly as a vessel for the Lord of Terror after all.

[Avilan the Grey]

Was the Black Soulstone even there?

The ending video clearly shows it rotating falling downwards.

[MammonAzrael]

The ending video clearly shows it rotating falling downwards.

Weird. Well that answers that then.

[Starwulf]

So, I finally got to visit Whimsyshire. Was quite hilarious actually. It also dropped me my very first Legendary! Frostburn Gauntlets! Absolute rubbish really, but they seem to be worth a small fortune, I guess just because of the name, LOL. I put em up on the AH, we'll see if they sell for the exorbitant amount I set for them(which was about a fraction of the exorbitant amount others had put them up for and already had bids(I saw several pairs with bids of 10mil gold with buyouts of 30mil. I put mine up for 50k start bid, 5mil buyout).

[ex cathedra]

So, I finally got to visit Whimsyshire. Was quite hilarious actually. It also dropped me my very first Legendary! Frostburn Gauntlets! Absolute rubbish really, but they seem to be worth a small fortune, I guess just because of the name, LOL. I put em up on the AH, we'll see if they sell for the exorbitant amount I set for them(which was about a fraction of the exorbitant amount others had put them up for and already had bids(I saw several pairs with bids of 10mil gold with buyouts of 30mil. I put mine up for 50k start bid, 5mil buyout).

Frostburns, unfortunately, are generally worth a bit less than 20k each. 5m buyout is kind of completely outrageous. For reference, I recently sold an Immortal King's Soul Cage (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/immortal-kings-soul-cage) with a decent roll for 4 million net profit. As it happens, I found that in Inferno Whimsyshire.

You have to realize that you're looking at unsold items on the AH. A ballpoint pen isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars just because that's how much I ask for it.

To price items, I would generally suggest that you search for items similar to you own, set an arbitrary buyout (setting any buyout at all will filter out all items without a set buyout; we just use this as a workaround) and sort by an ascending buyout. You'll generally notice that, barring rare situations where some items are really underpriced, there's a place near the bottom where most items of that sort are priced. It's a much easier way to estimate an item's value. It gets harder as you get further into the game, since good items are less common and quality/value fluctuate wildly due to ostensibly minor differences.

[Runestar]

I clearly remember in the D1 ending video, after the hero cuts the soulstone from diablo, the original body remained (and was clearly still alive?) :smallconfused:

Dunno why they retconned it so that diablo utterly consumes the body he inhabits.

[Anarion]

Is there some sort of AH autobid program running around?

I was trying to buy a few things on the AH today and for a couple items I attempted to bid rather than pay the buyout. However, when I bid, I got a message saying "that amount is too low to win the auction." Then the money got refunded and when I looked the item had a higher bid on it. I tested this a few times in a row on the same item trying to get a winning bid even for a few seconds, including jumping up several thousand gold from the opening amount. Same error and there was always a new bid just a couple hundred gold higher than mine.

[leafman]

Maybe it is in the way the host is defeated. Albrecht reverted to human form when the soul stone was pulled out, then died, so the Warrior beat Diablo but hadn't killed him before removing the stone. When the Warrior was defeated in D2 he was killed before the soul stone was removed. I think that's what happened in D3 as well, the host was killed before the soul stone was separated from the body so the host doesn't revert to human form before death.

The other theory I have is that Diablo was weak after being trapped in the soul stone for so long (300 years?) so he was unable to fully take over the host body like did in D2 and D3.

[pffh]

Also in Diablo 2 he had the help of his brothers and the power of hell itself when he transformed and in 3 he had you know what while in 1 he just had that boy Lazarus sacrified to power the change.

[Eakin]

Is there some sort of AH autobid program running around?

I was trying to buy a few things on the AH today and for a couple items I attempted to bid rather than pay the buyout. However, when I bid, I got a message saying "that amount is too low to win the auction." Then the money got refunded and when I looked the item had a higher bid on it. I tested this a few times in a row on the same item trying to get a winning bid even for a few seconds, including jumping up several thousand gold from the opening amount. Same error and there was always a new bid just a couple hundred gold higher than mine.

I think that's built in actually. You enter a maximum bid but the system only actually bids the minimum amount. Then if someone comes in later and enters their maximum bid, the system will push it up just above the lower one. I just bid 15K on a rare monk weapon and ended up getting it for 800, the difference gets refunded once the auction's over

[Dublock]

The auto-bid is built in, can be useful.

I finished nightmare on my Wizard class, I am tempted to go into Hell and leave my 4 other toons behind in nightmare cause I want to get to inferno now :P.

I feel undergeared on my wizard but I don't know if its just me, I got 12k hp and 1908 dps and the last boss only took me a long time, I had to be careful to avoid attacks due to my low hp but I use diamond skin, teleport, mirror images, and force armor which gives me a *little* cushion but I don't like my build very much.

Edit: I got a question, for the chat how do you get back into typing for the general, to get into the party chat, its /p and to get to general I have not figured it out, its not /g or /general or /1 (from WoW).

[ex cathedra]

Is there some sort of AH autobid program running around?

There are a variety of bots/utilities already running around, so I would expect as much.

[Starwulf]

Frostburns, unfortunately, are generally worth a bit less than 20k each. 5m buyout is kind of completely outrageous. For reference, I recently sold an Immortal King's Soul Cage (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/immortal-kings-soul-cage) with a decent roll for 4 million net profit. As it happens, I found that in Inferno Whimsyshire.

You have to realize that you're looking at unsold items on the AH. A ballpoint pen isn't worth hundreds of thousands of dollars just because that's how much I ask for it.

To price items, I would generally suggest that you search for items similar to you own, set an arbitrary buyout (setting any buyout at all will filter out all items without a set buyout; we just use this as a workaround) and sort by an ascending buyout. You'll generally notice that, barring rare situations where some items are really underpriced, there's a place near the bottom where most items of that sort are priced. It's a much easier way to estimate an item's value. It gets harder as you get further into the game, since good items are less common and quality/value fluctuate wildly due to ostensibly minor differences.

Ehh, trust me, I know how markets work(I was an elite trader in D2, and I say that fully knowing the eye-rolling that saying such will induce). My only issue is, I'm used to AHs that show the current bid/whether or not there IS a bid, so when I looked up frostburns and saw all the outrageous prices and bids, i thought they were ACTUAL bids, and not just the starter bid. Chalk it up to waaaayyy to much E-Bay(closing in on my 500th star now, half/half on buying/selling). But yeah, once it gets back I'll put it up for a much more reasonable start bid/buyout price ^^ Would have been nice tho, to be filthy stinking rich just from one weaksauce unique :)

[Avilan the Grey]

I am just bumbling around in the AH, but sometimes things happens, like me setting a buyout price at 10 000 gold and then get an auction that goes up to 21 000. Somebody really wanted that crossbow (I bought it for 9999 (the buyout price) the day before and was just wanting to get my money back).

[Chen]

Just searching for similar items to the one you want to sell and looking at the lowest buyouts generally gives a good idea as to the value of the item. A lot of the ridiculous prices on the AH are items that I have to imagine are not selling. But if I search for a similar ring to one I'm trying to sell and I see a whole bunch at 100k price range (and then the stupid high ones) I can usually assume the ring I have is worth 100k or less (assuming of course I didn't miss anything good on it). Its served me well so far.

Act 2 Inferno is getting kinda rough and I'm convinced its because a ton of mobs there have stupid invulnerability frames. The invisible snakes, the birds, the leaping lacuni and the sand sharks all can't be hurt when they're in a certain state and that state lets them get right next to you before they appear. I think if they removed those frames act 2 would be far more manageable.

[Traab]

So far nightmare is going smoothly. I have to back up a lot more often, and do quite a bit of tumbling on my demon hunter every time I face a champion pack, but its really more a matter of time to win the fights at this point. I can manage to survive some close combat long enough to escape again and keep on killing. So far the biggest threat are some combination of wallers and a big damage dealing attribute. I find I can vault out of jailers, and keep from getting hemmed in by sheer numbers the same way, but those walls, ugh. When you get bad luck in their placement you are in for a world of hurt. The other threat is now those things like the swarms of little spiders, are actually somewhat dangerous instead of an annoyance, so I have to belt out lots of aoe damage and rapid fire spam to hold them off till they are cut down to managable numbers. I can already see a couple of spots that are going to be, pardon the pun, hell on the next difficulty.

In act 1, when you need to get the two beacons to enter the drowned temple, one of the beacons is protected by a massive swarm of skeletons, and several skeleton summoning mobs that like to hang out in back summoning even more. I actually got overwhelmed on NORMAL by this spot, and nearly again on nightmare. Hell is going to suck. Alot. Right now im figuring a suicide vault dash to the back rows to take out any summoners I can, then come back in and finish the rest off slowly. Sure its great for those massive kill total bonuses, but they can get to an unstoppable level awfully fast. Ive said it before and ill say it again. When I reach those parts, I turn on rapid fire, and I feel like Mifune from matrix 3, trying to hold back the entire squiddy force by himself, I even have that yell of his going through my head as I watch the sheer numbers start to press forward towards me.

[Kansaschaser]

So far nightmare is going smoothly. I have to back up a lot more often, and do quite a bit of tumbling on my demon hunter every time I face a champion pack, but its really more a matter of time to win the fights at this point. I can manage to survive some close combat long enough to escape again and keep on killing. So far the biggest threat are some combination of wallers and a big damage dealing attribute. I find I can vault out of jailers, and keep from getting hemmed in by sheer numbers the same way, but those walls, ugh. When you get bad luck in their placement you are in for a world of hurt. The other threat is now those things like the swarms of little spiders, are actually somewhat dangerous instead of an annoyance, so I have to belt out lots of aoe damage and rapid fire spam to hold them off till they are cut down to managable numbers. I can already see a couple of spots that are going to be, pardon the pun, hell on the next difficulty.

In act 1, when you need to get the two beacons to enter the drowned temple, one of the beacons is protected by a massive swarm of skeletons, and several skeleton summoning mobs that like to hang out in back summoning even more. I actually got overwhelmed on NORMAL by this spot, and nearly again on nightmare. Hell is going to suck. Alot. Right now im figuring a suicide vault dash to the back rows to take out any summoners I can, then come back in and finish the rest off slowly. Sure its great for those massive kill total bonuses, but they can get to an unstoppable level awfully fast. Ive said it before and ill say it again. When I reach those parts, I turn on rapid fire, and I feel like Mifune from matrix 3, trying to hold back the entire squiddy force by himself, I even have that yell of his going through my head as I watch the sheer numbers start to press forward towards me.

I have never been able to use Vault to get out of a Jailer's trap. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? :smallconfused:

As for being overwhelmed by a swarm of skeletons, best attack is Elemental Arrow+Ball Lightning. The Ball Lightning does 155% weapon damage to everything in it's path. Just fire in their general direction and it should take out entire swarms with ease.

One thing I've noticed, if you get an elite that has the "Slow Missile Bubble" around them, then Elemental Arrow+Ball Lightning does even more damage. Since the "Ball" shocks things close to them for 155% weapon damage, then the more "Balls" you have near the target, the more damage they will be taking. I wish all the elites I fought had that special ability. They would be a lot easier to kill.

[efdf]

Act 2 Inferno is getting kinda rough and I'm convinced its because a ton of mobs there have stupid invulnerability frames. The invisible snakes, the birds, the leaping lacuni and the sand sharks all can't be hurt when they're in a certain state and that state lets them get right next to you before they appear. I think if they removed those frames act 2 would be far more manageable.

It's that and Inferno just has ridiculous jumps in pure numerical difficulty between acts. Even when my monk could easily clear Act 1 Inferno standing in plagues he simply couldn't stand up to the basic attacks of Act 2 monsters. Same deal with act 3 now that act 2 is manageable.

[Traab]

I have never been able to use Vault to get out of a Jailer's trap. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? :smallconfused:

As for being overwhelmed by a swarm of skeletons, best attack is Elemental Arrow+Ball Lightning. The Ball Lightning does 155% weapon damage to everything in it's path. Just fire in their general direction and it should take out entire swarms with ease.

One thing I've noticed, if you get an elite that has the "Slow Missile Bubble" around them, then Elemental Arrow+Ball Lightning does even more damage. Since the "Ball" shocks things close to them for 155% weapon damage, then the more "Balls" you have near the target, the more damage they will be taking. I wish all the elites I fought had that special ability. They would be a lot easier to kill.

Hmm, ill have to try that one. For the record, how do I go about changing my abilities so I can place several choices for the same key down like rapid fire and elemental arrow?

[Karoht]

I clearly remember in the D1 ending video, after the hero cuts the soulstone from diablo, the original body remained (and was clearly still alive?) :smallconfused:Still Alive? With a hole in the head? A rather deep one? That was gushing blood in the cinematic, along with a pool of blood beneath it?
Leoric's son Albrecht was very very clearly dead.



Dunno why they retconned it so that diablo utterly consumes the body he inhabits.Like when he rips his way out of the Dark Wanderer's body? Especially when it's established that the host of the Dark Wanderer was fighting him at every step? Diablo likely HAD to rip his body asunder.
As for this game...
Like when Imperious BURNS AWAY Leah's body?
How are either of those retcons?


If anything...
Leah's soul might remain in the Soulstone. Maybe. The other Prime Evil soul/s might be constantly messing with her though. She might not exactly be in the best of shape if she is still in there.

[Chen]

It's that and Inferno just has ridiculous jumps in pure numerical difficulty between acts. Even when my monk could easily clear Act 1 Inferno standing in plagues he simply couldn't stand up to the basic attacks of Act 2 monsters. Same deal with act 3 now that act 2 is manageable.

For a melee character the invulnerability frames probably don't make as big a deal (you need to go melee them anyway). For someone used to staying at range it makes it downright impossible since I can't do anything to those snake things when they're invisible. Either they appear and hit my follower so I can then attack them, or they hit me and I have to run because they'll gib me in 3 hits if I don't have diamond skin up.

[The_Jackal]

The gear climb for Inferno is just harder, it's that simple. I view this as a good thing. It's what will keep the game challenging and relevant after a year or two when the gear pool gets less shallow.

[Traab]

You were right, vault doesnt work on jailer, its just been a matter of lucky timing on my part that lets me try to vault away just as it drops.

[ex cathedra]

The gear climb for Inferno is just harder, it's that simple. I view this as a good thing. It's what will keep the game challenging and relevant after a year or two when the gear pool gets less shallow.

Except that it's only super significantly harder for two of the five classes. Ranged classes are practically unaffected by it.

[Battleship789]

Hmm, ill have to try that one. For the record, how do I go about changing my abilities so I can place several choices for the same key down like rapid fire and elemental arrow?

I think this is what you are asking about...go to the options section of the main menu, open the gameplay tab, and click the box for "Elective Mode." Then you can set abilities from the same group on different clicks/numbers. Ex: Magic Missile set to left click and Electrocute to right click, with Shock pulse as "1" (or similar). Note that even with Elective Mode, some abilities can't be set to the mouse clicks, iirc.

[Traab]

I think this is what you are asking about...go to the options section of the main menu, open the gameplay tab, and click the box for "Elective Mode." Then you can set abilities from the same group on different clicks/numbers. Ex: Magic Missile set to left click and Electrocute to right click, with Shock pulse as "1" (or similar). Note that even with Elective Mode, some abilities can't be set to the mouse clicks, iirc.

Ah thats the thing I wanted to know. I knew it was possible, but didnt know how.

[The_Jackal]

Except that it's only super significantly harder for two of the five classes. Ranged classes are practically unaffected by it.

Yes, that's not new. Diablo II was the same way, the early farm builds were all shoot-and-scoot builds which could sacrifice gear and durability for magic find, until the gear pool got deep enough to support builds that could actually take the beating that Hell was dishing out.

Also, it's not as if melee doesn't get trade offs for being melee. 30% damage reduction off the top isn't peanuts. Yes, you'll have to work to itemize, but once you've got your resists and armour where they need to be, you'll be laughing. Yes, right now Inferno appears to be the sole province of builds which can kite flawlessly, in the 'one mistake and you're dead' variety. That won't last forever. Those kiting builds are going to be getting monk and barbarian drops, and lots of that will make it to the AH.

[Artanis]

Regarding Inferno:

Blizzard has come right out and said that Inferno is supposed to be ridiculously hard and require MUCH better gear than Hell. However, they've also said that it's not quite working as intended: damage is way more "spiky" than they want it to be, so they're going to try to even it out a bit so that you wind up with fewer one-shot deaths.

[Traab]

I have come to the conclusion that fast vampiric snakes suck. You cant get any range on them by running, if you DO get range through snares or whatever, they go invisible and pop up right in front of you. Then they proceed to stab you in the face till they are healed or you die. They wouldnt be so bad if not for that damn invisibility deal.

[Dublock]

The snakes in Act 2, on my computer they never go fully invisible, they appear as a faint white ball that moves, is this because I am running on max settings or does it actually change in Inferno?

[Traab]

The snakes in Act 2, on my computer they never go fully invisible, they appear as a faint white ball that moves, is this because I am running on max settings or does it actually change in Inferno?

You cant attack them when they are that way as far as I can tell, so its sorta academic. But yeah, i see the glowy white ball of light too, for all the good it does me.

[hamishspence]

Still Alive? With a hole in the head? A rather deep one? That was gushing blood in the cinematic, along with a pool of blood beneath it?
Leoric's son Albrecht was very very clearly dead.

He does groan slightly and move- like he was finally expiring, just before the PC inserts the Soulstone into their own forehead.

[MachineWraith]

I'm looking for any kind of advice on my Monk build. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, at least that I've noticed. I've just been using this basic build for quite some time, and I'm looking for an effective alternative to stave off boredom.

This (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#afgTeh!ZXV!ZYabZa) is my current build. I'm level 48, and have beaten Nightmare difficulty, but can't advance because I'm not yet level 50. Diablo wasn't terribly challenging. I had to do quite a bit of kiting while I waited for skill recharges, and I had a couple close calls, but overall it wasn't difficult.

[Eakin]

I'm looking for any kind of advice on my Monk build. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, at least that I've noticed. I've just been using this basic build for quite some time, and I'm looking for an effective alternative to stave off boredom.

This (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#afgTeh!ZXV!ZYabZa) is my current build. I'm level 48, and have beaten Nightmare difficulty, but can't advance because I'm not yet level 50. Diablo wasn't terribly challenging. I had to do quite a bit of kiting while I waited for skill recharges, and I had a couple close calls, but overall it wasn't difficult.

Mine's in Act 1 of Hell, level 52, using this. (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aZgdTh!YXW!ZZaZZZ) Not hugely different.

Also I'm at about 15K HP and 2900 damage after a few strategic purchases on the AH and a couple runs through nightmare Whimsyshire.

[Avilan the Grey]

Nightmare: I, too, am playing a Demon hunter and I just started Act II. The gear quality just jumped and so did difficulty. I admit I am not good at what I do, so I die quite often due to stupidness.

However so far, with new gear, I have been able to actually revert back to my setup from mid-game Normal: Bolas with extra BOOM for large groups of weak enemies that are tightly packed, and Frost Arrow for everything else. Also tumble of course.

Thanks god for the AH though so I can keep my DPS high.

My monk, who is just starting Act II normal, has a serious Rorschach thing going with Wallers: They think they lock her in with them, when the reality is that they are locking themselves in with her... :smallbiggrin:

[Starwulf]

My monk, who is just starting Act II normal, has a serious Rorschach thing going with Wallers: They think they lock her in with them, when the reality is that they are locking themselves in with her... :smallbiggrin:

Word. I can think of nothing better then seeing "Waller" on an enemy. Well, so long as it's not followed by "Arcane Enchanted". My monk loves when they do that, so much fun :).

I just doubled my DPS today(well, nearly. 1100 to 1900), bought a very nice set of rare claws on the AH for 80k gold, well worth imo, I'm shredding through Act 3 NM now.

[ex cathedra]

Here's (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/brother-laz-explains-whats-wrong-with-diablo-iiis-legendaries) a review of Diablo III's legendary item issues written by the developer of Median XL, one of the largest (both in scope and popularity) D2 mods released to date.

[Avilan the Grey]

So... Torchlight 2. Worth getting when it comes out?

[sihnfahl]

Here's my current monk build (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WZXijQ!UcX!cYZZcc).

I know it looks interesting, but I find it a very effective multi-target tanking build.

If you stack one type of resist (I chose lightning), dexterity, and vitality, then toss in quite a bit of life on hit / life regen, you'll do rather well for yourself - I won't tell you how many invites to Hell Diablo kills I get nowadays.

Well, that and you can snicker at folks who die during Izual while you kill off his adds, then tank him down to zip. It's also an effective strategy for tanking most elites - the only ones that give me any problem nowadays are those with a knockback (and therefore prevent me from leeching life off) or jail me while sniping me at range.

If you need any gear advice, just shoot me a mail and I can hook up with you in-game.

[ex cathedra]

So... Torchlight 2. Worth getting when it comes out?

Probably. It's only $20, to be fair. Personally, the art style doesn't do much for me and I'm way too psyched about Path of Exile to pick up a third or fourth Diablo-clone.

[Dublock]

I don't know much about TL2, I just know I've spent close to 100 hours on D3 and I have a lot more time getting each class to inferno :p

Game on normal? Easy
Game on Nightmare, you can't blindly rush through
Game on Hell? You got to start thinking and expecting deaths. Mortar, Health link, waller really messed me up on my wiz for a while (kite to spawn point to prevent healing and a few deaths later collect loot)

I honestly can't wait to progressed father in Hell (only in Act 1 right now) and get to Inferno. Although my stash is full of gear for my other 4 toons so I might put my Wiz on hold.

[Avilan the Grey]

I don't know much about TL2, I just know I've spent close to 100 hours on D3 and I have a lot more time getting each class to inferno :p

Game on normal? Easy
Game on Nightmare, you can't blindly rush through
Game on Hell? You got to start thinking and expecting deaths. Mortar, Health link, waller really messed me up on my wiz for a while (kite to spawn point to prevent healing and a few deaths later collect loot)

Personally I doubt I will enjoy going past Nightmare, since it seems too frustrating after that.

[Traab]

Nightmare: I, too, am playing a Demon hunter and I just started Act II. The gear quality just jumped and so did difficulty. I admit I am not good at what I do, so I die quite often due to stupidness.

However so far, with new gear, I have been able to actually revert back to my setup from mid-game Normal: Bolas with extra BOOM for large groups of weak enemies that are tightly packed, and Frost Arrow for everything else. Also tumble of course.

Thanks god for the AH though so I can keep my DPS high.

My monk, who is just starting Act II normal, has a serious Rorschach thing going with Wallers: They think they lock her in with them, when the reality is that they are locking themselves in with her... :smallbiggrin:

My standard setup atm in nightmare is hungering arrow with the greater chance for pass throughs, rapid fire, for burning down the single big targets, and the elemental arrow with ball lightning to do damage to large groups at once. Im thinking about giving bolos another shot though, I dont think ive tried since I first got the thing.

[Avilan the Grey]

My standard setup atm in nightmare is hungering arrow with the greater chance for pass throughs, rapid fire, for burning down the single big targets, and the elemental arrow with ball lightning to do damage to large groups at once. Im thinking about giving bolos another shot though, I dont think ive tried since I first got the thing.

You have to mind the delay, but for weak enemies clustered close together there is nothing better.

[otakuryoga]

so just before i left for work i spent some time playing in the AH

45 monk currently in nightmare..starting to make repeated runs to get the gibbering gem
i was sporting 2 75dps weaps
i searched for bonus damage to elites(i assume it also applies to yellows/purples)
+life on hit
+chance to stun/freeze

i ended up with a 90 dps with +4% against elites, 23 life on hit, 1.9% freeze
other stats + a socket for just 5k

and a 110dps with +3% against elites, 99 life on hit, 2.0 chance to stun
2.6% life drain and a socket for just 10k

both also have respectable amounts of dex/vitality on them

can't wait to try em out when i get home tonight

[Traab]

You have to mind the delay, but for weak enemies clustered close together there is nothing better.

The delay does suck, but I just managed to clear the ruins where I get the guys head, and fought like 2-3 pacls of blues at once due to not paying attention what direction I was kiting in. The bolo is very handy. So now I have bolo with larger radius, rapid fire with the snare option for doing nasty single target damage, elemental arrow with ball lightning to hit large crowds of mobs at once, caltrops and vault for keeping at a distance.

[Dublock]

Personally I doubt I will enjoy going past Nightmare, since it seems too frustrating after that.

It definitely can be frustrating and I don't blame you. Personally I know I am going to love that aspect (at least to a point).

I love my DH and my SO wants to stay with it so my time is limited to my SO's time which is not a lot. Ball lightening is amazing, I've been swamping out all my skills right now except that one :p

[Starwulf]

so just before i left for work i spent some time playing in the AH

45 monk currently in nightmare..starting to make repeated runs to get the gibbering gem
i was sporting 2 75dps weaps
i searched for bonus damage to elites(i assume it also applies to yellows/purples)
+life on hit
+chance to stun/freeze

i ended up with a 90 dps with +4% against elites, 23 life on hit, 1.9% freeze
other stats + a socket for just 5k

and a 110dps with +3% against elites, 99 life on hit, 2.0 chance to stun
2.6% life drain and a socket for just 10k

both also have respectable amounts of dex/vitality on them

can't wait to try em out when i get home tonight

Hmm, you do realize that if you spend like 50-75k you can get a 175DPS claw at that level, right? I bought 175 dps last night for 75k, then 20 minutes later my best friend found an upgrade for his monk(he's 57), so he gave me his old claw(200 flat DPS). His upgrade claw is 400DPS, his total damage is just shy of 8k now(he's in act 2 Hell). On the plus side, I sold that 75k claw for 90k today :) Got 200k saved up, but I have to hold onto 100k of that, friend is providing the other 100k to upgrade our staff of herding(I farmed all the items while he was at work), so I'm going to be browsing the AH for some better armor(especially that right side shoulder piece whatever it is, mine is junk. 50 armor, 47 dex, that's it)

[otakuryoga]

but if i spend 50k on something i wont have the money to make the herding staff

[otakuryoga]

force post since pagebreak ate it not allowing me to edit

also i think i am gonna really like that 99 life on hit

[Derjuin]

:smalleek: I definitely think there's another bug with Force Armor, which oddly seems isolated to Act IV Inferno. Non-champion Corrupted Angels and the like freely smack me around for 70k-80k, nearly 4x my life, while Force Armor is supposed to reduce it to 35% of my life if it exceeds that.

After retreating to earlier acts, I think I like the way magic find runs work in this game. Though you can't really do a quick run or two before work or school, it's more fun (for me) to have a reason to kill elite packs now. Just need to remember which ones to run away from (Invulnerable Minions, Reflects Damage, Vampiric, Fast I'm looking at you) so I don't waste time on my Nephalem Valor :smallamused:.

[Avilan the Grey]

I bought two 82+ DPS (counting the sockeded rubys in them) hand weapons for my lvl 16 monk this morning. Basically if you are willing to loose only 1 or 2 points in DPS (from optimum) you can get things for a 10th of the price.

[Chen]

:smalleek: I definitely think there's another bug with Force Armor, which oddly seems isolated to Act IV Inferno. Non-champion Corrupted Angels and the like freely smack me around for 70k-80k, nearly 4x my life, while Force Armor is supposed to reduce it to 35% of my life if it exceeds that.

Force armor was nerfed so that the absorb it does cannot be more than 100% of your total hp.

So if you have 10000 hp and take a hit for 10000, force armor attempts to reduce that to 3500 damage meaning it absorbs 6500. Since 6500 is less than your total health (10000) it absorbs it all and works as stated.

However, as the damage you take increases, we can see that eventually force armor won't save you if the hit is big enough. Again if I have 10000 life and take a hit for 25000 force armor attempts to reduce this to 3500. However that would mean an absorb of 21500 which is more than your total life. Thus Force armor only absorbs 10000 (equal to your max hp), you take 15000 and die.

If the incoming damage (after mitigation) is more than double your HP total you'll still get one shot through force armor. This makes the extremely low HP/high regen builds not work, but it still leaves force armor as very powerful, as long as you don't neglect vitality and armor/resists.

[Dublock]

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6262208/Patch_103_Design_Preview-6_6_2012#blog

A much more detailed look into the changes for 1.03 and I recommend looking it over if you care.

Increase loot, you can get ilvl 62 gear in Act 3/4 Hell.

Buffing the legendaries which looks like it will NOT be this patch

Decrease guaranteed rare drops with 5 stacks to 1 on bosses but still a high chance for multiple, BUT multiple rare drops on elite/champ packs.

A Major nerf to Inferno (Act 1 inferno difficulty throughout)

Increase repair costs, like 4 time the cost

I hit what I thought was the highlights but not everything.

[Chen]

Buffing the legendaries which looks like it will be this patch

The article specifically says NOT this patch for Legendary buffs.



Decrease guaranteed rare drops with 5 stacks to 1 on bosses but still a high chance for multiple, BUT multiple rare drops on elite/champ packs.

Good change. Makes more playing the game rather than farming bosses.


A Major nerf to Inferno (Act 1 inferno difficulty throughout)

This isn't said anywhere. They said Act 1 was in a good place. They want the curve to be less steep. This implies the later difficulties are still harder but not as dramatically harder as they currently are.


Increase repair costs, like 4 time the cost

Good idea. More gold sinks are needed to stem inflation. I would suggest if you're COMPLETELY broke though (0 gold) you can repair for free. That way no one can say they're "stuck" because they have no money.

[Dublock]

The article specifically says NOT this patch for Legendary buffs.

This isn't said anywhere. They said Act 1 was in a good place. They want the curve to be less steep. This implies the later difficulties are still harder but not as dramatically harder as they currently are.

Thanks for the fix and I edited my post so no one will get confused.

Also yea they did say they will nerf Inferno, just acts 2,3, and 4


In patch 1.0.3 we’re going to be lowering that wall by adjusting the damage and health of monsters in Inferno Act II, III and IV.

I guess you can argue that its not a major nerf or not, but they are lowering the damage in 3/4 of Inferno.

[tyckspoon]

Good idea. More gold sinks are needed to stem inflation. I would suggest if you're COMPLETELY broke though (0 gold) you can repair for free. That way no one can say they're "stuck" because they have no money.

If your repair costs are potentially high enough that this is an actual concern, you are probably at a point where you can drop back a difficulty setting and gather some cash naked if you have to.

[Chen]

Also yea they did say they will nerf Inferno, just acts 2,3, and 4



I guess you can argue that its not a major nerf or not, but they are lowering the damage in 3/4 of Inferno.

I meant they didn't say anything about "Act 1 inferno difficulty throughout". I presume Acts 2,3 and 4 will still each be harder than the previous acts, just they're being nerfed from the currently difficulty level. Act 4 monsters will still be stronger than act 1 monsters (else their first change with the drop rates is pointless).

[Eakin]

The Diablo devs are doing an Ask Me Anything over on Reddit, here. (http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/uoooj/i_am_we_are_wyatt_cheng_andrew_chambers_and_jay/)

[Artanis]

:smalleek: I definitely think there's another bug with Force Armor, which oddly seems isolated to Act IV Inferno. Non-champion Corrupted Angels and the like freely smack me around for 70k-80k, nearly 4x my life, while Force Armor is supposed to reduce it to 35% of my life if it exceeds that.
I actually just read a post about that. Apparently it's intended that Force Armor only works if a hit wouldn't finish you off. So if an attack would one-shot you, Force Armor does nothing. It's just not in the tooltip for some reason*.

*One conjecture I saw for it not being in the tooltip was due to Force Armor doing so much stuff that it wouldn't all fit or something like that.


After retreating to earlier acts, I think I like the way magic find runs work in this game. Though you can't really do a quick run or two before work or school, it's more fun (for me) to have a reason to kill elite packs now. Just need to remember which ones to run away from (Invulnerable Minions, Reflects Damage, Vampiric, Fast I'm looking at you) so I don't waste time on my Nephalem Valor :smallamused:.
I'm one of those guys who likes to go through and clear every square inch of an area before moving on, so putting more of the focus on non-bosses is a godsend for me :smallbiggrin:

[The_Jackal]

I actually just read a post about that. Apparently it's intended that Force Armor only works if a hit wouldn't finish you off. So if an attack would one-shot you, Force Armor does nothing. It's just not in the tooltip for some reason*.

Not quite accurate. The 1.02 patch fixed Force Armour so that the most damage it would absorb is equal to your maximum hit points. So, in order take more than 35% damage while Force Armour is on, the hit you took needed to be 135% of your HP total, after figuring in resistances and armour. To be one-shot through Force Armour, the damage needed to be 200% of your HP total. This is to prevent a gimmick where a Wizard with a ridiculously low HP pool could waltz through Inferno by simply using Force Armour and lots of life on hit and life per second gear.

Beef up your HP total and resistances, and force armour will do its job well. If you stack enough resistances, you may consider switching to Prismatic Armour instead, as it will eventually outperform force armour if your resistances are high enough.

[AgentPaper]

If your repair costs are potentially high enough that this is an actual concern, you are probably at a point where you can drop back a difficulty setting and gather some cash naked if you have to.

I'm not sure if this would actually work. Almost all of your stats come from your gear, so if you were naked, your only real choice would be to go back to act 1 normal at the start of the game and work your way up from there.

[tyckspoon]

I'm not sure if this would actually work. Almost all of your stats come from your gear, so if you were naked, your only real choice would be to go back to act 1 normal at the start of the game and work your way up from there.

Eh.. rejig your skills for maximum safety, grab a random white weapon, and lean on your follower a lot (you *have* been keeping your follower's stuff up to date, haven't you? Heck, the stuff they're wearing doesn't get degraded, so you could just borrow their weapon and jewelry for a bit assuming it's something you can wield.) I'm pretty sure most of Normal is doable this way, and at least Whimsyshire Normal/Act 1 Nightmare should be too.

[The_Jackal]

Or, pop on some gold find and pickup radius gear, and pop the 2 nearly empty rooms full of jars before the Skeleton King.

[Chen]

Or, pop on some gold find and pickup radius gear, and pop the 2 nearly empty rooms full of jars before the Skeleton King.

I think they nerfed this. With 150% GF it was an easy 300k or more per hour as a Wizard. Mind numbingly boring though.

I'm trying to figure out a good spot to farm now. Act 1 Inferno is almost trivial barring a few ridiculous packs (mortar, fast, horde, invulnerable minions...yeah that's fair) so doing Halls of Agony 1->Butcher is fast and nets two bosses worth of increased drops (Warden and Butcher). Sometimes you need to port to the graveyard to get your last stack of Valor but more often than not you have 5 by the time you hit the Warden.

I tried Act 2, but I can't find a good spot to farm elites at to get NV up. Not to mention the elites are MUCH more difficult in A2. I would run through the Oasis and get valor up and go kill Zoltan Kull but it felt like I wasn't getting nearly as much stuff and it seemed to take longer. I'm wondering whether its even worth doing or if I should just farm Act 1 and try and get rings/amulets/gloves/bracers to sell on the AH and basically just skip act 2 entirely for farming. I've already found 2 amulets that have sold for ~a million gold, so good stuff can drop in Act 1. Its just the weapons that are really crappy.

[AgentPaper]

Eh.. rejig your skills for maximum safety, grab a random white weapon, and lean on your follower a lot (you *have* been keeping your follower's stuff up to date, haven't you? Heck, the stuff they're wearing doesn't get degraded, so you could just borrow their weapon and jewelry for a bit assuming it's something you can wield.) I'm pretty sure most of Normal is doable this way, and at least Whimsyshire Normal/Act 1 Nightmare should be too.

Actually, thinking about it, the best thing you can do if you really run completely out of working gear and gold, is to simply jump into a random game, explain your situation, and pick up whatever drops. You should get enough gold and equipment to be back in action pretty quickly. You should only do this in hell, though, not Inferno, since the added baggage of a non-functional player isn't exactly going to make Inferno any easier.

[The_Jackal]

I think they nerfed this. With 150% GF it was an easy 300k or more per hour as a Wizard. Mind numbingly boring though.

Yes, that's the most important thing: Honestly, though, if you're going broke on repair bills, you're doing it wrong. As long as you're not totally profligate with your spending and don't just repeatedly die over and over, you're not going to run out of cash.

[GolemsVoice]

repeatedly die over and over, you're not going to run out of cash.

And if you're doing that, you do exactly what Blizzard doesn't want you to do, so you have only yourself to blame.

[Artanis]

So...what kind of stats do the various classes look for most on their gear? It's hard for me to tell how much - if anything - an item might go for on the AH when it isn't blatantly DH-related. So just a quick "Class A likes stats X and Y in general, and stat Z is important in this particular slot" for the other four would help me a lot :smallwink:




Not quite accurate. The 1.02 patch fixed Force Armour so that the most damage it would absorb is equal to your maximum hit points. So, in order take more than 35% damage while Force Armour is on, the hit you took needed to be 135% of your HP total, after figuring in resistances and armour. To be one-shot through Force Armour, the damage needed to be 200% of your HP total. This is to prevent a gimmick where a Wizard with a ridiculously low HP pool could waltz through Inferno by simply using Force Armour and lots of life on hit and life per second gear.

Beef up your HP total and resistances, and force armour will do its job well. If you stack enough resistances, you may consider switching to Prismatic Armour instead, as it will eventually outperform force armour if your resistances are high enough.
Ah, that makes sense. My Wizard is just a level 10 alt, so I don't know much about the class, just relaying what I'd heard :smallredface:

[Traab]

My dh has 16.6khp and 752 listed dps in act 3 of nightmare. Is this doing decent? Or should I work on pumping one or the other up? I keep hitting those champ packs and desperately vaulting all over the place trying to avoid a 5 second death

[Dublock]

My dh has 16.6khp and 752 listed dps in act 3 of nightmare. Is this doing decent? Or should I work on pumping one or the other up? I keep hitting those champ packs and desperately vaulting all over the place trying to avoid a 5 second death

Your dps is a tad low compared to where my Wiz was. But if you are killing those packs then you are good, I used teleport, mirror images, and force armor in NM to prevent an early death so we got that in common :P

[Traab]

Well it honestly depends on what im fighting. The biggest worries are the molten or fire chained fast packs. I cant stay away from them long enough to shoot off more than a couple times. teleporters are a pita as well. Also, I just reviewed my gear, im wearing a level 24 belt for some odd reason, and I must have accidentally switched out shoulders, because they have no vitality on them. Once the auction house comes back up ill start hunting for upgrades and hopefully boost my hp up another couple thousand, and maybe get a few nice dex bits to boost my dps as well. Id like to be able to stand still long enough to dump a hate bar full of ball lightning at these packs to burn them all down equally. :p The illusionists are fun as hell with that skill. Suddenly there are 18 of the champs on screen, but a few shots later and poof.

[Chen]

My dh has 16.6khp and 752 listed dps in act 3 of nightmare. Is this doing decent? Or should I work on pumping one or the other up? I keep hitting those champ packs and desperately vaulting all over the place trying to avoid a 5 second death

16k hp seems like a hell of a lot for nightmare. Are you using a decent weapon from the AH? This is the biggest factor at lower levels. Get a good weapon with a socket, throw a high end ruby in it and kill things super fast.

[Traab]

16k hp seems like a hell of a lot for nightmare. Are you using a decent weapon from the AH? This is the biggest factor at lower levels. Get a good weapon with a socket, throw a high end ruby in it and kill things super fast.

Yeah im using I think, a 110 dps weapon with a radiant ruby or some such thing, +24 damage on it. There are better ones out there, but not that I can afford.

*EDIT* Just upgraded my weapon since apparently my hp is fine. Im now up to 1041 dps. :smallbiggrin: Just a minor upgrade of nearly 300 dps, lol. It cost me 1k hp to get it, but ill be able to compensate once I get some money back and can get some upgrades.

[DGB]

If you look for reduced level requirements in the auction house, you can even have a 300 dps weapon by level 45 and a 500 one at lvl 51 :D

[DGB]

If you look for reduced level requirements in the auction house, you can even have a 300 dps weapon by level 45 and a 500 one at lvl 51 :D

[Traab]

Heh, with my new, much higher dps, things are dying a lot faster. Ive pummeled my way through to arreat crater and im about to take out the sin hearts. God I love ball lightning elemental arrows. If it wasnt for that I would likely be dying left right and center to the massive enemy swarms that keep popping up.

[Karoht]

The bigger the swarm, the more effective Ball Lightning is.

[Traab]

Question, why would I use bola shots over say, grenades with the cluster effect? Both will explode in aoe damage, but the grenades seem to have a much larger spread, and a solid high spammability.

[Karoht]

I find that I'm not a huge fan of Bolas or Grenades. I use Bola's though. I haven't tried Grenades again in a long while, might be worth a second look.

[Avilan the Grey]

Question, why would I use bola shots over say, grenades with the cluster effect? Both will explode in aoe damage, but the grenades seem to have a much larger spread, and a solid high spammability.

Because the bolas has precise aim.

[Traab]

Because the bolas has precise aim.

True, but a swarm of grenades is hitting everything at once, and im rather annoyed at constantly missing with bolas because my target is moving around. At least with the grenades I have a chance to hit something else if my intended target runs away. *EDIT* And sorry about the quadrapost. It kept giving me error 300 messages and then not showing the post as having gone up yet. I deleted the extras.

[Avilan the Grey]

True, but a swarm of grenades is hitting everything at once, and im rather annoyed at constantly missing with bolas because my target is moving around. At least with the grenades I have a chance to hit something else if my intended target runs away. *EDIT* And sorry about the quadrapost. It kept giving me error 300 messages and then not showing the post as having gone up yet. I deleted the extras.

But the bolas stick. Even if the target moves, it still explodes. And normally big groups try to get to you anyway.

[Othesemo]

Personally, I'm not a fan of either. Grenades and bolas are both imprecise in their targeting, and their effect is delayed which just annoys me. I always use the Chain Gang rune on entangling shot (though I almost never use my left-click ability any more).

[Traab]

But the bolas stick. Even if the target moves, it still explodes. And normally big groups try to get to you anyway.

Yes they stick, if they hit, what I meant was, my bola will frequently miss my target if its further away than close to mid range and it isnt moving directly towards me. Then it wont blow up at all and I just wasted that shot. With grenades, I have an indiscriminate killing attack that will hit anything in range with a steady carpet bombing of explosions.

[Dublock]

Personally, I'm not a fan of either. Grenades and bolas are both imprecise in their targeting, and their effect is delayed which just annoys me. I always use the Chain Gang rune on entangling shot (though I almost never use my left-click ability any more).

On my level 32 DH, I agree with this statement. I am not a fan of either skill although I admit I might change when I get to Hell/Inferno. (But I always have something of use on my left button, go elective mode!)

[MachineWraith]

So...what kind of stats do the various classes look for most on their gear? It's hard for me to tell how much - if anything - an item might go for on the AH when it isn't blatantly DH-related. So just a quick "Class A likes stats X and Y in general, and stat Z is important in this particular slot" for the other four would help me a lot :smallwink:

My monk goes for a few things on literally every piece of armor he owns: Resist All, Resist (X), +Dex/Vit. Monks get a passive that makes their resistances all equal to their highest resistance. So if each piece of my gear gives me +Resist All and +Resist Cold, my resists can stack through the roof.

Dex being my damage stat (and also defense due to another passive) makes it pretty important, and Vit is always good.

IMO, melee in general enjoys life on hit.

[Avilan the Grey]

Yes they stick, if they hit, what I meant was, my bola will frequently miss my target if its further away than close to mid range and it isnt moving directly towards me. Then it wont blow up at all and I just wasted that shot. With grenades, I have an indiscriminate killing attack that will hit anything in range with a steady carpet bombing of explosions.

Okay, got you.
What difficulty are you on? I don't really notice any misses. Of course I usually just empty them into a cluster. So I hit SOMEONE and then all get splash damage.

[The_Jackal]

Bola shot shoots further, hits harder, and has a different selection of rune effects. The 'Bitter Pill' rune in particular is of interest to trapper builds.

[Traab]

These phase beast champion packs are frigging evil. They have buttloads of hp, keep surrounding me, and have managed to kill me 5 times in a row and break my gear.

[otakuryoga]

got my gibbering gem
onward to Izual and then on to hell

[GolemsVoice]

So...what kind of stats do the various classes look for most on their gear? It's hard for me to tell how much - if anything - an item might go for on the AH when it isn't blatantly DH-related. So just a quick "Class A likes stats X and Y in general, and stat Z is important in this particular slot" for the other four would help me a lot

As far as I know, especially in higher modes, each class wants +Mainstat (Dex for DH and Monk, Str for Barb, Int for Wizard and WD) and +Vitality, and when searching gear I usually ignore anything that doesn't have at leas this combo on it.
Sockets are always nice, too. That's all I know.

[ex cathedra]

Demon Hunters want +Dex, +Attack Speed, +Critical Damage, +Critical Chance, and +Vit/All Res/Armor in roughly that order. Glass cannon is pretty much the way to go.

Witch Doctors and Wizards should look for +Int, +Attack Speed, +All Res, + Vit, and +Armor.

Monks want +All Res, +Life On Hit, + Attack Speed, +Vit, +Dex, +(resistance X, where X is what you're focusing for the One With Everything passive), and +% Block.

Barbarians want +All Res, +Life On Hit, +Vit, + Strength, +Armor, and +% Block.

+ All Resistance is the single most important defensive stat in the game, bar none. Each point is worth around 10 armor, assuming you have similar amounts of damage reduction from Armor and All Res. If you have more Armor than ten times your All Res, All Res is worth even more than that. Armor is naturally on pretty much every piece of defensive gear in the game, but All Res is almost entirely derived from random affixes on items.

[Avilan the Grey]

Stuff

Actually it varies with difficulty. As far as I understand it, in Normal and Inferno you should go for glass cannon, but for slightly different reasons: In normal, it's because enemies have so little HP that it just is the easiest way. In Inferno it is because no matter your HP, you will be one-hitted. So you might as well go for glass cannon. I Nightmare, a good balance between DEX and WIT (for DH, as an example) is the way to go.

[ex cathedra]

Actually it varies with difficulty. As far as I understand it, in Normal and Inferno you should go for glass cannon, but for slightly different reasons: In normal, it's because enemies have so little HP that it just is the easiest way. In Inferno it is because no matter your HP, you will be one-hitted. So you might as well go for glass cannon. I Nightmare, a good balance between DEX and WIT (for DH, as an example) is the way to go.

*shrug*. You may as well go glass cannon there, too. You'll progress faster and it'll (almost) prepare you for A2i+ where you'll need to dodge literally everything or you're dead, even though I'm pretty sure that you'll still be pretty safe in Nightmare.

[Traab]

Heh, I just finished act 3 of nightmare. At the siege engine destroying part of the act I had 16.6khp and 752 listed dps. Now just after killing asmodan, I have 20khp, and 1376 dps. Hows that for a bit of an upgrade? :smallbiggrin: Cant believe I came so close to doubling my dps over the course of half an act.

[Dublock]

I have not gotten that far on my own DH, but if you go for a glass cannon build, then with reflect damage mobs you could one shot yourself (which would be funny to everyone else :P). I guess you could avoid them

[ex cathedra]

I have not gotten that far on my own DH, but if you go for a glass cannon build, then with reflect damage mobs you could one shot yourself (which would be funny to everyone else :P). I guess you could avoid them

You don't literally one-shot yourself, but you die very quickly to reflects damage so you have to time your skills very carefully. Generally, Smokescreen is all you need, but Gloom with the Shadow Power rune is another option if you expect a lot of reflects damage.

[pffh]

Is there a way to display an items item level?

[ex cathedra]

Is there a way to display an items item level?

That's being implemented in a later patch.

[Derjuin]

You can use the Diablo 3 Database (http://d3db.com/home) to look up the item in the meantime. If it's rare, you can check it against other items' appearance to get a general idea - for example, I know my current wand is a Desolator Wand from its appearance, so ilvl 63.

Earlier I got to (try) going through Act 3 inferno with 4 players. We basically corpse-hopped our way to the end of the Rakkis Crossing, then killed the Siege Beast after about 10 minutes and chain resurrections. It only dropped blues, but one of them was a ~700 dps claw, a huge upgrade for the monk with us. Despite being very expensive, it was kind of fun :smalltongue:.

[Avilan the Grey]

Heh, I just finished act 3 of nightmare. At the siege engine destroying part of the act I had 16.6khp and 752 listed dps. Now just after killing asmodan, I have 20khp, and 1376 dps. Hows that for a bit of an upgrade? :smallbiggrin: Cant believe I came so close to doubling my dps over the course of half an act.

Well I am not twitchy enough I think. I had only DEX-gear and nothing else on Normal but I had to switch to about 2/3 VIT-bonus gear to survive at all in Nightmare, I got one-shotted or two-shotted way too often without it.

[Fan]

You can use the Diablo 3 Database (http://d3db.com/home) to look up the item in the meantime. If it's rare, you can check it against other items' appearance to get a general idea - for example, I know my current wand is a Desolator Wand from its appearance, so ilvl 63.

Earlier I got to (try) going through Act 3 inferno with 4 players. We basically corpse-hopped our way to the end of the Rakkis Crossing, then killed the Siege Beast after about 10 minutes and chain resurrections. It only dropped blues, but one of them was a ~700 dps claw, a huge upgrade for the monk with us. Despite being very expensive, it was kind of fun :smalltongue:.

We actually moved on later to head up and farm Iskatu which proved MUCH easier, and MUCH faster to farm. Though it was mostly archon busting for extra lasers.

Just don't get caught in the corruption, and the team generally wins within the span of like, 3-4 minutes.

[Traab]

Well I am not twitchy enough I think. I had only DEX-gear and nothing else on Normal but I had to switch to about 2/3 VIT-bonus gear to survive at all in Nightmare, I got one-shotted or two-shotted way too often without it.

I can actually survive for a round or two with the champ packs if I get trapped for whatever reason. No more than that mind you, and some kill me way faster than others, but though I still cant stand toe to toe with the mobs and expect to win, at least I am not more or less guaranteed to die if they catch me. Im sure that will change when I hit hell, and most definately if I ever reach inferno. I may not even bother trying, I honestly find the game less fun on higher difficulties. While the normal trash is fine, I have to duck and dive around a bit, I just dislike the fact that the champs seem to have 10x the hp, and half of them can teleport or have the fast ability, making it almost impossible to get any range. Molten/mortar is fun, because that way im screwed at all ranges.

[leafman]

This might be a silly question, but how do you put an item name in chat so it is clickable and others can look at the item's info. It would look like [this].

[ex cathedra]

This might be a silly question, but how do you put an item name in chat so it is clickable and others can look at the item's info. It would look like [this].

Hold shift and click the item with the chat menu open.

[leafman]

Ah! thank you! I couldn't figure that out, probably a tooltip I missed.

[nihil8r]

i'm going through as monk and trying to use the templar on hell. why does he die so much? i used enchantress on normal and scoundrel on nightmare. is templar dying because it's hell or because he sucks? :smalleek:

thanks for earlier tips btw

[GolemsVoice]

The followers in general are pretty suidicial, I'm afraid, since they don't move out of any effects.

[Avilan the Grey]

I don't do Templar. His biggest problem is that he tries to tank. The Scoundrel and Enchantress survives better merely by being away from the fray. He is also BORING.

I noticed an AI flaw today though, none of the followers understand to move out of the line of the bee stinger thingies. It's like their AI can't detect what is hurting them.

Also... The Enchantress questioned my daring outfit today (as a female character). I don't think she should be talking? :smallbiggrin:

[GolemsVoice]

She actually gets more clothing the further you progress through the game (I think it continues through the modes, too) and in the end she actually looks like a normal woman and not like an exotic stripper.
By the way, I thought the outfits for the characters are quite modest for video game standards. The Barbarian doesn't wear much clothing regardless of gender. The only stupid thing: high heels for the demonhunter. Yes.

[Avilan the Grey]

She actually gets more clothing the further you progress through the game (I think it continues through the modes, too) and in the end she actually looks like a normal woman and not like an exotic stripper.
By the way, I thought the outfits for the characters are quite modest for video game standards. The Barbarian doesn't wear much clothing regardless of gender. The only stupid thing: high heels for the demonhunter. Yes.

The Demon hunter is basically an expy of Selene, from Underworld. Not that she wears heels, but her voice and attitude (and fashion) is very similar.

As for clothing in general... I think eventually I will have to start using the vanishing dye simply because as is all too common in some RPGs, the higher tier clothes are FAR uglier than the lower tier ones. Especially the monk ones.

[GolemsVoice]

Really? I found my (female) wizard's colthing always very nice, with the robes and nice helmets. Also, the option to recolor things is more fun than I thought!

[Dublock]

i'm going through as monk and trying to use the templar on hell. why does he die so much? i used enchantress on normal and scoundrel on nightmare. is templar dying because it's hell or because he sucks? :smalleek:

thanks for earlier tips btw

A simple question, is his gear up to date? I find on Hell that he dies if there is a pack with an anti melee attribute, but normally lives besides that.

I personally like the Templar cause he heals :P

[Avilan the Grey]

Really? I found my (female) wizard's colthing always very nice, with the robes and nice helmets. Also, the option to recolor things is more fun than I thought!

I think Wizard looks the best, and Monk looks the worst (eye-less helmets? What?)

[Traab]

A simple question, is his gear up to date? I find on Hell that he dies if there is a pack with an anti melee attribute, but normally lives besides that.

I personally like the Templar cause he heals :P

Yeah that heal has meant the difference between life or death for me more times than I can count. Does it drop off in effectiveness as you go on? As far as I can tell, in nightmare it only seems to be healing a couple thousand hp, which isnt that much when you consider I have 20k, and most mobs are hitting for 5kish it seems like.

[otakuryoga]

well, i got my staff of herding plans so have moved up to hell
..now i just need 75k more gold and get to act 2 so i can make the staff and start goin to whimsyshire(normal)

[Avilan the Grey]

Thank God for the auction house. I had a lot of trouble in Act II nightmare and grinding 60 000 gold I was able to increase damage from mid 800 to high 1 100.

BIG difference.

[Traab]

Let me preface this by saying, it was my first character dangit, I didnt know any better! My barbarian just finished act 1 nightmare, earlier on in act 1 I looked at my gear. I had 2 rings and an amulet, none of which had strength or vitality on them. No, I had +2-3 damage rings and some silly little yellow amulet that gave me int, magic find, and extra gold. I was wearing a level 23 belt with just strength on it, and a level 28 shoulders with str/dex/int and no vit. Oh, and my weapon was about 40dps lower than what I could buy for cheap off the ah without bankrupting myself, and had crappy stats besides. I was 35 at the time. My hp has since doubled, and I have raised my dps by several hundred. It still kinda stinks overall, but im working on it.

[Avilan the Grey]

I only buy weapons on the AH because I can't be bothered with auctions: I just buy out stuff.

I will buy gems from now on though.

[Dublock]

Does it drop off in effectiveness as you go on?

Yes it does if only because it scales off of the Templar's level so once you reach Inferno it won't increase any more.

But as a Wiz in Hell, I only got around 12-14k health so it is still effective for me :P I know once I finish act 4 on Hell its going to be rough on me.

I am currently working on my other classes, my Monk is almost to Act 3 in NM. This is because my Stash is full of gear for levels mid 30s through early 50s and I don't have any more storage space lol.

[Traab]

I only buy weapons on the AH because I can't be bothered with auctions: I just buy out stuff.

I will buy gems from now on though.

I rarely bother to get into bidding wars, especially now that I have figured out the max buyout search function. That lets me get rid of the initial 45 pages worth of 200 million to 100k buyout wastes of my time, and right to the stuff I can actually afford to buy.

[Avilan the Grey]

Worst. Lag. Ever.
This morning was ridiculous.

Also, how come the green gems are 4 times more expensive than the rest?

[Starwulf]

Worst. Lag. Ever.
This morning was ridiculous.

Also, how come the green gems are 4 times more expensive than the rest?

Because two separate jobs are reliant on Dexterity as their main stat, as well as the fact that it's useful to boost for Dodge, and it boosts Critical Hit damage in weapons, which I think is more useful at higher levels then using Rubies(though the real darling there is the Life on hit gem, aka Amethysts).

[Traab]

When you get life on hit, if im using cleave, am I getting a separate bit of life from every monster I make contact with? or is it one per swing? Also, does that effect abilities like seismic slam or other ranged attacks?

[Dublock]

@ Traab: I *think* it works on each time you hit a monster so if cleave hits 5 you get 5 times whatever amount.

Apparently Blizzard admitted to massive duping on the Korean forums and this is why they have a really long maintenance is to delete all those items which is why there is so much traffic on the American servers currently.

The economy is so messed up due to everything...farming spots, exploits, and now apparently duping.

[Traab]

@ Traab: I *think* it works on each time you hit a monster so if cleave hits 5 you get 5 times whatever amount.

Apparently Blizzard admitted to massive duping on the Korean forums and this is why they have a really long maintenance is to delete all those items which is why there is so much traffic on the American servers currently.

The economy is so messed up due to everything...farming spots, exploits, and now apparently duping.

So, basically, the exact same thing that messes up every online market? Honestly, I just get this feeling that the entire auction house thing is going to spiral out of control. I mean, the items are all reuseable, so you can just resell the last item you bought to pay for your next one, and with the money just constantly changing hands back and forth, while more money pours in, the prices are going to swell out of control.

[GolemsVoice]

I'm honestly a bit suprised everytime I sell something I've previously worn, because I still somehow expect them to be soulbound (in WoW, items that you wear become soulbound, meaning you cannot give them to another player). It would make sense to bind them to an account, for example, so that you can hand down weapons, but just selling them again?

And, really, duping? Wasn't that the whole reason we HAD the online-only client? It's great that Blizzard tries to delete these items, but that's like trying to empty the sea, I'd say.

[Karoht]

And, really, duping? Wasn't that the whole reason we HAD the online-only client? It's great that Blizzard tries to delete these items, but that's like trying to empty the sea, I'd say.Because of the online-only requirement, they have more tools at their disposal.

For example, class trainers in D2. Every patch that came out would make existing class trainers no longer work. Well, all you had to do was simply not take the latest patch, make the character whatever way you want, and then patch up. Some trainers had the capability to do this automatically. This included 'duped' or created items. The online only component means that if they find a loophole, they can close it with a patch, and everyone is forced to accept that patch or not play.

Also, because everyone is connected to servers all the time, it means that, if the duping method is done in game (high chance that this is the case) it means there will be a server side log of how it took place. Much easier to respond to than if the duping took place client side, or if there were a client side option to begin with.

[The_Jackal]

To be fair, you always had to have an up-to-date DII client to connect to battle.net, what really makes the difference in DIII is the database log of all item transactions, which makes it possible to identify and revoke the accounts of dupers.

[Runestar]

Quick question - how are you people getting your gear in inferno?

I know earlier, I complained about the game being boring, but after a short break (that and Blizzard not responding to my request for a refund), I have gone back into the game.

Am now in inferno act1, and while I have no trouble farming butcher, I find his drops suck, and AH stuff cost so much! Nor can I survive in act2.

Help?!? :smalleek:

[tyckspoon]

Option 1: Find/buy some cheap gear with +gold% on it, go back to Hell, grind gold until you can afford some key upgrades.
Option 2: Get really comfortable with the Buyout-search function and try to find some upgrades that are being sold at more sensible prices.
Option 3: Group with somebody who is doing better until you find a few decent drops of your own.
Option 4: Wait for patch 1.03, which will, among other things, smooth out the Inferno difficulty curve some and make it possible to find Inferno-grade drops in late Hell acts.

[Avilan the Grey]

I'm honestly a bit suprised everytime I sell something I've previously worn, because I still somehow expect them to be soulbound (in WoW, items that you wear become soulbound, meaning you cannot give them to another player). It would make sense to bind them to an account, for example, so that you can hand down weapons, but just selling them again?

Why? I don't see the problem. The AH is just an official substitute for the Trading channels and in-game trading. This is not WoW (not said in a condescending manner!).

[ex cathedra]

And, really, duping? Wasn't that the whole reason we HAD the online-only client? It's great that Blizzard tries to delete these items, but that's like trying to empty the sea, I'd say.

This seems like a good time to mention that, ostensibly, the fact that your client's time and date settings have power over the auction house has enabled players to dupe literally billions of gold. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0AMkcD01do)

Reports are conflicting, though, so we'll have to wait and see. Still, everything considered... it's hard to describe how disappointing this game can occasionally be.


Why? I don't see the problem. The AH is just an official substitute for the Trading channels and in-game trading. This is not WoW (not said in a condescending manner!).
Because no decent item sinks exist. It makes for a wonky economy.

[Avilan the Grey]

Because no decent item sinks exist. It makes for a wonky economy.

...And gold is endless. Also a case for a wonky economy.
But yes, good items will get cheaper. Yay!

[ex cathedra]

...And gold is endless. Also a case for a wonky economy.
But yes, good items will get cheaper. Yay!

There exist gold sinks. There exist zero quality item sinks in Softcore.

[Avilan the Grey]

There exist gold sinks. There exist zero quality item sinks in Softcore.

So far the AH IS the gold sink, IMHO.

[Traab]

...And gold is endless. Also a case for a wonky economy.
But yes, good items will get cheaper. Yay!

No, they will get more expensive as people are constantly grinding up extra gold, and reselling their old gear, they will build up larger and larger banks of gold, which will in turn inflate the prices even further. It may not spiral totally out of control, but i would imagine new players popping in a year from now will likely find it hard to locate anything they can afford off the auction house. Thank god crafting really isnt that bad of an option.

[Avilan the Grey]

No, they will get more expensive as people are constantly grinding up extra gold, and reselling their old gear, they will build up larger and larger banks of gold, which will in turn inflate the prices even further. It may not spiral totally out of control, but i would imagine new players popping in a year from now will likely find it hard to locate anything they can afford off the auction house. Thank god crafting really isnt that bad of an option.

On the other hand, with an unlimited supply of great Rares... I can't see the prices spiral out of control when there will be a gazillion rare crossbows with max damage for your level.

[otakuryoga]

is the staff of herding is a one use item and you gotta refarm the components and craft a new one after use?

[Dublock]

is the staff of herding is a one use item and you gotta refarm the components and craft a new one after use?

Nope, you can use the staff as many times as you want :)

Remember Blizzard is making crafting more viable in 1.03 too :D

Edit: I had a weird dream last night and I am positive it is due to Diablo.

I was trying to avoid a huge wasp with a stinger thats roughly 2 inches long.

Damn Act 2, damn you.

[Chen]

No, they will get more expensive as people are constantly grinding up extra gold, and reselling their old gear, they will build up larger and larger banks of gold, which will in turn inflate the prices even further. It may not spiral totally out of control, but i would imagine new players popping in a year from now will likely find it hard to locate anything they can afford off the auction house. Thank god crafting really isnt that bad of an option.

Yeah people kept saying crafting is WAY too expensive and you can always get cheaper and better stuff on the AH. Thing is, if inflation continues crafting will be the best way to get ilvl 62 items at some point. The equilibrium point SHOULD be where the buyout on the AH is about equal to the sum total you'd speed to craft an equivalent item.

[The_Jackal]

Bear in mind that the 10 per account limit of auctions will have somewhat of a dampening effect on most auction prices. The most wildly good stuff will get huge prices, but most of the rest should stay pretty cheap.

[Derjuin]

Quick question - how are you people getting your gear in inferno?

I know earlier, I complained about the game being boring, but after a short break (that and Blizzard not responding to my request for a refund), I have gone back into the game.

Am now in inferno act1, and while I have no trouble farming butcher, I find his drops suck, and AH stuff cost so much! Nor can I survive in act2.

Help?!? :smalleek:

Are you farming him with 5 NV up? If you start on the quest "The Cursed Hold" and farm Cemetary/Halls of Agony for 5 NV, you are guaranteed 4 rares (2 from Warden, 2 from Butcher). Honestly, though, I don't farm them for items I use - I farm them for items to sell and then purchase act 3/4 gear, because that's sort of necessary unless your twitch reflexes are amazing. Also, be sure to craft down all crappy items you find - Exquisite Essence typically sells on the AH for 1,700g each, much more than any crappy item will vendor for (or, if you are lucky and found the Exalted Grand Sovereign <armor piece> plans, you can try making your own items).

Even with 40k hp and 42k dps as a Wizard, though, I find myself having a hard time in act 2, and act 3 may as well be suicide (lol soul lasher pack = instant death). I haven't really found a reason to progress into or past Act 2, because it takes so much longer to do anything in it.

[Chen]

Are you farming him with 5 NV up? If you start on the quest "The Cursed Hold" and farm Cemetary/Halls of Agony for 5 NV, you are guaranteed 4 rares (2 from Warden, 2 from Butcher). Honestly, though, I don't farm them for items I use - I farm them for items to sell and then purchase act 3/4 gear, because that's sort of necessary unless your twitch reflexes are amazing. Also, be sure to craft down all crappy items you find - Exquisite Essence typically sells on the AH for 1,700g each, much more than any crappy item will vendor for (or, if you are lucky and found the Exalted Grand Sovereign <armor piece> plans, you can try making your own items).

Even with 40k hp and 42k dps as a Wizard, though, I find myself having a hard time in act 2, and act 3 may as well be suicide (lol soul lasher pack = instant death). I haven't really found a reason to progress into or past Act 2, because it takes so much longer to do anything in it.

This is pretty much what I've been doing too. Things like gloves, bracers, boots, rings and amulets can all roll extremely good affixes even in Act 1. Starting from the Hall's of Agony 2 and going to the butcher, usually gets you 5 stacks of NV before the Warden (sometimes you need to port to the graveyard to get the last one). I've found with ~18k HP and 28k dps as a wizard I can easily clear through this with a Shock pulse-Blizzard-Venom hydra build with Force armor, teleport and diamond skin. I haven't yet hit a group of elites I can't kill here, though Invulnerable minions can be a pain in the ass (I had a group when going through act 2 that was Horde, Invulnerable Minions, Mortar and Fast...wtf are you supposed to do with that?).

[Starwulf]

Here's a question: What in the world does the "Horde" affix to monsters do?! I haven't noticed anything off about them, nothing that stands out and screams "I am what Horde does/mean"

[AgentPaper]

Here's a question: What in the world does the "Horde" affix to monsters do?! I haven't noticed anything off about them, nothing that stands out and screams "I am what Horde does/mean"

Horde just means that there's more "minion" creatures running around. Something like 2-3 times as many, from what I've seen.

[Starwulf]

Horde just means that there's more "minion" creatures running around. Something like 2-3 times as many, from what I've seen.

Ahhh, that would explain why I had so many swarms of flies last night when I got near a mini-event queens nest last night ^^

[Dublock]

Horde+Mortar+Extra Health=a few deaths (as a range at least)

Anyone looked at RMAH? I have not been able to get on.

[ex cathedra]

Horde+Mortar+Extra Health=a few deaths (as a range at least)

Anyone looked at RMAH? I have not been able to get on.

Just wait until you deal with Mortar + Horde + Molten + Invulnerable Minions ._.

Yup. Things are already up at $250USD and things are already selling at at least $100USD. Though I saw someone ebaying an item for 710 euros pretty recently, too.

[Starwulf]

So is anyone on here planning on touching the RMAH with a 10-foot pole? I know I won't be, which means my Inferno career is going to be a very long and arduous grinding affair in the hopes of getting some decent claws, since most people will likely list the good **** on the RMAH in the hopes of making money.

[ex cathedra]

So is anyone on here planning on touching the RMAH with a 10-foot pole? I know I won't be, which means my Inferno career is going to be a very long and arduous grinding affair in the hopes of getting some decent claws, since most people will likely list the good **** on the RMAH in the hopes of making money.

I'll be selling as much as possible.

I've made 16.25USD thusfar so I've recouped a quarter of my monetary investment. :3

[Othesemo]

So is anyone on here planning on touching the RMAH with a 10-foot pole? I know I won't be, which means my Inferno career is going to be a very long and arduous grinding affair in the hopes of getting some decent claws, since most people will likely list the good **** on the RMAH in the hopes of making money.

My eventual hope is to sell the game's value back. However, I'm taking a break from the game right now, and none of my characters are terribly close to inferno yet.

[Traab]

Woohoo! My barbarian is in act 3 nightmare at the mission to kill the ballista, and he is at 16.6khp and 1500+dps. I got some kickass amulet that gave me an extra 100 vit and about 30 extra strength. I love wading into a swarm of baddies and watching cleave set off chain reactions of explosions after 1-2 swings. Or slamming the ground to stun a pack of champs and dropping earthquake that murders them so hard it makes me ashamed that I ever switched to those ancient warriors.

[Eakin]

I finished Act 1 of Hell on my monk, finally. It's turning into a real slog. Buying a new weapon from the AH helped but there were still a few champ packs that killed me 4-5 times. Or chased me into a second pack, which also ended poorly... I thought about picking up my level 17 WD and going a little further with her, but frankly that playstyle isn't my cup of tea, so she's potentially been back burnered for good. Instead I rolled up a Demon Hunter and HOLY CRAP, I finally feel like a total badass again! Why did I not try this first. Rapid Fire? How is something this much fun not illegal?

So yeah, I'm probably going to be working on a demon hunter for the foreseeable future.

[Avilan the Grey]

So is anyone on here planning on touching the RMAH with a 10-foot pole? I know I won't be, which means my Inferno career is going to be a very long and arduous grinding affair in the hopes of getting some decent claws, since most people will likely list the good **** on the RMAH in the hopes of making money.

Nope. I won't touch it. I am not THAT invested in my games..

[Starwulf]

Nope. I won't touch it. I am not THAT invested in my games..

Glad to see I'm not the only one ^^

On another note, I'm now in Act 3 Hell. Belial was a freaking pansy, I didn't even have to heal one single time fighting him. The snakes he summoned did more damage to me then he himself did! I've begun buying All resist gear with dex/vit and Cold resist on them, and it's definitely helped a good deal, I'm dying MUCH less often now, I was having a lot of trouble against champion packs, but now that I've gone from 30-40 resist all to 150 resist all, it's a pretty huge difference. I've also finally switched from Mantra of Retribution to Mantra of Evasion, and I've noticed a fairly significant difference with it as well, from 30% dodge to 45% was a pretty good leap, makes me a very happy camper!

Also only 7 bars away from level 60. I think Imma grind it out before I beat down that fat bastard in the Kitchen Larders, just so I can see what 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor can do on a boss monster :).

Beyond that, I need to start saving my gold, I'd like to ugprade to a 700 or so DPS weapon(from my current 560(or is it 580..hmm) Weapon. Still not at 10k DPS, only about 7800, which is a bit disheartening atm.

So what skills are my fellow monks using? I'm currently using: Buttons 1-4: Breath of Heaven with the extra healing power rune, Sweeping Wind with Cyclone, Mantra of Evasion with Divine Protection(another major lifesaver I've noticed, even if it is only for 3 secs), and Seven Sided Strike with the teleportation rune(Please note, that with that rune, you can escape Jailer effects, I've done it multiple times, over and over again just to make sure). Left click is Fist of Thunder with the very first rune(again, teleportation, but it does NOT escape jailer effects), and Lashing Tail Kick, with Vulture Claw Kick rune. Over-all I feel pretty content with how I'm set up, I only have issues with very specific champion packs now, and even then, as long as I target the minions, or use my knockback ability(lashing tail) to keep all but 1 Elite off of me, I can almost always grind my way through pretty much any mob. Bosses are a joke, I haven't had a single boss that I couldn't burn down in under 2 minutes since Act 4 normal, most is under a 1 minute(I rarely get more then 2 Seven Sided Strikes on most mobs, sometimes no more then the first).

Having a blast, once I get through act 4 hell, Imma grind hell level ponies for a while before I move onto Inferno. Then I'll just grind and grind out gear and gold until I feel confident I can move on. I'm not touching another character until I finally beat the game on Inferno, after which I'll move back to my wizard(level 32), which I've shelved in order to beat the game fully with my monk(love me some monkey fist fighting!).

[Traab]

Im trying an experiment with my weapon. Instead of piling on +damage gems, ive added life gained per hit to a weapon that already has life gained per hit on it. Just with my weapon im gaining something like 150 hit points every time I hit something. Its less useful against the bosses, but since the majority of creatures in diablo come in packs, some in huge swarms, hitting 5-10 guys at once per swing should help keep me topped off fairly well right? Or should I stick with a lower dps weapon that lets me gain 2.4% of the damage I deal back as hit points? Im getting crits for between 4800-10k at the upper range, depending on what im smashing, and whether I have battle rage up.

[otakuryoga]

Im trying an experiment with my weapon. Instead of piling on +damage gems, ive added life gained per hit to a weapon that already has life gained per hit on it. Just with my weapon im gaining something like 150 hit points every time I hit something. Its less useful against the bosses, but since the majority of creatures in diablo come in packs, some in huge swarms, hitting 5-10 guys at once per swing should help keep me topped off fairly well right? Or should I stick with a lower dps weapon that lets me gain 2.4% of the damage I deal back as hit points? Im getting crits for between 4800-10k at the upper range, depending on what im smashing, and whether I have battle rage up.

everything i have seen from the mathcrafters say that life on hit >>> lifesteal
supposedly the % lifesteal listed gets reduced in practice each difficulty level you advance

[Traab]

You know, sometimes its so hard to judge whats better for a slot. Its easy when its something simple like seeing which has higher stats, but especially with the weapons, you have to consider whether gaining any of a dozen or more things like % chance to crit/crit damage/life steal/stun/fear/knockback/life on hit, are worth losing a bit of vit and strength, and if so, how much? Especially when the drop of strength effects your total dps, which may make that weapon that looks great actually do crappy damage because your current weapon had 150 str on it.

[Chen]

So is anyone on here planning on touching the RMAH with a 10-foot pole? I know I won't be, which means my Inferno career is going to be a very long and arduous grinding affair in the hopes of getting some decent claws, since most people will likely list the good **** on the RMAH in the hopes of making money.

If I can sell stuff on it I'll use that money to buy other stuff. But I won't start off putting any money on it.

Right now since the gold selling isn't available the RMAH and the gold AH are pretty wonky. I suspect with a little brokerage back and forth you could make a bunch of money once the gold selling is enabled. That said I'm still mainly working on the gold AH now. Started crafting the 6 property chest pieces. They cost roughly 200k to make (including all mats). I made 4. One was complete crap (re-salvaged it). One is on the AH for 400k. One already sold for a million and I have another that I'm debating how expensive to put it up.

Stats:
~150 Str
~50 Vit
~70 Resist All
~+250 armor
Melee damage reduced by 4%
some random stat which I don't recall

Thoughts?

[ex cathedra]

If I can sell stuff on it I'll use that money to buy other stuff. But I won't start off putting any money on it.

Right now since the gold selling isn't available the RMAH and the gold AH are pretty wonky. I suspect with a little brokerage back and forth you could make a bunch of money once the gold selling is enabled. That said I'm still mainly working on the gold AH now. Started crafting the 6 property chest pieces. They cost roughly 200k to make (including all mats). I made 4. One was complete crap (re-salvaged it). One is on the AH for 400k. One already sold for a million and I have another that I'm debating how expensive to put it up.

Stats:
~150 Str
~50 Vit
~70 Resist All
~+250 armor
Melee damage reduced by 4%
some random stat which I don't recall

Thoughts?

Nice. Did the 6-prop chest recipe just drop for you? Those are ridiculously valuable. That particular piece should sell for millions.

[Chen]

I bought the recipe for 2.5 mil. I have had some of the 4 property ones drop but they're kind of pointless (and they sell for a couple of thousand gold only). Eventually the gold AH will be incredibly saturated with money. Crafting will be the way out. Already the 6 property recipes seem to be paying dividends. As prices increase even more the fixed crafting cost will become a better and better deal. I figured I'd get in early before most realize this. Once they do, those 6 property recipes are going to skyrocket.

[Traab]

Is there a way to narrow down the search function like this? Say im browsing for upgrades and I find an item with great stats. Is it possible to do a search for that item name to see if there are copies of it for sale cheaper? Say its a yellow called stalwart clod hoppers, can I type in "stalwart clod hoppers" and bring up a list of them for sale?

[Karoht]

So is anyone on here planning on touching the RMAH with a 10-foot pole? I know I won't be, which means my Inferno career is going to be a very long and arduous grinding affair in the hopes of getting some decent claws, since most people will likely list the good **** on the RMAH in the hopes of making money.

If I have an item THAT good tht it would be worth selling, odds are I'm either keeping it for myself, my fiance, or my friends, in that order.
If none of the above are interested, then I might sell it. The highest I expect to sell anything for is 5 bucks.

And before I sell it, I'll probably make mention of it here, and on my friends list anyway.

My free and open policy as such is why I have 4 friends already sending me Act 2 Inferno gear, and I don't even have a character in Hell Difficulty yet. Sure, I'm paying with future karma, but thats how I roll.

[Aotrs Commander]

My goodness, the Blizzard forums are more inimical than Bioware's, aren't they? I ended up following a few links after reading patch notes, and oh my. There are almost as many bitter people as there were with Mass Effect 3...

[Traab]

My goodness, the Blizzard forums are more inimical than Bioware's, aren't they? I ended up following a few links after reading patch notes, and oh my. There are almost as many bitter people as there were with Mass Effect 3...

Yeah honestly at this point I think its bitterness for the sake of being bitter. Ever since they first made the always online announcement there seems to be a subset of diablo fans that are bound and determined to hate the game. Despite the fact that they bought it, despite the fact that they have played it, despite the fact that they are STILL playing it, they will complain about everything they can think of, including some of the dumbest bits.

[ex cathedra]

Yeah honestly at this point I think its bitterness for the sake of being bitter.

Personally, I'm a little bit bitter because this game was really poorly made.

[Traab]

Personally, I'm a little bit bitter because this game was really poorly made.

I dont see how. I am having a freaking blast, im still discovering new stuff every time I go through an act with a different character, the auction house has new gear for me that I can afford, life is pretty good.

[Dublock]

I can understand some of the complaints but for the most part I like it:

Story: Yea it is lacking a novel type story but I honestly was not expecting much.

Graphics: I have seen people complain about this but I love it on max settings

Loot drop rate: Wasn't that the case back in D2? I see this a lot but I thought the point of Diablo is going through and having a lot of loot for the chance at something.

Legendary gear: They are fixing it although I have no problem a great roll yellow being better (but has to be a damn near perfect blue to be better).

Always Online: Been known and I would have been shocked if it wasn't.

AH/: The AH is included in a lot of games and I honestly think its for the better. We can (and I do ) can trade without.

RMAH: Ultimately I have no problem with this, if people want to pay other people for gear, sure go ahead. As soon as Blizz offers gear(better gear) on it, then I have a problem, but if its fellow players, might as well lower the incentive to use 3rd party services.

[AgentPaper]

Personally, I'm a little bit bitter because this game was really poorly made.

I won't claim that it's a perfect home run strike out of the park from day 1, but to say that the game is poorly made is just being purposefully antagonistic. You can't focus on the flaws and ignore the game's strengths, of which there are many. Fluid combat, large variety of skills, great graphics and style, huge amounts of quality voice acting, interesting and varied locales, varied enemies, and so on and so on.

The flaws it does have, are very fixable. Blizzard has stated not only that they plan to address the specific flaws that have been brought up, but have even shared how they plan to do so. They are not uncaring or lazy, they are experienced, passionate game-makers and gamers, and yes, they are human. Humans make mistakes. So do I, and so do you, so just relax and enjoy the game a bit, ok?

[The_Jackal]

Beware, Hardcore Griefing, coming to a theatre near you!

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4551471942

[ex cathedra]

I dont see how. I am having a freaking blast, im still discovering new stuff every time I go through an act with a different character, the auction house has new gear for me that I can afford, life is pretty good.

And I'm legitimately glad to hear that you're enjoying yourself, but disregarding my qualms with the game simply because you don't know what they are seems a bit unfair.


I won't claim that it's a perfect home run strike out of the park from day 1, but to say that the game is poorly made is just being purposefully antagonistic. You can't focus on the flaws and ignore the game's strengths, of which there are many. Fluid combat, large variety of skills, great graphics and style, huge amounts of quality voice acting, interesting and varied locales, varied enemies, and so on and so on.

D3 lacks polish. It's rough. More to the point, it's unfinished, and it was released unfinished. Maybe you don't think that's a flaw. Maybe I do. I think that the game is, to some extent, poorly made and I'm not trying to be antagonistic and I'm perfectly calm.


IThe flaws it does have, are very fixable. Blizzard has stated not only that they plan to address the specific flaws that have been brought up, but have even shared how they plan to do so. They are not uncaring or lazy, they are experienced, passionate game-makers and gamers, and yes, they are human. Humans make mistakes. So do I, and so do you, so just relax and enjoy the game a bit, ok?

To some degree I get that, but... maybe I don't think that it's okay that the game was released with so many problems. I don't really feel like I'm at a time in my life where I can spare another decade for Blizzard to finish their most recent Diablo. The "release it broken, make early-adopters test it for us, fix it later" thing strikes me as kind of unfair. I thought I was buying a game, not beta test access.

They are experienced. This team has a dozen year's worth of experience to pull from Diablo II in addition to the incomparable advantage of having everything that Blizzard learned from WoW. However, I feel like a lot of that experience... isn't apparent. I'll give you that they have experience, but I'm not yet convinced that they weren't lazy.

[The_Jackal]

D3 lacks polish. It's rough. More to the point, it's unfinished, and it was released unfinished.

Care to back that up with some specifics? I mean, yes, the RMAH didn't make it by release date, and sure, the balance isn't 100% there, but the game is, in my opinion, remarkably polished, given the amount of content and the vast scope of possible builds out there. I mean, what game title are you really comparing it to, that it compares unfavourably to?


I don't think that it's okay that the game was released with so many problems. I don't really feel like I'm at a time in my life where I can spare another decade for Blizzard to finish their most recent Diablo. The "release it broken, make early-adopters test it for us, fix it later" thing strikes me as kind of unfair. I thought I was buying a game, not beta test access.

The kinds of problems they had at launch were not problems that could be fixed with testing, no matter how much you did of it. Balance testing really doesn't work until you've crowd-sourced your game to the public and get to see what 1 million players make of it. Likewise, the battle.net connection issues can't be simulated. There's no way to TEST millions of players trying to log on to your game all at once. You can't do it, period. They did a perfectly good job testing the game, but problems like we've seen were inevitable. Now you may not agree with the design choices they made which created these issues (online only DRM, vastly flexible skill system), but given those choices, they did as good a job as any reasonable person could expect.

Also, what modern PC game doesn't ship with bugs that get patched once the game goes live? Did you try Skyrim? Or WoW? Or really any game that isn't some braindead FPS game (because walking down a cover-strewn corridor shooting people really is innovative and complex gameplay)?


They are experienced. This team has a dozen year's worth of experience to pull from Diablo II in addition to the incomparable advantage of having everything that Blizzard learned from WoW. However, I feel like a lot of that experience... isn't apparent. I'll give you that they have experience, but I'm not yet convinced that they weren't lazy.

The team that made Diablo II is LOOOONG gone. There's no such thing as organizational memory, and if you think the Blizzard North guys had some kind of development mad genius, I commend you to trying a copy of 'Hellgate London', which is what the lion's share of that Studio did after the breakup of Blizz North. If you can run it, since it is one of the legendary bombs of PC gaming.

My point is that this stuff is HARD. Making a computer game, even a relatively simple one, is far, far more complex than an amateur might expect. It takes millions of man hours to design it, make it, polish it, and test it. And no matter how much testing you might put it through, you're still going to discover that your players will find new and exciting ways to break it.

[Traab]

And I'm legitimately glad to hear that you're enjoying yourself, but disregarding my qualms with the game simply because you don't know what they are seems a bit unfair.



D3 lacks polish. It's rough. More to the point, it's unfinished, and it was released unfinished. Maybe you don't think that's a flaw. Maybe I do. I think that the game is, to some extent, poorly made and I'm not trying to be antagonistic and I'm perfectly calm.



To some degree I get that, but... maybe I don't think that it's okay that the game was released with so many problems. I don't really feel like I'm at a time in my life where I can spare another decade for Blizzard to finish their most recent Diablo. The "release it broken, make early-adopters test it for us, fix it later" thing strikes me as kind of unfair. I thought I was buying a game, not beta test access.

They are experienced. This team has a dozen year's worth of experience to pull from Diablo II in addition to the incomparable advantage of having everything that Blizzard learned from WoW. However, I feel like a lot of that experience... isn't apparent. I'll give you that they have experience, but I'm not yet convinced that they weren't lazy.

1) Except you didnt list qualms, you just said its poorly made. Now, aside from the gold auction house, I cant think of anything that could really count as unfinished or poorly made. Do you mean class balance? Because any time you have more than one choice of a single character, class balance is going to be an issue pretty much forever. D2 was still getting class balance patches MANY years after it was released. Did you mean because there were some login issues on release? You may have a slight point, but speaking as someone who has been there on opening day for probably 4-5 different mmo games, this one comparatively went as smooth as silk. Expecting anything better than what we got is honestly a pipe dream, its not going to happen for any really popular game like this.

2) The problems it came out with were the kind of thing that simply cant be fixed ahead of time. The biggest problems were the early logins, and that was sorted out in record time, and not everyone even experienced them. I know my game interruptions were pretty few and far between from day 1 on and im hardly one of the lucky few.

I just think that you pretty grossly exaggerated the issues when you made a claim about poorly made. It was extraordinarily well made, and the minor issues have been ironed out with rather excellent haste and effectiveness so far.

[Dublock]

The only time I really had log in issues was for an hour and half after the game came out which I was a little sadden by as I was logged on to Cata's release a few mins after but as it was a new system I was not shocked at all.

I have had little lag issues, I had a lag spike once yesterday morning right when I logged on, but other then that I haven't had any in a week.

I like the major system changes, the runes, the stat system change is not a big deal at all as a good number of people just picked what they thought was optimum anyway.

[Othesemo]

Hey, I'm going to be trying out a hardcore barbarian tonight with my brother (who'll be playing a demon hunter). Any good tips for avoiding death?

[Traab]

Hey, I'm going to be trying out a hardcore barbarian tonight with my brother (who'll be playing a demon hunter). Any good tips for avoiding death?

Play run away, run away fast with izual in act 4. God I hate fighting him so freaking much on my barbarian. I drop an earthquake, take potshots as my hp allow, and meanwhile sprint circles with mini tornadoes pecking away at him so he doesnt two shot me in the face so hard I respawn inside out. Just got him on nightmare, took me 3 tries, which is a huge improvement over normal. It took me something like 15 tries before I found the perfect way to kill him and not die in 5 seconds flat.

[ex cathedra]

The game was released without PvP. Whether or not that feature matters to me (or you) isn't really relevant, but it was a promised feature that was cut from release in order to ship earlier.

I wasn't talking strictly about "bugs" that were released with the game. I don't even mind those. Those are reasonable, as you're suggesting. What I do mind are the blatant design flaws that Blizzard are scrambling to resolve. Rebalancing 75% of Inferno isn't a bugfix. Retooling the entire endgame itemization system isn't a bugfix.

The game was shipped without sufficiently testing its highest difficulty. They've outright admitted that, internally, they didn't even progress to the end of inferno. People keep making these "oh, well, there's no way Blizzard would be as good as their players so they really couldn't test it" excuses that are completely unfounded. You don't have to full clear Inferno on a Hardcore Barbarian to understand that there isn't a single legendary weapon in the game that can compete with an ilvl 63 blue item with decent affixes. Someone had to design the drop/affix tables so there's simply no excuse for the itemization issues given a) how obvious they are and b) given how relatively simple the itemization system is in D3.

The game has always-online DRM. I get it. We're over it. They don't want people pirating their game; D3 is serious cash for Blizzard. However, they reassured people about the DRM by suggesting that it would combat hacks/duped items. That's fine and all but there have already been dupe methods uncovered and the game isn't even a month old.

[Eakin]

The game was released without PvP. Whether or not that feature matters to me (or you) isn't really relevant, but it was a promised feature that was cut from release in order to ship earlier.

I wasn't talking strictly about "bugs" that were released with the game. I don't even mind those. Those are reasonable, as you're suggesting. What I do mind are the blatant design flaws that Blizzard are scrambling to resolve. Rebalancing 75% of Inferno isn't a bugfix. Retooling the entire endgame itemization system isn't a bugfix.

The game was shipped without sufficiently testing its highest difficulty. They've outright admitted that, internally, they didn't even progress to the end of inferno. People keep making these "oh, well, there's no way Blizzard would be as good as their players so they really couldn't test it" excuses that are completely unfounded. You don't have to full clear Inferno on a Hardcore Barbarian to understand that there isn't a single legendary weapon in the game that can compete with an ilvl 63 blue item with decent affixes. Someone had to design the drop/affix tables so there's simply no excuse for the itemization issues given a) how obvious they are and b) given how relatively simple the itemization system is in D3.

The game has always-online DRM. I get it. We're over it. They don't want people pirating their game; D3 is serious cash for Blizzard. However, they reassured people about the DRM by suggesting that it would combat hacks/duped items. That's fine and all but there have already been dupe methods uncovered and the game isn't even a month old.

All of these issues are completely valid areas where Blizzard really did drop the ball to a greater or lesser extent. I'm never going to use the RMAH, but I'm still connected 100% of the time so I get to enjoy 4000ms lag spikes where I can't flee from the pack of champion level foes that 3 shot me without rubber banding back into them.

Still I have to ask, are you still playing the game? You seem really disappointed by it, so if you are I'd ask why you're wasting your time with it, and if you aren't I'd ask why you're still posting in a thread about it. Not that your feedback isn't useful or or accurate, it probably is. But why spend your time on a game you aren't having fun with rather than writing off the $60 you spent and moving on?

[ex cathedra]

All of these issues are completely valid areas where Blizzard really did drop the ball to a greater or lesser extent. I'm never going to use the RMAH, but I'm still connected 100% of the time so I get to enjoy 4000ms lag spikes where I can't flee from the pack of champion level foes that 3 shot me without rubber banding back into them.

Still I have to ask, are you still playing the game? You seem really disappointed by it, so if you are I'd ask why you're wasting your time with it, and if you aren't I'd ask why you're still posting in a thread about it. Not that your feedback isn't useful or or accurate, it probably is. But why spend your time on a game you aren't having fun with rather than writing off the $60 you spent and moving on?

I've mostly stopped playing. A good deal of my motivation comes from playing with people who haven't yet stopped, but my friends list is increasingly lacking those. As far as this thread goes, it's something to do, I truly enjoy discussion, and I pretty much never unsubscribe from threads, so it's always here and bold and updated. :smalltongue:

The game isn't unplayable, and it isn't even outright bad. It's disappointing and somewhat shallow, but I've obviously played worse games. In this day and age, though, it really isn't worth 60 USD, in my opinion. Though, I suppose that few games are, to be fair.

[Eakin]

I've mostly stopped playing. A good deal of my motivation comes from playing with people who haven't yet stopped, but my friends list is increasingly lacking those. As far as this thread goes, it's something to do, I truly enjoy discussion, and I pretty much never unsubscribe from threads, so it's always here and bold and updated. :smalltongue:

The game isn't unplayable, and it isn't even outright bad. It's disappointing and somewhat shallow, but I've obviously played worse games. In this day and age, though, it really isn't worth 60 USD, in my opinion. Though, I suppose that few games are, to be fair.

I'll admit that I also find myself playing the game less and less, although I would say that what I've gotten out of it so far is probably worth the $60 I paid even if I never touch it again. I'd like to finish Hell mode, maybe try Inferno after 1.03 makes it a little more reasonable, but I can't see myself playing this game for years, or even through the end of 2012. It's not that I don't think it's polished, necessarily, but the core game play just isn't holding my attention that well.

I also wish you could skip the normal mode play through when making a new character. Really, there's no excuse for making someone play through the same game 4 times PER CHARACTER to unlock the hard stuff. All that says to me is that they haven't figured out how to make a satisfying difficulty curve.

[AgentPaper]

The game was released without PvP. Whether or not that feature matters to me (or you) isn't really relevant, but it was a promised feature that was cut from release in order to ship earlier.

Yes, they specifically decided to not release this part of the game until a later date. They specifically said that they were doing this, months before the game came out. Blizzard has done this before, for example the infamous Dance Studio in World of Warcraft has been pushed back multiple times. Sometimes features need to be pushed back, but that doesn't mean that Blizzard is releasing an incomplete game.


I wasn't talking strictly about "bugs" that were released with the game. I don't even mind those. Those are reasonable, as you're suggesting. What I do mind are the blatant design flaws that Blizzard are scrambling to resolve. Rebalancing 75% of Inferno isn't a bugfix. Retooling the entire endgame itemization system isn't a bugfix.

The game was shipped without sufficiently testing its highest difficulty. They've outright admitted that, internally, they didn't even progress to the end of inferno. People keep making these "oh, well, there's no way Blizzard would be as good as their players so they really couldn't test it" excuses that are completely unfounded. You don't have to full clear Inferno on a Hardcore Barbarian to understand that there isn't a single legendary weapon in the game that can compete with an ilvl 63 blue item with decent affixes. Someone had to design the drop/affix tables so there's simply no excuse for the itemization issues given a) how obvious they are and b) given how relatively simple the itemization system is in D3.

Blizzard knew that no matter how long they tested, they would never be able to fully balance Inferno to the fine degree that they would need to. They also knew that, if Inferno was too easy, it would be far harder and unpopular for them to increase the difficulty later on, rather than to decrease it. So, they bit the bullet and made it harder than their testers could handle, knowing that it wouldn't be balanced regardless of what they did. That's not to say that they didn't test it, just that they tested and balanced it with the goal of making it slightly too hard, rather than "challenging", which is what they did for earlier difficulties.


The game has always-online DRM. I get it. We're over it. They don't want people pirating their game; D3 is serious cash for Blizzard. However, they reassured people about the DRM by suggesting that it would combat hacks/duped items. That's fine and all but there have already been dupe methods uncovered and the game isn't even a month old.

I still haven't seen a reputable report of items or gold being duped. I've seen disreputable ones, and ones that were later proven to be fake, but if you know of a confirmed case of hacking/duping, I'd be very interested to see it.

Regardless, even if a duping glitch was discovered, that wouldn't be a failing of the online-only security. The online-only security would allow Blizzard to quickly identify the problem, hotfix in the required patch to everyone playing the game instantly, and delete any contraband before it's users could put it to use.

[ex cathedra]

Yes, they specifically decided to not release this part of the game until a later date. They specifically said that they were doing this, months before the game came out. Blizzard has done this before, for example the infamous Dance Studio in World of Warcraft has been pushed back multiple times. Sometimes features need to be pushed back, but that doesn't mean that Blizzard is releasing an incomplete game.
It kind of does, though. That's what incomplete means. The game is missing features.


Blizzard knew that no matter how long they tested, they would never be able to fully balance Inferno to the fine degree that they would need to. They also knew that, if Inferno was too easy, it would be far harder and unpopular for them to increase the difficulty later on, rather than to decrease it. So, they bit the bullet and made it harder than their testers could handle, knowing that it wouldn't be balanced regardless of what they did. That's not to say that they didn't test it, just that they tested and balanced it with the goal of making it slightly too hard, rather than "challenging", which is what they did for earlier difficulties.
It's not about perfecting balance. That point isn't even relevant. They didn't test the entirely of the game. Their testers didn't complete inferno. How is that defensible? I can't possibly understand why anyone feels the need to defend that decision. It's not just minute difficulty adjustments that are hard to get down; if it were, I doubt that they'd be reworking difficulty, drop rates, and itemization balance for the entirely of the inferno difficulty. These weren't hard things to notice; they're gross oversights.


I still haven't seen a reputable report of items or gold being duped. I've seen disreputable ones, and ones that were later proven to be fake, but if you know of a confirmed case of hacking/duping, I'd be very interested to see it.

Regardless, even if a duping glitch was discovered, that wouldn't be a failing of the online-only security. The online-only security would allow Blizzard to quickly identify the problem, hotfix in the required patch to everyone playing the game instantly, and delete any contraband before it's users could put it to use.

You haven't been keeping up with the Asian servers, then. They've experienced constant downtimes and at least one rollback because of duping, among other things.

[The_Jackal]

So, itemization, endgame difficulty and PVP.

Okay, I'll grant you, itemization could be a better. But bear in mind that the really cool legendaries for DII mostly didn't hit until LoD. The few that were relevant weren't great for their stats, but for unique abilities that simply weren't available as random affixes, like Crushing Blow or Piercing, or what have you.

In DIII they did make it a point to ensure that the best of the best items would be rares, so as to keep everyone from being a carbon copy of each other, a'la Buriza-Zons in DII. So I don't know how much of the disappointing legendaries is design versus a mere lack of content. I know one thing: There aren't enough legendary/set drops, period. Clawing through piles of yellow wank in hopes of getting something remotely useful to anyone gets old fast, and legendaries at least had the merit of having a sane group of affixes for some putative purpose.

Endgame difficulty, I feel folds back into my original remarks about balance. There was no way they were going to get it right in testing, without crowd-sourcing it, and frankly, making it too hard, rather than too easy was the right decision. If it's too easy, the world is flooded with tons of easily gotten ilvl 63 gear, and you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Better to set the bar absurdly high, see how the population did, then tune it back to a more reasonable level. Is it cool to have to wait for a patch before you can advance into Inferno? Maybe. How much worse would it be if inferno had been a joke, and the top difficulty flamed out after 30 days of play?

PVP: This isn't a FPS game, and it isn't WoW. Simply put, PVP is a sideshow. You may feel it's more important, but clearly the developers and the vast majority of the community agrees with me, and for good reason: PVP is the hardest to balance, takes tons of developer time, is fundamentally unfair to begin with, and appeals to a small percentage of their player base. So, I'm sorry you're in that fraction, but honestly, you should be shopping your PVP buck somewhere else, like a game that puts players on a more even footing. I recommend Starcraft II, personally.

[AgentPaper]

@aethernox: Before I continue this discussion, I'd like to ask you to please tone it down on the over-exaggeration. You don't need to throw around big statements to make a point. If you don't think that the game is "really poorly made", then don't say so. If you state what you actually think, instead of exaggerating everything, then you'll be taken more seriously and perhaps we can have a real discussion. Normally I'd just move on, but you've stated you want to have a real discussion, so this is what will need to happen to have one.


It kind of does, though. That's what incomplete means. The game is missing features.

It's not about perfecting balance. That point isn't even relevant. They didn't test the entirely of the game. Their testers didn't complete inferno. How is that defensible? I can't possibly understand why anyone feels the need to defend that decision. It's not just minute difficulty adjustments that are hard to get down; if it were, I doubt that they'd be reworking difficulty, drop rates, and itemization balance for the entirely of the inferno difficulty. These weren't hard things to notice; they're gross oversights.

I'd argue against this, but I'd just be repeating what I said earlier, so we'll just have to agree to disagree here.


You haven't been keeping up with the Asian servers, then. They've experienced constant downtimes and at least one rollback because of duping, among other things.

The Asian server is something completely different. I can't say I would be surprised if duping was occurring there, though I can't help but notice you still haven't given any reference to prove the duping besides word of mouth.

Regardless, if what you say is true, it sounds like the online-only protection is working exactly as intended. Of course it's impossible to completely stop any kind of hacking or exploits, but the online framework probably made it a lot harder to do, and certainly made it much easier to resolve the issue. A rollback certainly sucks, but it's better than duping running rampant, and wouldn't be possible in an offline game.

[Derjuin]

So today I had the smart idea to try to add Whimsyshire on to the end of my inferno butcher runs, though I think I'll have to tweak my skills a bit before I do that. A chubby pink unicorn smacked me for 40k (not using Force Armor, probably should be), while its cuddle bear champion pack buddies' Mortar hit for 35k~ each (a huge increase from the 5k-10k I'm used to seeing :smalleek:). Two seconds later I was quite the crispy corpse :smalltongue:.

[Traab]

Ugh nightmare diablo is kicking my butt on my barbarian. I get through stage one with no problems, but the lack of healing pools at stage 2 is getting stupidly annoying. My doppelganger has killed me most of the time, usually on the second or third spawn, when im at half life or lower from random hits ive taken from diablo. I tried front loading damage hoping to burn them down so I have earthquake and the ancients, but diablo just wont stay the hell still in my earthquake, and my ancients tend to stand directly in the fire or skeletal cages he summons like nimrods.

*EDIT* Opps, didnt mean to post then, anyways, i think my next step is to take a page from my izual fights and try sprinting with tornadoes to whittle away at his hp and force my dopplganger to stay back. If I can keep that gap I should be able to hold onto my hp long enough to get to stage three.

[Dublock]

I heard a rumor about the AH using your system clock to affect the auctions that allowed the duping of gold (which was apparently fixed on Tues.). If this was true, shame on Blizz for allowing that one through.

But I agree with the camp of Inferno needed to be insanely hard to force those great gamers to struggle through it and then nerf it if/when needed. I have no problem hitting the brick wall as its phrased for now. If anything it pushes me because I know its hard and I know its still possible, that appeals to me.

Honestly I don't care about PvP and I don't see how its going to be balanced at all, Blizz might surprise me but I fully expect DHs to be really OP, more so if they delayed the game for it. SS for 100% crit and crit damage stacking? Yea, one shot type OP.

[ex cathedra]

Regarding Asian server exploits: A developer post (http://tw.battle.net/d3/zh/forum/topic/697956329), translated:
First of all, we are deeply grateful to you for your patience waiting for the development team during this maintenance time in order to restore the service as a whole.

On June 10, our development team has found some error on the stored items in the database, these errors represent a very small part of the items can not be normal trading or selling. This error caused all less than 0.01% of the items have been copied, the majority of players and is not affected by this problem, but the database before removing these duplicated items, is unable to maintain stable. Therefore, we carried out the maintenance of the server, and perform the necessary operations to fix this problem. The development team is currently working to make the server able to resume service as soon as possible.

All original items and their reproductions will be removed from the database, follow-up, we will tell the exact time of maintenance completed, but currently estimated Server recovery services some time in the afternoon of June 11, 8 pm (Taiwan time).We have also noted that part of the players during a short period of the game after the break and suffered back problems. This issue follow-up will be further instructions.

Note: to restore service postponed to 20:00

I heard a rumor about the AH using your system clock to affect the auctions that allowed the duping of gold (which was apparently fixed on Tues.). If this was true, shame on Blizz for allowing that one through.
That much is unconfirmed, but you could change your system clock in order to cancel any of your auctions at any time.

But I agree with the camp of Inferno needed to be insanely hard to force those great gamers to struggle through it and then nerf it if/when needed. I have no problem hitting the brick wall as its phrased for now. If anything it pushes me because I know its hard and I know its still possible, that appeals to me.
Inferno isn't "insanely hard" inasmuch as it is insanely time consuming. Inferno doesn't have difficulty as much as it has grind-elements. It's mostly just a gear check. If you can play through act 1 inferno easily, you don't have to improve to do A2+ (and that often wouldn't be enough), you simply have to farm better gear. Just a note.

[leafman]

Ugh nightmare diablo is kicking my butt on my barbarian. I get through stage one with no problems, but the lack of healing pools at stage 2 is getting stupidly annoying. My doppelganger has killed me most of the time, usually on the second or third spawn, when im at half life or lower from random hits ive taken from diablo. I tried front loading damage hoping to burn them down so I have earthquake and the ancients, but diablo just wont stay the hell still in my earthquake, and my ancients tend to stand directly in the fire or skeletal cages he summons like nimrods.

*EDIT* Opps, didnt mean to post then, anyways, i think my next step is to take a page from my izual fights and try sprinting with tornadoes to whittle away at his hp and force my dopplganger to stay back. If I can keep that gap I should be able to hold onto my hp long enough to get to stage three.

I know it is kinda cheesy, but stun lock them and they do down easier. Bash+Clobber is the easiest way to do it. War Cry+Invigorate (+20% Armor, +10% Life and 310 life per second for 60 sec) is helpful with healing and damage migitation. Also Wrath of the Berserker+Insanity is nice for smacking Diablo around.

My current build (level 54 and at the end of Act 1 Hell): http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#baiVkP!beV!YaabbZ

[Artanis]

My goodness, the Blizzard forums are more inimical than Bioware's, aren't they? I ended up following a few links after reading patch notes, and oh my. There are almost as many bitter people as there were with Mass Effect 3...
Don't even get me started on the Blizzard forums :smallmad:

[Traab]

I know it is kinda cheesy, but stun lock them and they do down easier. Bash+Clobber is the easiest way to do it. War Cry+Invigorate (+20% Armor, +10% Life and 310 life per second for 60 sec) is helpful with healing and damage migitation. Also Wrath of the Berserker+Insanity is nice for smacking Diablo around.

My current build (level 54 and at the end of Act 1 Hell): http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#baiVkP!beV!YaabbZ

Hmm, bash and clobber huh? I have had cleave in my main skill slot for so long, ive almost forgotten other skills exist for there. Ill give it a shot.

[Starwulf]

The Asian server is something completely different. I can't say I would be surprised if duping was occurring there, though I can't help but notice you still haven't given any reference to prove the duping besides word of mouth.

Regardless, if what you say is true, it sounds like the online-only protection is working exactly as intended. Of course it's impossible to completely stop any kind of hacking or exploits, but the online framework probably made it a lot harder to do, and certainly made it much easier to resolve the issue. A rollback certainly sucks, but it's better than duping running rampant, and wouldn't be possible in an offline game.

There was a link on the D3 forums earlier to a live stream of some guy named Kipplerian that showed how to dupe. My best friend has a site that he's used since D2 for hacks, and they already have working bots, maphacks, and dupes as well. The online-only DRM bullcrap hasn't stopped jack ****, and jack done left town.

Sorry, I'm fairly content with D3 as I've said many times before, but I do fully admit that they've made more then a few errors with it, and the online only bit that was supposed to be for our protection(and their profit with the RMAH) IS NOT working out like they said it would. They banned several thousand accounts and removed a few trillion gold from the various servers because of a massive duping bug. That was straight from a blues mouth over on the official forums.

[Dublock]

Like someone else said first (sorry I forgot who and I won't go back and reread to find out :p)

Online only is not designed to stop these exploits but rather have it be quicker ad easier to find out and ban whoever abuses them .

On Inferno: I have not gotten there yet, My Wiz is about to kill Diablo on Hell so ideally I'll see myself in a hour or two ;)

[Traab]

Wow, ok, bash and clobber almost felt like cheating. I died once due to bad freaking luck in nightmare, (got caught by the skeletal cages right off and never managed to fully recover) but other than that, wow. I kept chain stunning and intterupting his spells, and my doppleganger went down like a punk. seismic slam till I run out of rage, ground slam to stun, then hit him twice to finish him off. :p It probably helped that I was at 22khp and over 2k dps at the time.

[Chen]

It's not about perfecting balance. That point isn't even relevant. They didn't test the entirely of the game. Their testers didn't complete inferno. How is that defensible? I can't possibly understand why anyone feels the need to defend that decision. It's not just minute difficulty adjustments that are hard to get down; if it were, I doubt that they'd be reworking difficulty, drop rates, and itemization balance for the entirely of the inferno difficulty. These weren't hard things to notice; they're gross oversights.

I don't get this. They said not everyone will be able to complete Inferno. I cannot imagine they have the absolute best of the best gamers as their playtesters. Why is it reasonable to assume that they should be able to complete it? I mean imagine some of the harder achievements in say WoW. Do you consider it an issue if their playtesters couldn't get those achievements if they've specifically made them so hard so as not everyone will be able to get them?


So, itemization, endgame difficulty and PVP.

Okay, I'll grant you, itemization could be a better. But bear in mind that the really cool legendaries for DII mostly didn't hit until LoD. The few that were relevant weren't great for their stats, but for unique abilities that simply weren't available as random affixes, like Crushing Blow or Piercing, or what have you.

In DIII they did make it a point to ensure that the best of the best items would be rares, so as to keep everyone from being a carbon copy of each other, a'la Buriza-Zons in DII. So I don't know how much of the disappointing legendaries is design versus a mere lack of content. I know one thing: There aren't enough legendary/set drops, period. Clawing through piles of yellow wank in hopes of getting something remotely useful to anyone gets old fast, and legendaries at least had the merit of having a sane group of affixes for some putative purpose.

Its really only the Legendary Weapons that are really out of whack. Other slots put stats you can't normally get in that slot on them which makes the Legendary and set items quite valuable. I'm using 3 Legendaries on my Wizard that won't likely change (Boj Anglers boots, Lacuni Bracers and Hammer Jammer pants).

[Avilan the Grey]

I don't get this. They said not everyone will be able to complete Inferno.

On top of this... Who said you should be able to complete it? I DON´T mean "you", personally? Being able to finish a game on the hardest difficulty is not a right. If you cannot complete Inferno, don't play Inferno.

I don't get those who want it both way; they want it to be so hard only "hardcore" players and no "noobs" and "casuals" can "complete" the game, but when they, themselves, cannot do it, they want the difficulty lowered.

[ex cathedra]

On top of this... Who said you should be able to complete it? I mean "you", personally? Being able to finish a game on the hardest difficulty is not a right. If you cannot complete Inferno, don't play Inferno.

I don't get those who want it both way; they want it to be so hard only "hardcore" players and no "noobs" and "casuals" can "complete" the game, but when they, themselves, cannot do it, they want the difficulty lowered.

Who are you referring to with "you?" It sounds like you're using it in the general sense, but you specifically say "you, personally." Anyways, what's the the "hardcores," "noobs," and "casuals," etc? What's the issue? Who are you trying to put down, exactly?

Once again, though, Inferno's difficulty is rudimentary at best. It's not "hard," per se, and referring to it as legitimate difficulty seems wrong to me. While clearing act III inferno, I never stop and think "wow, that really tested my skill." Because it didn't. Every class has the same gameplay. Gear to the point where you can safely clear the content, then hit your "oh ****" button whenever something is about to hit you. That's it. You don't need particularly strong mechanics or even notably above-average reflexes. The "brick wall" between acts, as it were, isn't legitimate difficulty but rather is purely a gear check.


I don't get this. They said not everyone will be able to complete Inferno. I cannot imagine they have the absolute best of the best gamers as their playtesters. Why is it reasonable to assume that they should be able to complete it? I mean imagine some of the harder achievements in say WoW. Do you consider it an issue if their playtesters couldn't get those achievements if they've specifically made them so hard so as not everyone will be able to get them?.

"Not every can complete inferno" is fine and all, but some people can and Inferno was inherently designed to be played. It wouldn't have been in the game if it wasn't. You don't have to be one of the "best of the best" to even test that material. The only block is that it would be time consuming. However, the primary roadblock (acquiring gear) can be completely obviated by built-in developer tools. It's not hard to deck out a test character with 4-affix ilvl 62 gear.

A lot of people have made it to Inferno. Once again, this isn't some testament to their skill, since Diablo isn't (and really never has been) about skill. It's about their time investment. Releasing Inferno in its current state was lazy.

[Funky.Player]

On top of this... Who said you should be able to complete it? I mean "you", personally? Being able to finish a game on the hardest difficulty is not a right. If you cannot complete Inferno, don't play Inferno.

I don't get those who want it both way; they want it to be so hard only "hardcore" players and no "noobs" and "casuals" can "complete" the game, but when they, themselves, cannot do it, they want the difficulty lowered.

I can relate to that. I love playing these kind of games, but endgame like inferno requires carefully preparing your hero, stats, skills and equipment wise. And of course a lot of skill as a player. So not everybody will make it, I will probably max out at hell, but hey that's ok, I still love the game.

[Runestar]

So my request for a refund has been approved. When I tried logging on yesterday, my account was gone.

I really tried to like this game, and in all fairness, I did have some enjoyable moments. However, it doesn't help that out of the 5 classes, I only enjoyed playing the wizard. Gameplay for my wizard60 is confined to endless butcher runs, because I can't survive in act2, elites drop crap loot, and I am too poor to afford anything in the AH.

Endlessly zapping the Butcher with archon beams and disintegrate rays is not how I envision myself spending the next few months. So I am bailing out.

For those of you still stoically sticking with this game and supporting Blizzard, I sincerely wish you have a pleasant gaming experience (much better than mine at any rate),

Runestar out. :smallfrown:

[Traab]

Bye rune. Im still debating on whether I want to try and play through hell or not. (I like quick clean fun, cursing as I get slaughtered with ease aint fun) or if ill just start playing all the other classes up to hell. Ive got a dh thats ready for act 4 nightmare, and the rest of the classes are pretty much all act 1 normal atm, act 2 at the best. I may also do a few act 3 nightmare runs for gold and gear on my barb. Im sure ill need the cash. And one of these days im going to finish getting my herding staff parts so I can check out whimsy.

[Runestar]

I could still tolerate the game up to hell (because you were still gaining xp and so there was a reason to hunt down every last monster on the map). The downside was that very few of the higher-lv runes were useful, so I was really still using lower lv abilities like disintegrate - chaos nexus, shock pulse (that piercing rune) and diamond skin (extra damage soaked). But at least there was still something to look forward to.

Inferno was another story. I managed to snag some pretty decent gear off the AH for cheap (including a 1k dps maul), so deep down, I knew the gear I farmed in Act1 could never surpass them. Then I look at the next tier of tiems with their 8-figure sums and I realised I would never be making it into Act2 in the near future...:smalleek:

I guess the only silver lining is that I went with the digital download, which made it easier to request for a redund (not to be construed as any sort of gloating). :smalltongue:

[Traab]

I hear yah, im still using cleave with the exploding dead guys rune. Damn thats awesome for clearing out the swarms of weak junk! Whether its those baby spiders in act 1, or those... baby scorpions in act 3. Cleave cleave KABOOM!

[Dublock]

Blizzard is lowering the difficulty of Act 2-4 of Inferno in patch 1.03, now we have no idea when that patch will be out (Although Blizz said "hopefully soon").

Although if I end up farming Act 1 for a while, thats ok. If I end up getting my other classes up to Hell/Inferno until 1.03 thats ok too. I have each class in NM right now.

Actually I ended up making three storage characters for all the gear I have for those classes :p I have a bad habit of finding something and saying "Oh! That would be great for when my *insert class* gets to level **" and then keeping it when I find something thats slightly better thats one or two levels higher :P

[Runestar]

I hear yah, im still using cleave with the exploding dead guys rune. Damn thats awesome for clearing out the swarms of weak junk! Whether its those baby spiders in act 1, or those... baby scorpions in act 3. Cleave cleave KABOOM!

That mirrored my experience as well - I saw little reason to not use cleave ever (except for bosses, where I switched to frenzy). Clump them all together with war cry (range extended), then smack away.

Disintegrate because foes have this amusing tendency to line up and march towards you in single file (especially in act3 cellars).

For monk, I stuck with that AoE heal ability all the way. Great for saving dying team-mates.

Hope the other skills get buffed to make them more relevant. For instance, I tried mirror image once, then discarded it when it actually pushed me closer toward the enemy! :smallsigh:

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Inferno is supposed to be D3's version of D2's uber tristram. Inferno is not for everyone and requires a lot of gear farming just like uber tristram

[efdf]

I feel like if I ever get bored of this game I'll just play Hardcore Inferno

[AgentPaper]

"Not every can complete inferno" is fine and all, but some people can and Inferno was inherently designed to be played. It wouldn't have been in the game if it wasn't. You don't have to be one of the "best of the best" to even test that material. The only block is that it would be time consuming. However, the primary roadblock (acquiring gear) can be completely obviated by built-in developer tools. It's not hard to deck out a test character with 4-affix ilvl 62 gear.

A lot of people have made it to Inferno. Once again, this isn't some testament to their skill, since Diablo isn't (and really never has been) about skill. It's about their time investment. Releasing Inferno in its current state was lazy.

Completing inferno certainly does require a lot of very good gear, but to say that it doesn't require skill is being disingenuous. If you simply walk up and start spamming cleave or magic missile at a group of elite mobs in Inferno, you will die, period. You need skill to build your character right with the correct skills, passives, and gear all built to work together, and you need skill to use that build in an intelligent way to move, dodge, kite, avoid, and attack when appropriate. The more skilled you are, the less mistakes you make, and the more damage you do. All of this allows you to compensate for the higher numeric stats on enemies relative to yours.

As for developers cheating in the absolute best items, well, first of all they would need to figure out exactly what those were, which could take some time. There's a lot of complicated stats in Diablo 3, and finding the perfect balance isn't as easy as crunching a few numbers.

Regardless, they probably did do this sort of testing, and they may have even completed Inferno with it. But then, why did they say that they didn't complete Inferno? Well, because that would be like saying that they were able to complete Normal difficulty because they played through it on a level 30 character. To truly test Inferno, or any difficulty, you need to approach it with level-appropriate and progression-appropriate gear. When they say that they never completed Inferno, that means that they never took a character from level 1 start of the game, and played that character legitimately from act 1 normal to act 4 Inferno.

[Eliirae]

I must be behind on everything, because while everyone here is talking about inferno and how its difficulty is getting lowered, I can't even go through act 1 in hell mode without getting two shotted by everyone and spending forever kiting every single rare spawn I see.

This is coming straight from nightmare mode. Maybe I'm just one of the odd ones that believes they shouldn't be forced to farm up millions of gold because all the farmers and everything have already screwed up prices in the AH so I can continue playing the game.

[AgentPaper]

I must be behind on everything, because while everyone here is talking about inferno and how its difficulty is getting lowered, I can't even go through act 1 in hell mode without getting two shotted by everyone and spending forever kiting every single rare spawn I see.

This is coming straight from nightmare mode. Maybe I'm just one of the odd ones that believes they shouldn't be forced to farm up millions of gold because all the farmers and everything have already screwed up prices in the AH so I can continue playing the game.

I transferred directly from Nightmare to Hell, no farming. What you really should be doing, is going on the Auction House and looking for cheap upgrades. Set your max buyout to be ~10,000 gold, or whatever you're comfortable paying for a single piece of equipment. For weapons specifically, you may want to pay a bit more for a really good one, and specifically you should be looking for higher level weapons that have the "reduced level requirement" mod on them For example, if you're level 50, look for a level 60 item with -10 levels or more. Even a level 55 with -5 levels is likely to be a lot better than most level 50 weapons you can find, really.

Aside from that, you should look over your build and choose more defensive skills and passive, and when looking for items, you should value vitality about as much as you do your main stat. Resist All, attack speed, and life on hit are also all pretty good stats from what I've heard.

[Avilan the Grey]

Who are you referring to with "you?" It sounds like you're using it in the general sense, but you specifically say "you, personally."

I just noticed. The word "Don´t" disappeared, somehow between my brain and my fingers. Sorry about that. Fixed now.


Who are you referring to with "you?" It sounds like you're using it in the general sense, but you specifically say "you, personally." Anyways, what's the the "hardcores," "noobs," and "casuals," etc? What's the issue? Who are you trying to put down, exactly?

The people who see other people as "Noobs" and "Hardcore". Basically I was pretending to be regular Blizzard Forum poster. They are crying their eyes out because they cannot have the cake and eat it too (defeat Inferno and make fun of noobs).

[Karoht]

So my request for a refund has been approved. When I tried logging on yesterday, my account was gone.Well I for one am glad they approved your refund. Normally, a gaming store won't refund 'opened' computer merchandise. But I guess because Blizzard can just revoke the licence for that ID it works out.

Sorry it wasn't for you. Cheers.

[otakuryoga]

I must be behind on everything, because while everyone here is talking about inferno and how its difficulty is getting lowered, I can't even go through act 1 in hell mode without getting two shotted by everyone and spending forever kiting every single rare spawn I see.

This is coming straight from nightmare mode. Maybe I'm just one of the odd ones that believes they shouldn't be forced to farm up millions of gold because all the farmers and everything have already screwed up prices in the AH so I can continue playing the game.


I transferred directly from Nightmare to Hell, no farming. What you really should be doing, is going on the Auction House and looking for cheap upgrades. Set your max buyout to be ~10,000 gold, or whatever you're comfortable paying for a single piece of equipment. For weapons specifically, you may want to pay a bit more for a really good one, and specifically you should be looking for higher level weapons that have the "reduced level requirement" mod on them For example, if you're level 50, look for a level 60 item with -10 levels or more. Even a level 55 with -5 levels is likely to be a lot better than most level 50 weapons you can find, really.

Aside from that, you should look over your build and choose more defensive skills and passive, and when looking for items, you should value vitality about as much as you do your main stat. Resist All, attack speed, and life on hit are also all pretty good stats from what I've heard.

this

i was having no success against Belial in hell..
grabbed 2 new weapons and 4 slot upgrades for ~34,000 gold and he was cake

i kept seeing people on here talk about how good the blade barrier with lightning tornado rune was but i was ready to give up on it..3 of those slot upgrades had + crit chance on em boosting me to 15% crit chance and now i see what they are talking about

[ex cathedra]

Completing inferno certainly does require a lot of very good gear, but to say that it doesn't require skill is being disingenuous.
I just sincerely don't feel that it takes any non-negligible amount of skill more than, say, Nightmare or Hell.

As for developers cheating in the absolute best items, well, first of all they would need to figure out exactly what those were, which could take some time. There's a lot of complicated stats in Diablo 3, and finding the perfect balance isn't as easy as crunching a few numbers.
It actually is. There exist dozens of fan-made DPS and effective HP calculators already, and there are undoubtedly Blizzard devs capable of making them. Anyways, the math is actually quite easy and I only suggested letting the devs use average gear, not the best in the game. Most stats have relatively clearly defined effects (aside from those that don't, like Lifesteal being 80% less effective on Inferno).

[Z3ro]

Just picked up the game this week and started playing, had a question for some of the people here who've been playing since release:

I've seen many people complaining about affording high-level gear and how much gold it costs, but it appears to me that I've found a trick on the AH that will basically net me infinite gold. I turned a 5,000 investment into 50,000 in less than an hour. It seems easily and infinitely repeatable, and it's really not that hard to do.

Is this normal? Is the auction house supposed to work like this, and they just assume everyone has access to as much money as they need? Or did I break the auction house and need to worry about future patches?

[AgentPaper]

I just sincerely don't feel that it takes any non-negligible amount of skill more than, say, Nightmare or Hell.

That's fine, but you're wrong. If all you have to support your argument is a "feeling", then that's really all there is to say on the matter.


It actually is. There exist dozens of fan-made DPS and effective HP calculators already, and there are undoubtedly Blizzard devs capable of making them.

Raw EH and DPS are easy to calculate, yes, but neither of those are as simple as that.

For EH, you also need to evaluate how much you want damage reduction versus vitality. More vitality might increase your EH more, but you may also want to stack more for DR to make healing more efficient, even if it technically reduces your EH.

For DPS, you can calculate how to get the highest raw DPS, but you also need to factor in how much you want critical hit, which depending on your skills may be very valuable for very different reasons than raw DPS, whether it helps you with survivability, or to keep moving, or to debuff enemies, or any number of other reasons. Attack Speed also has the benefit of allowing you to be more mobile, and you need to decide whether you want to go for dual wield, two-handed, or 1h and shield, all of which have their own merits and depend on your build.

And then there's the more nebulous abilities like movement speed, health globe pickup radius (which you probably want at leas a little of, it can be a lifesaver), life on hit (you almost certainly want it, but how much do you need versus other stats?), the various specific skill-enhancing abilities, snare reduction, specific element resistances, and so on.

Figuring all of this out takes time, and it takes time for every single build you try out. Even a seemingly minor change in your build could change your stat evaluation radically. It will be months, even with the huge amount of people playing the game now, for the truly "best" builds to be discovered and documented to a really complete degree. We know some good basic facts about how stats work, but by no means is any part of it "solved".

In addition, while the testers might be able to figure all of this out after a long period of testing, and they probably did, at least to some degree, once those results are discovered, then that almost certainly leads to changes being made, at which point they have to start the whole process over again.


Anyways, the math is actually quite easy and I only suggested letting the devs use average gear, not the best in the game. Most stats have relatively clearly defined effects (aside from those that don't, like Lifesteal being 80% less effective on Inferno).

What constitutes "average gear"? And again, they may well have done that. But if you cheated in gear to complete a game, would you say you had "completed" it? They never said that their testers didn't test Inferno, only that they didn't complete it. It seems like you're just misinterpreting them here.

Edit:

Just picked up the game this week and started playing, had a question for some of the people here who've been playing since release:

I've seen many people complaining about affording high-level gear and how much gold it costs, but it appears to me that I've found a trick on the AH that will basically net me infinite gold. I turned a 5,000 investment into 50,000 in less than an hour. It seems easily and infinitely repeatable, and it's really not that hard to do.

Is this normal? Is the auction house supposed to work like this, and they just assume everyone has access to as much money as they need? Or did I break the auction house and need to worry about future patches?

What's the trick? Is it commodity trading? as in, buying low and selling high? I did that for a bit early on, but decided it was too boring. At any rate, 45,000 gold in an hour isn't actually that impressive, unless your method would allow you to go from 50,000 to 500,000, or 500,000 to 5,000,000 just as easily.

[Z3ro]

What's the trick? Is it commodity trading? as in, buying low and selling high? I did that for a bit early on, but decided it was too boring. At any rate, 45,000 gold in an hour isn't actually that impressive, unless your method would allow you to go from 50,000 to 500,000, or 500,000 to 5,000,000 just as easily.

It's effectively commodity trading; I could probably bump it up to make 100,000 from 10,000, but that would be it. I figured it wouldn't be that uncommon, but seeing how easy it is to setup auctions and have them running in the background, then having others complaining about not being able to afford the best gear, I wanted to reconcile the two. That at least puts my fears at ease.

[efdf]

yeah, it's extremely easy to make millions off the auction house

[Othesemo]

yeah, it's extremely easy to make millions off the auction house

It's not all that fun, though. It doesn't make sense to me to purchase a game for the sole purpose of watching numbers go up over the course of an hour. I did it a bit when I figured out how quickly people bought crafting resources, but I decided that just playing the game was much more fun.

[Dublock]

I wonder how profitable it can be, playing the either the AH or the RMAH with commodities (or gear right now in the RMAH). I don't think I have the patience to really give it a valid effort though.

[Z3ro]

It's not all that fun, though. It doesn't make sense to me to purchase a game for the sole purpose of watching numbers go up over the course of an hour. I did it a bit when I figured out how quickly people bought crafting resources, but I decided that just playing the game was much more fun.

Depends on how you define fun, I guess. I love me some diablo (back to the first one), but I find myself spending more time in the AH than playing the game. The again, I do work in the finance industry, so maybe that has something to do with it.

[ex cathedra]

That's fine, but you're wrong. If all you have to support your argument is a "feeling", then that's really all there is to say on the matter.
It's a basic observation. Mechanics in hell and inferno are identical. You're fighting the same enemies with the same abilities but with higher numbers. The correct "counterplay," if you can call it that, is to accrue bigger numbers of your own. The fights themselves don't intrinsically change from difficulty to difficulty; you simply die faster and your enemies simply die slower. That's it.

For EH, you also need to evaluate how much you want damage reduction versus vitality. More vitality might increase your EH more, but you may also want to stack more for DR to make healing more efficient, even if it technically reduces your EH.
You really only need enough to not be bursted down; after that, melee classes want as much life on hit as possible. 700 post-socket LoH 850+ DPS one-handers are pretty much good enough, and life on hit spawns on a ton of secondary gear. Anyways, you don't really have choose between the two in many cases, since almost all of your defensive stats are condensed into three affixes: +all resistance, +armor, and +vitality. That leaves more than enough room for +x resistance, +dex, or + strength, and everything else is pretty straight-forward. Ranged classes have it much easier.

For DPS, you can calculate how to get the highest raw DPS, but you also need to factor in how much you want critical hit, which depending on your skills may be very valuable for very different reasons than raw DPS, whether it helps you with survivability, or to keep moving, or to debuff enemies, or any number of other reasons. Attack Speed also has the benefit of allowing you to be more mobile, and you need to decide whether you want to go for dual wield, two-handed, or 1h and shield, all of which have their own merits and depend on your build.
Really, all monks/barbarians want to use 1h+shield. All of the other classes just want to use the best combination of gear that they have access to, which more often than not is weapon + class-specific offhand or simply a good two-hander. I don't think that any of the classes have serious crit-synergy anymore. The crit-based Wizard builds have been heavily nerfed and I'm under the impression that it's relatively unimportant for inferno Monks.

And then there's the more nebulous abilities like movement speed, health globe pickup radius (which you probably want at leas a little of, it can be a lifesaver), life on hit (you almost certainly want it, but how much do you need versus other stats?), the various specific skill-enhancing abilities, snare reduction, specific element resistances, and so on.
The thing is, you don't have to really pick-and-choose. LoH will spawn on your weapon. That's mostly it. Movespeed will only appear on your boots. CC reduction is very weak (simply because each character has a get-out-of-jail-free skill), and most skill-enhancers aren't worth using, etc. +X resistance is pretty easy, too; you want to take whichever element that you can acquire the most of on One With Everything monks (which is likely the most ubiquitous inferno-level monk passive, but according to devs it's not something that they used very extensively in testing. That strikes me as pretty odd). Otherwise, physical resistance is worth far more than anything else simply because of how common Physical damage is. Only Barbarians really have to worry about that, anyways.

Pickup radius seems like a poor choice to me unless a) you're afk farming gold or b) you're running that gimmicky Sacrifices WD build.

What constitutes "average gear"? And again, they may well have done that. But if you cheated in gear to complete a game, would you say you had "completed" it? They never said that their testers didn't test Inferno, only that they didn't complete it. It seems like you're just misinterpreting them here.
For my example, I used 4-affix ilvl 62 gear. Basic rares that aren't really hard come by, and with three or so decent affixes on each item I'd describe that character as mostly "average," at least compared to 6-affix ilvl62 rares (exalted grand crafts), ilvl61/62 legendaries, and ilvl63 items as a whole.

[Dublock]

It's a basic observation. Mechanics in hell and inferno are identical. You're fighting the same enemies with the same abilities but with higher numbers.

Can you explain this point better?

I don't know about bosses, but it seems the biggest difference between each difficulty is higher numbers and an increase by one in attribute by the elites. If you say they are identical, then won't normal=inferno? Having to deal with 4 of them plus any natural ones do add some additional difficulty.

[AgentPaper]

It's a basic observation. Mechanics in hell and inferno are identical. You're fighting the same enemies with the same abilities but with higher numbers. The correct "counterplay," if you can call it that, is to accrue bigger numbers of your own. The fights themselves don't intrinsically change from difficulty to difficulty; you simply die faster and your enemies simply die slower. That's it.

Higher numbers do mean you need higher skill, though. When arcane lasers only deal 10% of your HP when they hit you, dodging them isn't all that important. When they deal 40% of your HP, you really should dodge them, but if you mess up sometimes you've got a bit of breathing room. When they deal 80% of your HP, you absolutely must dodge them or you'll die, no second chances. A new player might be able to dodge arcane lasers often enough to not die on normal, but stick that same player in inferno with level-appropriate gear, and he'll die constantly.

You're correct that Inferno doesn't necessarily require any new skills, but it definitely does require more skill in the stuff you've been learning throughout the game. If you go from dodging 80% of the stuff coming at you to dodging 90% of the stuff coming at you, you're talking half as much damage, so now you can deal with enemies that deal twice as much damage without needing to have twice as much HP.


As for the rest of that, yes, that all certainly sounds true. However, you realize that all of that information and subtlety you just mentioned is only known because of the constant testing done by thousands of players over a month of constant testing and discussion on the matter. Just because you understand it doesn't make it "simple".

[ex cathedra]

Can you explain this point better?

I don't know about bosses, but it seems the biggest difference between each difficulty is higher numbers and an increase by one in attribute by the elites. If you say they are identical, then won't normal=inferno? Having to deal with 4 of them plus any natural ones do add some additional difficulty.

Bosses do more damage and have more HP. They use the same abilities and have the same programming in each difficulty, and so a lot of people find that bosses themselves are fairly simple compared to certain random-affix elites.

Yes, enemies receive a fourth affix on Inferno, but, again, it doesn't really introduce any new mechanics as far as I could tell. There are some affix combinations that are more difficult to deal with than others, and these become more statistically likely in inferno, but more often than not it's still "Do I have the gear to survive this encounter" rather than "Do I have the skill to survive this encounter?"

[Starwulf]

I must be behind on everything, because while everyone here is talking about inferno and how its difficulty is getting lowered, I can't even go through act 1 in hell mode without getting two shotted by everyone and spending forever kiting every single rare spawn I see.

This is coming straight from nightmare mode. Maybe I'm just one of the odd ones that believes they shouldn't be forced to farm up millions of gold because all the farmers and everything have already screwed up prices in the AH so I can continue playing the game.

Get some gear with resists on it! I was getting my arse kicked in Act 1 and Act 2 Hell, left and right by very other champion/elite pack. Then I went and snagged a bunch of gear with resists on it, went from 30 resist all to 185 resist all, and I'm now halfway through Act 3 and I haven't died even once since.

[Dublock]

I think the point about skill vs gear comes down to this:

At a point all content is trivialized with great gear.

The difference is the skilled player who has a good build, knows when to press a certain skill can take on encounters sooner, farm sooner then the person who has no idea what to do.

Right now there is not a lot of great gear out there so there is some limit on who can go through inferno. When gear becomes more plentiful then more people can participate.

[ex cathedra]

As for the rest of that, yes, that all certainly sounds true. However, you realize that all of that information and subtlety you just mentioned is only known because of the constant testing done by thousands of players over a month of constant testing and discussion on the matter. Just because you understand it doesn't make it "simple".

Perhaps, but I'd like to clarify that almost all of that is gleaned directly through observation. Reading tool-tips makes most of that information readily apparent to anyone who would care to look for it.

[Aotrs Commander]

I must be behind on everything, because while everyone here is talking about inferno and how its difficulty is getting lowered, I can't even go through act 1 in hell mode without getting two shotted by everyone and spending forever kiting every single rare spawn I see.

Pssh, I ain't even finished normal with my first character yet!

[Dublock]

Pssh, I ain't even finished normal with my first character yet!

It took around 12ish hours if my memory is correct, (level 31) on my first character.

I was 2 shotted by pretty much every single mob in Hell, although for half of Hell I was rocking 2k dps, which it was not balanced around :p I got a dirt cheap 530 dps one handed wand off of the AH with level reducer :smallcool: Azodan went down quickly which was good cause that pool took away half my health in no time flat :P

[Draken]

I do wonder why everyone speaks of farming millions to throw at the AH on overpriced gear.

There is a lot of excellent (leveling, 1-59, so useful up to Hell) gear avaiable on the AH for very cheap prices. I will never forged getting my level 54 weapon, a double-handed axe with 350.0~ and a ton of int and vit (Wizard) dps for 5,000 gold.

The trick is to set a buyout limit (I tended to stick with an upper cost of 50,000 gold), set a minimum level of your preference and then go straight to the button above the buyout prices in the list and click it twice so you get right to what is cheaper. Filtering out the stuff without your primary attribute should reduce the selection to 2-10 pages of excellent items to pick from.

And now, back to painfully plowing through Act I inferno!

[kyoryu]

You're correct that Inferno doesn't necessarily require any new skills, but it definitely does require more skill in the stuff you've been learning throughout the game. If you go from dodging 80% of the stuff coming at you to dodging 90% of the stuff coming at you, you're talking half as much damage, so now you can deal with enemies that deal twice as much damage without needing to have twice as much HP.

The other point is that you can increase your numbers to overcome the difficulties. At earlier levels, where the skills are less required, that leads people to use gear to compensate for lack of skills, and so they don't really know how to develop those skills any more.

It's a fundamental problem in any game where you can level/gear up and choose what you fight. I don't really know how to solve it in a game design sense.

[Starwulf]

I do wonder why everyone speaks of farming millions to throw at the AH on overpriced gear.

There is a lot of excellent (leveling, 1-59, so useful up to Hell) gear avaiable on the AH for very cheap prices. I will never forged getting my level 54 weapon, a double-handed axe with 350.0~ and a ton of int and vit (Wizard) dps for 5,000 gold.

The trick is to set a buyout limit (I tended to stick with an upper cost of 50,000 gold), set a minimum level of your preference and then go straight to the button above the buyout prices in the list and click it twice so you get right to what is cheaper. Filtering out the stuff without your primary attribute should reduce the selection to 2-10 pages of excellent items to pick from.


And now, back to painfully plowing through Act I inferno!

Heh, when did you get that 2-handed Axe? I found one that sounds rather identical to that, and I'm pretty sure I put it up for like a 5k buyout, it sold fairly quickly.

[Draken]

Heh, when did you get that 2-handed Axe? I found one that sounds rather identical to that, and I'm pretty sure I put it up for like a 5k buyout, it sold fairly quickly.

A quick check of my AH history tells me that I acquired Mangle Justice (lvl 54, 325.5 DPS, + holy damage, +172 Int, +154 Vit, Indestructible and one socket) on the third of june.

I kind of saw it and instaclicked buyout. It was the best and cheapest weapon avaiable in the AH for me at the time, pretty much.

[Expf]

Begin_Rant();

(This is all about solo play BTW.)

I'm quite sore about D3 because I've very much hit a brick wall on Kulle's Blood quest (Inferno Act II). I'm aware that my gear isn't that great, but I was really hoping that I could force my way through. Not likely though ... I'll probably be stuck trying to farm gear for a couple days before I can proceed. Meanwhile, my Wizard and Demon Hunter friends -- who are squishier than I am -- have already cleared the entire Inferno.

I blame myself for picking the worst class to start out with, instead of just playing a ranged. Melee classes are just severely disadvantaged in this game compared to ranged:
- Melee need to spend a lot of survival stats, as opposed to ranged who can just stack the hell out of their damage stats.
- To add oil to the fire, melee can't even reach the mobs half the time because they have to run around and kite stuff. So pray that you don't hit the enrage timer on the champion packs!

Many of the affix combos are nigh on impossible unless you severely over-gear the place. Here's two prototypical examples:
- Molten, Vortex, Fire Chains, Illusion.
- Poison, Frozen, Waller, Arcane.
These are basically what I would call "melee-killers". Good luck to whatever poor soul that encounters these atrocities. Worse still, some times you get these dreadful affixes on "fleeing" ranged mobs that enjoy running around in circles while they laugh and shoot arrows/wasps/fireballs at you. Even without the inconvenience of all these affixes, a typical survival-geared melee would still take several minutes to kill these champion packs. How could have a game designer failed to foresee such an obvious flaw in the affix system?

It's pretty funny too: a friend of mine has no trouble soloing Diablo on Inferno, but the champion packs still rip her Monk apart. That surely says something about the tuning of these champion packs (alternatively you could also argue that Diablo is a bit undertuned).

I don't agree any of this being truly difficult in the sense of being "challenging" (and certainly not "fun"). The mechanics are really trivial: you run around like a headless chicken to dodge crap on the ground. The trouble is whether you're geared enough to survive them if you do get hit (many of those are simply unavoidable), and kill them before they berserk. How exactly are you suppose to dodge an Arcane beam cutting your way if the mob decides to root you? The answer is quite elementary: you buy or get your Wizard/Demon Hunter friends/alts to farm some gear for you until you can survive a few hits without dying!

Or better yet, just forget leveling a melee class altogether and just re-roll a Demon Hunter or a Wizard and mow the mobs down in less than 10% of the time it takes my Monk to kill them.

I wouldn't be so irritated about the difficulty of Inferno if it weren't so artificial. Right now you either have the gear to do them or you don't, and even if you do everything you can to survive, you can still get one-shotted if they decide to throw the worst combos at you.

Many of the boss fights are also extremely boring because they are just the exact same fights as normal difficulty, with over-tuned damage and health. There are very few interesting mechanics or boss fights ... Belial & Diablo are probably the only interesting ones I can think of right now.

End_Rant();

On the note of something less depressing, I've heard a couple friends have actually sold some (really good) equipment for $250 on the RMAH. It's quite surprising that people would actually pay that much for in-game items.

[grimrocker]

maybe add the link to list of random dungeons:
http://orcz.com/Diablo_3:_Random_Dungeon

to the OP

helped me get the achievements

[otakuryoga]

maybe add the link to list of random dungeons:
http://orcz.com/Diablo_3:_Random_Dungeon

to the OP

helped me get the achievements

done..nice utility there