Diablo 3

[Traab]

Its funny, I mostly only play now for the seasonal characters but after being disappointed in my gear options this time around I decided to bust out the old characters I played as and its honestly hilarious how overpowered they are in comparison. Now, in my defense, I played my witch doctor as a poison/haunt build with my hounds and randomly summoned fetish dudes as a screen so insta kills arent really my thing anyways, but this necro with his full bone armor set bonus gear on is a joke. He is literally sprinting through torment 7 difficulty instakilling everything in range, with maybe a bone spear tossed at the rift guardians and yellows just to finish them off faster. Meanwhile my witch doctor is scrambling to survive in torment 2 long enough to complete the challenges there. Ive got extracted legendary skills that just pile on even more damage passively meaning I just keep my mouse pointed in the direction i want to go, hit bone armor every time it pops back up and run. Ive been taking my time jumping up one torment level so i dont accidentally skip too many and get pasted but so far im just not seeing much difference.

There is obviously a lot to it, im aware. For example im at 197 paragon levels while my witch doctor is at like, 10. Plus I havent found all the best legendaries to extract. ive got a few nice ones like one that lets my and my fetishes poison darts pierce and do like 500% extra weapon damage plus my haunt stores damage then explodes hitting everyone in 15 yards for boosted damage which is my best room clearing skill. The Grace of inarius set is just funny its so strong, bone armor damage increased by 1000% 3% damage reduction extra for every enemy hit, and doing 1000% weapon damage in the aura around me, plus my necromancer does 10,000% more damage. I melt faces. Plus the armor design is awesome.

I just love how random it is season to season as to what classes get the amazing set bonuses while some get neat niche sets and some seem to suck. Also, when did they make the change to pylons that they summon a shadow that follows you around obliterating everything for you? I know I havent played much in awhile but wow thats hilarious. Find a pylon and suddenly the game goes from struggle to cakewalk.

[Lord Torath]

The Shadow Clones from Pylons and Shrines are the seasonal 'gimmick' this time around. When you first hit level 70, they are extremely helpful, killing elites and rift guardians in a couple seconds. Now that I've got 800+ paragons and am breezing through T16, they're not quite so overpowering, but they are still quite useful. As long as, you know, the pylon/shrine isn't right next to the stairs down to the next floor...

All the 6-piece sets have had substantial buffs over the last couple years, and they update automatically, so a character you haven't played in a while can suddenly be much more powerful than you remember. The legendary items do not automatically update, so, for instance, I've got an Etched Sigil that still boosts all channeling skills, rather than just Whirlwind. My non-seasonal wizard uses that for the Hydra build, and so is a good bit more powerful than my current season wizard with a similar build.

Also, just in case anyone's interested:
Diablo III: 2 - Don't Forget to Eat Today
Diablo III: 3 - Kanai Fix It?
Diablo III: 4 - Necros Aren't Just for Posts Anymore!

[tyckspoon]

The class sets have been repeatedly and continuously buffed to a greater or lesser degree over the seasons - when Blizzard decides something is too strong, instead of nerfing that back down they start bringing other sets up to match it so all the players can get somewhere close to that level instead of having the leaderboard be nothing but Inarius Necromancers (or..whatever the current Best Thing is. Haven't bothered keeping tabs. Point is most of the class sets are now at a point where just having the set will probably let you clear somewhere between Torment 8 to 10, depending on the set and how good you are at dodging attacks with the ones that have weaker inherent defense effects.) Some of the key accessory legendaries associated with those sets also get buffs, but generally the attention is on the sets - not much of a surprise at this point that a character sporting a completed class set is much more powerful than one that is still at the 'grab bag of legendaries' level, although they've also added a few things to try to make that more viable as well (primarily the legendary gem that mimics the effect of the Legacy of Nightmares ring set. Some of the craftable sets have also been significantly improved - if my early seasonal characters don't get Haedrig's Gift, they usually start off mixing and matching the level 70 Captain Crimson's and Aughild's sets.)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You think the necro is bad, try a 'spin to win' DH sometime. Hold right-click, proceed to win.

[The Glyphstone]

You think the necro is bad, try a 'spin to win' DH sometime. Hold right-click, proceed to win.

I thought that was a Whirlwind Barb.

[Psyren]

WhirlBarb (Wastes/IK Sets), Strafe DH (Nats/Dreadlands Sets) and Tempest Monk (Inna/Sunwuko/Justice Sets) could all be described as "spin-to-win."

[Traab]

I will be honest, ive never been a fan of DH. I generally like barb, crusader, necro, and monk. Witch doctor is also ok. I also recently got my smite jewel to level 25 so every 3 seconds something on screen gets blasted for like 3k% damage which is a fun little boost, im working on some other gems to truly maximize my automatic damage boosts because the strange thing is, I havent gotten a massacre bonus even when im literally obliterating everything in sight instantly with my whirling bone armor and flinging bone spears in all directions, so im kind of unsure as to what effects I can work with and what I cant. For example, I had a legendary that summons 6 skeletons after a massacre bonus, obviously that one is garbage now. But im not sure if things like bonuses to stats for every monster killed will work if the auto damage means it doesnt count as "me" killing them. On the other hand, im clearing rifts and grifts in sub 5 minutes on torment 7-8 so its not like I can complain that much. On a more enjoyable note, I love the rift levels setup like the act 5 cemeteries. My whirling armor destroys the endless number of pots and graves giving me a permanent sprinting bonus. I think my personal record was destroying something like 113 objects before the gap between hitting the next set was too much.

[Rynjin]

WhirlBarb (Wastes/IK Sets), Strafe DH (Nats/Dreadlands Sets) and Tempest Monk (Inna/Sunwuko/Justice Sets) could all be described as "spin-to-win."

Why even go that far with Monk? Inna's is basically "Kharazim wins by doing absolutely nothing" on most Torments once you have the full build up.

[Psyren]

I will be honest, ive never been a fan of DH. I generally like barb, crusader, necro, and monk. Witch doctor is also ok. I also recently got my smite jewel to level 25 so every 3 seconds something on screen gets blasted for like 3k% damage which is a fun little boost, im working on some other gems to truly maximize my automatic damage boosts because the strange thing is, I havent gotten a massacre bonus even when im literally obliterating everything in sight instantly with my whirling bone armor and flinging bone spears in all directions, so im kind of unsure as to what effects I can work with and what I cant. For example, I had a legendary that summons 6 skeletons after a massacre bonus, obviously that one is garbage now. But im not sure if things like bonuses to stats for every monster killed will work if the auto damage means it doesnt count as "me" killing them. On the other hand, im clearing rifts and grifts in sub 5 minutes on torment 7-8 so its not like I can complain that much. On a more enjoyable note, I love the rift levels setup like the act 5 cemeteries. My whirling armor destroys the endless number of pots and graves giving me a permanent sprinting bonus. I think my personal record was destroying something like 113 objects before the gap between hitting the next set was too much.

I like DH a lot. It's rare that I like all 4 main sets for a class, and DH is one of the two where that's the case. (Monk being the other.) Every other class has at least one set I hate.

Why even go that far with Monk? Inna's is basically "Kharazim wins by doing absolutely nothing" on most Torments once you have the full build up.

While it's true the Allies can kill a lot of things for you on mid-high Torments/mid-GRs, you might as well have a button to press while they do, and one that lets you run around breaking stuff and picking up gold/orbs is pretty useful in that regard

[alicecarter95]

The re-playability of Diablo 3 is just insane, which is why the player base is still active and strong after more than 8 years. I really hope, they give the same kind of treatment to Diablo Immortal. Having said that, almost all mobile RPGs have followed the freemium model, which has its own issues. Let's just hope its doesn't become a pay to win model like Genshin Impact.

[Rydiro]

On the other hand, im clearing rifts and grifts in sub 5 minutes on torment 7-8 so its not like I can complain that much.

You can play the game however you like. But if you want to play the high levels, I'd recommend looking up some builds. You should be able to breeze through Grifts 80-100 within a short while. And Torment 16 being just a small speedbump.

[Psyren]

Yeah - with the game's general power creep, you don't even need a build or full set for T7 anymore. A 4-piece (even a 2-piece for some classes) should be more than enough, or some random legendaries (especially with LoD).

[Traab]

In my defense, im not very good. :p

[Rydiro]

To be honest, I'm tired of this game. I think that there are many other games that are more interesting

To be fair, its basically Cookie Clicker with better graphics.

[Psyren]

To be fair, its basically Cookie Clicker with better graphics.

If you're that reductive then every mouse-controlled action game can be similarly dismissed - from first-person shooters to ARPGs to RTSes etc.

[bigbigXuan]

Hey Guys, :D

anyone here playing D3 - Season 23 ? And are you waiting for D4? The first look at rogue D4 looks very interesting.

[Lord Torath]

I was playing season 23. My wizard died at level 56, and I'm having trouble working up enthusiasm to start over. Maybe I'll rebirth one of my non-hardcore characters. It's been a while since they've acquired new gear.

[JordanM]

Is it worthy to get the full Diablo 3? I used to play Diablo 2 and had a lot of fun there.

[Traab]

I enjoyed diablo 3. The classes are fun, the storyline adventure is pretty cool, and the eternally escalating difficulty levels means you will pretty much never run out of absurdly hard fights to get into. The seasons we keep talking about add in more fun because they basically involve giving you challenges to run that net your new character a full set of class gear thats pretty dang powerful. Its a nice way to try out a class you normally wouldnt because once you get the class set you are generally in a good position to judge how good it is overall rather than being stuck farming good gear the hard way.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I enjoyed diablo 3. The classes are fun, the storyline adventure is pretty cool, and the eternally escalating difficulty levels means you will pretty much never run out of absurdly hard fights to get into. The seasons we keep talking about add in more fun because they basically involve giving you challenges to run that net your new character a full set of class gear thats pretty dang powerful. Its a nice way to try out a class you normally wouldnt because once you get the class set you are generally in a good position to judge how good it is overall rather than being stuck farming good gear the hard way.

I... really disagree with just about every point made here.

The infinitely scaling difficulty with incrementally increasing stats leads to chasing the 'optimal' gear in one of two or three cookie-cutter builds, because once you hit a certain point, no other build is going to be capable of handling it.

The seasons are basically normal play with freebies handed out and a laundry list of pointless tasks to accomplish for largely cosmetic rewards.

The game is 99% pure grind, seeking an ever more 'optimal' set of stats on the ancient version of the piece of gear you want in that slot with dramatically diminishing returns on time spent as you get closer to the goal of 'perfect'. Once you get full Ancient with 'good enough' stats, you're looking at dozens if not hundreds of hours of grind for maybe a 5% increase overall in survivability/DPS. Which again leads people back to the four or five top 'cookie cutter' builds at the top of everyone's tier lists. So if you want to play as a Witch Doctor... congratulations, you're never going to get as far as someone rolling a DH 'spin to win' build. And no amount of skill is going to change that.

I am extremely done with D3. Just completely burned out on it. It's all just 'keeping up with the Jonses' to the umpteenth degree at this point.

[Traab]

I... really disagree with just about every point made here.

The infinitely scaling difficulty with incrementally increasing stats leads to chasing the 'optimal' gear in one of two or three cookie-cutter builds, because once you hit a certain point, no other build is going to be capable of handling it.

The seasons are basically normal play with freebies handed out and a laundry list of pointless tasks to accomplish for largely cosmetic rewards.

The game is 99% pure grind, seeking an ever more 'optimal' set of stats on the ancient version of the piece of gear you want in that slot with dramatically diminishing returns on time spent as you get closer to the goal of 'perfect'. Once you get full Ancient with 'good enough' stats, you're looking at dozens if not hundreds of hours of grind for maybe a 5% increase overall in survivability/DPS. Which again leads people back to the four or five top 'cookie cutter' builds at the top of everyone's tier lists. So if you want to play as a Witch Doctor... congratulations, you're never going to get as far as someone rolling a DH 'spin to win' build. And no amount of skill is going to change that.

I am extremely done with D3. Just completely burned out on it. It's all just 'keeping up with the Jonses' to the umpteenth degree at this point.

And considering the person i was replying to loved d2, and d3 is like d2 only more so in every aspect, im sure he will be fine. I get not being happy that not every class can be as good as the others, but its pretty unreasonable to expect there to not be builds that are flat out better than others. There is just no way to make the thousand options equally effective. The fact that there are often more than one "optimal" build per class alone is an improvement imo. Also, there is nothing forcing you to keep pushing for torment 657 or whatever the current max setting is. If you like playing your weaker build and torment 4 is the best it can handle, big deal, so long as you are having fun. I only pointed out the eternal escalation of difficulty because its more challenge than normal nightmare and hell difficulty or whatever the three were for d2.

And yeah, this game is 99% pure grind, just like its always been, just like d2 always has been. At this point if you play any diablo game expecting something other than an endless grind, you need to pay attention. Complaining about the grind in d3 is like complaining about all the crafting you have to do in minecraft. The question is, do they make the grind at least somewhat enjoyable as opposed to running your 900th baal run in d2? I say yes. The storyline is interesting, there are also numerous extra things to do, dungeons caves and other stuff to explore not connected to the main storyline, the seasonal setup lets you run bounties and such instead of the storyline, giving you dozens of goals and challenges for each act, good rewards for the effort involved, and a leg up on trying out a different character with a good class set.

[zlefin]

And considering the person i was replying to loved d2, and d3 is like d2 only more so in every aspect, im sure he will be fine. I get not being happy that not every class can be as good as the others, but its pretty unreasonable to expect there to not be builds that are flat out better than others. There is just no way to make the thousand options equally effective. The fact that there are often more than one "optimal" build per class alone is an improvement imo. Also, there is nothing forcing you to keep pushing for torment 657 or whatever the current max setting is. If you like playing your weaker build and torment 4 is the best it can handle, big deal, so long as you are having fun. I only pointed out the eternal escalation of difficulty because its more challenge than normal nightmare and hell difficulty or whatever the three were for d2.

And yeah, this game is 99% pure grind, just like its always been, just like d2 always has been. At this point if you play any diablo game expecting something other than an endless grind, you need to pay attention. Complaining about the grind in d3 is like complaining about all the crafting you have to do in minecraft. The question is, do they make the grind at least somewhat enjoyable as opposed to running your 900th baal run in d2? I say yes. The storyline is interesting, there are also numerous extra things to do, dungeons caves and other stuff to explore not connected to the main storyline, the seasonal setup lets you run bounties and such instead of the storyline, giving you dozens of goals and challenges for each act, good rewards for the effort involved, and a leg up on trying out a different character with a good class set.

Interjecting myself into the discussion; I'd disagree with your claim that d3 is moreso in every aspect of d2. While I admit my impression is based on much more limited playtime; I found the story in d3 so weak that I didn't even finish playing the free beta portion, let alone buying the game and finishing it. The story and voice-acting simply felt quite weak compared to d2; as well as being inconsistent with established lore. I also found the character build choices so much worse in d3; there were almost no real choices to make for exploring/building a character. Whereas d2 had a variety of builds and skills I could try out with each character, even from the start; sure they might not all have worked out well, but the choices were there to make. In d3 your skills are basically set, and you only get to tweak the effects some of them have. It felt more like playing Heroes of the Storm and its talent tree than in getting to actually choose how to build your hero. I also found d2 itemization to be more interesting (and how your items change as you find new items, especially at the early levels and only using what you can find/buy), though it's a bit harder to make conclusions there due to limited sample size.

[The Glyphstone]

I mean, if you didn't even finish the free beta, let alone the whole game, you can't really complain that the skill options are too limited. Certain builds are better than others at higher difficulty, but every class has multiple 'builds' with varying sets of skills, not simply augments/modifications to the fixed set of skills, and they're all viable until at least mid-endgame scaling tier difficulty.

[Keltest]

I have played D2 though Hell Baal and D3 enough to get sick of the endgame grind, and frankly, i agree with zlefin. While youre leveling, you have a fair amount of choice in what skills you pick, but once you hit the endgame, youre using the skills as defined by your favorite set. Period. You dont even get to choose your favorite rune for the skill because the rune, besides changing the functionality, also changes the damage element, and a lot of sets or legendaries specifically require a given element to function.

D3's endgame is kind of an unmitigated disaster, and it has been ever since they started putting 4 digit damage multipliers on completed sets.

[Rynjin]

On the flipside though...there's a viable set or build for every skill for every class, with a few exceptions. And the ones that don't can be kludged with Legacy of Dreams/Nightmares up to a reasonable Torment difficulty. I can get my meme Phalanx Crusader up to about T11 before it falters, which is good enough in my book; T11 is a strong grinding Torment anyway. I could probably go higher if I grunded more, but I only play Seasonal really, so I get a solid 10-20 hours of playtime in every 3-6 months on average.

So ultimately you can still use pretty much any skillset you prefer and hit endgame content at this point. I really can't think of a skill that's flat out impossible to build around, you just have to know your options well enough to pursue it.

[Psyren]

Whereas I'm on team Traab. D2 is far more cookie cutter than D3 could ever hope to be, and it's worse because several builds are gated behind runewords whose drops you have very few means to control. If it weren't for rampant duping there are several runewords I would likely have never even gotten to try. And thanks to Legacy of Dreams, there are even more builds now than ever.

D3's endgame lasting nearly a decade at this point proves how strong it is in reality.

[Winthur]

d3 is like d2 only more so in every aspect, im sure he will be fine.

And yeah, this game is 99% pure grind, just like its always been, just like d2 always has been. At this point if you play any diablo game expecting something other than an endless grind, you need to pay attention.

There's absolutely nothing stopping you from parking a character in D2 and considering it done after you defeated Hell Baal, an achievement in itself, and the road to Hell Baal may involve no extraneous XP grinding whatsoever beyond what is necessary to complete each Act.

What D3 did was facilitate a portion of the playerbase's playstyle and normalized things that weren't officially endorsed by Blizzard but also couldn't be reasonably tackled in other ways (sharing stashes, skipping acts to speedrun the entire progression, extensive item trading, continually adding extra scaling, and the whole brief affair with the Auction House idea), but Diablo 2 isn't purely a grinding game unless you deliberately play it as one.

Diablo 2 lets you find a powerful unique item in Normal and carry it through your entire adventure simply due to some rare but efficient intrinsic that it grants, like Open Wounds, Crushing Blow or just a boatload of resistances, as well as the possibility of upgrading its weapon class; Diablo 3 is essentially set up in such a way that every few hours of progression you are going to find a numeric improvement to your last item. Items that allow you to borrow skills from entirely different skillsets are gone; even without focusing on oddball unique items like the "wolfbarb helmet", there's no more picking up an item with Teleport, Dim Vision or Amplify Damage charges to fix a shortcoming and increase chances of survival, and you aren't going to find some of your best intermediate progression pieces at a common vendor anymore.

This isn't a criticism of Diablo 3, it's just my observation of the shift in expectations towards the games in this genre. I have no qualms against Diablo 3's endgame or what it is trying to achieve; it responded fairly well to the expectations laid out by the lucrative farmbot market, the hype around the various Uber events, and the people speedrunning to 99 on the ladder.

But if you reduce Diablo 2 to being an inferior version of Diablo 3, statements like this one:

Which again leads people back to the four or five top 'cookie cutter' builds at the top of everyone's tier lists

naturally ring hollow because, of course, there's nothing toppling D2's usual suspects with an optimized Hammerdin at the helm, but the issue is that doing baal runs is just one facet of Diablo 2 gameplay.

I think that for many people D2's endgame was to simply... start another character. Which it encouraged to do even within the same class, because even with the limited respecs the journey of each build is going to be slightly different.

I did my fair share of Mephruns, Pitruns, Pindleruns, Chaosruns and Baalruns, but most of my Diablo 2 time was spent enjoying its natural progression. I never shared the impression that Diablo 2 only really starts at level 80+, like many players did, and while I respect that Diablo 3 really only starts at 70, I don't think it should be the default expectation of the games in the genre.

[Traab]

And you can stop d3 at any point you like same as d2. In D2 you can spend lord knows how long building up your magic find gear set farming end game runs trying to get runes to drop to put your gear together perfectly, in d3 its putting together class sets that let you push into higher difficulties to get better gear to drop. The grind is still there, and the push to get the "perfect" set of gear with the right legendary bonuses added on is a large part of what drives the end game of d3, just like the drive to get the right runewords is what drove d2. I personally never really got too involved in either. I played the basic game, and in seasons got my gear set, then pushed to see how far into torment I could handle then stopped playing as them because I wasnt interested in running grifts for months on end, same as in d2. I played the storyline, leveled up my classes, and eventually beat the highest difficulty I could then was done.

The difference is, d3 added in all those extra difficulty modes specifically to give us something to do beyond running the same boring fight forever. Instead of introducing monsters able to shut down your entire build because now they are immune to physical, or fire, or ice or whatever, they bumped up how hard they are to kill and how fast they can kill you. They added in seasons to give you something different to do. Take a break from trying to get your barbarian through torment100 grifts and get to level up a wizard and get an easy set of class gear for them as a reward. The higher difficulties were added because there is a significant set of the game population that wanted more challenging content. There is literally nothing forcing you to run any of it. You want to stop before you even reach torment? Thats fine, nobody is making you play further than you like. Same as in d2. You dont have to grind if you dont want to. But if you DO want that set of perfectly optimized gear, you are going to have to grind for it. Same as in d2.

[Keltest]

And you can stop d3 at any point you like same as d2. In D2 you can spend lord knows how long building up your magic find gear set farming end game runs trying to get runes to drop to put your gear together perfectly, in d3 its putting together class sets that let you push into higher difficulties to get better gear to drop. The grind is still there, and the push to get the "perfect" set of gear with the right legendary bonuses added on is a large part of what drives the end game of d3, just like the drive to get the right runewords is what drove d2. I personally never really got too involved in either. I played the basic game, and in seasons got my gear set, then pushed to see how far into torment I could handle then stopped playing as them because I wasnt interested in running grifts for months on end, same as in d2. I played the storyline, leveled up my classes, and eventually beat the highest difficulty I could then was done.

The difference is, d3 added in all those extra difficulty modes specifically to give us something to do beyond running the same boring fight forever. Instead of introducing monsters able to shut down your entire build because now they are immune to physical, or fire, or ice or whatever, they bumped up how hard they are to kill and how fast they can kill you. They added in seasons to give you something different to do. Take a break from trying to get your barbarian through torment100 grifts and get to level up a wizard and get an easy set of class gear for them as a reward. The higher difficulties were added because there is a significant set of the game population that wanted more challenging content. There is literally nothing forcing you to run any of it. You want to stop before you even reach torment? Thats fine, nobody is making you play further than you like. Same as in d2. You dont have to grind if you dont want to. But if you DO want that set of perfectly optimized gear, you are going to have to grind for it. Same as in d2.

Yeah, but whereas getting an Enigma or whatever for the first time can radically change my gameplay, getting an extra 2% damage on my weapon will not. The endgame for D3 is literally just "get bigger numbers on the same gameplay loop forever". At least in D2 i can get different gear with different effects.

[Psyren]

Yeah, but whereas getting an Enigma or whatever for the first time can radically change my gameplay, getting an extra 2% damage on my weapon will not. The endgame for D3 is literally just "get bigger numbers on the same gameplay loop forever". At least in D2 i can get different gear with different effects.

Sets and LoD do "radically change your gameplay." There are even radically different builds that use the SAME set. Inna Genmonk, Inna EP monk, Inna WoL monk and Inna Cyclone Monk all play very differently from one another, as one example. And then on top of that we have Seasons that can radically change the meta even more, like the one that gave everyone a free passive RRoG, or the one that let people cube any three legendaries regardless of item type.

Moreover, D3 looked at D2 Engima and realized "hey, maybe giving only one class in the game a decent movement ability might have been a mistake. Especially when the most efficient way to gain power in our game is to skip as many mobs as possible and spam kill the same boss repeatedly."

I loved D2 and played it for years. But D3 had (and has) much more longevity for me. D4 needs to realize what worked from it and what needed to be thrown out.