627 replies to this topic

[XMark]

I'm tempted to try an experimental character who limits himself to nothing but non-magic equipment.

[GENTLYPORKING]

I'm tempted to try an experimental character who dies a lot.

FTFY

[Rize]

Valor - I'm indifferent on the guaranteed rare thing. I mean, it's nice, don't get me wrong, but I think the bigger deal is how does mf work at all? It seems like the mf part of NV doesn't even matter since the drops are guaranteed anyway. If I have say, 200 mf without NV, shouldn't I be getting stellar drops anyway? I know that the mf helps with non champ/boss drops, but those (champ and boss) will always be the best places to farm. No need to try and reinvent the wheel.

MF was quite the complicated beast in D2 and I'm sure it remains so here. So you get the MF gain plus the special neph buff of guaranteed rares. In D2, a particular drop had different percentage chances to be normal, magic, rare, set or unique. MF would scale all of those so that you would be much more likely to find unique items. This probably goes in D3 as well. With neph and other MF, you get auto rares from bosses plus a greater chance to find set/uniques in general (including from just busting pots and opening chests and things).

Skills makes sense, but cooldowns on death and pots especially are bogus. It really messes with the flow of action in the game.

I hate the death cooldown. They should just have an anti-neph valor for inferno characters or something. Also, skill cooldowns, except mega skills such as archon should reset on death. My Barbarian revives and can't use warcry again because there is a stupid cooldown on it. The cooldown is only there so you can't spam it to get the fury bonus repeatedly. They don't have a cooldown on the one that buffs damage because it costs fury.

IAS - I'm not sure what to make of this one, but I think they should do more work on balancing what prefixes and suffixes can spawn on items before nerfing any one mod. I've mentioned this in regards to legendaries before, but I think they did a real sloppy job with this throughout the game overall. I haven't been stacking IAS at all because the items are real expensive and I've been building a more tank style wizard with tons of vit, res, and dex (dodge is the real deal folks). It seems a little overboard. If they only allowed IAS to spawn on a restricted number of items it wouldn't be as huge of a problem. Instead, it appears they are taking the easy way out and just using the ole ban hammer. Good job.

It's unfair to barbs who I think rely on IAS the most but are already weak.

Crafting - Excellent. It was absurd how expensive it was to level these guys before.

The cost of crafting low level gems is so low now it's basically free! You still have to pay for the level upgrades though. But they left high level gem upgrades the same so those are still incredibly expensive.

[Disposable Hero]

Valor - I'm indifferent on the guaranteed rare thing. I mean, it's nice, don't get me wrong, but I think the bigger deal is how does mf work at all? It seems like the mf part of NV doesn't even matter since the drops are guaranteed anyway. If I have say, 200 mf without NV, shouldn't I be getting stellar drops anyway? I know that the mf helps with non champ/boss drops, but those (champ and boss) will always be the best places to farm. No need to try and reinvent the wheel.

MF was quite the complicated beast in D2 and I'm sure it remains so here. So you get the MF gain plus the special neph buff of guaranteed rares. In D2, a particular drop had different percentage chances to be normal, magic, rare, set or unique. MF would scale all of those so that you would be much more likely to find unique items. This probably goes in D3 as well. With neph and other MF, you get auto rares from bosses plus a greater chance to find set/uniques in general (including from just busting pots and opening chests and things).

Yeah this was more a rhetorical question. I understand how mf works, but in D2 there was a noticeable difference in drops once you hit the point of diminishing return on mf. I haven't seen this kind of difference in D3 yet, and that's what I'm referring to. They are dealing with rare drop rates, but I have only had two legendary drops and no set drops in the 100 hours I've been playing this game. There were plenty of viable low level sets and uniques available in D2, not sure why this is a problem now. I just can't wait until all the code and algorithms have been cracked so we can have this information. Arreat Summit was fucking awesome with the info readily available about D2. The game is over a decade old, so I get it takes time. But Blizzard's website gives us such general and boring data about items and skills it's ridiculous.

[Rize]

Yeah, the Arreat Summit was awesome. What was that called before LoD came out I can't recall? It did exist though. I thought that place was run by Blizzard on the side somehow. Maybe it's completely private.

But yeah, Blizzard's game guide is not aimed at hardcore players. For now we have to feel things out and make guesses.

[Shoe]

I have a feeling one of the main reasons they're nerfing IAS is crit wizards; I haven't been there yet, but I've read of builds on the forums where people would have 3+ hits/sec, the AP on crit bonus + cooldown on crit bonus, and just go destroy everything through perma-spam.

And just as a fun anecdote on legendaries: I've only found one so far, in normal, and the stats were so hilariously bad I salvaged it over even trying to sell it on the AH. And not just "oh, bad for a wizard", but legitimately "no one would ever use this holy shit". I had lower level magic items that easily outpaced it.

[GENTLYPORKING]

I have a feeling one of the main reasons they're nerfing IAS is crit wizards; I haven't been there yet, but I've read of builds on the forums where people would have 3+ hits/sec, the AP on crit bonus + cooldown on crit bonus, and just go destroy everything through perma-spam.

And just as a fun anecdote on legendaries: I've only found one so far, in normal, and the stats were so hilariously bad I salvaged it over even trying to sell it on the AH. And not just "oh, bad for a wizard", but legitimately "no one would ever use this holy shit". I had lower level magic items that easily outpaced it.

But are your magic items in an orange box? Didn't think so.

[Ashane]

And just as a fun anecdote on legendaries: I've only found one so far, in normal, and the stats were so hilariously bad I salvaged it over even trying to sell it on the AH. And not just "oh, bad for a wizard", but legitimately "no one would ever use this holy shit". I had lower level magic items that easily outpaced it.

You'd be surprised man. People will pay top dollar for shit just because of its rarity. I sold a mediocre rare ring in the AH that had crit hit %/dmg for 450k... Every rare ring I sell goes for ridiculous amounts, no matter how much it sucks. Might as well just search for the item you're selling, sort by buyout from lowest to highest, and just undersell the cheapest one. I've made millions in the AH doing this.

[norg]

damn. i'm underselling on all my stuff then. i need to up the prices and keep them in the auction house.

i've re-listed several things over time now and sometimes they won't sell the first time and after the 3rd or 4th they go within minutes. it's insane.

[Ashane]

damn. i'm underselling on all my stuff then. i need to up the prices and keep them in the auction house.

i've re-listed several things over time now and sometimes they won't sell the first time and after the 3rd or 4th they go within minutes. it's insane.

I know, haha. That happened to me a lot when I was starting out. Makes sense though when there's millions of people playing this game. You gotta have a pretty fast clicking finger to get the really good deals heh. I can't tell you how many times I've missed out on good deals because I was contemplating buying it for 5 seconds. There's tons of people underselling stuff, so even if there's something I don't need and I find a good deal, I'll buy it just to flip it for some profit.

Some people have speculated that there are bots auto-buying the good deals. If it gets sold literally the second after your cancellation timer goes up, there's a good chance it was a bot...

Also, if you're selling something that has open sockets, throw in some good gems because chances are it'll meet someone's search criteria if you do. Make sure it has both str/dex/int and vit.

[Lucavi00]

I regret playing in a 4 player hell game. Elite mob packs are just roaming rape brigades. Especially if they are fast shielding arcane enchanted assholes.

[LordMachino]

That's nothing, man. Last night on inferno I ran into a pack of Fast Shielded Fire Chain Vortex Scientologist Holocaust-Denying Nickelback-Member mobs.

Also, life regenerated per second on armor is awesome. I have mine up over 1k and it's making my wizard die way less.

[Rize]

Well. It was some good times, but I had to uninstall. The fun:addiction ratio crossed some invisible threshold, plus I need to get the rest of my life off of ignore for a while. Maybe after the multiplayer patch I will take it for another spin. It sure would be nice to actually get a legendary or set item once in a while. Even if it sucks.

[Bahamut]

I should mention about NV - NV also increases the # of items that drop from champions/elites/uniques (or whatever they call the purple guys in this game), so with the increased drop rate, there's a much higher chance of more rares dropping other than the guaranteed one. It's not uncommon to see 2-3 rares drop from bosses as it is with a 5 stack of NV.

I've only found one legendary so far, and its been pretty good for my wizard: http://us.battle.net...ndariels-visage (+117 intel, 13 IAS, +94 regen, 283 armor, +34 poison resist I think, and level requirement down by 2)

So far, I'm up to A2 inferno, gathering Kulle's body parts (up to the desolate sands). It's rough, but the game hasn't felt undoable - at least I can farm A1 without much trouble minus super crappy mods. I'm currently running this, and its been ok although I feel undergeared with vitality & armor, especially against the snakes I come upon. I'm currently at 38k hp, 21k dps, and ~200 resists for all (poison up around 280). Figuring out the AH for gearing up seems to be tough, most people seem to overprice their items and I admittedly don't care too much about the price I throw up my items up for (sometimes underpricing, sometimes overpricing.

[Rize]

Yeah..... so now I'm depressed. Can't go home and play Diablo 3? Why go home at all?

I knew this wouldn't be this easy