Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

The more I play all the classes (not quite an pants's level, but 3 level 60's), and the more viable builds always have a "get-me-out-of-here-now" skill. This is probably why I'm not as keen on monk, just because it's panic skill really doesn't solve the issue of getting you out of the mosh pit of enemies around you.

Queueball wrote:

This is probably why I'm not as keen on monk, just because it's panic skill really doesn't solve the issue of getting you out of the mosh pit of enemies around you.

The combo of serenity and tempest rush can serve pretty well to help you get out of dodge quickly.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Queueball wrote:

This is probably why I'm not as keen on monk, just because it's panic skill really doesn't solve the issue of getting you out of the mosh pit of enemies around you.

The combo of serenity and tempest rush can serve pretty well to help you get out of dodge quickly.

I'll have to try that. "Wasting" a serenity for tempest rush seems like overkill, although I use the serenity that heals, so running at that moment feels less necessary.

Random aside: I just noticed I screwed up "it's" and it got quoted so I can't really fix it and hope it goes unnoticed... dang it...

Queueball wrote:

"Wasting" a serenity for tempest rush seems like overkill

I think you only need serenity for it if you need a cc breaker. Honestly, that's the only thing I use serenity for. I never remember to use it to avoid damage.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Queueball wrote:

This is probably why I'm not as keen on monk, just because it's panic skill really doesn't solve the issue of getting you out of the mosh pit of enemies around you.

The combo of serenity and tempest rush can serve pretty well to help you get out of dodge quickly.

I like to use Tempest Rush with my monk, but they still haven't fixed the rubber banding effect. Nothing more frustrating than tempest rushing out only to magically get pulled back into the middle of a lava/poison pool with firechains all around you.

F, fire chains and double F wallers with arcane laser beams and jailer. Finally got my Barbarian and monk to lvl 60.

SpyNavy wrote:

F, fire chains and double F wallers with arcane laser beams and jailer. Finally got my Barbarian and monk to lvl 60.

Perhaps the mobs you are fighting have vortex?

Looking at the love of the pets. Have you experimented with stacking Thorns and speccing fierce loyalty?

I am in love with Grave Injustice, but I am not sure if the Frog mojo makes it worth your while. That is what my build hinges on, but my bonus radius is up to 70 now. That gives me about the entire screen's worth of radius for kills to feed me. Fetish Army is my Oh sh*t button if I come across a particularly nasty elite, or stumble into a group of 2+ elite mobs. But that radius means I am feeding myself with Grave Injustice without needing to be too up close and personal.
IMAGE(http://i.stack.imgur.com/IKkOB.jpg)
http://i.stack.imgur.com/IKkOB.jpg

Something to keep in mind, Soul Harvest or Gruesome Feast will also make your pets hit harder. I think subbing Soul Harvest (maybe with Siphon) would do you more good than sacrifice. And by stacking thorns, you have your pets doing their greatest good by getting smacked, not blowing them up. Try stacking thorns with Fierce Loyalty, not Grave Injustice and see what you get. Sub Soul Harvest for Sacrifice.

Ok - I am holding stuff back for whoever needs it. Not sure what folks are trying to improve, but let me know and I'll find it and hold it. Diablo has its claws into me hard so I play quite a bit. Post it here or find me online and I'll see what I can find or have in storage. I vendor most high end yellows because I dont feel like auction half the time. Lots of good stuff.

Three of the last five legendaries I've gotten have been mighty belts. Three of them were worthless Ageless Might's and the fourth dropped for my level 40 hardcore witch doctor. And, I still can't get the act 3 or 4 keywardens to drop stuff. Asses.

Up to MP4 and I still can't get a god damn act 3 key. Son of a Female Doggo.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Up to MP4 and I still can't get a god damn act 3 key. Son of a Female Doggo.

They dont drop unless you have 5 NV stacks is my understanding.

SpyNavy wrote:

They dont drop unless you have 5 NV stacks is my understanding.

Correct. You must be in Inferno with a 5 stack of NV before having any chance of them dropping at all. The sweet spot for farming the machine stuff seems to be MP7-8. The kicker? The ubers are not guaranteed to drop the ring parts either and really you need three machines at once to guarantee even having one go at all the parts, well that and all the crap rolls you'll likely get on hellfire rings.

You can have someone carry you for machine parts rather cheaply, I've also seen (and used) mp9 uber carry services for a mere 6 million on mp9, cheaper if you bring your own machine(s), and got all 3 parts every time I did it. You only need to buy the hellfire plan once thankfully (2 mil from the vendor near the wp in a2). Also you can stick one on your follower and you'll get something like 7% extra experience that way too.

Regardless of the roll the hellfire proc is pretty awesome, especially in normal where it just destroys bosses. I've seen it one shot the spider queen and completely skip the parts where she runs away until you fight the little spiders. That and 35% bonus exp is always nice leveling those alts (especially combined with leorics signet, even the "crappy" 20% one at level 14, a helm with a 31% ruby at 15 and cain's legacy set at 23).

If any of my chars get to the point of being able to carry I'll take goodjers for free but that may be a while.

I was doing an mp4 act 1 butcher run on my barb to see if I could do it. Two friends joined and helped with the clearing but lived all of a minute on the butcher. I then went on to tank him for the next 20 or so minutes while standing in the enrage fire. 60 million life at 20k dps takes awhile. But he couldn't kill me.

SpyNavy wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

Up to MP4 and I still can't get a god damn act 3 key. Son of a Female Doggo.

They dont drop unless you have 5 NV stacks is my understanding.

I understand how it works. I'm not an idiot.

For some reason Act 2 key is my nemesis. Even just at mp3 i am getting pretty lucky with act 1 and 3 keys, but 2 always takes at least 6-8 times before I can get one to drop... stupid probabilities!

iaintgotnopants wrote:
SpyNavy wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

Up to MP4 and I still can't get a god damn act 3 key. Son of a Female Doggo.

They dont drop unless you have 5 NV stacks is my understanding.

I understand how it works. I'm not an idiot.

No offense intended - I didnt know until someone told me. I dont follow patch notes and all that stuff so I wasnt sure what you knew.

SpyNavy wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:
SpyNavy wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

Up to MP4 and I still can't get a god damn act 3 key. Son of a Female Doggo.

They dont drop unless you have 5 NV stacks is my understanding.

I understand how it works. I'm not an idiot.

No offense intended - I didnt know until someone told me. I dont follow patch notes and all that stuff so I wasnt sure what you knew.

Actually I didn't know either, for the same reason you used to not know, SpyNavy. So I'm happy for the heads-up!

Somehow I got it in my head that every machine needs its own plans, not so. In fact if you pick up more than 1 per account (excluding the hardcore/softcore divide that is) plan for the staff of herding or the infernal machine you can't train the extra ones (already known), can't sell them, can't drop them, etc. The only way to get rid of them is to stick them in the inventory of a scrap character and then delete that character. The other solution is not to pick them up but they drop as legendary items and I think I would rather the roundabout way of disposal than teaching my brain it's okay not to pick up legendarys sometimes.

So I know some people have compared Diablo II and Diablo III, with some people saying Diablo II only seems better in retrospect, but is actually a worse game than Diablo III. For myself, I have leveled a new sorceress up to level 24, and a druid up to level 12. In five hours of playing, I have found 3 unique items, all of them useful, and one set piece, also seeing use. I have made 2 runeword items, a weapon for my hireling and a nice caster chest piece for my sorc. I'm not going to list what I found in a similar time frame in Diablo III because it's too depressing.

Hands down, Diablo II is winning, and for one reason only: I love the loot. As far as the gameplay goes, they both involve a lot of clicking, and Diablo III may edge out Diablo II a tiny bit. Did I mention they have added respecing to Diablo II?

Suffice it to say, I will continue to play both, but the question of whether Diablo III is measuring up to previous standards is, for me, completely closed in favor of Diablo II.

I posted about my own experiences earlier in the thread with playing D2 and D3 "alongside" each other, coming down pretty similarly to you. I still feel Diablo 2 is the better game, though the recent patches have at least helped a little with Diablo 3.

The itemization is so, so much better for single-player in D2 that it completely obliterates the itemization in D3. There really is no contest at all. Heck, the itemization in D2 is still better than any other action-rpg I've ever played (the jury's still out for me on Torchlight 2).

However, the skill system in D3 provides far more flexibility than the one in D2. It's arguable as to which one provides a greater number of unique and interesting builds, but I would come down on the side of D3 in that area - if you're talking about the point in the game at which all skills and runes are available to choose from.

At the low-to-middle levels, I actually think D2 still has the edge on unique and interesting build possibilities, since you do get the once-per-difficulty respec now, so you can basically build your character as you go until you hit a point around Nightmare difficulty sometime where you will need to respec to move "wasted" skill points to better slots.

Oh it's only one respec per difficulty? That's lame. Still, it's an improvement

I still think if you want to compare D2 and D3 you should be doing D2 Classic, not D2:LoD.

shoptroll wrote:

I still think if you want to compare D2 and D3 you should be doing D2 Classic, not D2:LoD.

I won't argue that. And by that standard, it's a much closer comparison on itemization. I'm genuinely hopeful that the Diablo 3 expansion can prove to be the boost it needs to leapfrog it past D2+LoD.

However, I'm extremely skeptical of that because of how the auction house shaped the core itemization of the game, as well as the way that D3's base game is build around the MMO concept of "endgame" being the "real" game, whereas the base game of D2 was built around the roguelike and Diablo 1 concept of the journey being the game. Because of the way D3 is built, the expansion is likely to be built equally heavy around the mmo "endgame" concept, whereas LoD built in awesomeness from start to finish, not just in Act 5.

Farscry wrote:

However, I'm extremely skeptical of that because of how the auction house shaped the core itemization of the game, as well as the way that D3's base game is build around the MMO concept of "endgame" being the "real" game, whereas the base game of D2 was built around the roguelike and Diablo 1 concept of the journey being the game. Because of the way D3 is built, the expansion is likely to be built equally heavy around the mmo "endgame" concept, whereas LoD built in awesomeness from start to finish, not just in Act 5.

I won't argue with that either. I also think there's an expectation for two expansions (as with Starcraft II) based on a leaked overly-optimistic Blizzard timeline a year or two ago. I think it's likely we'll see a much more fleshed out itemization system by the time Blizzard is done with this game.

I certainly hope so, because there's so much else to like about Diablo 3 that I don't want to see it fail to hit its potential.

Farscry wrote:

I certainly hope so, because there's so much else to like about Diablo 3 that I don't want to see it fail to hit its potential. :)

Yeah, this is how I feel about it, I have played it a bunch lately. Like, it sucks, but it doesn't SUCK, you know? I'd like to see a few things fixed and see the game get better.

I think WoW took a very similar trajectory, most people dont realize how broken the game was when it first came out. But compare new MMO's to wow with 4 expansions.

I hope Diablo gets some more fixes but I have liked the direction they went with paragon and the infernal machine seems cool. If they add some more stuff like that it will give a reason to do full clears not just small runs.

I would actually beg to differ that the acts in D2 were all comparable to act 5. Act 5 to me was head and shoulders above the other acts in D2. As a matter of fact, I would put every act in D3 above the acts in D2 save for act 5.

I know you haven't forgotten the act that everyone wants to skip (d2 act3). And I'd add that there is much more stuff to do in D3 acts while running between waypoints. In fact, a lot of d2 was scouring the blocky "zones" of each act to find the waypoint or exit. Once all the waypoints were found, it was then determined which ones were the best return for farming and the others were ignored. (until later patches where they added champions to under utilized side dungeons and ignored quests)

Then once LOD came out, everyone raced to and farmed act 5 until acts 1-4 of the next difficulty became trivial and the race to act 5 was renewed.

I think act three does approach a little long in the tooth in d3. Do we really need to do the keep, then zoltan, then the hearts and spider queen before Asmodan? But it is nowhere near the tedium of act 3 d2.

Oh plus, thankfully most of the d3 fetch quests only require 2 items unlike d2 where up to 4 things were scattered in random directions to progress the story.

Hmm, I know there were tedious parts to D2, but personally, I liked all of the vanilla initial release content. I was riveted from the word go, and stayed hooked through all the later patches and releases. I hated some mobs/combinations, but I found the first playthroughs of normal and nightmare far more entertaining than D3.