Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

fangblackbone wrote:

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.

Not me. My favorite acts in Diablo 2, even after the expansion (once the newness of Act 5 wore off), are still Acts 1 & 2. Yes, Act 3 was horrible and there's nothing in Diablo 3 that's comparably bad (thank goodness!). There were parts of Act 5 that were just horribly tedious and dull to me; those freakin' ice caves can go die in a fire, and a couple of the trenches-type overland areas just went on and on and ON.

I liked D2 act 1 up to the jail.

D2 act2 was alright with notable highlights: arcane sanctuary, sewers, palace and canyon of the magi. The notable black marks are: sand maggot lair, halls of the dead and getting to duriel in the last dungeon was much too nested.

D2 act 3 the only redeeming part was once you reached Kurast and beyond.

D2 act 4 was my favorite before the expansion.

D2 act 5 did have its drawbacks as you mentioned: the glacial trail, nihlathak, frigid highlands. But the ancients, the bloody foothills, and the worldstone keep I did many dozens of times over with little burnout.

I wish they had incorporated more of the seals releasing mechanic in other acts and done much more with it. That was the atmosphere key in D2: the seals, breaking the wall to duriel's lair, etc. I'm not sure d3 captured that as well with their boss reveals. Sure they were bigger but the intro cutscenes were too chatty when all we really wanted was "ah, fresh meat!"

Yeah, I absolutely agree. A big part of what made the butcher the butcher is the speed at which he was right on top of you. I don't want dialog and taunting, I want "FRESH MEAT" and then terror. The closest D3 comes to that moment is when you get a random champion with a hard combo of skills, which I like, except that when you find them you feel unlucky which kind of spoils it. In D2 with the butcher you knew he was coming, you just didn't know when.

The other thing I want back in D3 from D2 are the massive swarms of mobs. You get some of it in Act 3 with the scorpion things, but they should do much more of that.

Once thing I loved about D2 is that you could just stack like +100 (I forget the actual values) to pretty much any skill and feel like a god. The massive swarms nihilo mentions were a big part of that too but with d3 though it feels like anytime a build is found that feels that way Blizzard swoops in with the big ol nerf bat and/or it would cost a few thousand dollars on the RMAH to make it work. I suppose you could play a lower difficulty to feel that way but then you lose a lot of the reward aspect.

So, my last 3 legendary drops have all been Frostburn Gauntlets. What are the odds of getting three drops in a row of the exact same item? Compound that with the odds of that item being the most useless legendary ever made. As far as I know Frostburn Gauntlets are the only legendary without any random affixes. While the affixes it gets aren't bad as individual affixes, when a glove has no chance of getting any stat, crit or attack speed affixes, it is by default a useless item. I'd like to know what genius at Blizzard actually thought that this would somehow be a legendary item. That person should be fired immediately.

Here's hoping the next patch comes up with some way to improve crafting because I am building a rather large pile of brimstone.

Copingsaw wrote:

What are the odds of getting three drops in a row of the exact same item?

I got three ageless mights (might belt) in a row. Not as useless as frostburns but pretty useless especially the one that dropped for my hardcore witch doctor.

Shameless bragging time: I direct your attention to the progression section of my profile.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Copingsaw wrote:

What are the odds of getting three drops in a row of the exact same item?

I got three ageless mights (might belt) in a row. Not as useless as frostburns but pretty useless especially the one that dropped for my hardcore witch doctor.

Shameless bragging time: I direct your attention to the progression section of my profile.

Hardcore? o_0

Bless you señor, I wouldn't dare even start up a HC character because I'd get so mad when I died due to disconnect or lagspike. Why'd you go with Witch Doctor of all classes?

edit: Your barbarian is named "Steve"? Really? Steve The Barbarian? >_>

I'm a fan of Buttercup for a male barbarian. Makes them tougher in the long run.

I always go with Sherman.

Mex wrote:

Bless you señor, I wouldn't dare even start up a HC character because I'd get so mad when I died due to disconnect or lagspike. Why'd you go with Witch Doctor of all classes?

edit: Your barbarian is named "Steve"? Really? Steve The Barbarian? >_>

I've rarely had lag issues with this game. If the servers feel wonky when I'm playing softcore, I don't even try to play my hardcore character for a while. I haven't heard about any mass deaths due to disconnecting in a while so I'm guessing the fixed that issue. I've never had a disconnect.

In my experience, witch doctor is the class that has the most survivability. With spirit vessel, pets to draw aggro, horrify and spirt walk, I should never die. I won't be able to to a bears build though because it's just too dangerous. I'm either going to run a grave injustice/gruesome feast build or a zombie handler/fierce loyalty build when I get to inferno. I still need to test which I like better though. I'm going to test the first on my HC character in hell and the second on my SC character since I'll need to see how the pets hold up in inferno.

I have female characters named Jeff, Pete, Frank and Fred and your issue is with Steve the Barbarian?

Contrary to popular thought, Fred is actually a very common Witch Doctor name

Got 65 million from selling a Vile Ward shoulder legendary drop to play with n_n

So I just stuck my head into the game and I'm sure this is oft-repeated but holy cow, what a beautiful game! Tossing minions off cliffs and into the abyss never gets old. The destructible environments and lighting effects were just amazing, and it was a real pleasure settling into another Blizzard game, even one as controversial as this one.

I've only leveled two characters to ten, so I'm quite inexperienced, but I was surprised how little damage my Witch Doctor took the entire time, whereas with my Monk there were a few scary moments. I was also a bit shocked how few skill selections there were, at least initially, but if iirc you didn't use that many early on in D2 either.

So, after something like 400 hours I finally had a set item drop:

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/1100265829644685662/02DB9A0BE8C66AB6B1BF0AEE4E2EE3B19B80A96F/)

I almost pissed myself when I saw the 10% crit chance. It's probably the luckiest roll I've gotten. There were only eight others on the auction house with that roll with buyouts between 369 and 900 million. I'll probably try posting it a couple of times but if it doesn't sell, it'll be put to good use on my wizard that I'm trying to transition to a CM build.

Wow, pants, you are Diablo Rich now : o

Mex wrote:

Wow, pants, you are Diablo Rich now : o

It's balanced out by the number of TF2 crates I've opened without getting an unusual.

Congrats pants, no excuse not to buy yourself a nice pair of pants now. That is an amazing drop.

Mex and I made easy work of MP4 uber bosses. I'm wondering if we might be able to go up to MP7 or MP8 if we get a couple more decently geared people. I probably won't be able to play again until Thursday or Friday but I'd like to try that this weekend (assuming I can get keys, I still have sh*t luck with that).

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Mex and I made easy work of MP4 uber bosses. I'm wondering if we might be able to go up to MP7 or MP8 if we get a couple more decently geared people. I probably won't be able to play again until Thursday or Friday but I'd like to try that this weekend (assuming I can get keys, I still have sh*t luck with that).

Mex can kill stuff now? pfffffft

If anyone would like a char powerleveled (up to 60 that is) drop me a pm. I can loan you +%xp gear and you can follow my wiz around in a3 mp10. It goes pretty quick, if you have a hellfire ring (can't loan you one as they are account bound) it'll be even faster but should be reasonable even without it.

Also when specced cm my wiz should be good to go for any key runs or uber runs people want to try, still getting used to the play style but I think I've got the knack of it now.

krev82 wrote:

Also when specced cm my wiz should be good to go for any key runs or uber runs people want to try, still getting used to the play style but I think I've got the knack of it now.

CM Wizard 101

Step 1: Find enemy
Step 2: Mash all buttons

iaintgotnopants wrote:

CM Wizard 101

Step 1: Find enemy
Step 2: Mash all buttons

Sounds like Magicka.

Keithustus wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

CM Wizard 101

Step 1: Find enemy
Step 2: Mash all buttons

Sounds like Magicka.

Well, at least in Magicka, the order of the button mashing matters. When I play CM wizard, I just mash 1, 2 and 3 at the same time while holding down LMB.

So, I'm developing the Diablo itch right now, after having not played at all since early summer. I have a 30 WD and 50 Wiz, to give you an idea of how much I played then (meaning, a bit but not too much by most people's standards).

I have been reading up on patches 1.04 and 1.05, and I spent a few minutes looking at the official forums. But, have they changed the actual classes or gameplay basics that much? Are old class/build guides worthless now? Any other massive changes besides this Monster Power thing?

Any guidance is appreciated. Thanks.

The general power of various abilities has changed quite a bit, but the way most abilities function hasn't. If you log in with either of your characters you should be in familiar territory, you'll just want to play around with all your abilities to find out which ones you prefer now.

I would definitely say any un-updated class guides are worthless, in large part because the difficulty at MP1 has been so dramatically nerfed. I can't think of any build that won't be able to finish Inferno now at MP1.

I think witch doctor has been relatively unchanged with the exception of increased pet survivability. I know there were a bunch of small changes to wizard abilities but the only one I can remember is them changing hydras so that despawning them doesn't count for life on kill. A lot of the wizard changes were buffs to stuff that wasn't used much. At your character levels, I don't think you'll notice much of a change at all.

As for builds, I think I think almost all witch doctors run a build centered on zombie bears since there's nothing that even comes close to it in terms of DPS. There are some pet builds. There isn't much more diversity for wizards. It's pretty much between the critical mass build or an archon build that's really only useful for paragon level farming.

They made it so you can't forever spam zombie bears, so it's more bursty, but you still tend to use them a lot.

I have way too many hours playing my WD, and while Bears may still be the best, with recent patches, its definitely not the only way any more.

Spirit Barrage and I think Fireballs, got buffs. The Pet Buff is nothing to sneeze at, and combine it with some other buffed defensive skills (Wall of Zombies) WD's can hold their own pretty well.

I actually started a new Barbarian last night and played up to level 14-ish. I didn't mess with the MP setting, and man, people aren't kidding about their dropping the difficulty. How big is the payoff in loot (and gold?) for increasing the MP setting, esp. at such a low level?

CptGlanton wrote:

I actually started a new Barbarian last night and played up to level 14-ish. I didn't mess with the MP setting, and man, people aren't kidding about their dropping the difficulty. How big is the payoff in loot (and gold?) for increasing the MP setting, esp. at such a low level?

edit: This sums it up
http://www.justd3.com/diablo-3-monster-power-scaling-in-detail.html
though I think they removed the monster damage scaling.

basically the hp scale much faster than anything else, if your damage is top notch for your level you may find mp1,2 or even 3 an acceptable speed but generally, especially at a lower level and gear, you could cover so much more ground on mp0 that it's not really efficient to do higher aside from farming specific items after level 60.

That said if your concern is being challenged rather than efficient then sure grank up the mp though you'll only really notice a difficulty difference on certain mob affixs since they'll take so much longer to kill.

A new character on mp10 is awesome fun. The difficulty is balanced out by the fact that you are over leveled for the content you come across. I am sure at some level that evens out or perhaps gets flipped. But up until level 24 so far, it is a ton of fun, even for a class you've already played to high levels.