Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

Farscry wrote:

That's what they actually mean when they say that "only one stat matters": they mean that your primary stat is vastly more important than anything else,

That is, however, far from true. I get more DPS by stacking crit damage or attack speed. I also get more efficiency out of stacking MF (which I have stacked to the cap) and defense than damage stats. Int isn't more important, it's just the cheapest, most easily available stat and the one that you tend to stack first.

So I took a look at your character (using the information at the beginning of this thread). Based on that it's very clear that the itemization you saw has nothing to do with the game I'm playing right now. That's why your perception is so skewed from what is going on in the actual game. I'm guessing you barely got into Act 2 Inferno and quit (based on the fact that almost half your gear is blues). At that point, sure, int was the best bang for the back -- your gear is, frankly, terrible and int is a very cheap way to get early damage increases. Even back in the early patches, however, it becomes the case that with just a little more gear you see a much bigger gain from focusing on other stats. You just didn't play long enough to get to that point.

Here's your homework: go to the D3 forums (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/), click on random users and view their profiles. You'll find that players have tons of varied equipment, quite different than the blue/yellow int/vit starter gear that your character has. Tons of uniques, tons of unique abilities, lots of stats being emphasized beyond int and lots of builds. That's the D3 that I'm playing and talking about in this thread. In that game, the graphic that was linked, is hyperbolic and wrong.

So you pick gear with no Int or with, say, Dex instead of Int in order to get the other stats you say are so important?

*looks at StGabe's linked character*

Gee, look at that, every single item you have on your WD has Int. Why haven't you picked gear that pumps the other stats but has no Int on it?

You're contradicting yourself here, not me.

[edit]To clarify, before you go taking me out of context, my point is that your witch doctor follows exactly what I said: the WoW school of gearing. Gear needs the primary stat to be viable for your character (in this case, Int for Witch Doctors), then you have a secondary stat that is most important for your spec (in your case, you indicated this to be pickup radius, but I might have misinterpreted your statements earlier), then you have tertiary stats that you seek once your primary and, in most cases, secondary requirements are met.

If gear doesn't have your primary stat, it's trash. Doesn't matter how awesome the remaining bonuses are, because the game's design relegates secondary and tertiary stats too far below the importance of the primary stat.

I got back to the game a couple weeks ago. At launch and a month or so after, I played a DH and a Wizard to Inferno Act 3. That was a rough experience and I hated it very much. I swear never to try Diablo 3 again but after reading a lot of patch notes since then, I decided to give it a try.

So, I got my Wizard to Paragon Level 35 and messed with a Witch Doctor (PL 8). The game has improved quite a lot and the difficulty progresses really well with the inclusion of Monster Power. Legendary drops and quality improved overall, driving prices down of pretty good rares in the AH, so that helped me spend a couple million per character and have a viable build to farm MP0.

I got a bit lucky farming with my Archon wizard, got a good drop and was able to sell it for a lot of gold, which helped me finance the rest of my items. I'm able to farm up to MP6, but I usually do so in MP4 for being a lot more effective.

I was having fun, but I got to a point now where upgrades will cost me billions of gold or being extremely lucky. I can farm for 3 hours straight and almost everything that drops is not worth picking up. Even legendaries are really bad drops most of the time. You know, those that can't sell for not even 20K gold in the AH, because they have all the wrong stats. Drop rates on good items are still very very low. This makes the game very monotonous to me and I have decided to put it aside and wait for the expansion or another big patch.

As far as the discussion here about the Info graphic posted, I think it is pretty spot on. Weapon DPS is just way too important to ignore. Your main stat, Critical and Attack Speed are way too important as well. If you look at the top players, they usually all wear the same stuff. You can say that there are a lot of varied setups but if you want to be effective, there are only a couple cookie cutter builds out there and if a lot of the players you inspect are using something different, to me it just means they were not lucky enough with their drops, because I'm sure they would really love to have that Echoing Fury with 90% Crit, Socket and 1k+ DPS, they just don't have the cash or luck to get it yet.

EDIT: Btw, here's my WZ profile. If you check on Diablo Progress, most wizards use pretty much the same setup. Mine is not all that great, because I need better versions of each individual item, but the stats are pretty much the same if you compare to the majority of other effective Wizards out there. Attack Speed, Crit Dmg, Crit Chance, Int and Resists. Usually a piece of gear that doesn't have one of those stats, is somewhat bad.

EDIT2: Oh, and here's my lowbie WD. As you can see I was working towards exactly what StGabe has on his profile now. The exact same cookie cutter Grave Injustice / Gruesome Feast build most WD follow.

Farscry wrote:

You're contradicting yourself here, not me.

Nothing I've said is contradictory. You're confusing the fact that int is the most common, and easiest-to-acquire stat with the notion that it's the most important stat. If I could trade out int for other stats on my items, and keep the rest of the stats, I'd do so in a heartbeat. This statement is strictly false: "the game's design relegates secondary and tertiary stats too far below the importance of the primary stat".

Of course with your character where he's at, I'm not surprised that you're making this mistake. You haven't seen the game that I'm playing.

I think you are a crazy person who doesn't see how he's contradicting himself

StGabe wrote:
Farscry wrote:

You're contradicting yourself here, not me.

Nothing I've said is contradictory. You're confusing the fact that int is the most common, and easiest-to-acquire stat with the notion that it's the most important stat. If I could trade out int for other stats on my items, and keep the rest of the stats, I'd do so in a heartbeat. This statement is strictly false: "the game's design relegates secondary and tertiary stats too far below the importance of the primary stat".

Then show me a high-end powerful character build for a Witch Doctor or Wizard that has abandoned Int from one of their item slots. The burden of proof is on you at this point, not me.

StGabe wrote:

Of course with your character where he's at, I'm not surprised that you're making this mistake. You haven't seen the game that I'm playing.

Ah, condescension. I thought I'd seen the last of that in this debate. Alas, I was wrong.

I'm talking about the majority of the playerbase who purchased the game. Like me. Most of whom have abandoned the game by now, because they were not interested in playing in the niche you occupy.

Fortunately Blizzard continues to make positive changes that, from what I've seen in my attempts to rekindle the fun of the game, are moving it in the right direction.

StGabe wrote:

Of course with your character where he's at, I'm not surprised that you're making this mistake. You haven't seen the game that I'm playing.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/lKPdC.jpg)

Spoiler:

Look, I don't really have a horse in this race, since Diablo 3 isn't something I was interested in. But you're doing your arguments a disservice here, regardless of their potential merits.

StGabe wrote:
Dimmerswitch wrote:

Then show me a high-end powerful character build for a Witch Doctor or Wizard that has abandoned Int from one of their item slots.

I just posted two.

Actually, Farscry wrote that. I simply pointed out you were doing your arguments a disservice.

[edit]D'OH I'M A BLIND IDIOT[/edit]

KillTrash wrote:

EDIT2: Oh, and here's my lowbie WD. As you can see I was working towards exactly what StGabe has on his profile now. The exact same cookie cutter Grave Injustice / Gruesome Feast build most WD follow.

It's not the most common build. If you want to do anything more than MP0/1 on your character you'll see why. It's a great farm build but I'm currently working on a completely different set up.

I think you'll find that Wizard is a bit boring compared to WD. I sold my wizard's gear to fund my WD because I found WD to be a lot more interesting. The items you've got on your Wiz demonstrate that you've focused entirely on DPS. And yeah, for a glass cannon, pure-DPS build you can focus on a smaller set of stats and you'll tend to find characters geared the same. There is no real glass cannon WD build and high level gear Witchdoctors, in comparison, gear/build in wildly different fashions. For example here are some top-tier Witchdoctors that have recently been posting different builds in the forums:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/I...
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/C... (similar skills, but lots of differences on items with stun/blind/freeze procs, no life steal, etc)
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/T... (zombie dog sacrifice build)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc48O... (no bear, MP10 build -- can't show you that guy's char because he's currently switched to a sever build)

If you go to diabloprogress and look at top DPS WD's you'll probably see more homogeneity but, IMO, those guys are playing the game more to get to the top of the DPS high score list than they are to have a viable build.

edit: posted a higher-tier zombie dog / sacrifice build

[MASSIVE EDIT FOR BLINDNESS]

So far I'm seeing one very specific exemption to the Int in every slot claim, and it's a very specific combination of bonuses on an incredibly rare item (the item itself combined with the odds of it generating that specific set of bonuses), making it a gimmick build. Those existed in the D2 high-end game as well (which I didn't really play, so there's no way I could possibly understand that), and I found them as uncompelling there as here. And the character still has Int in all their other slots.

So... other than gimmick builds, which I should have anticipated since they were in D2 too, still not seeing any proof that Int is not the single most important stat on these characters' gear.

Int is the cheapest stat to acquire as a witchdoctor.

That's an item budgeting concern. On the majority of items you can get int almost "for free". Therefore, any high end player will have int on almost all of their items (with some exceptions like Stone of Jordan). To not do so would be to miss out on a very cheap upgrade.

You're confusing that with the notion that intelligence is the single best stat for witchdoctors.

For example, take my amulet. It has a lot of int on it (+272). It has a decent amount of crit chance (7%, but it could go up to 10%). If I lost the int from my character I'd lose 14k DPS. However if I lost the crit chance from my character I'd lose almost 16k DPS. Crit chance is a "more important" stat, at least as far as DPS is concerned. (numbers generated on d3up.com).

Farscry wrote:

Then show me a high-end powerful character build for a Witch Doctor or Wizard that has abandoned Int from one of their item slots.

I just posted three.

Ah, condescension. I thought I'd seen the last of that in this debate. Alas, I was wrong.

That's not condescension. Your character isn't geared. At all. You haven't played the part of D3 that is about interesting items. There may well be design flaws with D3 that prevented you from getting there. However "int being the only stat that matters" is not a design flaw in the current game.

There's no need to sensationalize this conversation by taking my comments personally. Bring up your character in one window and some random character profiles from currently active players in another window and you'll see a stark contrast. You didn't play the game that those players are currently enjoying and as such your comments about itemization in D3 are misinformed.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Actually, Farscry wrote that. I simply pointed out you were doing your arguments a disservice. :)

Yeah, sorry I misquoted you. I understand that my arguments are being read as condescension but that's not my intent. It's relevant to the discussion that Farscry's perspective comes from never having played the part of the game where items are interesting. Like I said above, there may well be design flaws in D3 that lead to him not making it that far. However those design flaws have little to do with a lack of interesting items or stats (in the entirety of the game) and a lot of them have been addressed in subsequent patches.

Honest question here (seriously, dumping the sarcasm at the moment):

Which would cost your character more dps: losing all the Int bonuses across your gear in favor for, say, Dex, or losing all the crit chance bonuses across all your gear in favor for, say, Mana or Mana regen?

When I say that Diablo 3 is following the WoW gear model, that's what I'm referring to. You have your core stat (which is your most important stat, i.e. you need it as your base upon which everything else builds), and you need to pick gear which has your core stat. You cannot afford to sacrifice your core stat for other stats until you have enough of that core stat to compensate for losing it in favor of secondary or tertiary stats.

So, with the Witch Doctor or Wizard, you wouldn't build your gear around Dex/Vit instead of Int/Vit, regardless of the other bonuses. A Dex/Vit gear base with piles of crit % will (if I understand the math correctly) do jack-all for your character compared to someone with an Int/Vit gear base without much crit %.

On a sidenote, discussions like this are where I get frustrated with the limitations of debating on a message board. I bet if StGabe and I were sitting down for coffee or beer or whatever and actually conversing in real-time, we'd have figured out what each other is saying long ago and be well on the way to some sort of consensus about the topic.

Farscry wrote:

On a sidenote, discussions like this are where I get frustrated with the limitations of debating on a message board. I bet if StGabe and I were sitting down for coffee or beer or whatever and actually conversing in real-time, we'd have figured out what each other is saying long ago and be well on the way to some sort of consensus about the topic. ;)

I agree! I've had that experience a few times.

StGabe wrote:

I haven't played a ton of WoW but I did raid for a bit a few expansions ago and the gear system there had very little in common with what I see in D3 right now.

What you just discussed in your post is exactly how gearing in WoW works when you're dealing with the raiding end-game.

StGabe wrote:

That's the basis for almost every stat in D3: as you increase it, you increase the relative value of other stats.

Precisely.

I'm sorry, I didn't understand that THIS is what you've been trying to say. And that it's indirectly what I was saying. In WoW's raiding game, you have to reach a baseline of your primary stat (which is why it's considered your most important stat; you would almost never take gear without it aside from rare cases like certain trinkets - which is the role the Stone of Jordan is filling in those three builds you linked) before you will see enough benefit from other stats to worry about them. Then you need to boost those other stats to take advantage of your primary stat, rather than simply continuing to boost your primary stat. You'll hit a point again where mathematically, you want to invest even further in your primary stat. And so on.

Diablo 3's endgame, gearing-wise, has become almost exactly the same thing that WoW's raiding endgame is. So, surprisingly, I understand the D3 high-end game more than I realized.

And, apologies since this is not meant to be inflammatory -- this still mostly fits with my original statements regarding why I don't like how D3 handles gear versus prior Diablo games and other action-rpg's. I want more varied and interesting reasons to pick up gear. Not the same kind of motivation that I have in WoW to continue pushing for more dps (with, yes, survival as something to keep in mind as well).

I miss the items that give you reasons to change your playstyle beyond just taking advantage of maximized numbers. Things like I posted yesterday for other interesting gameplay-changing modifiers.

Most importantly, Blizzard could accomplish this without breaking what works for Inferno players like StGabe. There's no reason they can't add item modifiers like I'm discussing to broaden the gameplay options; the current modifiers will still exist and be attainable, allowing the current high-end game to continue to play out like it does right now. There would just be other options to consider as well (and I'd particularly like to see them appear on item modifier lists well before the end of Hell difficulty; playing to the level cap should be fun, not tedium).

Farscry wrote:

Which would cost your character more dps: losing all the Int bonuses across your gear in favor for, say, Dex, or losing all the crit chance bonuses across all your gear?

Int. But that's not a very useful way to look at it. When you have 100 int, the boost to 200 int doubles your damage (edit: actually that's 0 to 100). However, at 3,000 int, a boost of 100 int only increases your damage by 3.3%. Int gives huge gains initially but those taper off and other stats become more useful. That's the basis for almost every stat in D3: as you increase it, you increase the relative value of other stats. It's a very cleverly designed system in that way.

When looking at items I look at what they'll do my current character. On any given item it's almost certainly the case that crit chance would do more for my character than int. I'm looking at all of those 26 stats I mentioned above on any upgrade. And I frequently sacrifice int for other stats. That may be a little less obvious given that I do have at least some int on each of my items. However many of my items could have significantly more int (or other damage stats). If you get down to the nitty gritty of how stats work in D3, they're controlled by affixes. There are multiple affixes that can add int to an item (for example the same item can have an int affix and an int/vit affix). If int truly were "the most important stat" I'd have all of the int affixes on all of my items. I don't. I've traded int for all sorts of other stats.

I haven't played a ton of WoW but I did raid for a bit a few expansions ago and the gear system there had very little in common with what I see in D3 right now.

When you post a top end build that doesn't say "+2000 INT / +XX% Crit Chance / +XX Crit Damage/ +XX (Random stat, usually Vitality)" on it, maybe you'll disprove what everyone's trying to explain to you, not even sure what you're arguing now.

The ranged classes definitely have more variety and WD's seem to have the most with the "top" build only being used by less than 3% of the population. I see my WD build is nowhere in there and it works really well for me, so I guess that qualifies it as the most fun to play

Pets are the key to that. I have always felt they are the great equalizer in games. So long as you have a variety of things distracting and taking hits for you, the size and amount of fireballs you hurl at enemies matters much much less. And the key to the WD is that you can take all or some of the pets available to you and there are many different ways to assemble your army through passives and actives.

Barbarians for instance only have a few viable or popular builds because their ranged abilities have cool downs that are too long, pure and simple. Other classes can spam blizzard, multishot versions of bolo and entangle shot, grenades, fire bombs, zombie bears, etc but the barbarian can't spam ancient spear or throw weapon or that shockwave attack featured so prominently in the 2008 reveal video?

Farscry wrote:

Diablo 3's endgame, gearing-wise, has become almost exactly the same thing that WoW's raiding endgame is. So, surprisingly, I understand the D3 high-end game more than I realized.

I wouldn't agree with this, and in some ways I'd say D2 is closer to WoW.

WoW has a very curated, on-rails, gear progression with lots of soft and hard caps that create thresholds that you have to reach. D3 doesn't. As int increases it increases the value of other stats. However there are no hard lines for this. It's a continuous curve. Just as int increases the value of crit chance, crit chance increases the value of int. An effective D3 build is not about hitting "baselines" but rather about balancing a bunch of useful stats (in my case, 26 of them). The closest it gets to that is probably resource management or cooldown reductions (for example you might need a certain amount of mana regen to sustain a certain attack or you might need to hit a certain cooldown reduction to spam a spell). Magic find and movement speed are pretty much the only stat in the game that actually have hard caps and there aren't any soft caps that I know of (edit: actually dodge has a soft cap but it isn't important for any builds that I know of).

D2 had a lot more of the hard-line requirements. For example you had to hit a decent resist to each element to survive in Hell, attack speed and recovery stats had specific thresholds and gear required stat thresholds in order to equip. In that way it actually feels a lot more like WoW where, for example, you might need a certain crit defense as a tank to become immune to crits, enough hit% to never miss, enough haste to hit cap, etc. D3 has almost none of that and gearing is, IMO, way more interesting.

Both D2 and D3 have radically more variance and a lot more interesting stats than WoW. If you take top level characters in WoW they will have literally the exact same gear. As I showed above, you can find lots of high-end witchdoctors with very different gear.

Good points, I can't really disagree with anything you wrote in that post.

[edit]Also, hilarious that I just happened to check the thread again apparently right after you posted. I promise I'm not sitting here just hitting 'F5 F5 F5!'

Farscry wrote:

Good points, I can't really disagree with anything you wrote in that post.

[edit]Also, hilarious that I just happened to check the thread again apparently right after you posted. I promise I'm not sitting here just hitting 'F5 F5 F5!'

We wouldn't judge you if you were though.

As a melee lover, I wish they had worked to make more melee builds more viable. It's just that melee guys have way more issues with stuff like teleporting enemies, snares, knockbacks, and all that nonsense. When you need solutions to 5 problems, and you only have 5 skill slots, you have a lot less freedom in your build than the guy who only has to have 2 solutions at all times.

Anyone seen this vid? Guy explains some reasons why D3 got it wrong:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I22Iv...

I played D2 very casually, I finished it once with a... um necromancer maybe? And I never touched it again, but I do recall the atmosphere and thinking it was great.

Kinda off topic but am I the only person who thought that Diablo II was a bigger disappointment than Diablo III? That guy in the video certainly used D1 more to make his case than D2. (I'm pretty sure I trot this question out every once in a while so forgive me for repeating myself.) It's where they really changed the franchise in my opinion from an intense dungeon crawler to a slow loot grind. Personally I feel like D3 is a natural evolution of what Blizzard has been doing ever since D2 came out: modernizing, streamlining, and polishing their old games.

Although I will admit that I was relatively young when I played D1 so maybe I'm overestimating how challenging it was. But recently I started playing Dark Souls and it reminds me of that original experience more so than the Diablo sequels or Torchlight. (Partly that's the difficulty and technical combat, and partly because Dark Souls looks old and janky.)

Latrine wrote:

Kinda off topic but am I the only person who thought that Diablo II was a bigger disappointment than Diablo III?

I don't think any of them are a dissapointment but It's also why I don't exactly agree with the hate for Diablo 3 since there's always going to be a group that thinks the previous game is the best one in the series or the current game is a dissapointment.

I also have no doubt they will also improve Diablo 3 to the point it's as good as Diablo 2 and it's already quite a bit improved.

I came here to check and see if you guys were still arguing, and I'm still slightly drunk.

I just want people to play video games with...

Anyone interested in the following whenever we both happen to be on?

Requirements: you are level 60 or higher, all the better if you are a barb or monk though not essential. If you are not yet 60 and want to do this I will gladly help you get to 60 quickly.

-I will loan you a set of survivability orientated +300% mf +24% ms gear +49% xp (51% if you have a pstar ruby, 53% rstar). This includes a sun keeper and a shield, I'm not sure if a DH can use that combo so bear that in mind if you're a DH.

-You follow my wiz around on mp0 or mp1 act 3 runs, depending on your class various things such as shouts/auras/etc will make these runs easier or faster.

-We share drops, keeping anything that's needed and splitting the profits generated from sales of the rest.

Result = yummy xp and we both get better odds on good drops without slowing down the kill rate much/at all as would typically be required when mf stacking solo.

I love MP10 on Normal/Nightmare/Hell. My WD is 56 at the start of A1 Hell, I bet I'll be 60 by A2, and I didn't even start out on MP10. I bet my Barbarian could hit 60 by the end of Nightmare.