Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

SpyNavy wrote:

Thanks - I found MP 3 is the sweetspot for me - not getting one shotted. I havent really tried to many builds - I like the one I have - Fire Spiders, Zombie Bears, Grasping Hands, of course the Zombie Dogs, and Behemoth. Not sure what an infernal machine is - I see you guys talking about it, and I assume it gets you to better loot, but that's the extent of my knowledge.

I think at this point machines are just fun to do. You get parts which allow you to craft a legendary ring which you can specify as STR, INT, DEX or VIT. You get a ton of that primary stat, and 4 (5?) other stats. Its biggest benefit is that it confers a 35% exp bonus and its account bound so any of your characters can use it regardless of level.

Unfortunately if you have "good" rings already, aside from the 35% bonus XP which is great, just like all other loot in the PC game right now, the likelihood of a good roll on the other stats to make it worth it for a 60 character in inferno isn't that great.

Oh and FWIW regarding your WD built, I'm not familiar with bears builds but I would recommend swapping out dogs for spirit walk. Dogs really don't do any meaningful damage unless you're playing a sacrifice build, spirit walk is your get out of jail free card from frozen, lasers and any other elite nastiness. The other problem with Dogs is that they tend to tank enemies all separately so you're blowing mana trying to kill off enemies that are in different corners of the screen. If you really like the dogs, then swap your Grasping Hands rune to the one that spawns them. IMO Spirit Walk is a must have at Inferno.

I sent a friend request, so I'll take a look at your gear. The other thing for WDs (bears or bats build) is that atk speed is a very overrated stats. Increasing your paperdoll DPS through attack speed looks good but because bears and circle bats does so much damage at a high mana cost, you just end up blowing mana faster through wasted attacks. My 80k dps WD kills things just as fast at MP6 as my 120k DPS monk or other classes.

Looking ahead, should GWJ be a "clan" or a "community" once 2.xx hits? Can read the differences here. In short, "Clans" are like the traditional Guild or Clan tag, and are limited to 120 members and a player can only be in one clan. Communities are broader, can be public (why I don't know), players can be in multiple communities, and member size is not limited.

We can always create both, though I'm guessing they can't have the same name.

We can try to figure out names and whoever gets on first can create. I probably play way too much (still) so will be happy to create when the time comes.

I have been wondering the same thing. Can we have a clan within a community? I lean toward clan, but will roll with whatever we decide.

Naming contest or voting thread?

We had both for SC2, I see no reason why w can't have both for D3. Just depends on if you want to fly the GWJ tag or not.

+1 to both. I don't know that we'll even hit 120 regular players, I don't think we did for vanilla D3.

Xeknos wrote:

We had both for SC2, I see no reason why w can't have both for D3. Just depends on if you want to fly the GWJ tag or not.

Don't play SC2.. can they have the same name?

Yeah, 120 is a big stretch.

When an Legendary item in the RoS drops, it will be bound to your account. The only exception is that you have a 2 hour window to trade this item with another player, who was in your game when the item dropped.

I already knew this but reconfirmed it stumbling on a post today; although I understand that it's necessary if they want to stop 3rd party vendors (or ebayers) from stepping in with their own item shops&sales to replace the rmah, as someone who likes to hand-me-down old gear that's a bit of a downer.

So they're going from a model where you have to buy everything to one where you have to find everything. Didn't anyone teach them extremes are bad, let alone extreme swings? Is this meant to get players back into a 2-year old game or chase everyone that was left out?

Video of the post-ros uber fights which will drop parts for a new version of the hellfire ring.

-It's now 4 uber fights.

Spoiler:

"Once you obtain all four items, you are able to craft a new level 70 Hellfire Ring, which rolls random properties plus Increases Bonus Experience by 45% and Chance to cast a fire ring for 200% weapon damage when attacking. The animation for the fire ring is similar to Diablo’s fire ring, making for a pretty nice AoE attack."

The key and ring part drop rates are changing to scale to the new difficulty system rather than mp as well.

fishdude wrote:

I have been wondering the same thing. Can we have a clan within a community? I lean toward clan, but will roll with whatever we decide.

Naming contest or voting thread?

I don't care either way, but having a community will be awesome. As a guy who plays D 3 very casually (don't even have a 60), it will be nice to have people to level with.

Speaking of, is anyone re-rolling? I'm still trying to decide if I join the crusader army or restart a witch doctor.

Shoal07 wrote:

So they're going from a model where you have to buy everything to one where you have to find everything. Didn't anyone teach them extremes are bad, let alone extreme swings? Is this meant to get players back into a 2-year old game or chase everyone that was left out?

Better than having a secondary market emerge based on gems or something. Really this just makes the game closer to WoW, it is only legendary items after all.

ahrezmendi wrote:
Shoal07 wrote:

So they're going from a model where you have to buy everything to one where you have to find everything. Didn't anyone teach them extremes are bad, let alone extreme swings? Is this meant to get players back into a 2-year old game or chase everyone that was left out?

Better than having a secondary market emerge based on gems or something. Really this just makes the game closer to WoW, it is only legendary items after all.

Well, those legendary items are the only items really worth value. How many gear sets are out there at the top tiers that are less than 50% legendary/set items?

Since they've tweaked the game the AH has become a viable part of it. Killing it and switching models to me seems like the completely wrong way to approach "fixing" this game. Implement loot 2.0 and keep the AH - what's the harm?

Also, I don't want another WoW, only with far less content and social aspects.

jdzappa wrote:

Speaking of, is anyone re-rolling? I'm still trying to decide if I join the crusader army or restart a witch doctor.

I didn't care much for the paladin in D2 so I think I'm sticking with my monk at least for the campaign. My low-level Wizard will probably just go straight into adventure mode.

Shoal07 wrote:

Since they've tweaked the game the AH has become a viable part of it. Killing it and switching models to me seems like the completely wrong way to approach "fixing" this game. Implement loot 2.0 and keep the AH - what's the harm?

I think the AH was an unhealthy distraction for the game. I have a weird feeling they're not abandoning it permanently since there's some good aspects to it (ie. secure trading). My guess is they want to get the rest of the game settled first and re-introduce it at a later point. I also wouldn't be surprised if Hearthstone supplanted however much revenue they were getting from the AH, which probably made the decision easier on the business side.

I've always said the AH was not the problem, just a scapegoat, but I don't really want to revive that tired discussion.

True legendaries are core to all builds now, but is there evidence that they'll continue to be so? That's a real question, I haven't been following the beta but I know one of their design goals was to shy away from legendaries being so key and making random yellows the top end gear.

ahrezmendi wrote:

I've always said the AH was not the problem, just a scapegoat, but I don't really want to revive that tired discussion.

True legendaries are core to all builds now, but is there evidence that they'll continue to be so? That's a real question, I haven't been following the beta but I know one of their design goals was to shy away from legendaries being so key and making random yellows the top end gear.

Then won't an underground trading mechanic evolve for random yellows? It doesn't matter what they're called, people will want to trade/buy the top end gear somehow.

Shoal07 wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

I've always said the AH was not the problem, just a scapegoat, but I don't really want to revive that tired discussion.

True legendaries are core to all builds now, but is there evidence that they'll continue to be so? That's a real question, I haven't been following the beta but I know one of their design goals was to shy away from legendaries being so key and making random yellows the top end gear.

Then won't an underground trading mechanic evolve for random yellows? It doesn't matter what they're called, people will want to trade/buy the top end gear somehow.

Which is why Ahrezmendi, myself and others have kept on stating that scapegoating the AH for all of your bad loot RNG is bad, and that pulling the AH won't help matters. People want to trade gear and will go to lengths in order to do so; just look at Diablo 2. The AH, love it or hate it, made that simple and scam free. Now, due to the massive amounts of Female Doggoing and whining, we're back to the old Diablo 2 scam hell of trading items, and to top it off, you can't even trade legendaries any more.

So, tell me, how was removing the AH a good thing again? Looks to me like a giant step backwards.

AnimeJ wrote:

So, tell me, how was removing the AH a good thing again?

Well for one, it got Blizzard to re-evaluate their item generation code and determined it was due for a rewrite. The AH was basically a crutch where they could hand-wave and say "if you get a terrible item, sell it on the AH and buy something better". The problem they overlooked is that people don't like getting colored gear they can't use (especially incredibly rare things like legendaries), and I don't think most players really used the D2 black market.

If yellows are intended to be the real top gear (which I think was likely in D2 too because their affixes could theoretically roll higher than uniques/oranges) and they aren't BoA, then it does seem likely they could re-open the AH at a later point to trade yellows and blues at a minimum.

At this point, those of us who are still playing must not think the AH (Gold and/or RM) is the problem, no point in continuing the argument, as it just goes around in circles with each side refusing to see the other. I personally think the ability to exchange goods in an open market is perfectly reasonable. I got extremely frustrated with D2 and it wasn't until a friend of mine actually used this black market to get me a weapon that the game became fun and I poured in a lot more hours. I only needed it that one time, but I needed it and without it I probably would have stopped playing.

If getting rid of the AH doesn't stop our dedicated core from playing and a few more (misguided ) GWJers join in, then I guess we can say its a win.

Removing AH (and BoA'ing everything just to be sure) is the main reason I'm even considering buying RoS.
AH hurt the gameplay a lot by shifting focus toward sitting in a UI interface instead of using abilities, killing monsters, picking up gear etc.
Removing AH and shifting everything to forum trading or chat spamming would not exactly have been an upgrade either, so I fully embrace BoA.

Carlbear95 wrote:

At this point, those of us who are still playing must not think the AH (Gold and/or RM) is the problem, no point in continuing the argument, as it just goes around in circles with each side refusing to see the other. I personally think the ability to exchange goods in an open market is perfectly reasonable. I got extremely frustrated with D2 and it wasn't until a friend of mine actually used this black market to get me a weapon that the game became fun and I poured in a lot more hours. I only needed it that one time, but I needed it and without it I probably would have stopped playing.

If getting rid of the AH doesn't stop our dedicated core from playing and a few more (misguided ) GWJers join in, then I guess we can say its a win.

This...... I quit D2 for this exact reason. I have played D3 without using the AH and play now with it. I will miss it going into RoS, but will live without it. That said I am also hoarding anything I find until RoS just to see how it will recraft. I have also spent a crapton of gold buying stuff for various characters as well.

Carlbear95 wrote:

If getting rid of the AH doesn't stop our dedicated core from playing and a few more (misguided ) GWJers join in, then I guess we can say its a win.

AH or no AH, the revised and improved loot system from the consoles sounds FAR better than what we have on the pc. So if that's what we're getting with "loot 2.0" for the big RoS patch, then I'll be able to enjoy the game more again.

Noooooo... it's been revived.

Shoal07 wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:

I've always said the AH was not the problem, just a scapegoat, but I don't really want to revive that tired discussion.

True legendaries are core to all builds now, but is there evidence that they'll continue to be so? That's a real question, I haven't been following the beta but I know one of their design goals was to shy away from legendaries being so key and making random yellows the top end gear.

Then won't an underground trading mechanic evolve for random yellows? It doesn't matter what they're called, people will want to trade/buy the top end gear somehow.

Agreed, and I just think it's better to have that be a moderated mechanic rather than user run. This isn't EVE Online, and it's not designed to be.

Back to what we're all doing when RoS lands, I'm definitely rolling a Crusader, but I already have a 60 of every class except Barb. I'll probably finish my Barb before RoS drops though. I'm excited about the new Hellfire Ring, that looks like a fun challenge. I hope the loot drops enable it be done without years of farming.

I have like 80 mil on gold and i want to spend it on SOMETHING before AH dies.

I dont have a 'geared up' barb/witch.

are they pretty much all resistance + primary + stam/life?

do any of them prefer/require more crit or attack speed?

I think if you're talking about progressing further in Inferno then resistances always help. My loose understanding of Barb is that you can get away with lower health because you can lifesteal so well with whirlwind.

I have no idea how to play WD, and I'm half-way through Inferno with mine. I just go for primary stat, and I'm sure I wouldn't be able to survive even MP4.

Carlbear95 wrote:
Xeknos wrote:

We had both for SC2, I see no reason why w can't have both for D3. Just depends on if you want to fly the GWJ tag or not.

Don't play SC2.. can they have the same name?

They can in SC2, so I would imagine so.

I use the most common WD build for mine, and crits are important for it so crit chance and crit damage + primary stat is the most desirable. And if you can get vitality, that too. Things get really expensive if you're looking for all of that at once though. Like all of your 80 million on one item expensive. Because all the Wizard players want the same gear and they're more viable at higher levels of MP.

Personally I'm just going to dump my gold into high level gems before the AH goes away. They're by far the most versatile use of the money.

Don't forget they have severely nerfed the whirly barb build on the PTR and likely RoS. It looks like life steal is going away. It would be a good idea to go test your current build in the PTR before you decide to stick with whirlwind.

I am planning to start a WD from scratch on launch day. I will play my Barb and Wizard a bit, but I want to play something from the start and see how well the loot builds it.

Pikey26 wrote:

I have like 80 mil on gold and i want to spend it on SOMETHING before AH dies.

I dont have a 'geared up' barb/witch.

are they pretty much all resistance + primary + stam/life?

do any of them prefer/require more crit or attack speed?

Get a Leoric's Signet with as much +exp as possible.