Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

I guess I'm the weird one out here - I actually enjoy playing through the story with new characters.

CaptainCrowbar wrote:

I guess I'm the weird one out here - I actually enjoy playing through the story with new characters.

I guess I don't mind it, but when you're pushing in a season and your second hardcore character dies, you just want to get back to the dance as fast as possible.

My only issue with the campaign is it not remotely efficient to play. At this point I’d much rather play the campaign than go through more samey rifts. It really should be a viable alternative.

absurddoctor wrote:

A useful tip that took me far too long to find out after my return to playing: salvaging gear with gems returns the gem to you, you don't have to have Shen remove it first.

That's good to know. If I'm not going to do anything permanent, then I might mess around with slots a bit.

fenomas wrote:

Note also: some (I think 15%) of your drops will be off-class (e.g. dex or int items even though you're a barbarian). So make sure you're not accidentally using an item with neat affixes but the wrong stat.

Another great tip I hadn't picked up on. I'll have to look up what's good for a Crusader. I feel like Vitality is really helpful, and Strength too.

Shadout wrote:

My only issue with the campaign is it not remotely efficient to play. At this point I’d much rather play the campaign than go through more samey rifts. It really should be a viable alternative.

I would posit that, should they cut out enough story and general cruft from the campaign to make it efficient to play, its saminess would increase and it would start to resemble rifts. In fact, I think that's what running bounties basically is.

Don't reduce the length though.
Just give a large amount of items/XP from act bosses/quests - but only once each campaign reset (which the game already supports, it just gives next to nothing for that first kill). Even better, make it interesting to explore the world outside the straight line between campaign missions. Have big chests randomly spawning at the end of all the various caves etc. Make it so you can also only get items from those once in each campaign reset - otherwise the efficient way to play becomes chest farming, which we already had in early D3.
Make bounties spawn throughout the campaign. Heck, make random rift portals spawn through the campaign to spice it up a bit.

Sadly, early in Diablo 3s life the (quite fair) dislike of the campaign lead Blizzard to just give up on it as part of the gameplay. Other titles like PoE has done the same of abandoning the campaign in the end game. Just seems silly. More ways to play would be good.
PoE is really good about making random events (with rewards) spawn all the way through the campaign on the other hand - hopefully Blizzard takes notes for D4.

I start with old ruins until I get a couple levels and hopefully some gear.
Then I go to the Corvus area on the way to Adria for all the massacre bonus loveliness that is the masses of scorpion wall crawling thingies. I also love Temple of the Firstborn for the same reason and Shrouded Moors.
At level 61 I start doing a few regular rifts to build up Death Breaths to upgrade the blacksmith, enchanter and jeweler. It is also a good source for marquee gems for your weapon and if you were lucky enough to get a Leoric's crown by then.

Crusaders leveling up want strength, vitality and all resistance. It is not the end all be all but if you focus on those you won't go wrong.

Re: the campaign I feel like that is going back to Diablo's roots. I mean just look at the Darkening of Tristram event. You essentially have most of the Diablo 1 Campaign in 16 smallish levels. The levels are made smaller due to your characters run speed vs. walking. So to me, they would be much better served with that sort of simplified campaign. You get much less samey that the Diablo 2 campaign. IN case you needed reminded that everyone loathed act 3 because the campaign involved having to collect the 2 foozles to open up the boss lair and then you had to collect the 4 foozles to open up the boss lair and then you had to trigger the 3 caboozles to summon Diablo and finish the game.

Stevintendo wrote:

Another great tip I hadn't picked up on. I'll have to look up what's good for a Crusader. I feel like Vitality is really helpful, and Strength too.

Anything with the right main stat (str in your case) will be a solid choice - the relative value of the other stats vary by build, but before the endgame they don't matter much. Vitality is the old tradeoff - you want as little of it as possible, unless you're dying too much (or playing HC), in which case you need more.

Just about 99% of builds want crit/crit dmg. More so than their main stat.
You rarely want vitality when there is a choice (rings, amulets, gloves, weapon/offhand in particular). You are going to get some from the items that do not have a meaningful choice (shoulders, breacers, helm, boots mostly), which is typically enough to get going. The way the game is balanced these days (spike damage), vitality just isn't very strong, unfortunately.

fangblackbone wrote:

It is also a good source for marquee gems for your weapon and if you were lucky enough to get a Leoric's crown by then.

I believe you are still guaranteed to get a Leroics crown by killing the Skeleton king in campaign, at lvl 20+. Doesn't take much time to get there, even if you dont do rest of the campaign.

fangblackbone wrote:

You get much less samey that the Diablo 2 campaign. IN case you needed reminded that everyone loathed act 3 because the campaign involved having to collect the 2 foozles to open up the boss lair and then you had to collect the 4 foozles to open up the boss lair and then you had to trigger the 3 caboozles to summon Diablo and finish the game.

Yet it was endlessly better than Diablo 2 boss runs, imo Everything gets repetitive, campaign farm, boss farm, rift farm. Best solution is to have a multiple viable end game activities.

One of the great things about loot in D3 in all levels is finding tradeoff between gear pieces.
It is one of the few games where you can:
1 - combine what would be side grades by themselves but a much more significant boost collectively
2 - take a hit on one stat from a piece that is otherwise outstanding and offset the loss with another
3- take a hit on one stat from a piece and reroll that stat onto another piece or two

For instance: you find a helmet that loses 2.7% damage but increases toughness and recovery by 12% and 7% respectively. You quite frequently will loot another piece, say pants, that increases damage by 4.1% and toughness by 2.1% while losing recovery by 5.6%. So through both pieces your character nets 1.4% damage, toughness by 14.1% and recovery by 2.4%

Well the itch is well and truly there. Going to jump into season 16 after taking the last 3 or 4 seasons off. I'm also clearing out all my stash tabs too in my non seasonal character. No real point keeping much, so will go through a big purge as much as it pains me and convert it all to materials.... unless it's a perfectly rolled item or build inclusive primal...

Can't believe I'm actually excited to play Diablo again. It's like an old friend is coming to visit...

BlackSabre wrote:

Well the itch is well and truly there. Going to jump into season 16 after taking the last 3 or 4 seasons off. I'm also clearing out all my stash tabs too in my non seasonal character. No real point keeping much, so will go through a big purge as much as it pains me and convert it all to materials.... unless it's a perfectly rolled item or build inclusive primal...

Can't believe I'm actually excited to play Diablo again. It's like an old friend is coming to visit...

Haven't they added some polish and tweaks since you've been gone? Might be an even nicer ride.

IMAGE(https://pmctvline2.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/archer-ending-season-10.jpg?w=620)

While playing last night (got my new WD to 70) I noticed something I hadn't before... armor slots. (I probably have the name wrong). There are now 5(?) slots where you can store an entire gear set, including Cube powers, and equip the whole thing with one click. I am fairly certain that wasn't there when I stopped playing, and it seems like it would be a great utility for people who want to try out several builds or for keeping specialized builds available.

Very cool!

Did someone send me a present? Is that a thing? I just got an item in the mail from "Legion". I figure that could be *legion* here on the forums, but also it makes sense as a name for a character in Diablo!

fenomas wrote:

Vitality is the old tradeoff - you want as little of it as possible, unless you're dying too much (or playing HC), in which case you need more. ;)

Could you explain that bit to me? Does high Vitality hold me back in some way? Or do you just mean that I should prioritise Strength over Vitality?

Yeah prioritise stuff that kills baddies quicker basically. Offense is the best defense and all that, unless you are just getting one-shotted or find you are dying without much time to react.

Edit: but it would depend on the player too. I noticed my dad always prioritises defensive stats, but then he's 65 and probably has slower reaction times. Nevertheless he still made GR90 last season so you can make it work.

I am really curious now as to what you guys use to beef up your toughness for higher GR?

fangblackbone wrote:

I am really curious now as to what you guys use to beef up your toughness for higher GR?

I'll have to ask my dad later

I'm not sure, the highest I ever got was about GR50, which seemed high at the time but several seasons have past and blown it out of the water.

Stevintendo wrote:

Could you explain that bit to me? Does high Vitality hold me back in some way? Or do you just mean that I should prioritise Strength over Vitality?

The latter - items get a set budget of affixes, as it were, so if an item has vitality that's one affix worth of stats that isn't helping your offense, is all. If you've ever played with the enchanter NPC, you can swap this back and forth - vitality, armor and resist are the main defense affixes, while main stat, crit, and crit damage are the main offensive ones. If you feel fragile you can swap the latter to the former, etc. - this will give boosts big enough to be really noticeable within a given difficulty, though it doesn't usually boost you into higher GR or anything.

fangblackbone wrote:

I am really curious now as to what you guys use to beef up your toughness for higher GR?

Defense for pushing high GRs usually comes from stacking one or more sources of damage reduction on top of what you get from your set(s). I mean stuff that gives 25-50% DR, like Aquila Cuirass, Mantle of Channeling, Endless Walk, etc. Most of the good ones are class specific and tailored to specific builds - e.g. Lakumba's bracers give witch doctors 60% (!) DR, but only if you take a certain skill + rune, etc.

Each class has a few good options - if you go to diablofans and look at some high GR builds, you'll see all the likely culprits.

At some point in GR you are going to die if you get hit by any strong attack, and the only real strategy becomes killing things before you get hit (or CC-->kill them before you get hit). You just need to have enough survivability to not get one-shot by the 'unavoidable' (or at least, so hard to avoid, that it is bound to happen) "low-dmg" attacks - like some of the ranged attacks, spears and what not - from white enemies.
A few legendary Damage reduction items are a much 'cheaper' to get on your gear than the huge amount of vitality, armor or resist from multiple items it would take to replace them.

Stevintendo wrote:

Did someone send me a present? Is that a thing? I just got an item in the mail from "Legion". I figure that could be *legion* here on the forums, but also it makes sense as a name for a character in Diablo! :D

That was me.

On occasion, you get an item that is tagged as a gift to send to someone on your Friends List that also plays Diablo. Don't know if this is a Switch exclusive thing or if there is something similar in the other versions.

But I cared enough to hit the "A" button to make the item send.

When it comes to defense, you can't do much better than a cheat-death passive (or one of the few legendaries or skill runes that replicate them). Armor / damage reduction / vitality / life% / etc. will increase your "always-on" defenses so that the chip damage that mobs do is negligible, which is fine, but then a damage spike can still kill you. A cheat-death protects against damage spikes, and there's not much that can meaningfully replace them, since you're always going to eventually rise to a level where damage spikes are dangerous.

Most builds that help you survive those higher rifts will have an item tied to a skill that you'll use to mitigate damage. For example, the demon hunter has the Wraps of Clarity which makes your Hatred Generators reduce your damage taken by 45% for 5 seconds. Others have similar items. Some builds will also make use of double unity and the followers "cannot die" relic. There are lots of damage mitigation options above and beyond stacking vit etc.

Logged in last night and found my old DH. Really felt good and didn't take much for the muscle memory to kick back in. I actually really just enjoyed speed clearing T13. Nice chill music in the background and nice way to relax and the end of a long day. With the changes to S16 and the power creep, it'll make that even easier so I can factor in some more options as I won't need the damage as much. Still not 100% sure if I'm going DH... it's either that or Wiz.

I really don't like any of the end game wizard builds. It totally bums me out because up until that point, I love the wizard. The frozen orb build is okay. I just don't like Tal Rasha or Del Sere sets.

Aquila's quirass only works at near full resource. So I guess I can look for pushing resource reduction.

Aquila is great for generator skills builds, or channeled skills like whirlwind (where you can usually tweak your build to generate resource as fast as you use it). For a regular setup you'll probably find it drops off too often to save you.

Most of the great defensive items are hugely build dependent this way. Unity is the noticeable exception, that can work in basically any build (as long as you have an extra one for your follower, and a "follower cannot die" doodad).

For a Wizard, Aquila is usable if you can reduce resource usage significantly, because of the way the Arcane Power resource works.

Funny story, I was feeling pretty good about how well I was handling myself at higher difficulty levels...then I noticed that there are pages worth of difficulty levels... I had thought it was just the five levels on the first page!

fenomas wrote:

The latter - items get a set budget of affixes, as it were, so if an item has vitality that's one affix worth of stats that isn't helping your offense, is all.

Ok, that makes sense. I had been making choices based on all my stats, I've started prioritising Strength/Offence now though and I can see it making a difference already.

*Legion* wrote:

That was me.

On occasion, you get an item that is tagged as a gift to send to someone on your Friends List that also plays Diablo. Don't know if this is a Switch exclusive thing or if there is something similar in the other versions.

But I cared enough to hit the "A" button to make the item send. :)

It's nice to know that you care! Thank you, it was Leoric's Signet, and it's pretty helpful. As it happens, I found a present for JR Rawls an hour after I posted, which actually reminded me that I'd already sent someone else a gift, but I'd assumed it was for some benefactor in the game or something. That's a nice feature!

*Legion* wrote:
Stevintendo wrote:

Did someone send me a present? Is that a thing? I just got an item in the mail from "Legion". I figure that could be *legion* here on the forums, but also it makes sense as a name for a character in Diablo! :D

That was me.

On occasion, you get an item that is tagged as a gift to send to someone on your Friends List that also plays Diablo. Don't know if this is a Switch exclusive thing or if there is something similar in the other versions.

It's on all of the console versions I think. Well at least on Switch and PS4.

*Legion* wrote:

That was me.

On occasion, you get an item that is tagged as a gift to send to someone on your Friends List that also plays Diablo. Don't know if this is a Switch exclusive thing or if there is something similar in the other versions.

But I cared enough to hit the "A" button to make the item send. :)

Can confirm it works on Xbox as well, as I have sent (and received) quite a few gifts since getting back on.

Abu5217 wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

That was me.

On occasion, you get an item that is tagged as a gift to send to someone on your Friends List that also plays Diablo. Don't know if this is a Switch exclusive thing or if there is something similar in the other versions.

But I cared enough to hit the "A" button to make the item send. :)

Can confirm it works on Xbox as well, as I have sent (and received) quite a few gifts since getting back on.

Just added you since most of my gift drops have been going to folks not probably playing right now.