StGabe
5921
Regarding armor vs. resist:
Generally 1 resist = 10 armor. However that skews based on which is higher. If your armor/10 is twice as high as your resist then, for example, 1 resist = 20 armor. As a barb you should already have tons of armor and resist will offer the most improvement. Resist is also easier to find.
I’m at 450 resist all and 2900 armor. That allow me to survive 1-2 hits in act 2 Inferno but a lot of act 3 stuff still one shots me.
KevinC
5922
Just FYI, Force Armor has been hotfixed(nerfed) and the tooltip is no longer accurate.
That’s very similar to my WD, who also finished up normal today at level 32 and 23 hours. For the last bits of Act III and some of Act IV I quit being quite as much of a completionist and didn’t explore every single random dungeon that was there.
It’s interesting… my WD ended up half ranged or so. At the end I was running:
Acid Cloud with Acid Rain
Haunt with the life return
Spirit walk with the mana return
Gargantuan with the get really big and angry rune
Flashfire with Roll The Bones (I think… whichever causes it to bounce from target to target)
Grasping Dead with the faster recycle
I found Acid cloud to be best when I’d run right up next to a huge pack of monsters and drop an acid cloud or two on them. It took care of pretty much everything except the biggest huge demons. By the end I was pushing about 400 DPS or so. About halfway through Act III I discovered I’d been WAY to conservative with balancing DPS vs. armor/survivability and I’d run out of mana before I could kill stuff which, oddly enough, really lowers your survivability no matter how much health/armor you have. Upping my DPS from around 200 at the beginning of Act III to 400 by the end of Act IV helped tremendously.
The biggest thing was realizing that stats on weapons don’t make a damn bit of difference compared to the weapon DPS. Which left me in the odd position of using a 2H BOW for a while simply because of the 12 point DPS jump on the weapon, which was about a 90 point DPS jump on my character sheet.
I explored as thoroughly as possible even through to the end of the game. I hated the backtracking necessary to make sure I found everything I could, but I still did it. I expect I still missed out on some areas and dialogue, though.
It’s interesting… my WD ended up half ranged or so. At the end I was running:
Acid Cloud with Acid Rain
Haunt with the life return
Spirit walk with the mana return
Gargantuan with the get really big and angry rune
Flashfire with Roll The Bones (I think… whichever causes it to bounce from target to target)
Grasping Dead with the faster recycle
The biggest thing was realizing that stats on weapons don’t make a damn bit of difference compared to the weapon DPS. Which left me in the odd position of using a 2H BOW for a while simply because of the 12 point DPS jump on the weapon, which was about a 90 point DPS jump on my character sheet.
Agreed about the shift to pure DPS being better than stats. I kept with WD equipment but realized that dropping some stats for anything that gave me more DPS would be better for survivability later on (I really made this switch in Act IV, dropping rares for magic armour that would boost DPS). I never made it to 400 DPS, though. My build at the end of Normal:
Poison Dart (Spinters)
Firebats (Dire Bats)
Summon Zombie Dogs (Rabid Dogs)
Soul Harvest (Siphon)
Wall of Zombies (Barricade)
Gargantuan (Restless Giant)
Jungle Fortitude, Zombie Handler, Spirit Vessel were the passives.
I hardly ever used Soul Harvest and Wall of Zombies, however, nor any of the other skills available in those categories. I stuck with my summoning for distraction, mostly; along with the Templar, I was able to keep my distance and rapid shot the hordes fairly well. There were a few close calls where I didn’t think I’d make it; considering that I didn’t switch up the skills and focused on only a few, I’m surprised I didn’t get wiped.
They don’t actually say they are reducing the cost of the blacksmith in that post. Just the cost of gem combos. So its not clear to me exactly what they are going to change with the smith?
Solomani, right where they discuss the jewel changes they mention they are lowing the Blacksmith training costs and page requirements.
My monk is in Hell Act 2 and I’m looking for a bit of advise. Starting in Hell, he’s beginning to feel a bit wimpy when fighting Champion packs. Those arcane or fire chains guys are tearing me up. And I’m not sure exactly what I need to do to fix it. At level 58 I have around 21k HP and my DPS is around 3800 on the character sheet.
My skills:
Fists of Thunder (Thunderclap)
Lashing Tail Kick (Scorpion Sting)
Serenity (Peaceful Repose)
Blinding Flash (Searing Light)
Breath of Heaven (Circle of Light)
Mantra of Conviction (Overawe)
Resolve - Sieze the Initiative - Transcendence
My resists are all between 65 and 90.
Do I just need to get better gear, or is there something specific I can change?
Ahh yes, you are right. My bad. I haven’t spent a dime on either crafter in either normal or HC will definitely wait now.
I switched over to hardcore, but my normal monk at level 59 is running about 275 resist all via the One with Everything passive. I still had issues with fire chains and arcane, so I think you need to either find some resist all gear or change out a passive and look for gear with all the same resist.
My default AH search for him was Arcane Resist>25, Dex, Vit. Some other resist might be cheaper than arcane as arcane seems to be the biggy for tearing people up, but my first big gear piece had arcane on it so that’s what I went with.
I’m using 5 of those 6 (some with different runes). I currently have Wall of Zombies instead of Spirit Walk, but not sure if I will be keeping it.
400 dps sounds low. I’d have to double check, but pretty sure I was close to 600 at the start of act III. Then again, I’ve twinked gear on him pretty good from the AH. Acid rain melts most things, and I use haunt on the bigger targets, just as you said. One thing you might try, if you haven’t, is a ring or amulet with a few points of damage on it. That can make a huge difference.
Phred
5930
Make that L60 only stuff and I’d agree. Otherwise waiting 2 days, assuming you’re not away on vacation, you will be a good distance through or past the usability window of the item you have bid on.
Well, I’m not sure I think there are great ways of solving the issue of people playing together with completely different investments of time.
These games are meant to last for a good while, and if you allow people to get within powerlevel of each other in a trivial amount of time - then I don’t see how they can keep the content interesting.
That said, I think one way to mitigate the problem is to have the game be more about skill than gear - but that’s pretty counter to the entire Diablo genre.
As it is now, you’re just going to have to spend money/gold on gear to be at top level. There’s really no way around it. Aside from chest/goblin farming - which is incredibly boring and counter to the intended gameplay.
It’s a social experience - and if people aren’t playing by the same rules, then it makes no sense at all to limit yourself.
I suppose you’d claim that HC mode is superfluous - because I could just delete my character if I died, and I wouldn’t have to care about the prestige related to having an “official” HC character playing with people following the same rules?
Obviously, for something like the no respec gameplay to make sense, you’d have to have people playing in the same way - so as to share the experience, and find ways to come up with unique and interesting builds - found under the same limitations. The challenge of coming up with smart builds or just unique functional builds is only interesting if you can show them off, or demonstrate them to people playing by the same rules. I find this to be such a psychological axiom - that I’m constanty amazed when people suggest that pretending the rules aren’t there and dreaming up your own is a satisfying alternative. This goes for all suggestions to all games. If a certain item is overpowered - “just don’t use it” - if the AH is ruining the game - “just don’t use it” - and so on. It’s such a cop-out answer, really.
Why would you be opposed to a “No Respec” mode that’s completely optional, just like HC mode?
Because, for many people, it is?
Where do you think, say, the speedrun community came from?
And people did crazy things in MMO games before achievements came in to publicly mark them.
Embedded vs Emergent Gameplay.
When playing by yourself, I can see how that might be satisfying. That didn’t sound quite right, did it? ;)
But when you’re playing a social game with rules that apply to everyone, I don’t see how satisfaction can come from self-imposed limitations.
Like I said, I don’t think doing away with HC mode and just have people committing digital suicide would be the same experience, and provide the same level of entertainment. How can you be sure people actually do it, and what kind of achievement would it be if you’re the only one playing under those rules? Again, it’s great for solitary play - but as a shared experience?
But that’s me, and I’m quite ok with other people doing this. It just doesn’t work for me, and I really AM amazed that it’s working for others.
StGabe
5935
I disagree with DKDArtagnan on most points but on this I agree.
D3 is an online game. In case you didn’t catch that somehow: D3 is an online game. That means that everything you do is relative to a community of other players.
The thing that no respecs in D2 created was rarity among builds. Having a certain character with a rare or unknown build meant something. If other people wanted to try your build they had to start a brand new character. If you had an idea for a new build that hadn’t been tried yet then this meant a significant investment to see if it panned out. Respecs negate that. They mean that if I have a cool build and I show it you then you can have that same exact build immediately.
And I enjoyed all of that quite a bit. I was a javazon before javazons were cool. I came up with new crazy build ideas, tested them, and got to find out the hard way if they actually worked.
All that said, I’m ok losing all that gameplay. D3 is a better game all around. It’s a better game from moment to moment and a better game in terms of character customization. While I think something was lost with no respecs I think it was replaced with something better.
If they fix the items like they just stated they intend to, I’m kinda leaning towards D3 being better than D2 - given the potential of future content.
It’ll be interesting to see what an ilvl 63 legendary item looks like.
With 600 DPS in Act III acid rain should have been melting everything with 1 hit, maybe two for the high-HP brutes.
I’m running 100% with found/crafted items (first char, so nothing to pass on from others…). As I mentioned, my principle problem was (and remains) finding a good weapon since weapon DPS affects skill DPS so heavily.
I agree about the ring/amulet with +damage. I have an amulet (I think) that added something like 80 paper-doll DPS. The main mental block I had was not thinking that +80 DPS outweighs a lot of other, smaller stats. It absolutely does. And it’s ridiculous how lopsided it is: 100 int is the rough equivalent of +4-8 damage. That’s horribly counterintuitive to me.
Sure there is. Everyone makes a character just to play with their friends, and then another one to play on their own time. That does mean if you only play with your friends once a week for a couple hours it will be months to years before you’re in Inferno with those characters, but I have trouble seeing why that’s an issue when you have 9 other character slots…
KevinC
5939
This changes later in the game. The primary stat is 1% damage increase. Early on, when you have a weapon that does 14-20 damage, that’s not very much. That +4-8 damage on the other hand is ridiculously awesome. That all changes when you start getting weapons with very high DPS values. Now that I have a couple characters in the 50’s, the primary stat is becoming much more important in terms of damage increase.
A perfect example is socketing Rubies in your weapon. Early on, it’s a massive increase in damage but later on it just doesn’t scale as well. Instead of getting a 40% DPS increase from a ruby, I’m now getting around a 5% DPS increase. Part of this may be the result of +Damage items (rubies and amulets/rings with that stat) not scaling very well, but once I started getting weapons in the 250+ DPS range, I’ve started to value the percentage stats more on my supporting gear.
z22
5940
I’m getting a little discouraged reading about “high-level” play in Diablo3. From what I’m reading, some of it here, it seems as though using the Auction House for item acquisition is, by design, assumed, making play for those who do not use the AH very difficult (my findings).
I don’t mind doing extra farming to get good gear but I know getting the best gear for all slots is found on the AH. On my HC character, I wonder if I’ll never have a chance making it through Inferno or Hell difficulty. My Normal Barbarian in Inferno is being b*** slapped around with only found and crafted non-AH gear, but I haven’t done any lower level farming with him, which gives me hope.
