5941

In my experience with a L59 wizard and a L55 demon hunter, the AH is… I won’t say required, but highly recommended. Crafting is awful and the loot tables seem all kinds of out of whack. I’ll go to town after filling my inventory with blues and yellows and am finding basically the same stats as the L20-30 gear I’m currently wearing. I should not have inventory full of stuff like “socketed ring” (nothing but a socket) or “+9 exp from monsters”. I’m literally finding a lot of the same gear in Hell as I was in Normal.

It all reminds me of the problem I had with the Lightning skills in Diablo 2. They had really high max damage but it was coupled with a minimum damage of 1. This was kinda cool early on, but once you got into later difficulties you could just not rely on a skill that could hit for literally 3 damage. I feel like the problem with the loot is that the minimum floor on the stats is not being raised at all.

I’m a Diablo vet and I understand how these games work, but the loot does not feel anywhere near “right” to me. I can be hitting a brick wall in terms of difficulty but the item drops are often 10 levels below me, offering no recourse for upgrades other than hitting the AH. I’m hoping late NM/early hell are just awkward spots in the game, but I have my doubts.

5942

Oh… and another thing. The difficulty on this game really ramps up when you’re playing with others. I can do much better on my own, but once I start playing with my friends things just start getting out of whack. It’s not just the amount of HP that goes up on the mobs, but they seem to do a lot more damage to me as well. This leads to long and annoying kiting fights for everything, which does not feel very fun in my book. Perhaps this is a problem with me being undergeared, but that ties into the loot problem in my previous post. It was only in Act2 Hell that I finally started finding level appropriate (mid 50’s) gear, but even then the quality of it is oftentimes very poor. I’m still wearing some gear (especially in the ring/amulet variety) from Normal because it’s superior to anything I’ve found in my entire run through Nightmare and the first two acts of Hell.

5943

I’ve been farming Act I of Inferno with my Barbarian for a couple days now and I’d say half the rares I find are level 60 and I’ve found quite a few that upgraded my previous gear bought from the AH.

I totally agree with you that up until Inferno that the gear was, let’s say underwhelming, especially when you take the AH into account, nothing you will find will ever be an upgrade. But that’s the price you pay for using the AH.

I think Hardcore mode is a whole different story though and every piece of loot (even blue gear) can potentially be an upgrade (if not then maybe for one of your other characters).

I did find a rare blacksmith upgrade yesterday (my first!) that lets me craft a rare helmet with 4 stats on it. It costs 50k a pop to craft, but it may have potential, especially if Blizzard intends on nerfing the costs.

5944

Rings and amulets are especially weird, in that

  1. their stats vs level seems even more out of whack than other gear
  2. they can have a couple stats that cause wild swings in dps, +dmg and +attack speed
  3. said +dmg’s value changes massively depending on your particular weapon’s speed and damage

I wore a level 18 rare ring until well into 60, and the one I replaced it with was BARELY an upgrade.

5945

I’m pretty much forced into the AH though, if I don’t want to peck things to death. My complaint isn’t that AH gear makes gear drops trivial, my complaint is that gear drops are so wretched that you’re funneled into the AH just to keep pace with the increase in mob damage/hp.

That’s good to hear about Inferno, though, it’s been my hope that things make a little more sense once you’re at the point where the levels don’t keep increasing.

5946

Once crafting prices are brought into line, it will be easier to make your own gear without ever using the AH. Be sure to check the merchants in game as well, as they sell some very useful items, randomly of course.

That said, it is a Diablo game; it’s built around trading items, whether via the AH or a less efficient method. Over half the items that are generated (whether it’s from being crafted, or drops, or on merchants) are going to have horrible stats. Most of the rest won’t have stats that are good for your particular class, but that someone else can use… which is where the trading comes in.

For amulets and rings, they’re mainly weird because their stats are different than the items in most slots. Early on, the +damage/Increased Attack Speed ones are incredibly powerful. As you reach higher levels, and your base weapon damage is much higher, jewelry that provide big boosts in your primary Int/Str/Dex stat become more important. All of them can be purchased from merchants, if you take the time to look for them; just restart a game to find different items on the merchants.

5947

Yea, that’s been the experience of myself and all my friends as well. I was playing my L20ish witch doctor with friends and found an upgrade for my L59 wizard.

Somehow, after Normal, good ring/amulet rares seem to be almost non-existent. Price and selection of those slots on the AH tends to reinforce this idea… I wonder if it has to do with end bosses no longer dropping anything noteworthy in NM and Hell difficulties? I think that’s where almost all my rings have come from.

5948

Yeah, I am still wearing a level 23 amulet halfway through Act 2 Inferno. I have been searching the AH pretty aggressively for a replacement, but the combination of stats that I’m willing to pay 500k+ for hasn’t come up yet. Similarly I have a couple of 9-18 damage, 15% IAS rings that are more damage than any rings out there within my price range.

Hitting level 60 and getting the Nephalem Valor bonus makes the loot chase massively more fun. You’re still striking out on 95% of the drops, but you’re getting twice as many drops to churn through. Running the second half of Act 1 Inferno can be very lucrative, with 3 pretty easy bosses in fairly short succession giving 8+ items each with the valor buff maxxed.

5949

That’s good to hear. I’m about halfway through Hell Act 3 so I’ll finish the slog and try out Inferno.

5950

Yup. I’ve been starting games at the last quest of the first act, jumping back outside of the temple as I can usually grab a pack in the temple and one right outside, then turning around pushing through to kill the Jailer and the Butcher with 5 stacks. I net about 5-8 rares a run this way, and then of course end up vendoring them all ;)

If you get a dude with invincible minions in the temple though, I advise just ignoring him.

5951

I expect you’re exactly right.

5952

A post on the “required” nature of the AH.

5953

Yeah, that about sums it up.

We’re not forcing anyone to do anything, and if you don’t ever want to trade with other players that’s your choice as well, but due to the nature of drops in Diablo games, if you want to be the best you need to trade.

5954

There’s a “Frogboy” in that thread. Is Brad posting on Blizzard forums?!?! Surely that is a different dude. Brad has bigger fish that require frying.

5955

I was checking out the Diablo 3 forums and saw some people with Starcraft avatars. Are there diablo 3 ones you can get, and if so, how do you set them? Mine is set to a WoW one and I haven’t played that game in years. I did play SC II, but I can’t even see how to change my Avatar to a non-wow one. I did the character selection thing but it was full of WoW toon choices only.

5956

I think that’s misleading. Yes, to be “the best” you would need to trade, that was always the case. But what he is replying to is that you really need to hit the AH to have sufficient gear in order to do the content.

Here’s the post he replied to:

The reply:

It’s a big complaint of mine at the moment. I play multiplayer, between 2-4 people total. We absolutely hit a wall in Hell difficulty where we were just flicking peas at monsters. We cleared Act I hell multiple times, painfully slogging through it each time, without getting anything in the way of upgrades. Finally we broke down and hit up the AH for weapon upgrades so we could actually progress. The weapon upgrades we obtained were double the DPS of anything that any of us had seen drop in our many run-throughs. Suddenly, we were actually able to kill things reasonably well again…and by reasonable, I mean not taking over thirteen shots of my highest damage spell to drop a non champion/minion.

5957

Having finally gotten comfortable in Act II Inferno I thought I would share a little video of my most effective tactic for dealing with elite mobs.

5958

I had to laugh, my friend and I had a long drawn out fight like that yesterday. I swear it went for 10 minutes, me running away screaming while dropping hydras and meteors behind me.

5959

Close to my own tactics in Inferno Act II, but I tend to scream more.

5960

lmao! For most classes that’s too true. :D