All good demons go to... um... sequel? - Diablo 3 Announced

[MrPerson]

Your Wizard just shouldn’t be getting hit that much. You’ll want to work on your kiting. By Act 2, so many things can kill you in under a second even with amazing gear on a Wizard that you need to get your ability to avoid attacks nearly perfect. Act 2 basically forces you to correct all the “flaws” in your play. That video of the little kid being chased by the birds is 100% accurate.

I stopped at Belial, as even getting there had been the opposite of fun in my opinion, and I just didn’t have the will to sort out phase 2.

[KevinC]

But by “everyone” you actually mean the people who want to play Inferno past Act 1. That’s far, far from everyone who will be playing the game. That’s the hardcore of the hardcore.

I’m going off of Blizzard’s own statements quoted several pages back. Their statement was that the AH is very convenient and everyone has access to it, thus the loot tables needed to be designed with AH usage in mind.

[nomaar]

All things are not the same. The loot drops have been changed from D2->D3 with the assumption that everyone will be using the convenience of the AH.

That’s debatable. I personally haven’t seen much of a difference. I used to get a piece of junk after junk in Diablo 2, just like I do now, interspersed with a few good pieces and once in a blue moon a real good one. And don’t turn around and tell me “that’s what Bashiok said.” I know the quote you’re talking about and he denied it meant that loot drops were made shittier because of the AH.

[KevinC]

That’s debatable. I personally haven’t seen much of a difference. I used to get a piece of junk after junk in Diablo 2, just like I do now, interspersed with a few good pieces and once in a blue moon a real good one. And don’t turn around and tell me “that’s what Bashiok said.” I know the quote you’re talking about and he denied it meant that loot drops were made shittier because of the AH.

I’m not trying to debate anything, really, I’m just going off of what Blizzard themselves have said.

Thanks for the post, Bashiok. Do you think that one area of concern that may get looked at is that people aren’t able to gear up for Infernon Act 1, even, without going to the AH and spending a lot of gold. Is this intended (To gear up solely through the AH) or will the drops at the end of Hell be better adjusted to help gear up for Inferno Act 1 and so on.

Bashiok’s response:

The auction house obviously provides an incredible service to allow for very easy trades between characters, and essentially blows out the wide range of items you could have available to you at any one time. So, in fact, the AH has to be a factor in how we drop items. On one hand you have a huge benefit because you can buy and sell items very easily, as opposed to having to post up WTS threads in the old USEast trading forums, but on the other end it does impact the item pool economy with the inherent ease at which you can trade items. If the AH existed but wasn’t a factor at all into how items dropped/rolled, the economy would be completely tanked within a matter of weeks.

(emphasis added)

[skyride]

Build:
Ignore Pain / 7 seconds
Wrath of the Berzerker / +100% damage
Revenge / 30% chance
War Cry / 50% additional resistance
Frenzy / damage buff
Battle Rage / +30% damage

Nerves of Steel
Tough as Nails
Inspiring Presence

Funny that is the exact same build I have going and I haven’t looked at a forum or talked to anyone about builds. Are we all pretty much forced to use these skills?

[meeper]

Sure. And, for a change, I killed him on the first try, without dying. I died a bunch of times on the champion packs leading to him though (I even had to park one pack which was simply going to cost me way too much gold on repairs from too many deaths).

Part of what enabled me to finally progress to him was finding a 673 DPS two-hander (my best previously was 480), bringing my DPS to 5780 and 7630 with Battle Rage, which I always have on, so really the latter is the true DPS.

I also have a TON of +resist all gear stacked, so that my resists, with the shout buff, are all at 49% and physical is at 54%. Armor is at 61%. This means I could take hits from the Skeleton King relatively well. Only 35000 life, however. And a whopping 6% Dodge!

Build:
Ignore Pain / 7 seconds
Wrath of the Berzerker / +100% damage
Revenge / 30% chance
War Cry / 50% additional resistance
Frenzy / damage buff
Battle Rage / +30% damage

Nerves of Steel
Tough as Nails
Inspiring Presence

The stacking of Frenzy, Battle Rage and Berzerker leads to massive damage. Together with procs from Revenge (I’ve had it crit for 50k damage), makes it possible to get through the champion packs, and it certainly make the Skeleton King fight much easier - it took so long I was able to use Berzerker twice.
Without Revenge though the champion packs are impossible for me.

I think resist are what I’m lacking here. I’ve focused on strength/vitality gear for so long that my resists are in the 3-5% range (doubled if I use War Cry).

My primary weapon is a 1H spear that does something around 350 DPS, but I’ve got a great shield that boosts strength/vitality by ~100 each and is 20% chance to block 1-2k dmg.

[StGabe]

So what’s the logic at work here? If good drops are more common Blizzard would make less money from RMT? Is that the reasoning behind the change?

I think if good drops were more common then the end game economy would be terrible. IMO design goal is to have an interesting end-game economy with diverse, rare items, and the idea of an RMT AH is just a natural progression of that. If they succeed in creating an interesting economy, people are going to do a lot of RMT trading even if they have to do it on their own.

[ibdoomed]

Originally Posted by Supper’s Ready
[I]Build:
Ignore Pain / 7 seconds
Wrath of the Berzerker / +100% damage
Revenge / 30% chance
War Cry / 50% additional resistance
Frenzy / damage buff
Battle Rage / +30% damage

Nerves of Steel
Tough as Nails
Inspiring Presence
[/I]

Funny that is the exact same build I have going and I haven’t looked at a forum or talked to anyone about builds. Are we all pretty much forced to use these skills?

Maybe that’s why I’m having issues. I’m using frenzy with sidarm, hammer instead of pain, leap with stun instead of battle rage, and wrath with the time extender. I’ll change things up some but stunning D was a lifesaver and I was in wrath mode almost the whole battle.

Edit to add: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WRiPkV!VbX!cZaZcc

[mouselock]

That’s debatable. I personally haven’t seen much of a difference. I used to get a piece of junk after junk in Diablo 2, just like I do now, interspersed with a few good pieces and once in a blue moon a real good one. And don’t turn around and tell me “that’s what Bashiok said.” I know the quote you’re talking about and he denied it meant that loot drops were made shittier because of the AH.

Come on now. Whether he denies it or not, can you think of any viable alternative method of interpreting that statement?

[DKDArtagnan]

FWIW, I don’t think the AH implementation is the core issue I have with loot. It’s the terribly straightforward and streamlined nature of it.

[KevinC]

FWIW, I don’t think the AH implementation is the core issue I have with loot. It’s the terribly straightforward and streamlined nature of it.

That’s another issue as well, for sure. Perhaps if there were more affixes to be excited about, the other would feel less of a problem.

[KevinC]

Come on now. Whether he denies it or not, can you think of any viable alternative method of interpreting that statement?

Especially given the content of the post he’s replying to.

[Fozzle]

That’s another issue as well, for sure. Perhaps if there were more affixes to be excited about, the other would feel less of a problem.

This is the real issue. There are certain affixes that work better then others not because of play style, but because under the hood skill-A has diminishing returns, while skill-B doesn’t, forcing you to use item drops that match the skill, not the play style. An example of whacky affixes is how much better life per hit works versus the diminished life on damage skill. Once a balance sweep happens, I am hopeful that gear and skill options will open up a bit. As it stands It isn’t gear or the AH that ruins Inferno mode, but rather poor scaling and balancing of several abilities for each class.

[KevinC]

This is the real issue. There are certain affixes that work better then others not because of play style, but because under the hood skill-A has diminishing returns, while skill-B doesn’t, forcing you to use item drops that match the skill, not the play style. An example of whacky affixes is how much better life per hit works versus the diminished life on damage skill. Once a balance sweep happens, I am hopeful that gear and skill options will open up a bit. As it stands It isn’t gear or the AH that ruins Inferno mode, but rather poor scaling and balancing of several abilities for each class.

I’m a little surprised at all the flat values. They smartened up a bit by having offensive abilities tied to a percentage of weapon damage, but there’s several abilities that have level-based scaling which obviously isn’t going to work (WD pets, crystal skin, galvanizing ward, etc). Why these things aren’t tied to a % of your health pool? It’s not even consistent… the DH passive for life regen is a % of health per second, but the Wizard’s is not. For a game that was in development so long, it’s strange to see those sorts of inconsistencies.

Same hold trues for items, like you mention. A perfect example are gems… compare a ruby to an emerald for socketing a weapon. Rubies start out pretty spectacular but the scaling is just awful. Early on I could easily increase a weapon’s DPS by 30%+ with a ruby, now I’m lucky if I can squeeze a percent or two out of it. Emeralds, on the other hand, with the +% to Crit Damage, scale wonderfully. And why are there not cool/different gem effects for socketing them into shields/jewelry?

Other than scaling issues, I think there’s a ton of room for more interesting items. While they do have (very minor) stats like “Reduce hatred cost of Cluster Arrow by 3” or “Gain Arcane Power on Crit”, I think they could do much more. Considering how you can typically only gain these affixes a handful of item slots (and thus not able to stack them), I think the effect should be much larger. Dropping the hatred cost of Cluster Arrow from 50 to 47 hatred does nothing for me. Giving Cluster Arrow a % chance to fire two arrows instead of one or a new unique effect… well, now I might actually think about working it into a build. I think cool affixes should be used to further customize your build outside of Runes. I loved finding an incredible item in D2 that made me think of a new build to try.

[ibdoomed]

Isn’t the majority of the skill system only a few months old?

[KevinC]

Isn’t the majority of the skill system only a few months old?

I thought it was only the implementation (runes via levels, not items) that was new.

[ibdoomed]

I thought it was only the implementation (runes via levels, not items) that was new.

Ahhah! Gotcha.

[FieryBalrog]

Fireball projectiles (morloks, goat shamans), arcing projectiles (lacuni, subjugators), special ranged attacks (heralds of pestilence, wasps), special melee attacks (fallen champions, oppressors) etc. are all dodgeable perfectly.

Spears and arrows are only dodgeable if you’re moving when the projectile is released.

WTF?

[MrPerson]

I link this again too, in regards to trouble with dodging things:

Which is probably related to:

Monster melee attack range - Diablo III Forums

[DeepT]

[/I]

Maybe that’s why I’m having issues. I’m using frenzy with sidarm, hammer instead of pain, leap with stun instead of battle rage, and wrath with the time extender. I’ll change things up some but stunning D was a lifesaver and I was in wrath mode almost the whole battle.

Edit to add: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WRiPkV!VbX!cZaZcc

I like frenzy with the 20% chance to stun. It really helps on some mobs, although other times it seems to not work at all. I think it is bugged. There are immune mobs, and when it procs, it says immune. There are others that it simply doesn’t seem to proc at all.

I have wondered of the 20% damage boost might be better, but when you can stun-lock some mobs (even on inferno) it seems better to stick with the stun mode.