And it’s never worth combining anything under flawless square, the top tier of dropped gem. The combination cost is way too high until 1.03.
Squee
6282
Hell, it’s not even worth de-socketing for the gems themselves. Costs less to just buy a new one on the AH if you’re upgrading/changing a piece of equipment.
Explosive Blast -> Frost Nova w/ Shatter -> Shock Pulse w/ Explosive Bolts. Illegal amounts of demon crispi-fying.
Something odd is happening with me and D3: I start to lose interest when I hit Act III Normal (mid-20s for level for my characters so far). The loot-finding trails off too sharply (I’ve never logged into the AH) and I’m not engaged by the world design in Act III and IV. This never happened in any other Diablo-style game (including the previous Diablos) and it worries me that I’m thinking of putting it away and going back to some other games instead. I just feel underwhelmed. I don’t care about the combat difficulty (I haven’t died in Normal yet, although I’ve come close) as the combat is secondary to the loot-finding for me and ramping up the difficulty would be frustrating, not fun (reference Inferno discussions). I do tend to explore every nook and cranny, though, but the areas aren’t terribly exciting; I could be running around on a grey screen for all the interest they hold. And the skills are some that I hardly ever change; unfortunately, that means my character development is practically nil aside from when I unlock runes and/or slots on my way to level 30.
It explains why I was impressed while in the beta, though, as those low levels are where I enjoy the game the most.
I might have to take a break and go back to Skyrim. Why’s D3 going wrong? Does loot-finding come back on board in Nightmare (my WD is in there now)?
I fully expected to play it for a good long while, but I’ve lost interest almost completely. I think the game is hollow after you’ve seen all the skills and experienced Inferno. The loot design is trivially boring - and the mechanics are too streamlined and predictable.
It’s a solid enough game - and I’ve logged around 100 hours, so there’s no question I got a good return on my investment. But it’s but a shadow of what I think it could AND should have been.
The upcoming changes sound good, but I don’t think they will do enough to items to change the design at its core. They clearly based almost all the “fun stuff” on the skills - and let gear be about straight numerical upgrades. A sound choice supporting the “all builds are viable” mindset - but a horrible approach for interesting long-term character “build and gear” strategies. Then again, I think aiming for all builds to be viable is futile - and it can never happen except if you boil everything down to basically the same thing with minimal variety, and they’re already well on their way to doing that with the gear. Just as I originally feared, it was a giant mistake to make all skills available to all characters - because such free experimentation quickly loses its luster. Without a carrot out of reach, you become oversaturated and bored - like being born rich or having 10 brilliant games available to play at the same time.
I’ll probably get through Act 4 Inferno eventually, just to get it done - but I’m struggling to maintain interest even for that. I haven’t played it in the last 3 days - and I was doing pretty well in Act 3 with my Monk.
I can understand Act III. I found it pretty boring and, frankly, annoying. But I loved Act IV since it was such a change in surroundings.
I’m mostly done with it as well having cleared nightmare as monk.
If you are a person who doesn’t care much about loot other than as means to progress there is very little there after one completition as the story is simply repeated.
Nightmare is interesting as mobs get new abilities and standing “in shit” hurts more so it’s more dynamic + requires some kiting.
However Act I Hell is so far only mobs are hitting harder + needing more hurt to go down and that is not enough for me to keep on going.
I plan to try the other classes for some levels to see how they play and than stop playing until an expansion comes out with new story.
I could clear achievements but no one will give a damn so why bother.
However I would urge everyone to complete the game at least once as Act IV is quite nice and has some good graphics + setting.
Especially if you play with the enchantress as sidekick as she comments a lot on the situation. Personally I hated the setting of Act II but I don’t like sand / Arabian settings much in general.
That was the case with diablo 2 as well though.
The difference is in diablo 2 i was always pushing to fill out some perfect skill plan i had for an undead necro or something. In diablo 3, my level 20 monk has most of the skills i want and i’m finding it hard to level him higher.
Maybe i willl go back to my melee wizard, even though everyone agrees i will eventually hit a point where the build won’t work anymore.
That’s so funny, because Act III is my favorite by far, whereas I though IV was ok.
Pogo
6290
I still don’t understand how loot in Diablo 2 was supposed to be “interesting.” Did it even have chances to blind/freeze/stun on-hit?
I’m guessing you haven’t played it in a while. To answer your question: Yes, those modifiers along with many others were attached to loot in Diablo 2.
StGabe
6292
In the same way that replaying Normal-Hell again to change the 5 skill points that you misspent was fun and in the same way that killing the same, trivial boss every 5 minutes for a night was fun.
Diablo 2 took a lot of planning to get your resists maxed out however the actual mechanics of resists were rather simplistic compared to D3 and maximizing defenses in D3 is just as interesting. The only on hit mechanic in D2 that was interesting was chill and D3 has several on-hit mechanics (that some people are creating builds around). Some D2 items had spells that you could cast or were proc’ed but the useful ones didn’t come out until rune words, long after the game was launched. Some cast spells when you leveled or died I believe but those were just flavor. One mechanic missing from D2 is +skills but that was a really wonky mechanic to begin with. Then there was weird stuff like getting an ethereal version of a weapon and runing it to be indestructible (another mechanic that came out well after launch).
Diablo 3 is far more interesting in terms of core mechanics. Should you dual wield or not, for example, is a very complicated and interesting question and I have a dual wield DH build in mind that will take a large investment to accomplish and so it won’t be something I get to for a long time. Maximizing defense is very tricky and there’s a lot more to it than just making sure that you hit 75 in each resist. DPS is WAY more interesting in D3 whereas in D2 it was just 2-3 stats depending on your class. I could write a several page post just on the value of fast weapons versus slow weapons in D3, for example.
Overall I’m incredibly impressed withed with the core design. It’s just way more elegant and balanced than D2 (which was full of all sorts of loopholes and weird edge cases that degenerated into bad gameplay). I think that as they continue to iterate on items but they’ll do so from a much sounder foundation. A lot of the stuff that people are taking for granted from D2 didn’t come out until the expansion or even later.
And then there’s the fact that skills and the core gameplay are roughly 5-10x better. :-) If you go back and look at old D2 builds you’ll notice that that vast majority of them revolve around 2 to 3 skills as opposed to the 6 that are never quite enough in D3 (I always want a 7th on my bar).
Quaro
6293
A lot more than that. Weird abilities like ‘convert X percentage of damage to mana’. Items that summoned pets. Items with charges to cast big attack spells. Faster hit recovery. + to skills which doesn’t apply directly. There was a helmet that let any character transform into something I recall.
Items with negative affixes that were otherwise extremely powerful and so you still wanted to you them. Example decreased sight range or -50% crit damage.
I kinda like the idea that Legendaries are just rares but with one or two ‘crazy’ affixes. So they still might stuck but they have the potentially to be the absolute best. Right now the damage range on the legendaries just isn’t high enough so people choose rares.
StGabe: the problem is that the skill system in d3 is VERY front loaded. All characters i’ve played tend to get almost all of their major skills early on and then after that they just get minor improvements to them. This leads to 30+ being EXTREMELY boring as you don’t really get anything new mostly.
Imagine playing a mage in wow where you got fireball, frost nova and arcane missiles by level 20 and then every 3-4 levels after that you get fireball II or frost nova II, nothing else. Not very interesting.
The skill system in d2 allowed more, unique builds and also maintained character progression throughout the character’s life.
So how viable is a full summoning Witch Doctor?
Pogo
6296
Yeah I was sooooooo looking forward to changing my skill from 120-160 damage to 130-170 damage when I leveled up in Diablo 2.
That’s a lie, because you had to hoard those skills until like level 30 to dump them all into one skill.
Pogo
6298
Ahh that’s right, because if you didn’t do that then you would enter Act 3 Nightmare and get your ass handed to you because those 10 points you put into flamewalking ended up doing less damage than one point in glacial spike.
MAN I REALLY MISS THAT SHIT
All of the pets seem to die if something so much as looks at them. The giant one can take a bit more damage, but still not great.
It does depend on your definition of summoning though. A lot of the Witch Doctor’s abilities have graphics that make them appear to be “summons” even though they are just DOTS or direct damage. So if you consider spells that “look like summons” to be enough, you can just use zombie bears like everyone else and do great.
Trying to focus on zombie dogs, hex and gargantuan will probably be a huge pain though. Certainly no undead necro or summoning druid.
Pogo: instead of that, every 5 levels you’re getting +20% damage to one skill or converting it to cold damage. There might have been a lot of small improvements like that in D2, but at least D2 also still had new skills. D3 past 20ish is almost entirely going from 120-160 damage to 130-170 damage, only unlike d2, it is much less frequently.
Jab
6300
As someone who attempted it with my WD, not so much. Once you get into late Hell and Inferno, the enemies just do too much damage to them for them to matter at all.
Supposedly patch 1.03 will adjust the pets to receive additional health based on the WD’s vitality which I hope will make the build work.
