Titan
2921
I got a lot of plans too. Let’s hope next week they increase the rare material drop rates!!
I don’t know that I’ll be playing next week. I already have one character essentially maxed out, with the only remaining progression being perfect rolls on items. Not sure why I would bother, particularly without the 100% droprate buff.
lokiju
2923
Yeah my DH is getting there. The only 3 things I need are full Marauders, better rolls on the great items I already have, and a weapon upgrade. Slight DPS boost items that could take months to get with 2-3 hours of playtime a day.
I could level my other alts, but it’s become very tedious, even with the exploits like Rift and Cache it Forward making things easier. The drop rate this week seems about right for the game anyways. I wish they’d keep it. The top 10% will be bored no matter what, let the other 90% get our gear faster.
Might be time to move on for a bit. Rebuild 3 is in beta (and turn-based is less stress with a toddler running around)…tempting!
The coolest stuff I get as drops tends to be on characters that aren’t 70. My 70s get boring stuff, while my 50s get cool weapons that summon angry cows. I get to use it for like an hour, then it’s outdated.
Yeah, I saw the potential for a neat fire build, but don’t have the gear for it. Still waiting for the Piro Plans to drop. One of the few that haven’t dropped this week (it’s raining plans, hallelujah!). It does work pretty well the Defender of Westmarch.
Biggest problem is wrath regen, even with Reapers Wraps and firing off Zealous Glare every 10 seconds.
As for the rare crafting materials, I’m finding they drop pretty often now, maybe 1 every 3 or 4 attempts in Torment 1.
JoshL
2926
Well, ironically, this double legendary weekend may have put the nail in the coffin for D3 for me. I’ll admit I didn’t get a huge amount of play time in, but I managed 3 rifts in a row with 0 legendaries, and then on the next run I found 2 that sucked and set plan… which also sucked (Guardian’s Jeopardy).
So now anytime after this weekend I think about playing, what I’ll be thinking is, “Do I really want to play with only half the chance of getting something good that I had that weekend when I got nothing?”
I had a very similar experience to yours, JoshL. I had actually stopped playing a few weeks ago, but I hopped back on this weekend for a few hours. A couple bounty runs, a couple rifts, two worthless 2Hers and a plan for a shield. I got burnt out after the initial expansion rush. Still love D3 and would recommend it to anybody who likes aRPGs, but at this point I’ll probably just hop on for a little while whenever they drop a patch, and for the next expansion.
If they’re not going to up the legendary rate, they need to redo the ~70% of legendaries that are complete trash even before you see the rolls.
It would be even better if they killed off the completely useless random rolls, like weapons without gem slots. I can use a weapon that isn’t optimal. I can’t use a weapon (without reroll) that is missing 130% crit damage.
Yeah, it’s still great, but I can’t help but feel like we’re some intangible metric away from absolute awesome here.
Honestly the combat feel and production values are amazing, but it really needs more interesting rewards in total and more of those lovely random one-off events to keep things interesting.
Like when a particular area can spawn a unique thing sometimes. Those hugely contribute to the variety in my book. If you combine things like that with a variety of useful loot you have got my attention.
They really have a beautiful base to build from, it just depends on more options and less grind from here on out. I’d be plenty happy to play this for years if that happens.
Razgon
2930
Well, I finally made it to 70 on Hardcore (Hard) this weekend on my Mage. There was some pretty hairy situations, where I was hammering the Q-key like mad because I was frozen and close to death, but I am now the proud owner of a lvl 10 paragon Hardcore account.
I kinda lost all incentive to play after that I’m afraid. The loot grinding never really did it for me, and even though I got a ton of plans and legendaries this weekend, none of it was really usable.
lokiju
2931
And that’s a main issue really. You can be a fresh 70 in mostly rares and STILL get leg drops that are inferior to a rare. Legendary is a misnomer most of the time.
I think it would be better if they gave all legs static specific stats while letting the amount be random. Also, making sure all legs have a useful special of some sort. Many don’t have a useful ability at all, and some have 1 that is laughable or just aesthetic. I don’t know, I just think getting loot should be more exciting.
The problem is still itemisation. There are too few affixes around which to build a character. There are a few optimal builds for most characters and not really enough affix options to make deviating too far from them worthwhile. There are still plenty of legs with no special ability making them worthless. In fact legs have basically become the rares of the early days of DIII - you can get them to drop, but most are not worth it.
Does not matter what class you play - stack core stat, vitality, crit hit and crit damage and resist where possible. Any item that can roll those (and well) is probably going to be close to BIS. Use whatever weapon drop that has highest DPS, core stat and socket, otherwise pretty much worthless. Even getting a leg with a good special ability does not really change what you would put in other slots to support it.
The only thing that may have changed that slightly is +elemental and +skill damages, but I don’t think they effect output enough until you have several pieces - ie you don’t pick up a +lightning piece and thing “Holy crap, I’m switching to lightning skills to take advantage of that!”, because you’d need 4+ pieces for it to be significant. I’d rather they all be +50% and your character end up stupidly OP’d once they have more supporting items, that way you might give up CH or CD for +lightning and change to a suitable build. Oooooh a +8% lightning damage glove! Yeah, whatever, I’ll keep my +10% CH and +50% CD thanks…
Paragon points seem to make little difference on L70’s unless you have racked up 100+ levels, which is a pretty significant time investment, though at least it is account wide. Crafting is a crap-shoot with no way to direct a desired outcome. Re-rolling affixes is worthless because half the time you can’t re-roll the affix you don’t want with one you do - why can’t I replace +% gold with a socket on this high DPS axe?
Ultimately I think there is also very little incentive to replay the game with the same character. Even if I wanted to try different skills on a barb, not sure why I would start again - just load up my 70 and switch. Even if I needed some items to support a different build, I’m still better off farming it with my 70 than re-leveling. And if I do get a decent leg drop for a barb, I’d much rather it roll endgame stat ranges!
But the moment to moment game-play is fantastic and I lost more hours in 2013 to DIII than any other game (though helped by co-opping with a buddy).
I was still using rares on my HC Crusader at paragon 50ish. The upped drop rate took care of that via plan drops. A mix of rares and so-so leggies can get you about as far as master as a HC player. Maybe further… I didn’t reroll my rares for the most part since I was sure a replacement leggie was “Just Around the Corner ™”.
Until you hit 70, the non-affix leggies are ok, at least they are usually improvements stat wise. After 70, it is pretty much “useful affix or trash”. Just drop a forgotten soul, It wouldn’t be as depressing.
The craft-able armor is very good, assuming you get the plans. The craft-able weapons are almost all terrible and at least need stat buffs or slightly inferior affixes.
Also. I now have enough rings so that my alts, their children and grandchildren are set. Flail plz Blizzard kthanksbye.
One really simple change I wish they would make: All legendary weapons come with a socket, that doesn’t count towards item budget. That change alone would just about fix the problems I have with legs in general.
Crafting sucks, that is all. I know it’s old news but I burned through about 18 souls and a bunch of rare crafting material trying to make a shield and the Aughild set for my Crusader but nearly all of them were trashed and I’m only keeping a couple that are barely any good just so I don’t feel like it was a waste of time farming up the mats and using up all those souls.
I’ve picked up about 40 legendaries this week, and not one of them has been an upgrade. I’ve picked up a couple sidegrades, but really as someone said early on 0x2 is not 2.
There are so many bad items polluting the drop tables. My drop this morning while running a rift on my wizard was an int 2hander, with no real legendary property and no socket. Great, item failure three ways at once. I’d been handing my int 2handers off to alts for their enchantress followers, but that helps drain them off for only so long and isn’t very exciting.
I’ve been playing my wizard and my crusader this week. My crusader despite being in about 40% yellows and wearing some pretty poorly rolled crafted gear has found NOTHING but immediate souls, not even a sidegrade. That is ridiculous.
They really need to make every weapon have a socket, period. Or alternatively nerf the hell out of green gems.
Even if they nerfed the hell out of green gems, you’d probably end up falling back on putting red in there. I’d like it if they implemented BOTH of your suggestions. Emeralds vs Rubies should be a choice driven by build and gear, AND every legendary weapon should have that choice.
Emeralds are just messing so much up. Not only are they the king of kings when it comes to weapon gems, but they are part of the problem with two handers being crappy for almost all characters. They also are a part of what drives the endgame where almost all damage comes from crits.
That would be cool too, but what I’m getting at is you should want the socket on your weapon because it offers a choice of what to use that item budget for. That choice should be balanced versus standard affixes available from enchanting.
In other words, the crit damage provided by a green gem should have the same budget as say, the attack speed from a normal enchanting affix. If your spec prefers attack speed or resource cost reduction or whatever, you wouldn’t want a gem. If your spec prefers one of the stats only available on gems, you would.
Or alternatively, just put sockets on every newly dropped weapon in the game.
That would be a good situation, I agree, or at least much less bad.
