That’s some dedication. I finally got the expansion since it went on sale again, and I’m having the same problem I did previously: The game is just so friggin’ boring, particularly at low levels (especially in Seasons without the ability to leverage an already developed crafter to speed things up.)
Did they add anything in with the expansion and all the patches (I think I last played around 1.2 or so…?) to make this that I’m just not aware of? Because having only one actual useful ability for my level 10-11 wizard is mind-numbingly boring. :/
robc04
3662
Well, I think it’s finally time for me to accept that Diablo just isn’t for me - whether it’s because I’m failing to grasp the aspect that makes it interesting or maybe I do grasp it and it’s just not my thing. Now that I tried Adventure Mode I can feel pretty confident saying that. I took my Barbarian to level 70 Paragon level 7. To me it seems like the whole point to playing, is to kill monsters so I can gain experience and loot so I can kill those monsters faster. Then increase the difficulty do I can keep doing it again and earn experience and loot faster. It seems like you have to get joy just from making the numbers go up - like Clicker Heroes. Granted, Diablo is more involved than Clicker Heros but the same kind of idea. You have to like building a more powerful character, well, because it is more powerful.
I admit, it can get pretty crazy once you start playing more difficult areas. Lighting balls floating around waiting for you to get careless and let them surround you. Frozen shards looking to impale you if you fail to get out of their blast radius, all the while trying to kill the horde of monsters that at first seemed mild enough, until they just keep streaming in from the next room until you are surrounded and now you have to try and clear a path and walk over mounds of dead bodies to climb to your safely. But it’s all to find that new piece of loot that will make you just a bit better (pr maybe a lot better) at killing more of the damn things.
I think I gave it my best, but I wish I could just sell the game and remove it from my machine knowing that I’ll be OK never playing Diablo or one of its knockoffs ever again. I think I can finally say that without wondering if I’m missing something. Thanks again for answering my questions and I hope the rest of you keep killing and seeing your DPS increase to ever higher numbers :-)
I approach it like a more stressful version of Solitaire, or Minesweeper. It’s a visceral but reflexive (hardly reflective) exercise in treadmilling. I play in spurts, with long times in between periods of intense play. I like the Wizard because you get to fry things, especially with Disintegrate, and the other make-them-go-boom abilities. I don’t do well with melee characters because the physical act of fighting isn’t as satisfying for me. WD and DH are my other faves, though you can build a Crusader as a sort of armored wizard if you try.
It’s not deep, unless you really go for the theorycraft min/maxing stuff, and then it’s mostly a spreadsheet with randomization, plus a text of manual dexterity at high levels. I hardly call it an RPG, really. There’s precious little development of your character or any “roles” to play; everything is pretty much canned and done for you. It is visceral and has a slot-machine sort of appeal to it. I play Hardcore precisely because that makes the game more like gambling with some stake at risk. Softcore to me is fairly somnolent.
Well, I think it’s finally time for me to accept that Diablo just isn’t for me - whether it’s because I’m failing to grasp the aspect that makes it interesting or maybe I do grasp it and it’s just not my thing.
No, from your description you totally get it. It’s a loot grind, pure and simple. Some people love that in and of itself. For some, like me, the way they dress the grind up in 2.0 is enough to overcome my usual aversion to that mechanic. For others it won’t be.
This game is quite addictive, isn’t it?
Reemul
3666
I have added you to the clan. :)
Ok, so I got the expansion and got my WD to 70. Have gotten a few paragon levels under my belt. So far so good.
I’ve read most of the recent parts of this thread, so I guess in theory I understand what I should be doing. But I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t off base.
First off, my character is here. That’s a pet-oriented WD in case it isn’t clear. For some odd reason, my in-game DPS shows as around 350k, whereas here it shows as 299k. Don’t know why (and the presence/absense of pets doesn’t change the character sheet, so I’m at a loss).
I assume I’m looking for gear with +INT, +VIT, +CritChance/Damage, and +Skills I use, right?
From what I understand, you want to make good use of your time (while still enjoying what you’re doing of course!): To that end, I am playing in Master difficulty. Not having any issues killing things or staying alive here. Tried Torment 1 and while I didn’t die, it took quite a bit longer to kill stuff. I’ve been mostly running Act I bounties, exiting the game, and starting over. Most of the time I try running to the bounty. I did try one regular rift, but killing the Frost/Arcane/Extra Life/Teleporting boss took about 3 years, so I’m not sure it’s smart to do that a lot. I did go into T6 with some friends, and of course, I was pretty useless, died a lot, and felt like I was a third wheel.
So am I on base here? I read upstream that stusser (I think) said it should be pretty easy to get to 1 million DPS and start T2 or 3 but I don’t see how I can get there unless I have much better gear. Am I missing something I can be doing with the Enchanter or Jeweler or Blacksmith (all maxed out, btw) to improve my gear? I guess I can make a big-ass Topaz and stick that in the helm.
I guess I’m asking what my strategy should be to improve.
stusser
3668
Basically, get crit chance, crit damage, your primary damaging skill, and your primary damaging skill’s elemental damage type (physical, for a pet doctor) on all slots possible. Yellows with those affixes and your primary stat (intelligence) are always better than legendaries without. Also your weapon must be socketed with the highest quality emerald you can afford.
Also, get your amulet and both rings socketed and put legendary gems in there. For a new player, I suggest the lightning wreath, +3s damage on every crit, and the smite holy gem. Don’t worry about leveling up the gems, level 0 is fine.
As a pet doctor, you want to gamble for the mask of jeram (which doubles all pet damage!) and tasker & theo gloves (which are very rare so don’t hold your breath). But the mask is very gettable. Without that mask you’re not really a pet doctor at all; it is spec-defining. There’s also a dagger and an offhand that make your fetishes shoot poison darts when you do and make them pierce, respectively, but that’s for a bit later on.
Doing all that stuff should quintuple your damage in yellows alone.
Some tips:
Unless the RRoG is your best ring independent of its effects on sets, don’t wear it yet as you’re getting no benefit from its set effect.
Ditch the ruby in your hat and replace it with either a diamond or an amethyst. Roll off the armor and get plus critical chance.
Try to gets as much +elemental of the type your main damage-dealing spender uses. Change your main spender to match your gear rather than the other way around if need be.
As Stusser says, get a socketed weapon. You could roll off the +damage on the one you’ve got for a socket.
Roll off the life regen on your gloves and get intelligence.
Roll off the all resist on your chest and your pants in favour of sockets.
Reemul
3670
Well i was running short of gold, I have got the flying Dragon Diabo for my Monk but no luck with rolling a slot, cost is over 400k per attempt now.
Anyways I tried the puzzle ring +32% gold along with the boon of the Hoarder Gem in it, 28% chance for a kill to cause a gold explosion and I looted 5 million gold in 30 minutes by doing Act 1 bounties, all these creatures in the fields makes for really easy money.
That’s exceptionally unlucky on that socket roll. I keep a goldwrap, goldskin, and whatever that amulet is that heals you when you pick up gold (these all come with large +goldfind affixes) and bump up my gold find % on the paragon points, on T6 you can get 6k-7k% extra gold pretty easily, and with a hoarder gem with a few levels on it you can do about 35-40m gold per rift, with the side effect of basically being invincible from having 2 billion toughness from the goldwrap. I tumble into molten explosions with that build, just because it’s fun to do so. Useless in Grifts of course, but money pretty rapidly becomes a non-issue in the game once you’ve got your boon of the hoarder.
Couple other random responses: I like SC more than HC not because I fear losing a character, but because the extra fear of death fun-factor doesn’t make up for the fact that it reduces a game with very few viable builds into an even more narrow category. Every class is shoe-horned into even fewer passive and rune choices in HC. You have to take the insta-save passive. You have to take the class equivalent of teleport or whatever. Most builds take these skills anyways on higher grifts on SC because dying slows you down too much to actually be able to beat them in time. It’s the being forced to take them aspect that I don’t like.
Someone mentioned their profile dps being different from their ingame paper doll dps, this is usually the result of passives or in-game buffs. If you are using Pierce the Veil or something, that will show up in-game but not on your profile. Also, profile dps is a pretty poor indicator of… anything, as it doesn’t take into account elemental damage, the aforementioned buffs/passives, elite damage%s, or item affixes that can be completely game-changing (Tasker and Theo and Mask of Jeram are both great examples of this, items that do nothing for your paper doll DPS but in reality buff it a huge amount). I think my Wizard has around 1m profile dps, but a little over 3m fire dps once the passives, buffs, and +103% fire damage get factored in. Again, this information is basically only useful in comparing yourself to someone using the same class and in some cases, the same build. The way that skills, affixes and dps interact can cause some classes to completely out-dps (in reality) other classes with similar paper doll numbers.
The point being, those paper doll numbers are almost only relevant to you and players with that same build, and even then you can look at two say, Marauder Demon Hunters, and if one guy has Tasker and Theo and the other doesn’t, their sheet numbers might look similar but their actual effectiveness won’t be. Legendary gems also aren’t factored in, and are so powerful at higher levels that they can easily account for 50% of your overall output.
I was the one talking about the paperdoll DPS number. I’m not hung up on it, I just thought it was strange. I figure that regardless as to the number shown, your DPS matters only to the extent that it lets youcomplete content - if you can kill stuff at a comfortable pace you can move up a level. If not, stay there and find better stuff.
Charlatan:
I’ve been playing the hell out of a pet WD lately. I’d highly, highly recommend some changes to your build. Reasons:
1) Gargant is horrible in every way that a skill can be horrible. Ditch him for Big Bad Voodoo/Slam Dance, which will make elites melt if you have some fetishes out.
2) Addling Toads is vastly inferior to Rain of Toads. The damage is always going to be basically nothing compared to what your fetishes output, so get the one that’s easier to hit with and procs fetishes (and other effects once you get some legendaries) more often.
3) Firebats…eh. They’re okay. Even their damage is total garbage compared to your fetishes, so just use Rain of Toads for spamming when you’re not dropping a Locust Swarm or running away from something. (see Pirahnado, below)
4) Ditch Haunt for Locust Swarm/Pestilence. Big packs melt, and it rolls proc chance every time it infects something. More fetishes!
5) Spirit Walk rocks <3
6) Pirahnado is amazing. Stacks up all the dudes so you can Rain of Toads them and get mad procs. Plus bonus damage. Highly, highly, highly recommended.
7) Midnight Feast is horrible (Dogs are for life on hit, not damage. See above regarding fetishes). Get Grave Injustice instead, which blows through the cooldowns on Pirahnado and BBV relatively quickly because you should have a screen of fetishes keeping the worst of the nasties away from you. Also 'nado-ed monsters can’t hit you and your fetishes will rip them apart.
And yeah, gamble a Mask of Jeram first and a Tasker and Theo second. Those two items will do absurd things for your damage output.
Craft up an Aughild’s shoulder and chest as soon as you can find the pattern and put together the mats, especially since you have a RoRG already. The 2- and 3-set bonuses are absurd.
And, of course, get legendary gems ASAP and socket your jewelry immediately. Proc gems are incredibly powerful (the smite proc thing is constant with this build). I run that + Bane of the Trapped (extra damage to CC’d mobs, since I have a Hwoj Wrap to make my Locust Swarm slow things and now a Thunderfury) + the special gold one, but either Enforcer (pet dmg) or the poison one (2000% poison dmg over 10s to everything you hit, including pets and locust swarm) are good too.
stusser
3674
Poison damage is way too slow, and petdoc isn’t a DoT build. The damage on crit is much better, as it’s over 3 seconds.
Admittedly, I’ve only done T1 on my HC WD, but I have always used a Garg, and like it for its tankiness. I rarely get hit because he agros everything and grows monstrously large. But I freely admit to not doing the numbers. Right now I’m running the Rain of Toads. Pirahnado, dogs, Spirit Walk, Garg, and Big Bad Voodoo. BBV is great but the cool down blows, so I need more reduction to cooldown I think. I might swap Garg for Locust Swarm to try it out though.
Adventure mode. Basically, go beat act 5 once with an old character on normal, and make all your future characters in adventure mode. It’s much more fun to just run an act’s worth of bounties than it is to progress through the story in order again. Pump the difficulty up to Expert or Master, don’t bother tweaking your items early on, and you will xp past the low levels really fast.
I’m guessing that rob won’t be back to see this, but I still want to argue with it ;) D3 (as of 2.1) is no more of a game about making numbers go up than any other game is. Sure, there are numbers that go up, like your best grift run or the Torment level you play on, or your paragon level. But the game isn’t about making those numbers go up, it’s about making a character that works. It’s about figuring out or reading about cool stuff you can do and then getting the right stuff to make that work (or to tweak it to be even better). The difficulty level is just there to help you figure out if you’ve actually improved things, and the grifts put that experience into a much cleaner, faster, more snackable form.
I mean, what’s the point of upping the difficulty of any game? Why play chess against a Master instead of a 1600-rated player? Why play MoO on hard instead of medium? Why play SC online instead of just playing the AI?
Thanks Reemul. I think I’m doing it all wrong at the moment though, I’m actually reading the story and chatting with the characters. I’m sure I’ll pick it up in no time though! ;)
I also have about a billion noob questions which I’m sure were addressed 90 pages ago, but I’ll try and figure it out.
Eh, at rank 25 this becomes a lot more questionable, as the 10% extra damage from the Toxin gem is going to be unquestionably better for a WD with Taskers than the average amount of attack speed you’ll be getting from Pain Enhancer. The DoT from Pain Enhancer is about twice as strong, though (400%/sec vs 800%/sec at rank 40 each, though technically the Toxic would be 440%, because of the 10% damage increase) and affected by % physical damage, which I imagine is a desirable stat for Pet-doctors. The 10% overall increase from toxin is significant and should easily equal that 360% spread, with fetish attacks doing 300% with a perfect Mask, so 30% per hit in addition to whatever extra frog/locust/haunt damage you are dealing from that 10%.
I’m sure under certain circumstances one is better than the other, but “much”? Nah. It’s pretty close to a wash in most scenarios. Running both may be desirable, I’ve no idea. Mirinae’s is 3600% holy that doesn’t proc from pets, but does go off locust swarm and haunt fairly often. Single target assuming you are spamming some sort of frogs, Mirinae’s certainly comes out on top out of the three. If you are using a lot of Haunt or willing to stand within 20 yards of enemies, Bane of the Trapped is a no brainer. Enforcer is probably not as good as any of the other options, as even a full on pet build isn’t doing close to 100% of its dps from pets. And yea, Zombie Dogs and Gargantuan are both kind of pointless. Gargantuan literally does less dps than a Fetish, for inexplicable reasons. Dogs have some survivability applications, but they don’t do a ton of damage. So I’d say Bane of the Trapped and Mirinae are probably the no-brainers for a pet build, and then it’s gonna be pretty close for that third gem.
stusser
3679
This guy is trying to get to torment1. Leveling gems to 25 may be a while.
Zombie dogs are there to tank for you, and with the leeching rune offer a ton of healing too. That also doesn’t scale to GR40+, but again, guy trying to get to torment 1 here.
If I read correctly, RoRG drops in the caches, and rate isn’t affected by difficulty. If that is so, does it make the most sense to run Act 1 bounties on Normal to just get the cache as quickly as possible?
