stusser
3681
Cache drop rate does vary by difficulty. That changed a couple months ago. Don’t run bounties on normal. Unless you’re only going for rift keys I guess.
Ah. Found quite a bit of contradictory info regarding the RoRG with some saying other rates scaled, but that one didn’t. Thanks stuser.
I think there’s a 10% chance of a legendary cache drop at Torment1 and below. 50% if you can manage Torment2.
Daagar
3684
As you say, I think it is merely the fact that there is less fluff/filler. I still play WoW, but depending on how you play, even that game is really nothing more than making numbers go up. But much much slower, over a much longer span of time typically. D3 is much more grinding distilled to its ‘purest’ form, with a more instant gratification feel.
It’s 100% at T6, of course you’ll still not get the legendary you want. (10 tries and counting for a helltrapper).
See, this is the point where I tend to just get lost with this game. I have taken a Barbarian through finishing the main game, then a Crusader, DH and Wizard through the entire campaign (mostly to level up). I have then played around with Adventure mode, but not really with any goal. Perhaps this time I can try something different.
robc04
3687
I still read a lot of threads for games I don’t have no plans to play :-)
I guess I’ll disagree, but this is so subjective I’m not arguing it as being ‘a given truth’. To me the actual gameplay of running a rift or bounty is pretty basic or mundane. Take my barbarian for example, my skills were
1- stun nearby enemies
2- damage nearby enemies
3- give myself 50% protection from damage + heal
4- summon help
LMB - bash
RMB - damage nearby enemies
Sometimes I would swap in one of the other skills (I can’t remember the name). So the gameplay for me was bash to build up some rage. If I was surrounded by enemies, which I usually was, I’d stun them and them damage them, using #2 or RMB. If I was taking too much damage I’d press #3. If there was some serious danger here I’d press #4. Meanwhile I’d be moving out of the way of the various ice bombs, lightning balls, or the arcane turnstiles of death when necessary. To me, none of that provided any real entertainment. I didn’t find the enemies very interesting and I didn’t find they needed to be handled in a vastly different manner. This isn’t to say it was always easy, it wasn’t. The gameplay was just so basic that the actual act of fighting wasn’t interesting.
Now I imagine there are some people who agree with what I wrote above but still enjoy the game because they enjoy the progression (making the numbers go up), like in Hero Clicker (or whatever it’s called). There are probably others who do find the combat interesting or at least engaging enough because you’re always doing something, even if that something isn’t overly complex. Those are all fine reasons.
There can be some thinking and strategizing involved for choosing what skills to put together, what equipment best suits your build, whether to modify your build to fit your equipment or visa versa. It just isn’t enough for me to make it more than a game about making the numbers go up.
These are fair points. Although for the leeching rune to offer a ton of healing you’d need a fair amount of life on hit, even on low difficulty. Might be the best first category for your paragon points, I dunno. I’m just not crazy about Zombie Dogs, sue me ;D
Once you finish your class set, all the builds change pretty dramatically for every class, and are usually more fun. Barbarians become charge machines that completely destroy groups of enemies in the blink of an eye but aren’t all that spectacular against a single target. Still, your basic premise behind the game isn’t that far off. For me it’s more about advancing to the next Grift, still working on beating 39 in the time limit, I’ve gotten soooo close but still haven’t managed it. Obviously its a combination of getting a lucky rift and slowly but surely eeking those numbers slightly upwards. I can see how it wouldn’t be for everyone. It’s just sort of mindless amusement to me. But I’d actually argue it has a more interesting endgame than D2 ever did.
Did you try a greater rift? Basically, the fact that you can just do the same thing over and over and complete quests on Master or T1 doesn’t translate into “it’s just making the numbers go up.” The way your character plays and the things you need to pay attention to and strategize about change dramatically from the lower difficulties to the higher ones. It isn’t just “get a bigger sword” once you’ve got all level 70 gear, you get better only by optimizing your affixes and a lot of that is build-dependent which it requires significant build-making strategy.
So again, what game isn’t like that? Most games can be set to a low enough difficulty that they are mindless, and you can then claim that there’s no point in getting better.
I had a similar impression to you of the endgame prior to the expansion, but it is quite different now that’s there’s so much more player control of progression.
Klaatu
3691
I’m playing on Expert and doing OK on bounties, but suck at even regular rifts. It’s pretty slow going. I have managed to finish them, but it’s a slog. I’m finding it difficult to reach the kinds of numbers being talked about here. So far my DPS is topping out about 250k. Here’s my Wizard @ 70. If someone could look it over and tell me what I need to do to improve, it would be much appreciated. Note that I have less than 1m gold so can’t roll a whole lot at the mystic, and Kadala has not been kind so far.
jpinard
3692
If you can get some chest or pants pieces with gem slots that would probably help a ton. You could fit 5 INT gems in them and you would get both a massive offensive and defensive upgrade from it. Make those from the armorer and roll for slots if necessary from the Mystic. Even yellows with slots would be preferable to what you have.
Crit chance and crit damage are probably the default response here. They are easy to under-estimate but they are basically mandatory. At least 30/300 unbuffed.
Your damage is low primarily because you have low crit chance and crit damage. At level 70 those two stats essentially dominate everything else when it comes to damage, given you should try to have your primary on every piece of gear. Try to get those two stats on every piece of jewelry, get crit chance on your hat, and (as keeps getting noted) get a socketed weapon and put a big emerald in it. Also try to get some +elemental damage.
Aim for defensive stats on your pants, chest, and shoulders. All but ignore attack speed – in RoS, paper doll DPS is even less relevant than it was in vanilla. Mentally divide your character sheet damage by your attacks per second and multiply by your +elemental damage and your +damage to elites multipliers—that’s the real stat you should be trying to increase.
Thanks for all the advice, everyone. I was able to improve my DPS by about 20% and can now run T1 bounties/rifts with no issues. I especially liked this advice:
I had played with Grave Injustice and used it with Pirahndo, the fetishes, and the Garg who you summon on a 15 sec timer, but I think at the time I was killing slowly enough that I felt I was always waiting on cooldowns. But for some reason everything seems to be working much smoother now. I ditched the Garg, and it’s really no issue generating tons of Fetishes. I did go with Big Bad Voodoo but tell the truth, most of the time I forget to use it since mobs are dying so fast now. Hmm, maybe I’ll bump the difficulty up to T2 tonight and see how it goes.
I’m having bad lag trouble with the US servers right now. Anyone still playing in the Europe clan?
Glad to help! I love my pet doc, and I’ve spent a lot of time dinking around with tweaks to the build. Once you can comfortable roll T2+, I’m not even joking about making everything about getting the Mask (of Jeram) and the Task(er & Theo). Gamble till you can’t gamble any more, then run more rifts to gamble some more. Mask is much more common, so try for that first IMO. Those two items took me from T2 to T5 with few other upgrades and build tweaks (I can do T6 at this point but it’s slow enough that I prefer T5).
edit: for reference, my pet doctor
robc04
3698
I don’t know what a greater rift even is. Edit: I just read the wilki so I understand how to access a greater rift. I did about a dozen bounties and 2 rifts. What makes a greater rift play so differently than the other content? Does it add new dangers you need to handle, or does it just add more of the same to those enemies - like a mortar lobbing, wall building, ice shard launching, poison spewing monster?
Of course you can make other games so easy that they become mindless, but I don’t choose to do so. Like I said before, the basic gameplay of Diablo is so mundane to me that it doesn’t really matter that it can be difficult. I have not found a way to make clicking on things to make them die fun. Heck even many people who like the game agree that there is plenty to call mundane about the basic gameplay of it. To me there is so much more to think about in a strategy title to make it interesting. I even play FPSs and to me it just feels like there is more skill involved - the act of aiming, dodging, finding cover, using weapons effectively, etc. Now I can see the argument being made that Diablo provides some of those same things, but it just doesn’t have the same feel to me. Again, I’m not asking you to share that opinion, but that is how it feels to me and why it just feels like the point is to make the numbers go up. The ‘playing the game’ part of it doesn’t contain much, so it is the character building that is the draw. It’s OK if we don’t agree about this, but what aspect of the gameplay makes it interesting / exciting for you?
What makes a greater rift different: It is timed. You need to finish it in 15 minutes. There is no loot to pick up until you defeat the Rift Guardian. It is the only place to acquire and upgrade legendary gems. Every level of a greater rift is more difficult than the last. Monsters do more damage and have more health. Once you’re into level 25-26, you’ve exceeded T6 in terms of difficulty.
What keeps it interesting? This is purely from a hardcore player’s perspective, but permadeath certainly affects they way you play, and keeps you on your toes. You’re not just standing in one place dishing out/receiving abuse. You pay real close attention to the elite affixes. You have to put a little more thought into gear. Stuff like that. Just my two bits.
I love that grifts add a little more spice to softcore, too. You don’t have unlimited swings at a grift (need a drop out of a normal rift to get into one) and losing the time to death sucks.
