Speaking of the journey, what do you have to do to get credit for completing (not mastering) a set dungeon? I blew through one, but didn’t get the credit for ch5 of the journey.
Typically:
- To complete a dungeon you need to successfully complete all the objectives
- To master a dungeon you need to successfully complete all the objectives and kill all the mobs in the dungeon.
Note, it is not just a matter of blowing through the dungeon and killing everything, pay attention to the objectives that appear ion the screen and right hand side when you enter. Typically it will require a particular skill selection, rotation and often DPS tweaking to retire objectives.
You can help people out, or have people help you (which is tremendously helpful at times for mastery as you can concentrate on objectives while the helper cleans up after you. Doubly so as the dungeons are more often than not a puzzle exercise in DPS/defence management. Sometimes you need to lower your DPS to complete the objective (say using one skill to group enemies before using another skill to kill them - too much DPS makes the first skill kill everything). Lowering DPS too much can then make mastery a pain as clean up can take too long.
Also keep in mind, as I discovered, that only the person activating the dungeon gets credit. Normally, that would seem obvious (a barb helping on a monk dungeon won’t get credit), but for example, me and another wiz both ran the same set dungeon with the same set. He activated it and was awarded completion, but I wasn’t. :(
So does a controller and dodge make it play like Victor Vran?
So how does someone know if they are playing effectively vs that they have the difficulty too high? That was one of my problems - I just didn’t know if when things took a long time to kill if I was playing substandard or had the difficulty set wrong.
Ah, I thought you had to do all the objectives for mastery. Yeah, I’d have to lower my dps quite a bit to do this one (might of the earth). Not sure I really want to go to the trouble.
Appreciate the info, though.
Just take the gems off your gear, or swap to a lower DPS (ie poorly rolled) weapon, or reset paragon points during the attempt. Usually all or some combination of that is enough to get the job done.
I would generally say that if it is taking more than 5-10 seconds to kill an elite pack, your effective drop rate/efficiency is suffering. Bosses and Guardians can vary and take a little longer.
The exception to that can be getting into Torment levels to begin with. You kind of want to be playing T1 as soon as possible as some items won’t drop otherwise, but that is usually trivial for a even fresh 70 with either at least a two piece set bonus and/or proper crit chance and crit damages rolled onto gear (helm, ammy, wrist, bracers, rings).
I also can’t overemphasis the importance of crit in D3. The vast, vast majority of builds (I can only think of one exception) fundamentally rely on crit hit and crit damage - that is your power scaling. If an item can roll crit, your goal is to get crit on it via the mystic, or replace it with a version that has crit - preferably both hit and damage. Your crit needs to be at 40-50% and crit damage at 300%+. Though in fairness, sometimes a socket for a beneficial legendary gem may be the better option during progression and until a better item drops.
It almost does not matter your build, you will generally be served well by the following advice:
DPS slots:
Rings and ammys - main stat, socket, crit hit chance, crit damage
Wrists - main stat, crit hit chance, crit hit damage
Bracers - main stat, crit hit chance, relevant elemental damage
Weapon - socket for an emerald for crit damage
Helm - main stat, socket, crit hit chance
Survivability slots:
Shoulders, Torso, Pants, Waist, Boots - main stat, vit, resist all, life%, armour
It’s kind of why the itemisation of Diablo 3 is pretty crap. It is so heavily reliant on main stat, crit and sockets that they are mandatory on any item that can roll them, making other affixes irrelevant as they are comparatively useless.
Thanks for all of the info. I guess what I mean by the above question is that if it is taking more than 10 seconds to kill an elite pack, how do you know if it is because you didn’t spec your character well, aren’t making good use of abilities, etc vs. just having the difficulty set too hard. In the first case I’d like to figure out how I could do better, but in the second case it’s time to set the difficulty lower since you’re already playing the best you can.
Eventually, perhaps. Certainly not right away. I am melting Torment 6-7 with nowhere near that much of either. It also depends on other gear. Crit is just one multiplier. There are plenty of other ways to get multipliers in this game (for instance I got the two ring set focus and restraint today…one gambling and one as a drop). Don’t want people to think if they don’t have those kinds of numbers they are screwed. Also, some of the bonuses from seta and items are positively massive.
Are you talking after L70? Generally it’s going to be all of those things to some degree, so change whatever you can that gets the result quick. ;)
Likely you can’t instantly get better equipment, so check ‘details’ section of inventory and see what the biggest bonuses are, then arrange skills to complement those. Or read up on a build. :)
If it’s still slow going then drop difficulty.
From 1-70 I just slot whatever items increase damage, spec skills to give enough resources to spam spenders, have a mobility/escape skill of some kind, and then set the difficulty down if it’s taking too long.
Yeah, ultimately, this game is about sets. That aside, the most powerful you can be with whatever gear you have equipped, is with stacked crit. Build your sets and complimentary legendaries, then stack crit on all of them - there is pretty much no substitute.
Along the way, sure, a set bonus may well trump crit, but generally I presume everyone is aiming for sets anyway.
Ah, good question. I guess it comes down to your average engagement time. If your average elite engagement time is 5-10 seconds, I would think you are at the right difficulty for progression. Progression being, “where is my drop rate optimised”, vs pushing being “how high can I actually go”.
Now your engagement time is also also a function of your skills and play-style, so yeah, that can have an effect. Generally, your skills should be optimised to your gear. If you have a few legs or items that boost an ability or element, look to stack that ability and element for best results. If you are confident your skill selection is leveraging the bonuses from your gear, then you are all good. Set the difficulty for a short engagement time accordingly while farming. The rest comes from getting your rotations right. And, to be fair, that can be annoying. I really dislike some rotation playstyles and they don’t gel with me. I am playing wiz this season and the free set is Firebird, but I just dislike the playstyle of that one for some reason.
Also damage mitigation is important - eventually. I talked about this in the Path of Exile thread, but that and D3’s structure ultimately made me realise that to be successful in an ARPG you need a couple of things. DPS, damage mitigation and to optimise for clear speed in order to progress. We have talked about the first (sets and crit, baby, crit) and the third above. The second, damage mitigation, D3 tries to make important during progression by breaking skills up into categories - primary, secondary, defence, etc, as they unlock. Now, the first thing you will do is turn on advanced mode which lets you put any skill anywhere (and by proxy stack all the same skill ‘type’ on all slots). That can make it easy to forget you need to slot a damage mitigation skill or two.
Sometimes the best defence is a good offence (stupid DPS) and that can get you reasonably far in D3, but sooner or later, even though you one-shot whites - all of them will also one-shot you. Many items in D3 will amplify defensive capability by stupid amounts. Aquila Cuirass is a good example - 50% damage reduction when above 90% primary resources! Brilliant if your build hardly uses any spenders. There are dozens of items like this in D3, custom built to compliment the sets on offer and every leaderboard build is leveraging one or more to a certain extent. The effect of this is that sometimes, regardless of DPS, you will be stuck at mid torments until you get that damn item that will make the survivabillity difference. The trick is recognising that and spending all of your crafting mats on trying to acquire that item, which, to be fair, requires fore-knowledge of what is available to begin with - annoying for a casual player.
So, D3 progression is get to 70, craft and re-roll items to crit, cube complimentary items, acquire legendary gems, farm or complete journey for set pieces, re-roll them to crit, acquire complimentary legendary damage mitigators/DPS multipliers, re-roll those to crit, win.
Win is typically faceroll torment X. After that comes grinding for ancients and pushing GR’s, of which some moderate amount is required to complete seasonal journeys.
I wonder if health scales enough at TX to make crit all that worthwhile for the LTK monk. Non-crit LTK one-shots most elites. Guardians and bosses take between 3 and 10 kicks.
So then, what exactly is the progression in the game now? I played it mostly back when it launched, when the progression was still the same as other ARPGs. Play through Normal, then play through Nightmare, then play through Hell. And your character gets higher and higher level, and faces the appropriate leveled monsters too, as you go along this progression. What is the progression like now? I played it briefly with the expansion, and got to Act 2 on Hard. What happens when I beat the game after starting it at level 1 on Hard? Approx what level do you reach by then? 70? And then you unlock adventure mode? Which lets you go anywhere? How does that work? Do they spawn monsters based on your level or something?
Dude, it’s Diablo.
Hit things. Fill bars. Hit things harder. Equip loot. Run faster. Fill more bars.
Rocket surgery it ain’t.
True. But I’m curious. I know what I’m asking about is many, many, many hours into the future, probably months away from where I am in the game, but I’m just curious about how they handled game progression.
One thing I did notice is that it took my Crusader about the same time to get through Act 1 on Hard as it took pre-expansion for one of my characters to finish all of Diablo 3. So obviously the game has been slowed down tremendously, or I’m playing on the wrong difficulty level.
Well, you don’t have to do the story at all anymore. Once adventure is unlocked, you can start a character in adventure mode and hit act v at level 1 if you want. Everything scales to your level. The entire map is open to you. Every act has bounty objectives and at any moment, one act is designated as having a bonus, so if you are doing bounties (a mix of kill this boss, complete this event, and kill all enemies at X location) you will typically go where the bonus is. The bounties reward you with recipes, crafting mats, and the occasional legendary.
But to get back to your question, nightmare and hell difficulties have been replaced with a much less coarse system. It now goes normal, hard, expert, master, and then torment. The latter has 13 separate difficulty levels. I suppose if you like replaying story mode, you’d start a “nightmare” replay at Torment 1 and just keep bumping the difficulty as needed. I can’t imagine doing that, though. About the only thing I will miss from the story is the character of the moment saying “Spider Queen?” Before the fight with Arenaea.
Moreover, these days, it’s apparently possible to level to 70 in 2-3 hours if you are good at speed farming and willing to grind (I’m not). The season journey gives you a bunch of stuff to do, leading you along the character progression as you go. It probably took me more like 10 hours to get to 70 but I enjoyed it.
I think the thing I would suggest is to go beat act V to unlock adventure mode if you haven’t already. Then start a season character in adventure mode at level 1. Pick a class whose season set matches your playstyle:
Here are the sets granted by Haedrig’s Gift in Season 9:
Barbarian – Might of the Earth
Crusader – Thorns of the Invoker
Demon Hunter – The Shadow’s Mantle
Monk – Monkey King’s Garb
Witch Doctor – Raiment of the Jade Harvester
Wizard – Firebird’s Finery
The first four chapters of the season journey will lead you through level 70 and all the way to Torment 4 difficulty. By the end you will have one of the 6 piece sets listed above (open all of the gifts from completing chapters 2-4 on the same character!). That point marks a nice finishing point, or you can continue on to the more advanced parts of the journey if you like.
Beat story once on your account to unlock Adventure Mode. If you’re playing in Seasons, progress through your season journey to acquire a free set, then continue along that journey for more cosmetics and a stash tab. The progression is now about pushing difficulty levels, Paragon levels, and Greater Rift levels instead of going through the story. If you insist on playing through the story/haven’t unlocked adventure, you should hit 70 before completing but it all depends on what difficulty you play on. Enemies are based on your level and then scaled by the difficulty.
Crusader’s damage output is pretty terrible until you can piece together some sets, but at end game a Thorns build is hilarious and extremely powerful.
@Rock8man - this is the way to go! Use your old Act 4 character to beat Act 5 and unlock adventure mode, then start a season game with a new character. Unless you’re dying to play through the story again… which you can still do within a season anyway. :)
The journey does a great job of guiding you through all the stuff you need to be doing to progress, while setting up reward goals. After completing chapter 2 of the journey you’ll get the first bits of your free set for example: Diablo 3: Season 29 Journey Tracker
But when I tried importing my old Act 4 character, the game warned me that the Crusader I made and his shared stash would get erased. If I’d imported the old character into Reaper of Souls right at the beginning, I wouldn’t have this problem, but I didn’t think to do it back then. So I said no to the import. So that Act 4 character is gone.
So the highest level character I have currently is my Act 2 Crusader and my Act 1 Witch Doctor who takes 3 minutes to kill each enemy.
Lower the difficulty down from hard until you get a bit of gear.