Diablo III

[Mark_Crump]

Thank you! Are these primarily solo things?

[sharaleo]

Thank you! Are these primarily solo things?

No! You can and hopefully will group in both rifts and greater rifts. There are separate leaderboard for solos and groups. Though some achievements and seasonal progression will require solo achievement.

Grouping can be awesome, as mentioned above, but when it comes to GR’s, the sum is greater than the whole as group difficulty scales slightly differently - a 4 man GR does not mean mobs are 4x as hard - more like 2x, so as a group you can likely push higher than solo - better drops, more XP, easier to get gems higher levels. Even moreso with well crafted groups with complimentary builds. Zero DPS builds (ZDPS) exist solely to provide massive group buffs, or de-buffs, or pulls, etc, and allow some serious DPS, but squishy builds to do their thing.

A couple of seasons back, if you were a ZPDS monk, everyone wanted to be your friend!

I should also point out that it’s fine to vary your build based on what you are doing at any given time. I talked about Nemesis Bracers yesterday, which spawn an elite pack when you click on a pylon/shrine. These massively reduce your rift/GR times as there are usually several pylons/shrines in any given run and the elites they spawn drop globes, which progress the meter faster. If you are farming for GR keys, or leveling gems for augments, Nem’s are a mandatory build adjustment to save you time, as long as your mitigation remains viable. It’s better to run Nem’s in TX rifts to farm keys, for example, than to run TXIII rifts for keys with no Nem’s. When you are curb stomping GR60, but want to level some gems to 40 for augments, substituting mitigation bracers for Nem’s at GR 50 is unlikely to be a death sentence for you, but will save you tons of time.

You may even vary legendary gems, depending on what you are doing. Bane of the Stricken is a waste during farming, replace it with Bane of the Powerful for faster clears. But you may need Stricken to kill that Guardian at GR65…

Thank fuck for the armory, which makes this alterations much easier than in the past.

[TheWombat]

Thanks for the write up, sharlaleo! Good stuff.

[sharaleo]

have to admit, I was unexpectedly excited last night when an enemy dropped green loot on the ground. I’d never seen Green loot in the 50+ hours I’ve played Diablo 3, so I was pretty excited to press X on the ring and see that progress bar go across to identify it.

Unfortunately, like Diablo 2, green means it’s part of a set. And in this case, it was The Compass Rose and it’s not a great item, and it’s not part of an attractive set either. (Endless Walk). Still, I found out that Diablo 3 does indeed have sets. They must just be really really rare drops. In Diablo 2, I found set items more often than unique items, except we found the same ones over and over for the most part. I think between five friends and hundreds of hours of Diablo 2 for each of us, none of us ever managed to complete a good set. There were some lower level crappy sets we did finish, but nothing high level.

Once you up the difficulty in D3, legendaries and sets drop like candy. Sets are the name of the game in D3. But, you’re playing HC, right? You need to find the right balance of difficulty vs clear speed. Find a difficulty you can speed run rifts (<5 min, heck <3min if possible) and they will come. Stop clearing the whole map - run, run, run to the elites and bosses as fast as possible! Stop dawdling - there is no story in D3! ;)

It’s also not that hard to get ahead of the early difficulties in D3 - a decent weapon makes a huge difference, particularly a legendary with a half decent ability. Weapon DPS is king - while leveling use the blacksmith to upgrade whenever possible.
You should be able to get to Torment I with little difficulty once at 70 with all yellow gear.

[Mark_Crump]

No! You can and hopefully will group in both rifts and greater rifts. There are separate leaderboard for solos and groups. Though some achievements and seasonal progression will require solo achievement.

So this kinda gets back to my age-old question: PC or PS4. On the PS4, how easy is it to find random groups to these things? Well, I guess the same question on PC as well.

[Rock8man]

Very interesting knowledge you dropped on us @sharaleo, thank you for the great write-up. I feel like you did the same thing for me a couple of years ago, maybe, in the other thread. But it’s different this time since I’m actively playing the game and I’m a hair’s width away from hitting level 70. I’m not sure how close I am to the end of Act V, but I can feel that the story is coming to an end soon since I’m headed to the Pandemonium Fortress to take on the final bad guy soon.

Currently I’m not playing Hardcore, but I’ll probably try Hardcore once the next season starts. Until then, my Witch Doctor can be my test bed for Rifts and Greater Rifts and Adventure mode, and Paragon levels, and all these things that haven’t unlocked yet.

[Becoming]

The positive side is that any stat that you change automatically rolls to max value. But yeah, after I blasted through last season so fast I only got two primals that were basically just a nice pile of mats.

[sharaleo]

So this kinda gets back to my age-old question: PC or PS4. On the PS4, how easy is it to find random groups to these things? Well, I guess the same question on PC as well.

It’s pretty easy on PC, in my experience, but I usually play with a couple of local friends. Never really have trouble getting purely public games filled in the last several seasons.

No ideal on the console platforms, I’m afraid.

[sharaleo]

Currently I’m not playing Hardcore, but I’ll probably try Hardcore once the next season starts. Until then, my Witch Doctor can be my test bed for Rifts and Greater Rifts and Adventure mode, and Paragon levels, and all these things that haven’t unlocked yet.

Oh good. Maltheal is not to be underestimated - I would have advised caution on first run through if it was your HC. Him, Urzeal and funnily enough, Adria, I find to be the most difficult bosses. Malth’s AOE’s can be a pain, Urzeal’s fire can hit like a truck and Adria just has ton of HP at high difficulty, giving her spanws time to be annoying.

[TheWombat]

I echo the warnings about Maltheal. I’ve lost more than one HC character on this SOB. If he’s one of the bounty assignments, I exit the game and reroll the setup.

[Rock8man]

Just going off the cutscenes, it seems ill-advised to fight the Grim Reaper himself.

[DrCrypt]

So this kinda gets back to my age-old question: PC or PS4. On the PS4, how easy is it to find random groups to these things? Well, I guess the same question on PC as well.

Honestly, PS4 groups are easy to find. I say PS4. The controls are better in a lot of ways, and if you want to play it on your PC, you can do so through the PS4 Remote Play app.

[Misguided]

Yeah, Rose/Compass is really nice.

[DrCrypt]

Yeah, it really is. My necromancer build uses it for great effect. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/07/03/heres-the-most-broken-necromancer-build-in-diablo-3-right-now-inarius-cursed-scythe/#6f75663832f0

[Rock8man]

The set bonus is just a theoretical thing though. This was the first set item I ever found. The odds of the next set item I find being the necklace I need to complete the set must be astronomically small.

[Misguided]

As others have noted, as you start pushing the difficulty higher, legendary and set items will become more common. It should be noted that’s one of the reasons that seasons are so fun. Getting an entire set handed to you (in stages) catapults you forward along the power curve.

[Gendal]

The set bonus is just a theoretical thing though. This was the first set item I ever found. The odds of the next set item I find being the necklace I need to complete the set must be astronomically small.

At your current difficulty level, yes. At higher levels, like the upper Torments, they will start dropping all the time.

Also if you acquired any set items before level 70… they are kind of though not entirely useless.

[Rock8man]

Also if you acquired any set items before level 70… they are kind of though not entirely useless.

Well, that is certainly the case for this ring. I found it at level 69. The stats on this ring were way, way below the rings I was already using, which I thought was really strange. I’d never seen that before. Generally the loot you find at higher levels is better than the one you found before, not worse. Maybe it’s because it’s part of a set, it’s supposed to roll lower numbers, I figured.

[instant0]

Hmm… getting to GR70 in HC Seasonal might be a stretch. And that is the only way to get the supersweet loot I assume.
Oh well :)

[kerzain]

[quote=“Misguided, post:5859, topic:66501”][quote=“Rock8man, post:5858, topic:66501, full:true”]
The set bonus is just a theoretical thing though. This was the first set item I ever found. The odds of the next set item I find being the necklace I need to complete the set must be astronomically small.
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As others have noted, as you start pushing the difficulty higher, legendary and set items will become more common.
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Exactly this. As an example, here’s a screenshot of my drops after a 10 minute GR run at higher difficulty. And this is pretty much an every-run sort of thing for this character.

[quote=“kerzain, post:5800, topic:66501”]https://forum.quartertothree.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/4/48e4b8787b364e9e0b25109d488f7567df6d60fe_1_548x500.jpg

[/quote]