1681

Heres the link to Jay Wilson’s original description of paragon levels. The TL;DR version its end game bonus to keep you going. 240 levels represents an enormous amount of time.

1682

Paragon levels are a means to improve your character60 (70 in the expansion, one assumes). Basically they give you a point to allocate to a a couple of different things.

There are 4 categories. Each paragon level gives you one point, but that point can only be used in 1 of the 4 categories. So the first Paragon level would give you a point to level in the “core/primary” category, the next level gives a point for offense, the next a point for defense, and the next a point for utility before it rolls around. Each category has 4 different things you can improve in it (iirc). All of them, except “bonus to primary ability score” and iirc “bonus to vitality” from the first tab cap at 50. So offense offers bonus attack speed and bonus crit chance, and iirc if you allocate 50 points you get something like a 10% bonus to each. Defense offers things like elemental resist. I think there’s a gold find one in utility.

Level 240 paragon means that person has 60 points to allocate in each of the 4 categories. Paragon points are account-based; if you have a Paragon level 240 character and start a new character, that character will have 240 paragon points to allocate immediately (quite a boost at level 1, actually). And if they hit max level, they’ll earn paragon levels to contribute to the account total.

1683

When you play in Torment 1-6 you get increased legendary drop rates, but nowhere does it mention by how much. Also, according to the difficulty selection screen, there are certain level 70 legendaries that only drop when playing on Torment.

1684

Thanks for the explanation - holy shit that’s a lot of time

1685

I expect my reaction stems from my having only played the game maybe 1.5 times through before the patch. I just did not find the difficulty progression and loot at the time appealing and legendaries had never dropped at all for me. It’s much better now. I dunno what sort of overall longevity it will have but the expansion dropping tomorrow means I’ll have a bunch of fresh vigor added tout suite.

1686

It did make a massive difference for Diablo but what other ARPG has not featured a proper difficulty selection in like forever? Diablo was the huge outlier with this stupid forced level progression.

1687

That’s an elegant way to put it, yep.

Each level of torment provides an added loot drop rate for sets and legendaries, and like someone said earlier, certain class-specific legendary sets can only drop on torment 1 or higher.

Basically, once you get to max level you gear up to be in at minimum torment 1.

1688

While the exp/hp drop off is clear, there is one thing missing from the chart. At higher difficulties, I get larger trash mob pack spawns and more elite packs. Assuming you will use an AoE on trash packs anyway, as long as you can handle the damage done to you by bigger groups that it is a bump in exp. I’m getting in the habit of running the very first bit of Act 1 on a new character with a very high difficulty. Its boring, mobs are easy … and 3-4 more of them in each AoE are nice exp and keep me from being as bored. When I start to slow down or regularly run from packs, then I bump it down to whatever is a steady pace with gear I have by then.

The difficulty setting on the fly is much nicer. I can set it for where it feels most fun. Some days for me are better, or worse, than others.

1689

People farming for XP generally skip boss/elite packs entirely using abilities like teleport, sprint, vault, etc.

As of midnight tonight you’ll be running bounties, though, so you’ll probably need to kill 'em.

1690

Hoping Act 5 keeps the “story” at the barest minimum. Adventure mode & bounties, ho!

1691

With all of the xp bonuses, it’s not as much time as it looks like (Blizz’s free 50% xp bonus, a hellfire ring at 30% iirc, and Torment bonuses). I think I racked up my high 20s paragon level totals in 4-6 hours. Those were largely spent at Master (a little bit) and Torment I (mostly, with a little bit of Torment II), with no hellfire ring. With more bonuses, at 10-15 hours a week, they would accumulate relatively quickly.

1692

Is Torment Level 2 give better drop rates than Level 1? If so, is there a chart that lists the improved rates?

Oh peacedog, that reminds me. Where do the components needed to make the hellfire ring drop?

1693

Yes, and no. Blizzard has said repeatedly that the drop rate for sets and legendaries increases with each Torment level, but they refuse to provide hard numbers detailing how much.

1694

You farm the keywardens for keys, use those to make Infernal Machines, then use those to get portals to fight Uber versions of old bosses (two at a time), which have a random (increasing at each torment level) chance to drop components for the ring. It’s very similar to D2 Pandemonium stuff, both in concept and execution.

http://www.diablowiki.net/Hellfire_Ring

1695

Someone told me keys you get before the expansion launches are no good once it launches? Is that true?

1696

The way I heard is that there are separate lvl 60 keys and lvl 70 keys. You can still craft the lvl 60 version of the ring with the old stuff but need the new ones for the lvl 70 version.

According to beta testers Act 5 should be better written than 1-4. At least, it shouldn’t have villains who tweet you their every plan like attention seeking idiots.

1697

Gulp. How many folks do this in Hardcore? I get scared just reading this description.

1698

It’s not really that hard once you have half decent gear. A character with ~1 million toughness should be almost unkillable on torment 1, especially if you have some LoH.

1699

The hardcore people, I guess? Hardcore is a way of life, you want to get through all the content for bragging purposes, right?

1700

The only other big ARPG I can think of that actually DOES have a difficulty selection is Torchlight. Titan Quest, Path of Exile, Dungeon Siege, and Diablo 2 all have the exact same forced level progression through each difficulty as Diablo 3 had until now. I dunno what Marvel Heroes does offhand.