1881

Here’s my highest: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/TANSTAAFL-1749/hero/8709002

I have no idea what I’m doing though. I don’t even like the Witch Doctor much, he’s just the only HC character that’s survived!

1882

I like the Crusader, and I think they’re pretty damn cool, but I agree power-wise they feel underwhelming. It’s kind of a drag leveling my Crusader when my Monk is sitting there and has better damage output, survivability, plus is way, way more mobile (I love you Dashing Strike).

Steed Charge is such a cool ability but definitely needs some tweaking. I don’t see why the ability can’t have a similar CD and duration to the Monk’s Serenity (20/3) an ability that is arguably more useful (3 second invulnerability with runes for increased duration, DPS and unhindered movement speed).

1883

You’re kind of in no man’s land right now at level 66 where Torment is scaling way, way faster than you are and you’re not getting the kinds of level 70 drops you’ll need to run it, especially since you’re still in some sub-60 gear. Here’s where I’m at right now and just starting to contemplate running T1:

(Keep in mind the toughness is misleading because it doesn’t count the huge boost from One With Everything).

There are other people around here running at a much higher level than me that can give you better advice though.

1884

Yeah, take it off Torment for that push to 70. Just drop it to Hard, knock out 70, and let the 70 gear come in. The curve has serious problems in the late 60s. They really should have scaled enemy health a lot less before 70, because the sub-70 gear is pretty crappy AND you’re not going to find enough of it to boost you much anyway.

Even on my Demon Hunter I was just getting bored by how long it was taking to kill in the high 60s. I was still invincible, but everything was just a sack of hitpoints. A single level 70 weapon, without amazing rolls, upped my sheet dps about 70%.

1885

Reading people on the official forums bragging about their crusaders makes me sad. They seem to fall into two camps; people who haven’t played another class to 70 and don’t have any basis for comparison, and people who are bragging about how their low level crusader is steamrolling Hard as if that’s some sort of accomplishment.

Crushing Hard while leveling? “You’re supposed to…you low ambition-having motherfucker!”

1886

I noticed my crusader didn’t seem to be as good as the other classes while leveling personally. Basically every other class (didn’t play barbarian) was easier to level than my crusader.

On the plus side, I soldiered it out to 43 and can now use my uber weapon.

When hitting 43:

After equipping my new weapon:

Now I am doing torment 3 for leveling.

Note: all other items were found on this character.

1887

I’d love to see the green hint text for that. So, replacing this weapon is +1112.7% damage? Maaaaaybe it’s worth it…

1888

I got my Crusader up into the 20’s and felt I was refreshed enough on how D3 worked. Fired up my 51 barb and set him to expert to try out Act V. Holy crap, the loot changes are insane. I was running around in what I thought was pretty good gear for a 51 (all yellows except for a legendary belt and 2 set pieces. Lowest piece of gear was my set-piece gloves at 44). Before I had even gotten into the town, I had replaced 3 pieces of gear with new yellows of equal level that were 3 - 5x better (stat wise) than what I was using. At first, it was taking me forever to kill anything but I also wasn’t in any danger of dying (was in my max-survival build). I was considering bumping it down to Hard until I gears up a bit more.

By the end of a 2 - 3 hour playing session last night, I had replaced every piece of gear I had and had gained 6 levels. My 246/232 dps weapons were replaced with a 886 dps legendary. Things are finally dying relatively quickly, so decided to keep it on expert for the time being.

All in all, the evolution of the game between when I had stopped playing until when I came back a few days ago is astounding. Honestly, I think the state of the game is where it should have been on day 1; feels like prior to 2.0, D3 was in a large-scale extended beta.

1889

“I think the state of the game is where it should have been on day 1”

Yup. There’s still a LOT of work to be done, but as of 2.0+ the game is finally what it should have been when it launched.

1890

There’s no reason to play on expert, monsters have much more health than hard but you only get 25% more experience. Either drop down to hard and destroy the hordes quickly or (if your gear supports it) step up to master.

1891

Thanks for sharing. I’m pretty clueless when it comes to this stuff.

1892

Agreed.

One complaint I have is that absolutely everything seems bound to account now. The only way you can trade anything worth a damn is if it drops when someone in the group and it is recent. I wish they hadn’t done this because it means that (at least before the expansion, which may, or may not have change it) a non crazy hardcore player has zero chance to assemble a set.

Removing the AH removes mass trading, so all this change means is that I can’t give my friends anything at all, which is annoying.

1893

I’d like to see a system where you can trade with (probably long term to avoid hopping) friends, so long as it’s not implemented in some fashion that encourages spider webbing to set up trade networks.

1894

I don’t see the point of account bound at all. You can’t item dupe because the loot is generated by the servers. Why not just let us trade freely? Let the users create the market?

1895

Because that will leave an auction hall around, it will just be on 3rd party sites.

1896

Hmmm, thanks stusser, I didn’t realize that. I had been playing Hard on my crusader and still found it a bit lacking, so when I fired up my barb I thought “let’s step it up a notch”. I hadn’t looked too closely on what the exp/loot difference was between them.

I think I’ll try it out on Hard tonight, see if it feels right. I don’t think my gear is in a place that I can step up a level to Master quite yet.

1897

The only way expert makes sense is if you’re one-shotting monsters on Hard (and thus wasting damage) and yet master still takes too long. But that shouldn’t actually happen.

Remember survivability is much less of an issue now in 2.0. Higher difficulty levels inflate health much, much faster than damage.

1898

There is no real problem about this though.

One of the problems before, in my opinion, was that the game was balanced around using the auction house. Not many drops and most aren’t for you. As long as they don’t do this again, there is no down side to casual trading. It worked fine in diablo 2.

1899

That leaves the door open to real-money trading on third-party sites, which leads to fraud and account theft, which leads to a poor gaming experience and customer support costs, which are what they were trying to avoid in the first place.

There are various ways around that; for example, allowing items to be traded for 36 hours to people in your clan or friends list at the time they dropped would be my preferred solution.

1900

But that is literally what is happening to me :(

I’m not playing expert because of some kind of perceived advantage, but because enemies just die on hard and take too long on master.