Diablo III |OT2| Queues Rise. Servers Fall.

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Seeing as nobody i know has had lag problems today and it's been running smoothly for me just maybe it could be his internet or it could of been blizzards fault.

But not everything is blizzards fault, stop using it as a scapegoat. And you died once from a lag spike that happened once, it's not a BIG deal and not a big enough deal to bitch on the internet about it but then again this is GAF so it doesn't surprise me.
Sure as shit warrants a wordy slap down, though. If it's not a big deal, why do you feel the need to shut him up?
 
Anyone starting act 1 NM tonight? I currently one-shot things still and would like more exp/loot and someone to meatshield adventure with my DH.
 
Seeing as nobody i know has had lag problems today and it's been running smoothly for me just maybe it could be his internet or it could of been blizzards fault.

But not everything is blizzards fault, stop using it as a scapegoat. And you died once from a lag spike that happened once, it's not a BIG deal and not a big enough deal to bitch on the internet about it but then again this is GAF so it doesn't surprise me.

Its not a big deal yet it really seems to have bothered you.
 
If you play hardcore with all these problems that are going on that's on your end not blizzards.

You should no better not to play hardcore right now, should servers be running better? yes but you should also use your common sense. Playing HC with known server problems is like playing russian roulette with a 6 shooter with 5 bullets. WAIT till everything is resolved.

You just contradicted youtself... Didn't you said that it was his conection before and not Blizzard's?

Anyway, I still think its bulshit to have internet lag on SP mode.
 
Oh would you look at that. My ping settled back down to 200 and I was able to finish it.

Obviously it had everything to do with me. I made the mistake of playing a single player game online. Silly me.
 
Gold Find and Magic Find.

DEX can be nasty on the Ah right now, just gotta hunt on there and look for folks that price it low. if you're worried about money, selling things that go fast is a good idea or building a Gold Find set and just dorking around in Nightmare earns you a lot. My Wiz has 105% GF and I was getting 500 gold drops in Act 1 of Nightmare, you earn it pretty quick that way.

I suppose I could invest in a shitty gold find set pretty easily and just do the first part of act 1 on hell.

It sucks that my gear is a constant moving target. As soon as I get used to one set of loot I need to find a whole new set of gear. Since the drops on nightmare and lower are so stingy I have to rely on the AH.

It is a huge slap in the face that bosses only drop blues once you beat them. You'd think all that effort would earn you ONE rare.
 
So because you lag spiked it's bullshit?

Ever stop to think it could be your internet? which makes your internet bullshit? it's a video game, calm down bro.

Uh no actually, it's known Blizzard likes to keep ping fairly evenly distributed among it's players so people with fiber (like me) can get the same shitty lag as someone rocking slow DSL. Half the day today my lag was unbearable forcing me to quit out despite my actual connection being perfectly fine.

In short it's bullshit and so is always online DRM along with Blizzard's handling of the launch.
 
I've been meaning to post what Alex did for a while, although I would have put it more neutrally, haha. Because I'm not knocking D2 superfans. The thing is, if you've put five thousand hours into Diablo 2 at a pretty steady pace over the last decade or more, then Diablo 3 is... kinda irrelevant for you, no? There are plenty of things to say about D3 right now, good and bad, but a significant number of hardcore D2 players don't actually want Diablo 3, of any kind. Why would they? They never got tired of the last game! It's why the "I waited ten years for this?" comments strike me as odd. They were waiting for an impossible game--a game that made them forget they ever played Diablo 2, and then let them play Diablo 2 again. They're chasing an experience they can only have once.

I was just thinking the exact same thing but you put it a lot more eloquently than I would have been able too. Nicely stated.
 
For Barbarians out there, what kind of builds are you using? I'm 41 Barb in Act II Nightmare. For most of the game so far I've been going 1H with shield.

For skills I have a balance of offensive, defensive, and healing skills.

Frenzy / Triumph (Killing an enemy with Frenzy Heals you)
- I've tried all the other skills and nothing kills shit faster than Frenzy from what I can tell. Cleave started out amazing with the explode ability, but now I'm at the point where I really single target death is more important.

Whirlwind / Blood Funnel (Crits while in Whirlwind heal you)
- I only recently started using WW, for a long time I was using Seismic Slam because it was basiaclly the only distance attack barbs get, and that's useful sometimes.

Ignore Pain / Igorance is Bliss (Restore Life while IP is active)
- Helps when I've got 30 mobs ganged up on me.

Revenge / Vengeance is Mine (Restore Life when using Revenge)
- I've had this set the entire game and don't see myself changing. I have about 7k HP and I can walk into a group of ridiculously strong mobs, and they just whale on me and I'll see my health bar dropping like an anvil but I'm getting hit so fast I can literally just spam Revenge and watch my health bar consntatly refill itself. It's amazing.

Battle Rage / Marauder's Rage (Increased +Attack effect)
- I sometimes switch to War Cry when grouping

Call of the Ancients / Duty to the Clan
- Nothing else compares, these guys do a shitton of damage, and also take aggro off me so I can easily burn things down without fear of being hit.



Any advice / criticism of this build?
How are you able to get by without Heroic Leap? With no mobility spells there are simply times you can find enemies stacked around you and you'll need to get out. Heroic Leap really shows its strength for two reasons: it takes you out of combat for a split second while your abilities aren't available, and it can be runed to grant 300% armor for four seconds. It's a huge defensive boost that you can pop every ten seconds, so you're looking at spending only a few seconds where you aren't under the benefit of it. I find it massively more useful than Ignore Pain, which seems like a crutch with such a long cooldown.

I also don't know how any Barbarian can get away with not using Ground Stomp, particularly when coupled with Wrenching Smash. It's a four second stun on a fairly short cooldown.

I stopped using whirlwind a long time ago because it simply isn't that useful unless you are farming easy trash. Most of the fury dumps are pretty underwhelming, but whirlwind's real benefit comes from the mobility it offers. Unfortunately that's kind of meaningless when you take so much damage, and are using a long term ability that is going to lose you your Frenzy stacks. Most of the Fury dumps are pretty underwhelming in my opinion, with the exception of Seismic Slam runed for Knockback.

Call of the Ancients is interesting, but it seems to lose a lot of its effectiveness the further you get in the game. Even runed for survival and duration it's pretty easy for them to get squashed or not actually do very much.
 
Uh no actually, it's known Blizzard likes to keep ping fairly evenly distributed among it's players so people with fiber (like me) can get the same shitty lag as someone rocking slow DSL. Half the day today my lag was unbearable forcing me to quit out despite my actual connection being perfectly fine.

In short it's bullshit and maybe next time you should get your facts straight before harking on someone else for having perfectly legitimate criticisms of Blizzard and always online DRM.

Whats crazy is that while i've been fluctuating between green and yellow (never though i'd hear DSL and the word slow in the same sentence lol) I havent had any really bad lag spikes. Day 2 of release, when the servers were up, I was at 72 ping at the highest...now whatever they did to avoid having to take down the servers so much, seems to be having an effect on everyone.

Thats the reason for that giant traceroute post i'm guessing.
 
Finished Normal a few days ago. Man, the story and writing was bad. Not that Diablo games ever were considered good story-wise, but c'mon, even saturday morning cartoons could do better, Blizzard.

Nightmare feels like a whole new game with the more difficult and complex Elite Mobs. I've only killed the Skeleton King with my Barbarian and so far it's been pretty easy, but I expect to get my bum kicked once I get to Fields of Misery and beyond... those god-damn trees! Can't wait.
 
I've been meaning to post what Alex did for a while, although I would have put it more neutrally, haha. Because I'm not knocking D2 superfans. The thing is, if you've put five thousand hours into Diablo 2 at a pretty steady pace over the last decade or more, then Diablo 3 is... kinda irrelevant for you, no? There are plenty of things to say about D3 right now, good and bad, but a significant number of hardcore D2 players don't actually want Diablo 3, of any kind. Why would they? They never got tired of the last game! It's why the "I waited ten years for this?" comments strike me as odd. They were waiting for an impossible game--a game that made them forget they ever played Diablo 2, and then let them play Diablo 2 again. They're chasing an experience they can only have once.

And Fugu, you mentioned plenty of valid criticisms and observations. So this isn't directed at everyone who loved Diablo 2, and isn't meant as a stalwart defense of Diablo 3 because it's really too early for me to say anything other than it still seems like an awfully effective timesink, and online is officially a clusterfuck after a week. But it's just interesting to me to see a lot of bewildered disappointment from people when the last thing I would expect is to like the sequel to a game I played for twelve years straight.
Well, I can only speak for myself, but I'm not surprised that I don't like it; I have been skeptical of this basically since they started talking about the actual gameplay details. However, I'm still very much disappointed that I didn't like it, because I figured if anything was going to out-do Diablo 2, it would be Diablo 3. I would surmise that for the most part, the people that have been playing Diablo 2 for as long as I have would have settled -- at least temporarily -- for a game that wasn't as great but was still decent. I am not exaggerating when I say that, at least for myself, Diablo 3 falls below that threshold.
 
Hola to all the WD's


I thought I'd check what builds people are rockin'?

I'm about level 43 I think now,

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#acURdT!ZbX!bbaZYZ

is my build.

My basic strat = run in to confront a group (after i've picked off any loners) hit soul harvest, then back up as Hodor starts to tank, then as guys start to go past him towards me I hit 2.. turning them into piggies and then spam bats until my mana runs out, then micro back using darts to recover my mana, and pretty much repeat.

Is this just shit? does anyone else do anything similar?

could anyone see a major flaw in the plan that they think they could make a change to?
 
I suppose I could invest in a shitty gold find set pretty easily and just do the first part of act 1 on hell.

It sucks that my gear is a constant moving target. As soon as I get used to one set of loot I need to find a whole new set of gear. Since the drops on nightmare and lower are so stingy I have to rely on the AH.

It is a huge slap in the face that bosses only drop blues once you beat them. You'd think all that effort would earn you ONE rare.

You actually start getting a lot of rares in Hell, far more than Nightmare which is nice. You can get nice stuff in Act IV of Nightmare as well just takes a bit of patience. I got a very useable Legendary for my Monk there.
 
So some quick questions now that I have finished Normal:

1. Whats a good DPS for a Witch Doctor starting NM? Mine is currently sitting at 513 after boosting with some gems.

2. Was the only mention of the D2 heroes the
Necro disciple in Act 2?

It is a huge slap in the face that bosses only drop blues once you beat them. You'd think all that effort would earn you ONE rare.

Hm, but I've had a legendary drop from farming a boss before. I guess no rares, but legendaries can still drop?
 
I screwed myself over because I've been playing the game only with friends that I have all dmg and no def because I have a full support Wizard setup. I die off one or two hits from an elite. D: I tried playing through Nightmare by myself for a bit and if there is no space for me to move, I get mauled.
KuGsj.gif
 
So some quick questions now that I have finished Normal:

1. Whats a good DPS for a Witch Doctor starting NM? Mine is currently sitting at 513 after boosting with some gems.

2. Was the only mention of the D2 heroes the
Necro disciple in Act 2?

thats about what I had, probably even less so you should be OK for a while, I got it up to around 600 by the start of act 3, and then a friend gave me a staff.. and now its like 1200 base (or about 1800 with 5 souls) and i'm finding it fairly easy.. until i get surrounded by mobs
 
lol, this sounds horrible

I forsee a nerf coming to Inferno anyway now that it's been world firsted.

If anything it will be buffed (via the bosses). Apparently the rez mechanics weren't working properly and you could rez people while still taking damage. When they fix that, Inferno will be harder for groups. (Though I do think it might be better if you just couldn't rez people during boss fights period.) I honestly think that between class nerfs and/or boss buffs, that killing bosses on Inferno will become harder. The guy who soloed it used the cheesy Wizard build that seems likely to get nerfed, and Method abused resurrections in their multiplayer game.

Itemization is currently very bad. I've been poring over the affixes for the last few years in development and again currently and there are very few that are remotely interesting.

The ones I was most excited about were the +skill ones, but they are so minimal that it isn't even worth the affix slot. Not to mention that they only apply to attack skills and that they are all either +dmg or decrease cost. The proc-based affixes are also not high enough to be useful and legendaries are not memorable or flavourful, nor do they seem to have unique affixes which would require serious consideration for a build. Affixes are currently way too weak in general.

Blizzard stated that one of the purposes for removing runestones and levels was a chance for itemization to take over and become more complex and interesting, but they've apparently ditched that idea. They barely made any changes to the legendary item stats since they took them down after people complained other than add a few useless skill affixes here and there.

Hopefully they realize that item complexity and uniqueness are what drove people to desire them in D2 and fix this issue.

Completely agree. Itemization is broken right now on the high end (which is all that matters really.)


Act 2 is insanely long.. the quest is super boring. :|

It has my two favorite tile-sets in the game though :(
 
How are you able to get by without Heroic Leap? With no mobility spells there are simply times you can find enemies stacked around you and you'll need to get out. Heroic Leap really shows its strength for two reasons: it takes you out of combat for a split second while your abilities aren't available, and it can be runed to grant 300% armor for four seconds. It's a huge defensive boost that you can pop every ten seconds, so you're looking at spending only a few seconds where you aren't under the benefit of it. I find it massively more useful than Ignore Pain, which seems like a crutch with such a long cooldown.

I also don't know how any Barbarian can get away with not using Ground Stomp, particularly when coupled with Wrenching Smash. It's a four second stun on a fairly short cooldown.

I stopped using whirlwind a long time ago because it simply isn't that useful unless you are farming easy trash. Most of the fury dumps are pretty underwhelming, but whirlwind's real benefit comes from the mobility it offers. Unfortunately that's kind of meaningless when you take so much damage, and are using a long term ability that is going to lose you your Frenzy stacks. Most of the Fury dumps are pretty underwhelming in my opinion, with the exception of Seismic Slam runed for Knockback.

Call of the Ancients is interesting, but it seems to lose a lot of its effectiveness the further you get in the game. Even runed for survival and duration it's pretty easy for them to get squashed or not actually do very much.

You mention both Ground Stomp and Leap, how do you use them both at the same time? They're part of the same set.

To be honest I've never even slotted Leap before, ever. I've never actually used it.

Ground Stomp, sure it's a free stun, but who needs stun when you have temporary (almost) invulnerability? I actually go back and forth between Ignore Pain and Ground Stomp though. It's hard to decide.
 
You mention both Ground Stomp and Leap, how do you use them both at the same time? They're part of the same set.

To be honest I've never even slotted Leap before, ever. I've never actually used it.

Ground Stomp, sure it's a free stun, but who needs stun when you have temporary (almost) invulnerability? I actually go back and forth between Ignore Pain and Ground Stomp though. It's hard to decide.

Gameplay Options > Elective Mode. Your life is now better. (You can slot as many skills from the same category as you want, so any skill anywhere.)
 
So some quick questions now that I have finished Normal:

1. Whats a good DPS for a Witch Doctor starting NM? Mine is currently sitting at 513 after boosting with some gems.

2. Was the only mention of the D2 heroes the
Necro disciple in Act 2?
500 or so sounds good.

Hm, but I've had a legendary drop from farming a boss before. I guess no rares, but legendaries can still drop?
500 or so sounds good.
Hola to all the WD's


I thought I'd check what builds people are rockin'?

I'm about level 43 I think now,

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#acURdT!ZbX!bbaZYZ

is my build.

My basic strat = run in to confront a group (after i've picked off any loners) hit soul harvest, then back up as Hodor starts to tank, then as guys start to go past him towards me I hit 2.. turning them into piggies and then spam bats until my mana runs out, then micro back using darts to recover my mana, and pretty much repeat.

Is this just shit? does anyone else do anything similar?

could anyone see a major flaw in the plan that they think they could make a change to?
Right now at 43 I just run in, pop soul harvest, then mass confusion if it's up, and then I spam direbats until everything is dead. This is with Vision Quest.
 
Oneshot
Belial
on Hell. Me and two other guys stuck together and did all of ActII. Barb Monk and me a DH. Rocked the whole act, fantastic Synergy. We had a Wiz at one point who was decent too, but he bailed half way through, lol wanted back in once he saw on friends list we were on
Belial
.

Folks gotta start learning to stick to it.

edit: fuck me, I meant to spoiler tag that, not bold it. Hope noone is reading this evening.
 
You mention both Ground Stomp and Leap, how do you use them both at the same time? They're part of the same set.

To be honest I've never even slotted Leap before, ever. I've never actually used it.

Ground Stomp, sure it's a free stun, but who needs stun when you have temporary (almost) invulnerability? I actually go back and forth between Ignore Pain and Ground Stomp though. It's hard to decide.
* Be sure to enable Enhanced Tooltips and Elective Mode in the gameplay options menu. Elective Mode allows you to assign your skills in any manner, rather than being forced to choose from a specific category for each slot - allowing many more possible builds. Both are disabled by default.
On Hell I don't even feel very invincible with Ignore Pain. I'd rather have the guarantee of the stun. I only play with groups though, and being able to lock everything into one place for AOE damage and disable them from chasing the group is a pretty big deal. Ground Stomp is also an ability I can rely on regularly. When Ignore Pain is on cooldown you're kind of out of luck if you don't have hard CC. I don't really like using any abilities that don't fit in to a more regular rotation though.
 
Well, I can only speak for myself, but I'm not surprised that I don't like it; I have been skeptical of this basically since they started talking about the actual gameplay details. However, I'm still very much disappointed that I didn't like it, because I figured if anything was going to out-do Diablo 2, it would be Diablo 3. I would surmise that for the most part, the people that have been playing Diablo 2 for as long as I have would have settled -- at least temporarily -- for a game that wasn't as great but was still decent. I am not exaggerating when I say that, at least for myself, Diablo 3 falls below that threshold.

I have to concur =( I left myself so much in the dark about this game, I just bought it on a whim today and installed the game so pumped about getting my mind blown away like I did with Diablo 1 & 2.

I am so disappointed in this game. It's not that it's a bad game, it's just really not the experience I was expecting. I didn't even have the highest expectations for it, I just... wanted it be more like Diablo 1 & 2. You know, back when you were so looking forward to adding your stats up to use that next weapon you just got.

At first I found out in the first few minutes that I couldn't pump my own stats. I know, it's not the end of the world, but man I've been playing RPGs for forever, RPGs, SRPS, TRPGS, MMORPGS, I just love the customization of it. So I find I can't pump my own stats, okay, I get it, let's keep playing.

And then I get something about a skill. What's this, I can't put a point in a Skill? That don't make no sense.. let's keep playing, maybe something will pop up. Mind you, I've played ton of other games where I have to build my own characters: Pokemon, Ragnarok, RPGs, etc, etc, etc. Diablo 3's system just doesn't click with me =/

So I'm doing some reading and I find out that the max level is 60. Now I just want to quit this game :P

I'm playing it. I'll finish it, I'll get through Hell Mode, whatever. I'll probably play a couple hundred hours when it's all said and done, but I just don't feel it. Remember when you'd stay up till 2, 3 in the morning just playing this god damn game, thinking "just one more level. Just one more level. Just one more item. Just one more boss"? I'm not getting it. I played the game for a few hours intermittently today and every 30 minutes or so I'm like "yeah, I've had my fill, I'll do something else for now"

It's not that I've grown up, it's not nostalgia, I still get this with a lot of other games. It's just that the 2 prequels of this game sucked me in it so much, I just wanted more of that. Granted, with my son, my wife and my job I would never have been to play D3 like I played D2 or D1, though.
 
Yeah, they'll need to take a look at itemization. Frankly, they HAVE to, if they want to preserve the long-term carrot of their own game, and presumably they really really want to do that. At least if WoW is any indication.
 
500 or so sounds good.

Right now at 43 I just run in, pop soul harvest, then mass confusion if it's up, and then I spam direbats until everything is dead. This is with Vision Quest.

it's nice to see bat's is key then, as it's also key to me!

a question about vision quest, I never seem to have more than 1 thing on cool down (maybe 2) soul harvest + hex, what other 2 items do you get on cool down(replacing hex with mass confusion)
 
Yeah, they'll need to take a look at itemization. Frankly, they HAVE to, if they want to preserve the long-term carrot of their own game, and presumably they really really want to do that. At least if WoW is any indication.

Seriously, I don't even want to farm anymore ever since I found out legendary's suck :/

Kind of hurt my desire to replay this game actually..

Thank god for HC mode though, without that I wouldn't be playing this game for long!
 
What's the fun thing to do with a skill point in an ARPG? The most fun thing you can do for most people is put it in a new skill, less fun than that is getting a 2-3% increase in your existing skill, and less fun than that is dumping it into a passive skill.

What's the optimal thing to do with that skill point? The exact opposite of what is fun. Specialize always beats have 1 point in everything, and passives make or break your character. So while playing a videogame, you have to instead eat your vegetables. Unless you're a newbie who doesn't magically know everything, and instead you have a gimped-ass character.

Furthermore, in case you do realize you are supposed to pick a handful of actives and a bunch of passives to complement them, you are expected to pick which actives to maximize without the information to make that decision.

This is... not a good system. At it's core.

There's a somewhat related problem with the stats system. The primary one being, the correct distribution is completely opaque, and the optimal thing to do is to copy a proven point distribution from the game's fansites. You are not given a legitimate chance to figure out how to distribute anything optimally until after you have actually distributed them and played through the game several times, which is why you leave it to the hardcore players who will do all the painful legwork for you.

I mean these are just undeniable problems. These are not good systems. Nostalgia does not make these good systems.
 
Just saw a new commercial for the game. Next title should involve "and so it begins" from the commercial, and something about elective Mode. I'd never even played a diablo game, but now I'm close to 20 hours from launch. The closest thing I've tried was Dota 2 which was just too complicated for me.
 
it's nice to see bat's is key then, as it's also key to me!

a question about vision quest, I never seem to have more than 1 thing on cool down (maybe 2) soul harvest + hex, what other 2 items do you get on cool down(replacing hex with mass confusion)

Gargantuan (I just use it whenever it comes back on cooldown) and Spirit Walk/Fetish Army for the rest.

And yeah, Vision Quest is fun but since you're pretty much activating every cooldown you have whenver you can you sometimes get caught with your pants down, so to speak. As long as Spirit Walk is up I haven't had trouble running, though. My main problem with it is that it feels so clunky to just juggle cooldowns like that.
 
Gameplay Options > Elective Mode. Your life is now better. (You can slot as many skills from the same category as you want, so any skill anywhere.)

WTF is this!?!?! Are you serious?! I know what I'm doing when I get home. I've played through 3 acts of Normal on 3 different classes and never knew about this. Guess I should have poked around in the options more.
 
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