Diablo III |OT2| Queues Rise. Servers Fall.

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Dresden said:
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.
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hmm interesting.

Some times I find myself needing to use sprit walk to run away (more than some times I admit) so i could use it in combination with that where I spam gargantuan + hex + soul harvest again then run away with spirit walk to recover everything quickly, then go back in for a full strength attack... but without the ability to soul harvest ..damn it
 
cpp_is_king said:
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?
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Pretty much what I'm doing, only I prefer Cleave and Earthquake instead of Frenzy and Call of the Ancients. Revenge is a life saver.

Though this build works wells on normal. I haven't gotten to nightmare yet, so not sure how it would play out. I'd assume the barbarian will need to be much more defensive on higher difficulties.
 
FieryBalrog said:
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.
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I get it too. But quite frankly, there's an addicting feeling to the way some of these systems work. When I was playing Ragnarok Online, I remember spending quite some time just planning my build out, using tools online that would show what my character would be doing when I got to a certain level, etc, etc.

I don't expect for my peers in the game to do the same. I don't expect a game to be built around my wants and needs. It's just that at the same time, it feels like the game went too much to the other side. I guess that's what most of the people complaining about the game are feeling right now.

And actually, another thing that quite bugs is the feeling that... it's almost like I got a beta-phase game. It seems incomplete in some form of way. The item mods don't seem very well thought out, there's no PvP, no guilds. I know there's going to be expansions, so it feels a little beta still.
 
The AH is strange. Was about to put them items on there, and things of the same quality were being put up for like 200k. I just put a bunch of 17-28 Barb items up for 5-10k and they sold instantly. I wonder if I should try to get more for them...
 
Sohter.Nura said:
I get it too. But quite frankly, there's an addicting feeling to the way some of these systems work. When I was playing Ragnarok Online, I remember spending quite some time just planning my build out, using tools online that would show what my character would be doing when I got to a certain level, etc, etc.

I don't expect for my peers in the game to do the same. I don't expect a game to be built around my wants and needs. It's just that at the same time, it feels like the game went too much to the other side. I guess that's what most of the people complaining about the game are feeling right now.

And actually, another thing that quite bugs is the feeling that... it's almost like I got a beta-phase game. It seems incomplete in some form of way. The item mods don't seem very well thought out, there's no PvP, no guilds. I know there's going to be expansions, so it feels a little beta still.
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Yes, fair enough. I just love having so many loadouts to try. The system in D3 doesn't really blossom until nightmare, which is a long time I agree (though it gets good starting level 15 or so IMO).

Combat itself in D3 is also just flat out better than D2. It's not even close, it's 10x more tactical in terms of managing loadouts, mob abilities, positioning etc. Lots of mob abilities controlling your positioning combined with the health globes system.

It reminds me of in D2, the funnest part about building a new character was the time you spent planning before you ever made it, and the time you spent at like level 85+. Everything in between was a chore that I powerleveled through. Spamming my gimpy abilities for 20-30 levels and my 2 main abilities for another 50 levels was not a good character advancement scheme. D3 does remove that pre-planning enjoyment, but the tradeoff is incredibly better in my own opinion.
 
Started Hell with my Monk today, and I'm already changing my build and re-jeweling gear to compensate for the harder hits. At this point, I'm stacking dodge on my abilities in general, and capitalizing on Seize the Initiative.

The mere fact that Seize the Initiative exists means that I can increase my armor while also increasing my DPS. It's so weird to think that Barbs hit their limit on feasible DPS in Hell because they need to stack armor, resistances and vitality, and the Monk just gets better and better DPS as long as you use DEX to increase your armor as well.

Couple that with One with Everything, and stacking resistances for the Monk becomes infinitely easier.
 
FieryBalrog said:
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.
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Problems like these lessen with the option for respec though. You can pick the fun skills to play the low game, then when you have the points, you can then respec into a build that is capable of higher content. I mean we're at a point in the new game where every wizard has every set of skills, so what would have been the harm in allowing sorcerers in D2 to respec into a build they wanted to play? Even if every sorc ends up as the same min/max build, it would equal the one class build we currently have in the new game. (And I"m not talking about their latest patch to give you 2 respecs per difficulty. I'm talking about unlimited respecs. Why is that still not an option in Diablo 2?)

Borderlands for example employs the skill tree system but makes respecs a simple money dump (inexpensive) at any time. (Oh damn, this build sucks, too bad I'm stuck with it...oh wait! No I'm not!)
 
TheFatOne said:
How do I search for the +damage modifiers in the auction house? I can't seem to find it.
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That's something I'd love to know, too. I've been trying to find +DMG rings on the AH, and it's been proving to be rather difficult.
 
BigDug13 said:
Problems like these lessen with the option for respec though. You can pick the fun skills to play the low game, then when you have the points, you can then respec into a build that is capable of higher content. I mean we're at a point in the new game where every wizard has every set of skills, so what would have been the harm in allowing sorcerers in D2 to respec into a build they wanted to play? Even if every sorc ends up as the same min/max build, it would equal the one class build we currently have in the new game. (And I"m not talking about their latest patch to give you 2 respecs per difficulty. I'm talking about unlimited respecs. Why is that still not an option in Diablo 2?)

Borderlands for example employs the skill tree system but makes respecs a simple money dump (inexpensive) at any time. (Oh damn, this build sucks, too bad I'm stuck with it...oh wait! No I'm not!)
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I wouldn't mind it with a respec system. But I would also like to reform the immense verticality of the D2 skill system, with skills maxing out at 20 points, so you can have characters built around more than 2 skills + 1-2 utility skills (if that). For example, every single sorceress ever made had 2 main skills, 1 pt in Static Field, 1 pt in Teleport, and synergies.

And once you have shallower 5 pt skills and a respec system, you're pretty close to where D3 is anyway. Actually if you follow their design process, they went through this exact same path to where they are now.
 
My question is really how they could fuck up the items so badly after all those years in development??? Did no one realize what the whole internet is realizing now (and even when they put up the legendaries on the webpage before release) during testing that the loot is completely bland and broken!?

It blows my mind when they had the diablo 2 blueprint in front of their eyes.

They made so many other good additions such as the skill system, health globes, interesting bosses etc, but how they managed to royally fuck up the most important aspect of this kind of game is perplexing me.

A modder managed on his free time and limited resources to capture the essence of what made diablo 2 so good and expand upon it with even better loot and excellent encounters. Brother laz who made median xl should have been the lead designer on d3, I can only imagine how good the game would be with his understanding of what makes a loot game instead of the wow inspired game we have now.

Another thing is also the boring quest rewards. Seriously only some xp and a tiny amount of gold?
 
With all the D2 vs D3 replayability/skill tree/attributes debate - did hardcore players not pick this stuff up in the beta testing and or were aware of these changes?

D3 sounds like it has lost a lot of its replayability in favour of immediate accessibility.
 
I don't mind the quest rewards, but I agree about the loot. They do have some interesting mods, but they don't show up enough and they aren't "big" enough. There also need to be more game-changing items that have big impacts on how a class plays (not even talking about runewords and oskills here, those are bad for the game).

This is fixable, but they have to get on it.
 
FieryBalrog said:
I wouldn't mind it with a respec system. But I would also like to reform the immense verticality of the D2 skill system, with skills maxing out at 20 points, so you can have characters built around more than 2 skills + 1-2 utility skills (if that). For example, every single sorceress ever made had 2 main skills, 1 pt in Static Field, 1 pt in Teleport, and synergies.

And once you have shallower 5 pt skills and a respec system, you're pretty close to where D3 is anyway. Actually if you follow their design process, they went through this exact same path to where they are now.
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see i think they should have taken each skill set/skill tree in diablo 2 and expanded it with more skills. this would give it more breadth and retain the verticality in diablo 2 and would give you four or five different types of each class.
 
So, now I can't play online with other people. I'm at Hell chapter 2, and when I click play online there is only the 4th quest and it is greyed out.
 
arbok26 said:
see i think they should have taken each skill set/skill tree in diablo 2 and expanded it with more skills. this would give it more breadth and retain the verticality in diablo 2 and would give you four or five different types of each class.
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It wouldn't have given you anything if you still had only 95ish skill points to spend. The problem wasn't the lack of breadth, it was the amount of points you needed to sink into your skills vs how many points you had. Also the skill trees weren't that well designed with some absolutely overpowered 1-point wonder skills that you HAD to have (Static Field and Teleport being the most egregious examples). Some classes got screwed, like Barbs who had a ridiculous number of boring weapon passives, and many other bad skills like "find potion" or half the shouts.
 
frequency said:
Oh, thank you. That makes sense. I must just not be paying attention. When I get back in, the map is reset so I'm usually just lost and have no idea where I am. I'm probably just dumb.



How do you do that?
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I noticed that the checkpoint didn't activate until I had walked over to the quest-giver.
 
57 hours in and onto Inferno. I hit a wall in act II hell today until some godly rare crossbow dropped for my DH. Everything wasn't so bad after when Impale was critting for 24k+ from then on.

jVNYz.jpg
 
HolyCheck said:
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?
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I recommend this if you play solo (with a Templar as a tank)
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZUcdT!bVY!aaZaZZ

Splinters (it's up to you really, I like the rapid fire feel of it and it does a bit extra damage)
Spirit Walk with mana regen on it (pop it if you are not in danger to regain mana, 1 extra second is not worth it)
Soul Harvest with life leech (even on low health run in with SW and heal with SH, 60 seconds duration is not worth it since you will spam it all the time)
Grasp is great for control and will help you stay alive
Hodor for a bit of extra help
Firebats as a nuke

Passives:
Spirit Vessel is a must (it's just too good not to use - great for spamming SW and SH)
Gruesome Feast is nice i think (great for mana gain as well + extra damage buff)
Spiritual Attunement - pick what you like here, I use this sometimes if I need a stable mana supply, good for Fire Bats which are a bit expensive)

This is not the build I use now as I am in Inferno with a group but it is somewhat similar (I don't use pets).

Also, look forward to Zombie Charger - Bears for some spectacular destruction.
 
FieryBalrog said:
I don't mind the quest rewards, but I agree about the loot. They do have some interesting mods, but they don't show up enough and they aren't "big" enough. There also need to be more game-changing items that have big impacts on how a class plays (not even talking about runewords and oskills here, those are bad for the game).

This is fixable, but they have to get on it.
Click to expand...


I certainly hope they can fix it, but after spending so many years in development it should have been in place already.

Another issue the the RMAH where it would really suck for people who dished out 500 dollars on an item just to have the whole system radically change (for the better) in a patch the next day
 
Bought two Legendaries for my Monk wich will probably be useless in a couple of levels. But they were cheap and I wanted a Legendary. What's wrong with me?
 
FieryBalrog said:
I don't mind the quest rewards, but I agree about the loot. They do have some interesting mods, but they don't show up enough and they aren't "big" enough. There also need to be more game-changing items that have big impacts on how a class plays (not even talking about runewords and oskills here, those are bad for the game).

This is fixable, but they have to get on it.
Click to expand...

To support this, when I pick up loot I just look on the tooltip and weigh life and damage vs what I am currently equipped with. I take life stealing attributes into account but everything else on the offensive side is negligible. As for defensive, well, all I look at is life. There is no (that I am aware of) chance to avoid stuns, freezes, or anything like that. D2 as of now makes itemization in D3 child's play.

I have great confidence in Blizzard that after user feedback and a couple of patches this game will adjust and be just (not for everyone) as replayable as D2. I am being optimistic of course. There is great potential here and I feel Blizzard has laid some great groundwork and has plans to make this game live up to the initial hype. Will it ever be what D2 is? No. D2 is a masterwork but they can (and probably will) make this just as great in the next few years.
 
Apparently people do buy expensive stuff on the AH. I sold a wand for 300k O_O in less than an hour or two.

Now I'm wondering if I should have set the price higher.
 
Geeker said:
I certainly hope they can fix it, but after spending so many years in development it should have been in place already.

Another issue the the RMAH where it would really suck for people who dished out 500 dollars on an item just to have the whole system radically change (for the better) in a patch the next day
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I agree, though design teams can often tunnel vision in on things and this may be something they streamlined too much or thought was working fine. Beta test also didn't touch any of these systems.
 
NaturalHigh said:
To support this, when I pick up loot I just look on the tooltip and weigh life and damage vs what I am currently equipped with. I take life stealing attributes into account but everything else on the offensive side is negligible. As for defensive, well, all I look at is life. There is no (that I am aware of) chance to avoid stuns, freezes, or anything like that. D2 as of now makes itemization in D3 child's play.
Click to expand...
This mod actually exists! Like I said, a lot of the cooler mods don't get enough use and aren't 'big' enough. There is a -% crowd control mod. There are also mods that improve particular skills, there are mods adding bleeds and lifesteals, also with % chance to fear or % chance to blind like in D2. The % is often a little too low, and they don't show up enough.
 
NaturalHigh said:
To support this, when I pick up loot I just look on the tooltip and weigh life and damage vs what I am currently equipped with. I take life stealing attributes into account but everything else on the offensive side is negligible. As for defensive, well, all I look at is life. There is no (that I am aware of) chance to avoid stuns, freezes, or anything like that. D2 as of now makes itemization in D3 child's play.
Click to expand...

That's a reduced movement impairment duration modifier but I've seen it all of 4-5 times.
 
Finished up Normal with my DH :). Was a little over-leveled because of repeating certain parts with party-mates/friends. Here's my set-up, will probably continue using it through NM (on Act II now)

Hope I stack up with the rest of you :>

xteoO.jpg
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Koroviev said:
I noticed that the checkpoint didn't activate until I had walked over to the quest-giver.
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Thank you. I'll have to remember to do that before logging out next time.
It's not a huge deal since I can use the town teleport, but it'll be nice to start in town when I log in.
 
Game finally started working decently a few hours ago after 3 days of unplayable stuttering.

A5sBi.jpg


Someone give me advice on skills, please. I'm not feeling my current skill set.
 
Noirulus said:
Game finally started working decently a few hours ago after 3 days of unplayable stuttering.

Someone give me advice on skills, please. I'm not feeling my current skill set.
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When you get ball lightning (for elemental arrow), put it on. It's OP in Normal. Point it at a mob and watch it disintegrate.

Other than that...learn to use Shadow Power. You're going to need it in Nightmare/Hell/Inferno.
 
frequency said:
Thank you. I'll have to remember to do that before logging out next time.
It's not a huge deal since I can use the town teleport, but it'll be nice to start in town when I log in.
Click to expand...

Yeah, before you logout, just double-check the chat window for "Checkpoint." Easy way to keep track of it :)
 
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