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Diablo III: Reaper of Souls |OT3| Tyrael Looted: {[El'druin]}

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
well, delrasha is dead.

The change to the 4p bonus of Del makes me think that doing Del'Rasha is going to be a bit more annoying without the bubbles acting as a source for meteors/buffs, though the defense boost is nice.

a bit more annoying? it's not going to exist.

remains to be seen whether it makes wizards a viable support class. if not then gg wp in killing the most fun wizard build for no good reason xd
 

Wallach

Member
It seems the new Oculus creates a field and will not create another until the first one expires. I don't remember if that is how it used to work.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Not exactly sure why they reworked that 4 PC Delsere. They could've just added the 50% damage reduction on top of the existing bonus.


In other news they buffed the Fist of God. It can now roll up to 300% EP damage. This is probably to bring U6 back in power with other sets and not also rely on snapshotting Power Pylons which they apparently fixed.
 

eek5

Member
It seems the new Oculus creates a field and will not create another until the first one expires. I don't remember if that is how it used to work.

I can't ever recall it making two fields so it might be working as it always did. Might just have an ICD that is longer than the field duration. Not sure.
 

Dahbomb

Member
The power creep is so crazy in 2.4 that they have had to add in 300% damage on Fist of Az just so U6 can still feel somewhat relevant. And this was a set that until SC was discovered was a very powerful set capable of clearing GR70+ and was a god tier speed farming build.

At this point if your build can't do GR90 in 2.4 your build is not strong/competitive/"viable". Because like a thousand other builds in the game can speed farm TX now. Hell many of them can easily do GR70 now.

And some of the damage multipliers don't make sense against each other. Earthquake set gets meager damage bonuses where as others are getting 2000% damage bonuses.

This is not even taking into consideration that you can add even more stats to gear now.


Plus there are still various bugs in the game relating to items and skills interactions. That Vigil of Wizard doesn't even use the Nilfur damage bonus for example.


Game has improved a lot for the average player in terms of build/item selection plus getting to a high level quicker but at the top end it's a mess. No one is asking for razor sharp balance here but there shouldn't be 10-15 GRs difference in class/set performances. Because of the game system they have in place, it's very easy for everyone to just go to the Leaderboards, see who the highest player is and copy/paste their build... there is basically no commitment to builds anyway so it's very to easy to swap builds to the top build which means that there is no incentive to stick to a build. Worst of all is the Paragon grind which has made the previous loop of grinding even worse:


Paragon Grinding -> More main stats -> Able to push higher GRs -> Able to upgrade gems to higher levels and now attach to gear -> Able to push even higher GRs resulting in more Paragon grinding etc.

All of this helps botters even further.
 

Lain

Member
I went to toy a little bit with Del'Rasha and just switched away from it.
The Tal'Rasha change instead is quite good. No longer do we have to go through the annoying phase of losing and rebuilding stacks, because casting spells refresh it and that is simply great.
Too bad the spell autocasted when channeling thanks to the new orb don't count for the refresh, but I guess that'd be too powerful if it did.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Is it possible to get an ancient item from Kadala? What about using the Cube to upgrade a rare to legendary/set?
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
Yeah crusader/wiz seem rly ownage on the ptr from what I've seen.

I'm sad that pretty much every barb set seems to suck ass so far, the only viable combo at the new power levels seems to be IK6/Raekor4 and even that isn't spectacular. I'm sure there is more tuning to be done though.
 

Dahbomb

Member
Isn't the Raekor doing like mid 80s right now? That's definitely pretty good. Haven't seen Wizard performance since the nerfs.
 

Baliis

Member
Isn't the Raekor doing like mid 80s right now? That's definitely pretty good. Haven't seen Wizard performance since the nerfs.

Wizard is going to be... Weird imo if they dont change anything, at least for firebird. They'll have super high damage potential if you can get a super godly rift with with like 3 elites at the start, no dangerous affixes, and mega density. But the rift guardian will take a million years. It's gonna be old firebird/old raekor spawn the RG with 10 minutes left, still fail all over again, and boring as hell.
 

Anbokr

Bull on a Donut
Isn't the Raekor doing like mid 80s right now? That's definitely pretty good. Haven't seen Wizard performance since the nerfs.

Not sure about right now, it was back when there was a bug where you could perma stun rift guardians. Regardless, the whole point of this patch was to give every class 4-5 viable sets/builds; Raekor is literally the only barb set that can push near 80 right now. HOTA, SS, WW, and EQ are all performing pretty poorly (topping out in early 70's). Though they did revert all the WW nerfs/changes and JY tweeted that he was reading barb feedback threads; so here's to hoping for future tuning. I guess every class tends to have this issue though.

Part of the reason why I hate the blatant powercreep, every season is just a 1 set season because the old sets get left in the dust by the new/remade ones.
 

Sober

Member
Well I guess Tal Rasha's buff being able to be indefinitely maintained and DMO's changes is fine for killing off DelRasha. What a shame though, it was a fun build.

Apparently DMO is doing quite well in GRs on the PTR now.
 

Baliis

Member
We won't have 10 minute long RG fights again because we have Bane of the Stricken.

Idk, Firebirds single target is abysmal if they don't change anything. Go look at the rank 1 EU wiz right now that did an 80, Orlash took him almost 7 mins. Idk really how vyrs aoe/single compared to firebird single/aoe is, but it could get pretty bad.

Of course, who knows if firebird will end up even being the top build. might not even matter
 

Dahbomb

Member
Not sure about right now, it was back when there was a bug where you could perma stun rift guardians. Regardless, the whole point of this patch was to give every class 4-5 viable sets/builds; Raekor is literally the only barb set that can push near 80 right now. HOTA, SS, WW, and EQ are all performing pretty poorly (topping out in early 70's). Though they did revert all the WW nerfs/changes and JY tweeted that he was reading barb feedback threads; so here's to hoping for future tuning. I guess every class tends to have this issue though.

Part of the reason why I hate the blatant powercreep, every season is just a 1 set season because the old sets get left in the dust by the new/remade ones.
Honestly it's the same situation as the Monk. We have the Static Charge Inna build which craps on every other build. SWK is garbage, R6 wasn't even good in S3, Generator Static Charge is out classed by the Inna variant and U6 doesn't compete either now despite the buffs.

And I am not talking about a few GRS here but at least 10 levels of difference.

I would also point out that SWK is out classed by the nerfed Litany. Yup.


From the looks of it Wizards seem to be in a decent spot in terms of set power level. Seems like all 4 could potentially do GR80 and higher.
 

Nokterian

Member
Guys guys..the whole invoker set is glorious adding the braces from act 1 horadric caches. Also they have added 2 new belts one belt makes your slash ability go in all directions i added that one to the cube it works amazing the other belt that i have on is slamming meteors every 7 seconds. Maintaining that 50% damage reduction works amazing.
 

Fularu

Banned
Guys guys..the whole invoker set is glorious adding the braces from act 1 horadric caches. Also they have added 2 new belts one belt makes your slash ability go in all directions i added that one to the cube it works amazing the other belt that i have on is slamming meteors every 7 seconds. Maintaining that 50% damage reduction works amazing.

I'm prety sure the meteor belt has been around since S02
 

Mutombo

Member
I've been grifting a bit with the revamped demon hunter shadow set. I'm actually not really copying a build, and I've gone up until GR 52 now, but so far I haven't even had to use that passive revival skill when you die. Enemies are taking a bit longer to kill, but that's expected.

I'm doing orange criticals in the around 1000/1400 million, which is quite often, and i'm deviating a bit from the skills the top players use. For one, I'm rocking a shield with Justice Lantern, which reduces damage a bit, and most of the other skills are damage reducers as well. That, together with vengeance that gives me hatred, which is an awesome matrix skill to use anyway, and the knives that cost hatred so that i can keep spamming them, even though you want to wait at least a couple of seconds with the dagger skill that gives 300%damage every second, make me a walking terminator. Hatred runs out quickly though, so thats why I have vengeance to get it back and the other shadow skill that immediately restores 75 hatred. So when I run out i probably have one out of two skills to get it back.

It's quite fun.
 
Guys guys..the whole invoker set is glorious adding the braces from act 1 horadric caches. Also they have added 2 new belts one belt makes your slash ability go in all directions i added that one to the cube it works amazing the other belt that i have on is slamming meteors every 7 seconds. Maintaining that 50% damage reduction works amazing.
The bracers from the cache sound cool but you don't have the slot to equip it. Or you'd have to use a RORG which is out of the question.
Ideally you'd cube it but there's no way you can since you're already equipping/cubing aquila cuirass and heart of iron.

As for the belts, slash is pretty bad compared to punish (15% block chance is huge in itself already), the fact that it attacks in all directions doesn't matter since you only damage the first target you hit. Belt of the trove is an obvious BIS.
 
I tried the trap weapon cubed with Shadow, but sadly I don't think it'll be viable, mostly because it directly competes with Dawn which is obscenely OP compared to about every other weapon choice. I thought it was shoulders, but for some reason it's a xbow. It's pretty decent otherwise, put a sticky trap on a mob, does 950% aoe damage after 1sec and every enemy hit has now a sticky trap for 950% aoe damage, which reapply the sticky trap to everything else around. It just chain procs like that until most stuff is dead. But the aoe is tiny, the hatred cost for the initial sticky trap is kinda high. And mostly, stupid Dawn, how can you beat perma vengeance.

Other than that the set looks kinda meh. Big impales are fun but once stuff doesn't die in one hit, it really loses steam quickly. Impale is still shit at aoeing too which is another issue. That's originally why I thought about the spike trap stuff but alas. You can do chakrams which everyone is doing but that's very so so damage even with the chakram dmg legendary.

I think they should change the 6pc to "inflicts 40k% when you impale, this can only occur every x seconds", say 8, instead of being a one time thing only. This would let you hit them hard once, then soften them with chakrams, then finish everything with impale and move on.
 

Mutombo

Member
I tried the trap weapon cubed with Shadow, but sadly I don't think it'll be viable, mostly because it directly competes with Dawn which is obscenely OP compared to about every other weapon choice. I thought it was shoulders, but for some reason it's a xbow. It's pretty decent otherwise, put a sticky trap on a mob, does 950% aoe damage after 1sec and every enemy hit has now a sticky trap for 950% aoe damage, which reapply the sticky trap to everything else around. It just chain procs like that until most stuff is dead. But the aoe is tiny, the hatred cost for the initial sticky trap is kinda high. And mostly, stupid Dawn, how can you beat perma vengeance.

Other than that the set looks kinda meh. Big impales are fun but once stuff doesn't die in one hit, it really loses steam quickly. Impale is still shit at aoeing too which is another issue. That's originally why I thought about the spike trap stuff but alas. You can do chakrams which everyone is doing but that's very so so damage even with the chakram dmg legendary.

I think they should change the 6pc to "inflicts 40k% when you impale, this can only occur every x seconds", say 8, instead of being a one time thing only. This would let you hit them hard once, then soften them with chakrams, then finish everything with impale and move on.

Impale is indeed quite boring to use. I also tried out the fan of knives that does 1600% extra damage but has a 15 cool down period, but I prefer spamming whenever I need to, and to have the choice to wait for more damage increase, or just use it twice and still kill what I need to.

I'm going to try out LON as well, I've got a bunch of ancient weapons and gear so I should do around 600% extra. But I don't think it can beat sets since the nerf.
 
You don't need to hold on to Rares just salvage them all. When you are ready to use the cube to craft something, go to the Blacksmith and craft the yellow you want. The Jeweler can craft yellow rings and amulets for you.

Also Greater Rifts don't give Death Breaths so if you just want more gear then just run regular Rifts. Run it at the level where you can complete one in 5 minutes.

So boiling it down: I need one more Unity and I need a Focus. I should just speed farm normal rifts for blood shards and death's breaths then? That's the most efficient?
 

Dahbomb

Member
So boiling it down: I need one more Unity and I need a Focus. I should just speed farm normal rifts for blood shards and death's breaths then? That's the most efficient?
Yes and crafting mats as well. After you get a bunch you can start putting rare rings into the cube in order to get the rings. NOTE that if you get a 2nd Restraint you can convert the 2nd one into a Focus using a different cube recipe. And don't spend shards on jewelry and weapon slots as they are over costed, spend them on armor slots.

Also make sure your 3 legendary gems are a solid level as well so you probably need to do some GRS to get those Legendary gems leveled up.
 
Yes and crafting mats as well. After you get a bunch you can start putting rare rings into the cube in order to get the rings. NOTE that if you get a 2nd Restraint you can convert the 2nd one into a Focus using a different cube recipe.

And don't spend shards on jewelry and weapon slots as they are over costed, spend them on armor slots.
Nah, doesn't work for 2pc sets

For the second part, spending shards on rings is acceptable as these give the highest boost (CoE, F+R, unity)
 
Thanks for the advice. I actually have a 2nd Restraint, and got excited for a moment before I read on. Oh well.

So if Regular Rifts are better for death's breaths, blood shards and mats, what are Grifts better at? I've already gotten my leg gems up to 25+.
 
Thanks for the advice. I actually have a 2nd Restraint, and got excited for a moment before I read on. Oh well.

So if Regular Rifts are better for death's breaths, blood shards and mats, what are Grifts better at? I've already gotten my leg gems up to 25+.

Levelling gems higher. Currently level 50 for each gem is a minimum, next patch 70 will probably be a good starting point.
Faster/more reliable legendary drops (ie forgotten souls)
Much more xp
Less tedious (don't have to pickup items)
(more gold)
 

Wallach

Member
Whole lot of DH buffs on PTR today but this one:

Since Evasive Fire and Evasive Fire – Focus rune are the only outliers in terms of Hatred generation, we’re increasing the other four generators by 1 Hatred each to match.

9GMqpEl.jpg
 

Dahbomb

Member
LMAO @ the Firebird nerf. Damn Blizzard really doesn't want Wizards to live it big.


More importantly no set changes to Monk. RIP in pepperonis SWK and R6. Instead they have again nerfed their most powerful build:

Monk
Fists of Thunder
Static Charge
Splash damage reduced from 180% to 50%. (11/24)

RIP in peace. Quin69 am cry.
 

MrDaravon

Member
I can't deal with the ups and downs of PTR like some folks; I casually keep up with big new changes, but don't bother looking into things too deep or see what new gear/builds come into play until stuff is finalized. Stuff like this would just kill me lol.
 

Lain

Member
Was the initial firebird change too good? I didn't get to try it when it was at 1500% and then 1000%.

Cuirass change bums me out more. Having that, the shoulder and bracer on a monk felt awesome.
 

Dahbomb

Member
I'm glad he realizes that it's for the better of the game. Constantly buffing the shit out of everything for what is basically an item arms race has been the worst part of this game for the past year.
Agreed though they forgot to take this approach with the other classes, all of which received substantial buffs in the recent patch. There's most definite power creep in this season.

So basically Monks are quite worse off. Funny thing is that the Static Charge build with Inna is still probably the top Monk build LMAO!
 

Rhaknar

The Steam equivalent of the drunk friend who keeps offering to pay your tab all night.
Any new or reworked sets for pet lovers? Any sentry love or witch doctor stuff?
 

Wallach

Member
Any new or reworked sets for pet lovers? Any sentry love or witch doctor stuff?

Marauder set got big buffs, yeah. None of the DH stuff is really on the level of what Crusader or Wizard are cooking with on PTR right now, but M6 should be doing alright by the time 2.4 ships. Sentries hit like a fucking truck now and Manticore now rolls with +100% Cluster Arrow damage and 50% Cluster Arrow cost reduction so you have a few different options for spenders to make it work. There's also a new belt that gives 9% damage reduction for every active companion so the set does okay as far as Toughness.

Witch Doctor's main pet buffs right now are through the Gargantuan and Zombie Dogs. Both of those skills basically got big base damage buffs, and the Tall Man & Short Man Fingers are also larger multipliers than they used to be. I think Zunimassa is going to be pretty much dead in the long run assuming it doesn't get more help before ship, but pets will probably make some comeback outside Carnevil either via Legacy of Nightmares or Helltooth. Carnevil will ditch Zunimassa for Legacy of Nightmares for sure.
 
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