Diablo III - It's official

[Grall]

I'm 67 now, I've killed

Spoiler

Adria - WTF? I thought they'd do more with her TBH considering the lore behind this character and they just throw her away like this - unless it's all a ruse the plyer's supposed to fall for, which I sincerely hope

, and am besieging the gates of

Spoiler

pandemonium fortress

. By the way people, don't commit my mistake and browse through the achievements before you receive them. I got spoiled...

The game's getting kinda hard now I have to say. The early gear upgrades were a huge buff, but then the curve shallows out significantly. I was still fighting in the city while I turned 66 and gear drops were item level 61 for the longest time before level 66 started dropping. They're not very big upgrades though, if you have a high-end level 61 item it can be better than an average 66.

It's also really, really disappointing that it's better (to a significant degree) to equip a 66 hand crossbow together with a 61 quiver (with a marquise gem socked into it) than to equip two 66 hand crossbows. IMO, that makes no sense, and should never be the case.

I've received several terrible legendaries, including two that I salvaged immediately due to being as shit as any random drop you get in this game (like, no vitality at all, zero other stats, no sockets etc), and one or two that I temporarily put on my follower instead until I find a random yellow that beats the pants off of the legendary. Also received a legendary bow drop with stats that were only barely better than the random yellow weapon I was using. It also had no socket, which severely underpowers weapons in this game IMO. Gems really do make a big, big difference.

Interesting bug: some time after completing the Crusader's quest, all of his gear disappeared completely. I was wondering why he kept dying all the time (except, he doesn't really die....*ahem*), and when I went to check if a drop would suit him I noticed all his gear slots were empty. Wtf.

Well, beta is beta eh! Lucky I hadn't given him anything really important!

Anyway, is there a compelling reason to use anything but the templar? The others don't really do all that much damage, and the templar's heals really can be life-saving oftentimes.

Btw, I wish they'd fix the issue where you can consume health founts even though you're at max health... I was about to engage a boss when I mis-clicked on a fount, and nearly died as a result. Some of these bosses make a stupid amount of almost unavoidable area damage, if you're a class with low self-heal ability (hey hey, demon hunter here!), things can get rough.

Okay, there's some runes and stuff that can help, but at the cost of damage throughput. Still, no good being a dead glass cannon is there?! Maybe I ought to look into those options, as things are getting rather rough in the game right about now... Early on I mostly waded through monsters, but at this stage they clean my chronometer if I don't watch myself. Not sure I want to know what the endboss is gonna be like! Heh.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Anyway, is there a compelling reason to use anything but the templar? The others don't really do all that much damage, and the templar's heals really can be life-saving oftentimes.

With the right equipment they can provide decent and constant damage. They also provide other benefits like boosting the DPS of your current hero (via henchman buffs) or having a small bit of CC. The heals from the Templar are nice, but just like the damage from the other henchmen, aren't that great. As well, the Templar does less damage than the others, making him almost truly worthless as added DPS.

If you play a hero that has good self heals and/or good life steal weapons, then the Templar isn't a particularly good or useful henchman. You'd be far better served by one of the others.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

"Henchman"... What a sinister label for our valiant forces of good! (Yes, even the scoundrel, actually...)

Soon after my previous post I hit a brick wall where difficulty was concerned. Random elite monsters inside the pandemoneum fortress were simply too hard. I restarted from the beginning of the act, but since monsters scale with your own level in the beta it didn't really help, I just met a boss pack two streets down into the city and they laid waste to me and I gave up for quite a while. I don't know if a difficulty nerf happened in the meantime or what, but I made it to 70 without dying (I had less than 20% of a level to go so it did not take that long) and then upon unlocking my fourth passive skill slot I re-jigged some of my abilities. I picked the rocketry passive and health regen when stationary, rocket turret combined with rocket rapid fire, and then chose the shadow power ability or whatsitscalled which grants health regen per hit and runed it with double the health gain.

...Short story, on playing through almost the entire act and all of the bosses except the last (which isn't in the beta), I didn't die one single time after that, and most of the time I didn't fall below 50% life even without the templar. Much of the time I ran with the scoundrel instead. ONCE I think my globe went down to critical level, I'm not sure, but the game became much easier with these abilities.

One issue with the new lewt system is that it's friggin HARD to find gear for your followers! I did not see a single yellow ring or amulet with strength on it for the templar, no yellow shield with strength either by the way, reason I used the scoundrel mostly is that he can wear the same items as my demon hunter, so his damage output grew substantially as I played through the act.

Also, gems are way, way too expensive to combine. Jesus friggin christ, how am I supposed to afford it? Gems drop all the time, but it costs 100k+ to combine ONE set of gems, that's utterly ridiculous. Also, gold drops are nerfed substantially in the beta compared to live realms, that's really crazy! Right now I'm back to live D3 playing through inferno difficulty to amass more gold for when the expansion hits. I've reached act 3 for the first time ever, I'm paragon level 11, and I vendor absolutely everything that drops in the way of blue and yellow items. It's not enough even to keep pace with pre-expansion gem drops... How am I supposed to finance combining gems above star ruby-level...? Madness!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Also, gems are way, way too expensive to combine. Jesus friggin christ, how am I supposed to afford it? Gems drop all the time, but it costs 100k+ to combine ONE set of gems, that's utterly ridiculous. Also, gold drops are nerfed substantially in the beta compared to live realms, that's really crazy! Right now I'm back to live D3 playing through inferno difficulty to amass more gold for when the expansion hits. I've reached act 3 for the first time ever, I'm paragon level 11, and I vendor absolutely everything that drops in the way of blue and yellow items. It's not enough even to keep pace with pre-expansion gem drops... How am I supposed to finance combining gems above star ruby-level...? Madness!

Heh, 100k for one set of gems is cheap.

Just to craft 1 (ONE) Marquise gem in live D3 is 20,000,000. That's right 20 million gold.

And you need 3x Perfect Star gems which are 200,000 each. (so another 600k)

And you need 3x Star gems which 80,000 each (and another 240k) for one of those. 9x total for one Marquise (720k)

And you need 3x Radiant Square gems at 50,000 each (so another 150k) for one of those. 27x total for one Marquise (1.35 million)

And you need 3x Perfect Square gems at 30,000 each (so another 90k) for one of those. 81x total for one Marquise (2.43 million)

Thankfully those just need Flawless Square gems which can drop off mobs.

So 24,500,000 gold to make one Marquise gem in live D3.

Basically the Marquise gem was introduced into the game purely as a money sink for the rich to take money out of the Auction house economy.

Maybe it'll get reduced in the expansion due to no RAH. Although I'm not sure if it will or not. Getting rid of the auction house won't stop people from buying gear with gold or real money. It just makes it far less safe for them to use real money, just like it was in Diablo II.

I imagine a lot of people are going to get their credit card numbers stolen and their accounts hacked once the RAH is gone.

Regards,
SB

 

[liolio]

Patch 2.0.1 should go live today, read the release note and I'm quite happy about it it might give me incentive to start new characters on the european servers

 

[Entropy]

I imagine a lot of people are going to get their credit card numbers stolen and their accounts hacked once the RAH is gone.

My heart bleeds for the Pay-to-win digital gear addicts.
Sorry, but IMO getting rid of the auction houses was the second best change they could have made to D3. The best being getting rid of the online requirement.

 

[liolio]

Ouch, reinstallating since I had to replace my HDD a while ago : +12GB of patch, that's a lot ... might be able to play by thrusday

 

[Silent_Buddha]

My heart bleeds for the Pay-to-win digital gear addicts.
Sorry, but IMO getting rid of the auction houses was the second best change they could have made to D3. The best being getting rid of the online requirement.

I didn't care either way. I never used it. Don't like it, don't use it. Don't like to play with people that use it, then don't play with those people.

But I actually thought it was very good of Blizzard to think of the safety of their players. The fact that they could profit off of it doesn't bother me.

I have a much larger problem with them making legendaries drop like candy in the expansion. Legendaries are supposed to be extremely rare. Not what basically amounts to common loot drops as it will be (you can try it out on the PTS). My char on the PTS isn't even level 20 yet and has multiple legendaries. It's frankly off putting.

Regards,
SB

 

[itsmydamnation]

everytime i read a D3 thread i feel the urge to play D2........................

 

[Entropy]

I didn't care either way. I never used it. Don't like it, don't use it. Don't like to play with people that use it, then don't play with those people.

Which is what I did. I never used the auction houses (which is probably true for most, or they wouldn't take them down). However, the game was balanced around having them, with loot drops that assumed that you would go to the auction house and trade what you had for what you actually wanted/needed. And since much of your player strength is based on your gear, then the the presence of the auction houses affect the game balance for everyone.

I think it was a crummy idea from the get go. It made the loot drops your character got less interesting, going to the auction house takes you out of the game, and the concept doesn't fit the setting at all.
I'm actually quite impressed they scrapped it.

 

[liolio]

I didn't care either way. I never used it. Don't like it, don't use it. Don't like to play with people that use it, then don't play with those people.

But I actually thought it was very good of Blizzard to think of the safety of their players. The fact that they could profit off of it doesn't bother me.

I have a much larger problem with them making legendaries drop like candy in the expansion. Legendaries are supposed to be extremely rare. Not what basically amounts to common loot drops as it will be (you can try it out on the PTS). My char on the PTS isn't even level 20 yet and has multiple legendaries. It's frankly off putting.

Regards,
SB

The patch is finally installed though I've yet to try the game, is the drop rate comparable to the console version? Because if yes it is indeed a bit too easy to get good items.

 

[Grall]

It's frankly off putting.

No it isn't.

Speaking as someone who's NEVER had a SINGLE BLOODY LEGENDARY DROP EVER since level 40 on any of his char on live realms, this is a rather welcome change. I played up to paragon level 12, 5 stacks of nephalem valor bonus...nothing. Total number of legendaries dropping for me, sum total (all of them low level items): 5. In weeks of playing.

That is NOT fun. And that coupled with the fact all of the legendaries that did drop were not useable by the character it dropped for just made it even more frustrating, even downright hateful actually.

I'm truly looking forwards to this...a lot. It's truly super annoying to just hit a brick wall in your progress and not being able to proceed because you don't get any good gear drops AT ALL. I've played the beta some, and the drop system is just so much better. Apart from not finding any decent gear for all of my followers, the new system just is so much better, seriously.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

No it isn't.

Speaking as someone who's NEVER had a SINGLE BLOODY LEGENDARY DROP EVER since level 40 on any of his char on live realms, this is a rather welcome change. I played up to paragon level 12, 5 stacks of nephalem valor bonus...nothing. Total number of legendaries dropping for me, sum total (all of them low level items): 5. In weeks of playing.

That is NOT fun. And that coupled with the fact all of the legendaries that did drop were not useable by the character it dropped for just made it even more frustrating, even downright hateful actually.

I'm truly looking forwards to this...a lot. It's truly super annoying to just hit a brick wall in your progress and not being able to proceed because you don't get any good gear drops AT ALL. I've played the beta some, and the drop system is just so much better. Apart from not finding any decent gear for all of my followers, the new system just is so much better, seriously.

Pre-2.0.1 most legenadaries were worse than yellow rares. Especially pre-level 60. So you weren't missing out on much. That said, I got roughly 10 legendaries while getting level 60 on one char and over level 30 on various other ones. And since hitting 60 I had gotten between 40-50 legendary drops in Inferno.

Now that 2.0.1 is out. You can easily get 3-5 (or more) legendaries a day. By the time you hit 60, you'll be vendoring legendaries because they are so F$@#%#$%$%ing common.

It is frankly incredibly annoying. Something that should be rare, and should cause excitement when it drops instead becomes just another ho-hum, time to vendor it loot.

It could have used a boost in drop rate, but how it is currently is freaking ridiculous. Legendaries are not even remotely rare. They aren't even uncommon anymore, IMO.

But at least with 2.0.1, some of the legendaries will actually be useful.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

In the new patch I've had about one legendary or set item per playsession, roughly. I've gotten a set chest, legendary bracer, legendary bow (the one with spiny flaming thorns sticking out on either side, whatever it's called, it also had a socket), and a buriza, which I gave to my scoundrel since its stats were worse than the legendary.

Not sure I'd say the droprate is so high I'll be vendoring these in any mass quantities. What paragon level are you (if paragon levels still buff magic find)? I've gained a few paragons since the patch, and I can't exactly say I'm swimming in legendaries!

 

[Malo]

Still, they really aren't so "legendary" now are they?

 

[Grall]

What's the point of developers spending time on creating super legendary items including crafting unique models and textures which you the player will never see for the duration of your time spent in the game? I can't see any.

The idea that "I'm such a special snowflake because I had an uber-duper rare legendary randomly drop for me" is not a concept I'm a very big fan of.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

There was a very interesting Steam Developer Day talk:

I think a lot of the concepts here apply to where D3 failed in trying to monetize in-game transactions. The AH would have been fine if it was an additional part of the game. Instead D3 gimped the drops you got for your character in order to force the player to the AH so Blizzard could make more cash. The devs hurt the game and the player to make some more cash, and in doing so broke the game and drove the players away by making them unhappy. The fact that Blizzard had to backtrack so massively, and close the Auction House pretty much proves that.

 

[Jedi2016]

The idea that "I'm such a special snowflake because I had an uber-duper rare legendary randomly drop for me" is not a concept I'm a very big fan of.

You find "I'm such a special snowflake because I bought an uber-duper rare legendary on the Auction House" better?

 

[John Reynolds]

Still, they really aren't so "legendary" now are they?

Some are fantastic, but they drop on Torment difficulty. I've seen my clan members link some after playing T2-3 and they're build changers. You retool your entire character around the new drop, it's that good.

Best patch ever.

 

[Grall]

You find "I'm such a special snowflake because I bought an uber-duper rare legendary on the Auction House" better?

No, why would I?

I already said I find the new loot system much better than the original (which is what pretty much forced people to head to the AH if they wanted to acquire decent gear in any reasonable amount of time); pretty much the polar opposite of your ludicrous statement up there in the quote.