Diablo III - It's official

Malo informed me last night when we were playing that the +[poison/cold/fire/etc.] damage property on weapons doesn't get converted to the damage type of the skill you use. So I need to find a crossbow with +cold dmg or one that I can enchant to have that. Right now it does +poison so I'm losing out on a lot of the +39% cold damage I do.
 
I wonder if Malo's explanation was lost in translation.

Elemental damage on weapons is sadly irrelevant. I say sadly because it's very confusing until basically you're told that's the case. Also it makes rerolling damage off of a weapon (for a support build for example) a lot more time and resource consuming than it needs to be.

The reason for this is you don't actually attack with the weapon - rather the skill - which simply derives it's damage value from the weapon that you're holding. The skill itself has it's own elemental type which overrides the weapon.

There is one case in which it's used. If you have a legendary item effect which is gets its proc from that elemental type. i.e. giving your Templar a Thunderfury with lightning damage and a Wyrdward ring (which procs off lightning damage). It does this regardless of any skill/rune element.

TLDR:

1. Weapon damage is weapon damage, no matter the element. It really doesn't make a difference to your damage output.
2. Having +elemental % on your weapon is obviously good if it's of the right element.
3. Legendary item effects will proc off it, regardless of the skill / rune you're using. In practice this is rarely relevant outside of a couple of Templar builds.
 
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This is the Seasons Demon Hunter I was working on. I never really played my normal DH much but the Shadow Set I got from Seasons was quite different (uses a melee weapon!) and I've been enjoying playing her. Of course single targets go down very quickly with the 40,000% bonus damage from Impale LOL, so it's mostly been about building up area damage capability with Bolas and Fan of Knives (which is equally as ridiculous damage now with the new dagger).

Outside of season I've actually been playing one of my oldest characters, my WW Fire Barbarian. He was set aside for a long time as he was a very specific build that I enjoyed a lot but couldn't really progress much without changing him entirely. He is primarily built around the Razor Strop belt, which causes an explosion from him whenever he picks up a health globe. So his items and skills are all built round generating health globes as it combines as both damage and healing in one, and I just really enjoy spinning around on fire exploding everywhere. When he leaps into a mass of mobs, does his shout and a bunch of health globes spawn and and he starts exploding everywhere with bodies flying it's immensely satisfying.

I've finally got him doing some decent damage now both with the cube allowing more options as well as the Litany + Wailing set rings providing a big damage boost as I add Ancient items, since his build is about very specific items working well together. The profile currently has an alternative belt and boots than I want in the end, as they are not ancient and I need the damage. Eventually once I find/reforge ancient versions of Dread Iron belt and Firewalkers I'll finally be closer to my final build for my heavily thematic Fire barb. You'll notice that everything about him is fire-focused, including complete immunity and healing from Fire based attacks, which is very handy for the many fire-based elite specials.

I also previously had Solanium in my cube as my weapon power for the extra health globes on crits however to keep up damage on T7/8 currently I've instead gone with the Scourge power as it's providing some large burst area damage and fits my fire theme (apart from the green explosion). My hope is that once I have enough Ancient items, I'll be able to go back to Solanium. I'd also love to be able to get back to my large health globe pickup radius I had, which helps a lot as well.

Unfortunately it's taking a LOT of farming for bounties and legendaries for reforging (5x each act item + 50 souls each reforge!) and spending all my blood shards on trying to roll ancient versions of his equipment. So far it's not going well at all as I have not had a single replacement yet, many normal versions of those items.
 
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IIRC Solanium is getting quite a nerf in season six with an eight second internal cooldown timer on health globe spawns. :(
 
IIRC Solanium is getting quite a nerf in season six with an eight second internal cooldown timer on health globe spawns. :(
ugh really? Just as I find the new Skull Grasp with 400% WW dmg this morning in my cube ring slot and put Solanium back in weapon slot. Damn the people that abuse these things.
 
Just wondered what Diablo players think of Grim Dawn ?

Quite significantly better than Diablo III. It's closer to Diablo 2 (fantastic) than Diablo 3 (OK-ish).

I still play D3 occasionally at the start of each season. But I still play D2 far more than I play D3.

Regards,
SB
 
But I still play D2 far more than I play D3.
Gods! Why?
I really don't understand the D2 nostalgia. Seriously, it was not THAT a good game that it lasts for 16 years. Its reliance on mana leeching to power your skills (and random drops to provide the leeching) means I just can't get back into it again. A few years ago I tried to make a new character and lasted until act 3 normal I think and then I gave up. Fucking ran out of mana ALL the fucking time, so tedious.
 
That's just one of the reasons I like it. D3 is far too casual and easy mode. I get to actually think bout my builds in D2. If I want something easier I can make something easier. If I want something themed I can make something themed. If I want an all strength Sorceror or Necromancer in platemail I can do that. Speaking of which, armor actually matters. Along with a breastplate doesn't take up the same freaking space in inventory as a pair of gloves. I was actually EXTREMELY happy when I saw that "loot tetris" was intact with Grim Dawn. Weapons being able to have more than 1 socket. Hell I've mentioned in the past many times why D2 is, IMO, far far FAR superior to the rather mediocre D3. D3 has gotten better in some ways and worse in others since launch. But it's still a pale shadow compared to D3. Again, IMO, opinions will, of course, vary.

Skill builds and synergies require far more thought and consideration in D2 as well, Torment X isn't all that difficult. You can easily be doing G-rift 70+ within the first 1-2 weeks depending on class of the season. D2 is far more interesting for someone that wants more than just a simplistic hack and slash. In many ways it's like how some people prefer COD: MP (D3) to Battlefield: MP (D2). :p Some people like something simple and relatively mindless, yet still requiring some level of skill. Others want something more.

Regards,
SB
 
I agree that D3 should have difficulties higher than T10.

And don't get me wrong, Grim Dawn is super fun, but the character builds seemed very basic "shoot magic missile, shoot more powerful magic missile etc." at least that's how it was for my Arcanist. Compared to D3 and the myriad ways you can combine sets and legendaries and the Cube and gems to make unique and satisfying death machines, I felt Grim Dawn was a big step backward.
 
This new patch looks amazing. My DH gets a huge buff! Actually there's huge buffs all around! This is awesome!
 
D3 has been ludicrously buffed just in the last year. None of my characters could even do T3 easily (one or two could survive T3 for the most part unless waller/frozen+sentry or similar, but it was HELLA slow going) before the Kanai cube patch, and now I just blow straight through T6 mobs with several of my chars... :p

When is this patch coming out then?
 
Patch came out today. Yeah the power creep (jump) has been insane over the last year.
 
Yep malo and I just did a 58 and my bro and I did a 60 earlier. Couldn't even think about that a year ago.
 
Did a couple of grifts this morning levelling some gems on my frost leap barb and an Ancient Little Rogue sword dropped with nice rolls. Never seen that one before and reading up it's very rare. Would love to have the pair to play with my WW barb.
 
Blew though all of Seasons Journey Chapters 1-4 in a few hours on the first day and got too bored to do more (have parts of Chapters 5-8 done already as well). Maybe I'll pick it up again in a couple weeks to get the extra stash space, but I just lack the motivation for it. There's virtually no challenge in the game until you get to around Greater Rift 70+ (solo) or 100+ (in a group).

Regards,
SB
 
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