Diablo III - It's official

[PixResearch]

Ridiculously easy depending on what class, skills and runes you use, and what drops you get. If all you get is shit gear then it's not going to be easy regardless, and quite possible too considering the extreme randomness of diablo drops.

This really shouldn't be an issue on normal - something's not right...

BTW, this comment isn't about being a good or bad player but simply ytouy shouldn't be dieing much on normal since it's essentially a tutorial for the game. Aside from the very end bosses which could catch you out if you stand in their abilities for too long and the odd pack which could surprise you most mobs should die pretty easily. I bet there's a decent percentage of people who went through normal without dieing once - anything more than 50 deaths for the whole playthrough must be pretty unusual. More than say 20 would be a bit of a surprise tbh.

Only thing I can think of is you've missed something fundamental...

1) Do you realise you can drink health pots (bound to Q iirc).

2) You can hire helpers in the starting area of each act - they come with you and fight for you/heal you during single player. If you dismiss them you'll have to re-hire them.

3) You can equip items not only on your character but also the person you hire.

4) Your free signature ability/spell (left mouse button) is reasonably good. You don't need to rely on the other expensive spells/abilities and then wait for your magic/rage/energy to refill before you can attack again.

 

[Grall]

Thanks for the noob advice, but I'm not an idiot. And no, I certainly idn't die 50 times, don't know where you got that from.

Several deaths came from lag spikes, and some from nothing but what I'd call poor game balance, where Blizzard's talk about many viable builds just isn't true. I'm a pretty fair gamer all around, and I clocked D2 many many many many times, using all classes except the barb (which just didn't do it for me personally), on all difficulty levels. The only areas of that game I had problems with were those almost everyone had problems with, IE teleporting MSLEB Hephasto, hell knight packs cursing you and your minions with iron maiden, multi-resistant random bosses and things of that nature.

D3 is simply wonky, where some classes and builds just aren't effective enough. Not neccessarily from a damage standpoint, but a survival one. Ranged damage dealers in particular are way too powerful vs. a player.

 

[RobertR1]

In regard to difficulty, I finished Nightmare and it was mostly a breeze. My Wizard build was mainly for DPS and I used passives to enhance my DPS and Venom Hydra as additional point of DPS.

It's on on the Act 4 bosses I had to switch things up to lower DPS and higher vitality.

Act 1 Hell is much more difficult than going from Normal to Nightmare.

I've have to really refocus my build to armor, resistance AND DPS. Nothing can be ignored, it would seem. It's the first time in the game I've felt like I need Follower assistance. After making a bunch of changes Act 1 Hell is now manageable. I'm have armor upto 52% and DPS around 4,600.

Loot drops are finally starting to get better. They were absolute shit in Normal and Nightmare.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Agreed with the difficulty from nightmare to hell. Nightmare was a breeze with the right items but Hell puts even more emphasis on the right gear. Its a shame about the item drops since in nightmare you hardly or never get any "to all resistance" items, creeps in hell just kill you over and over (god those laser beams and meteor drops). Not to mention those flying bugs in ACT II and the trees in ACT I..

Im beginning to feel that barbs really need shields in higher difficulties which is a shame unless you fit yourself with life leech items, although Ive not seen many.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Life leech isn't all that hard to find, it's just not really all that good either. It's not going to keep you alive by itself. I have 3% lifetap on my weapon and over 19000 dps, it heals me for very little, it's probably slightly better than having a regen 150 stat or something.

 

[RobertR1]

Yeah Cookie. The arcane sentrys suck.

I started hell, got into the Forest of Act 1 and had 3 elite jumpers who would, freeze, pull me in and then drop arcane sentrys.

It was simply not doable. I couldn't kite due to their speed and leap ability.

I exited the game, came back in and thankfully they didn't repawn. Oh and each one had close to 100k hp with fast regen. BROKEN gameand as evident by earlier posts, blizzard are boastful about their lack of playtesting.

I have a mental obsession to hit 60. Sadly, thats my only reasoning to Keep playing.

 

[PixResearch]

Thanks for the noob advice, but I'm not an idiot. And no, I certainly idn't die 50 times, don't know where you got that from.

Wasn't intended to be sarcastic... When you say that normal is gear/build/class depedent you're either complaining about nothing or doing something wrong. I assumed the latter but evidently it's the former. Was an attempt to help in case you were genuinely having a hard time in normal (which you might have been).

 

[Grall]

More than 95% of the time in normal I have had no problem whatsoever, it's the corner cases where difficulty just spikes irrationally high that annoy me. Like when Izual freezes my wizard first thing he does almost as soon as the fight starts and two-shots me, even though I was actually running away from him when I got frozen.

It's not that I couldn't get past those points (I have; I'm well into act 1 nightmare now after buying some gear on the AH), it's that it's not fun when the difficulty curve is so uneven and unpredictable. It shows the game is unpolished and badly designed, despite taking six years to complete.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Mirror Image will break you out of freeze, diamond skin or energy armor with force rune will prevent you from getting 2 shot.

 

[liolio]

More than 95% of the time in normal I have had no problem whatsoever, it's the corner cases where difficulty just spikes irrationally high that annoy me. Like when Izual freezes my wizard first thing he does almost as soon as the fight starts and two-shots me, even though I was actually running away from him when I got frozen.

It's not that I couldn't get past those points (I have; I'm well into act 1 nightmare now after buying some gear on the AH), it's that it's not fun when the difficulty curve is so uneven and unpredictable. It shows the game is unpolished and badly designed, despite taking six years to complete.

I've the same issue with my wiz, actually there are jump in difficulty in different acts or encounters that require a different skills selection. I solo it takes a while to find the one that works. I'm not a good gamer and when usually when I shift a lot of skills I need time to adapt. Usually that translate in death. But that's my whole fault.
Thing is when it works I die too because I grow over confident.
Since the end of act three (now in act IV) I've been mostly meleeing, at that difficulty level it works well (crystal armor, frost nova, ice armor, magic weapon, spell blades, blizzard / Blur, evocation and cold blood). Still I die because of my play style bad luck or a bit too confidence, I'm stuck in cool down and boom dead.

Still I've no complain. I can see how thing would get better with a henchmen and how it would allow for a more diverse skills selections. I decided to solo to my first walk through, it's not the way the game is intended to be played though it's doable.

I should find out about nightmare soon I don't plan to solo and I know that I'm going to have to kite a lot more. With regard to the boss you're speaking about I don't but in normal I found out that if I ran away too far from Rakanoth he would teleport on me and "one shot me".
By remaining closer at least when he still did I could see it coming and trigger crystal skin.

Don't know but I won't play alone (or less) in nightmare and beyond.
Do you use auction house? I don't but in normal my blacksmith does me mice items (often better than drop) I " underuse" him early on, still does to a lesser extend.

Overall my main complain about the game is lag, I've a bit of lag and lag spikes... are the difference between a dead and an alive wizzie.

I would have also hope Blizzard to have introduce a spectator option. I enjoyed it on online and looking at how the game is working it would definitely have been doable.

Back to the game

EDIT

hum... no... updating now...

EDIT
Fuck battle.net is down... first I face the issue... mightily bothering I had few time to enjoy before working... They definitely have done better with the always online implementation. It's too intrusive.

 

[RobertR1]

Mirror Image will break you out of freeze, diamond skin or energy armor with force rune will prevent you from getting 2 shot.

I haven't unlocked Energy with Force Rune yet. There is NOTHING I could have done to beat the Elite pack I encountered and this is from a build that basically walked through Nightmare. I'd understand if this build didn't carry all the way through Hell but at the first real encounter of Act 1 on Hell, come on....

Diamond Skin was wearing off quickly against their damage output. The only option I had to goto AH and get the highest spec weapons and armor I could. I did just that and went back into the game but they didn't spawn the 2nd time around. Funny enough, the rest of Act 1 (so far) has been manageable aside from that shitty encounter.

 

[Grall]

Mirror Image will break you out of freeze, diamond skin or energy armor with force rune will prevent you from getting 2 shot.

That's nice to know and thank you for the information, but I don't use any of those skills (they don't feel fun to me). I personally believe I shouldn't be shoehorned into a particular skillset/build to get by specific points in the game, and from what Blizzard has SAID, that's not what they want either. Doesn't quite seem to be the case though. Izzy being able to freeze you and kill you in mere moments after the fight starts doesn't seem quite fair to me.

My demon hunter had a much easier time with Izzy than my wiz, since I just vaulted away when I saw the freeze grenades appear or when he yelled that he was starting to cast his frost nova thing/spell. Once I caught the backdraft of the frost nova thingy at the extreme edge of its reach, but I thawed out before he managed to reach me so it wasn't any real danger. As long as he can't freeze me he isn't hard at all.

I took him down and then the endboss* too with my DH using just the crap drops I had found, including level 22 & 25 hand crossbows when my character was level 33... >_< That gear didn't get me far in nightmare though. I did buy new crossbows though, and a cape, and those upgrades alone buffed me enough to not have much of a problem in act 1 anymore, I took down skelly king no problem and all the random rares too before him.

*Edit: should I just say the act 4 endboss is

Spoiler

Diablo

and be done with it? Is it really a secret anymore, if it ever really was?

 

[liolio]

I haven't unlocked Energy with Force Rune yet. There is NOTHING I could have done to beat the Elite pack I encountered and this is from a build that basically walked through Nightmare. I'd understand if this build didn't carry all the way through Hell but at the first real encounter of Act 1 on Hell, come on....

Diamond Skin was wearing off quickly against their damage output. The only option I had to goto AH and get the highest spec weapons and armor I could. I did just that and went back into the game but they didn't spawn the 2nd time around. Funny enough, the rest of Act 1 (so far) has been manageable aside from that shitty encounter.

Question is the amount of damage Crystal skin can soak up scale as you change difficulty?
Because less than 3000hit points should go down fast in higher difficulty setting.

 

[Grall]

Since the end of act three (now in act IV) I've been mostly meleeing

Whoah. Melee wizard? That's hardore!

 

[liolio]

Whoah. Melee wizard? That's hardore!

Well I raised my vitality significantly lately.
But Frost nova with Shatter does great on horde of enemies as the odds are that one of them will trigger a new one. I cast Blizzard just ahead of me to raise the DPS and trying to avoid being surrounded.
With champions I skite with Blizzard, when most of them are down I get closer.
I invest a lot of skills on pretty passive skills; ice armor, magic weapon, blur, evocation.
Cold blood as a nice synergy with ice armor, and blizzard and up my dps too. they have to go down fast (spell blase does nice damages).
Blizzard is for now my only spell that actually really use my arcane power pool.

NB for azmodan one of those spell for the hydra (too convinient for boss battle). But so far I took down the two first demon in a pretty hand to hand fashion. I don't expect to be able to do that during the whole act IV though even less looking to higher difficulty settings. But it's definitely fun.

 

[RobertR1]

My Wizard is mainly a magic missile/hydra damage dealer also. The rest of the skills are for damage boost and/or survivability.

When I have co-op with friends, I'll switch it upto cool elemental skills but this seems like the only real way to play solo and not die around every corner.

 

[RobertR1]

Question is the amount of damage Crystal skin can soak up scale as you change difficulty?
Because less than 3000hit points should go down fast in higher difficulty setting.

Yes it goes up. I'm not sure if it's related to your level or vitality points though. Not sure how it scales.

Also, I noticed that for some reason Storm armor sucks. It wasn't providing the damage return properly and was pretty useless.

Energy Armor is a must in later parts of Nightmare and for sure, Hell.

 

[AlphaWolf]

My Wizard is mainly a magic missile/hydra damage dealer also. The rest of the skills are for damage boost and/or survivability.

When I have co-op with friends, I'll switch it upto cool elemental skills but this seems like the only real way to play solo and not die around every corner.

Are you running Archon? A lot of people I've run into think it sucks because of the long cd, but it's godly when there's tough packs or large spawns of mobs (archon runs 1 second longer for each mob you kill), it increases your defenses as well as your offense.

I will say it tends to kill me killed at times because you can't cast a defense while its up, but usually a health potion is enough to keep me alive with it through a tough combo and you should be able to force out some health bubbles with it.

 

[John Reynolds]

At 48 I just got a rune that changes disintegrate into a 45 degree spray rather than a single long beam. Very nice if mobs close on you, but I prefer the higher range and nova blast for mobs that start to melee me. I'm close to the end of NM, so in Hell I'll probably end up filling my 1-4 bar with defensive skills and my mouse buttons with offensive.

 

[Kaotik]

Yes it goes up. I'm not sure if it's related to your level or vitality points though. Not sure how it scales.

Also, I noticed that for some reason Storm armor sucks. It wasn't providing the damage return properly and was pretty useless.

Energy Armor is a must in later parts of Nightmare and for sure, Hell.

Never used energy armor, and apparently my gear sucks too, in late parts of Act 1 Hell now.

I currently use Shock Pulse (Piercing Orb rune), Ray of Frost (Cold Blood rune), Diamond Skin (Crystal Shell rune), Hydra (Venom Hydra rune), Teleport (Fracture rune) and Frost Nova (Cold Snap rune), coupled with Blur, Astral Presence and Glass Cannon (in case of too hard elite/boss/whatever I'll switch Glass Cannon to Illusionist)