Game: Diablo III

[KoKo37]

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/

Blizzard put a teaser picture up on the front page a few days ago, and after some speculation of what game it was, it's announced that it is Diablo III.

I'm very excited at this, I remember all the good times playing Diablo II and the hours upon hours I spent on item finding. I haven't been playing too much PC games recently, but with D3 and SC2 announced, that should change whenever they are released.


Diablo 3 Comprehensive Information FAQ. (http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=930659&topic=44065088)


http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/5006/12146520166002222223ky0.jpg

[BioAlien]

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

My god.. I never thought I would see the day when Diablo 3 would be announced...
This is the best video game related news I have heard since Starcraft II.

But.. What could be left after Diablo II ? What kind of demon will Blizzard take out of Hell for our pleasure?
(The site is not really Opera compatible.. It works with IE though..)

So far, I'm a bit disappointed by the red orb system thing.. I fear it might make the game too easy...
But at least there are some great addition, like ladders, awesome traps with loots, destructible environment, kill enemies with collapsing walls, massive swarm of enemies... etc...

Bwhahaha Cain still live! This seems to take place 20 years after Diablo II.. he just don't die.
"Stay a while and ____*
"It is time for shedding our enemies' blood, not idle talk."
"Aww no ones ever listen.."

I wonder who that girl in the teaser was... she looked like an important character...

Love the fact that we can now choose between Female and Male for each class. I hated being restricted to male/female only class...

[IFHTT]

Sweet, I've been waiting for this for a long time.

I only hope that this installment of the series will provide as many hours of enjoyment as its predecessors.

[KoKo37]

So far, I'm a bit disappointed by the red orb system thing.. I fear it might make the game... too easy...
But at least there are some great addition, like ladders, awesome traps with loots after, destructible environment, kill enemies with collapsing walls..

Bwhahaha Cain is still alive! This seems to take place many years after Diablo II, as Cain seems much older now.
"Stay a while and ____*
"It is time for shedding our enemies' blood, not idle talk." "Aww no ones ever listen.."
The red orb worries me a bit as well, but as long as they don't heal too much, too fast, or appear too often it should be fine, and I agree the destructible environment looks great, it should add some more interactivity into the game. I also got a chuckle out of that conversation with Deckard Cain.


And you're right about it taking place many years after Diablo II, in the FAQ is says :
It has been twenty years since the events of Diablo II. Of those who faced the Lords of Hatred, Terror, and Destruction in the battle over the fate of Sanctuary, there are few still living who can bear to remember the horrors that the Prime Evils wrought upon the world. And of those who did not witness the terrible events firsthand, most believe the stories to be little more than myth. But something evil is stirring once again in Tristram, and it may already have claimed its first victim: Deckard Cain.


Man I'm excited about this game, maybe we could make a GotWoot clan in the future :D.

Edit : Oh, and I forgot to comment on it, but the boss biting the head off of the Barbarian in real time near the end of the game play trailer was awesome, hopefully there'll be a lot of detailed deaths like that in the game-- at least in the boss fights anyways.

[Animeniax]

Any word on when this game will actually be ready?

I didn't play the first Diablo as I wasn't into gaming at the time. Then when Diablo II came out, I heard too many reviews calling it a disappointment and saying how repetitive it was, so I didn't try it. I imagine they fixed any complaints in this new game.

[Kraco]

Hmm... You still see Diablo II in bargain bins regularly. I wonder if I should check it out. It's certainly a well known title but for some reason I never played neither the first nor the second. Back then I didn't play RPGs that much at all (not on computers anyway).

[animus]

They stated that it's only gonna have 5 character classes and since Barbarian and Witch Doctor are already revealed, there's only 3 left. Meh, seems like a crappy amount of variety. I would've preferred them to have implemented all of D2's classes and then some.

[KrayZ33]

They stated that it's only gonna have 5 character classes and since Barbarian and Witch Doctor are already revealed, there's only 3 left. Meh, seems like a crappy amount of variety. I would've preferred them to have implemented all of D2's classes and then some.

I hope the other 3 classes are:

Assassin (we need something sneaky and dark)
Paladin ( fighting against evil without a "holy" class? IMPOSSIBLE)
Mage (we need more magic!)

I have trust in blizzard, but I really hope that at least the paladin and assassin are playable... but since they don't have a physical-range-class yet, one class is pretty much going to be the Amazone... :( I want my Paladin and Assassin 8[ blizzard, don't fail me and do what I say!

Or maybe they reveal another new class... like a rogue which is able to use daggers/bows with poison etc.

[python862]

I don't think Blizz wants us to confuse Diablo with Warcraft, so I'm thinking that if they do have a rogue or mage class, it's going to be quite different than what you're talking about. I'm eager to get caught up in the storylines again.

[Animeniax]

Linking the two games could mean more success if kids do confuse the two, or decide to give the other a try since they enjoy one so much. A player who finishes Diablo III could see WoW as a way to continue developing his character, or vice versa.

[KrayZ33]

I don't think Blizz wants us to confuse Diablo with Warcraft, so I'm thinking that if they do have a rogue or mage class, it's going to be quite different than what you're talking about. I'm eager to get caught up in the storylines again.

I'm talking about d2 classes and not WoW classes... the assassin was very powerfull (if not the most powerfull class) with a lot of poison charms and I'm just saying that I want something like that again... a martial arts-class, which is also playable with a bow + traps (trapsin)...well ya ok, since you threw warcraft in: pretty much like the hunter in WoW just without a pet and focussed on poison.
I don't like the amazon from d2, thats why I hope they combine the two classes.

btw I just said "mage" because I don't know how to spell "sorcerer" (d2 class) ^^

and the paladin was/is the coolest class in d2... big shield, heavy armor and god-given-powaaaaaaarrrgh

he's the perfect class to combine magic with physical skills.


The witchdoctor is btw just another name for "necromancer".... pretty much the same skills..the only difference is that he has firemagic and not bone-magic.

[Sandldan]

Linking the two games could mean more success if kids do confuse the two, or decide to give the other a try since they enjoy one so much. A player who finishes Diablo III could see WoW as a way to continue developing his character, or vice versa.
I dont see that ever happening since any game Blizzard make is destined to be a great seller by now, and that is thanks to the quality of their games and the service that follows. Cant ever imagine that blizzard would be linking two different worlds together so that maybe some more kids will buy their games, they simply dont need it they will buy them anyways

[Death BOO Z]

Diablo 2 introduced skill trees, meanningful difrencess between charecters and broader, more vaired fields of action.
I didn't catch anything special about the third game. the site didn't say anything, but that's not so suprising, the game won't be released until 2012, at best.

also, I hate the site. I hate everysite that works with moving gifs and flash.

[KrayZ33]

PC 2 weak? at least blizzard-sites don't need to load 5 minutes like some others... GRAW/LP/Overlord and so on.

I like it and all their other sites too (especially sc2)

[Raven]

Yaaay, this is the best gaming news I've heard in a long time, and D3 is now my most anticipated game.

I was obsessed with Diablo 2 back in the day and even these days from time to time I will reinstall it and mess around with my old characters. My friends and I would even hold dedicated LANs just to play it 24/7, back when we were at university. So much fun and a true lifestyle of the time for many.

It looks like they've done everything right this time around - the gameplay video looks amazing, I especially like the idea of the destructible environments. The boss battles looked impressive, and the boss one-shotting that Barbarian by biting his head off was a surprise, that will add another edge to all boss battles if they can do that.

Hmm, lots of people at various forums are saying they'll quit WoW for this, I wonder how many players WoW will lose. With D3 and SC2, who can tell? I know I will, WoW just needed something special to pry me away.


They stated that it's only gonna have 5 character classes and since Barbarian and Witch Doctor are already revealed, there's only 3 left. Meh, seems like a crappy amount of variety. I would've preferred them to have implemented all of D2's classes and then some.
You realize Diablo 2 only had 5 classes originally, right? They'll most likely add more in an expansion pack or something, they won't just leave them out.

[KrayZ33]

The boss battles looked impressive, and the boss one-shotting that Barbarian by biting his head off was a surprise, that will add another edge to all boss battles if they can do that.

I think this was just a fatality blow... he was going to die with the next hit

I don't think you can get caught with full health, that would be kinda unfair and add too much luck into a boss fight.

But I like it very much too. this way its more fun to play with friends. because you get to see something like this more often... this is truely not a singleplayer game anymore in my opinion... everyone who plays this alone is wasting its potential

[animus]

Yaaay, this is the best gaming news I've heard in a long time, and D3 is now my most anticipated game.

I was obsessed with Diablo 2 back in the day and even these days from time to time I will reinstall it and mess around with my old characters. My friends and I would even hold dedicated LANs just to play it 24/7, back when we were at university. So much fun and a true lifestyle of the time for many.

It looks like they've done everything right this time around - the gameplay video looks amazing, I especially like the idea of the destructible environments. The boss battles looked impressive, and the boss one-shotting that Barbarian by biting his head off was a surprise, that will add another edge to all boss battles if they can do that.

Hmm, lots of people at various forums are saying they'll quit WoW for this, I wonder how many players WoW will lose. With D3 and SC2, who can tell? I know I will, WoW just needed something special to pry me away.


You realize Diablo 2 only had 5 classes originally, right? They'll most likely add more in an expansion pack or something, they won't just leave them out.

What I meant was both D2 and it's expansion. But then again I would've preferred them having totally new unique classes instead of re-implementing the barbarian.

[skindred]

Best news for me today. yipeee!

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4612389/Diablo_III_Launching_May_15_%E2%80%93_Digital_Pre-Sales_NOW_OPEN-3_15_2012#blog

can anyone confirm this please? I'm a bit drunk right now, gotta go to sleep.

[Penner]

It's official, i preordered mine like an hour ago.

[darkshadow]

You pre-ordered a digital release? Oh lord....

[Penner]

I dislike physical copies of games, and the price difference of getting it retail was like 9$ or some such, i might aswell just get the digital one.

And while i don't get any actual benefit of pre-ordering it digitally, the same goes for waiting until release and then ordering it, so whats the point in waiting?

[oyabun]

I'm getting a physical copy. I like seeing my collection of games on my shelf. We are kinda celebrating here in my office how the release date has been officially announced. yey!

[gos27]

Can't wait for this, never played any of the others as they weren't really in my time, but this looks great, love these type of games :)

[TwisT]

I play World of Warcraft and they had an annual pass deal that lets you sign up for 12 month WoW subscription and you would receive Diablo 3 digital, an in-game mount in WoW and a beta key for the next WoW expansion (although i think they should have given us D3 beta instead >_<) when that launches. So i've already had D3 on my list of games on battle.net for a while. The 1 advantage it gives us that pre-order it digitally is that we get pre-download it so it's ready to go once the servers come up.

I'm with Penner. Physical copies are just a bother. I end up downloading it anyways from steam/origin/battle.net rather then installing it with the disc. And you get nothing with a physical copy that is useful in anyway unless you get a collectors edition. What i still don't get is why is it so much more expensive to buy digitally rather then a physical.

A physical copy needs a disc to be pressed, a case (and many times a big carton box) and a big ass manual. On top of that all parts need to be shipped to the same place to be assembled into the box you buy in a store (unless they make all of that on the same location). Then it needs to ship all over the world to middlemen that in their turn ship it to retailers. And in the end you can still DOWNLOAD by inserting the product key in to steam/origin/battle.net. A digital copy only needs to be downloaded and the only cost is the bandwidth (that shouldn't even count since physical buyers can use that too). So what is making digital cost around 25% more then a physical?

[KrayZ33]

What i still don't get is why is it so much more expensive to buy digitally rather then a physical.


where and when is that the case?
even steam is cheaper thanks to deals, because most shops will always sell at the Suggested retail price(the same goes for steam btw when the game is not on sale)

if you buy the games on key-sites its *alot* cheaper though
around 33-50%...


A physical copy needs a disc to be pressed, a case (and many times a big carton box) and a big ass manual.

How I wish it were true.
the smell, the stories written in there, the pictures...

games don't have that anymore, witcher 2 is probably one of the few recent games which has the things you mentioned

[darkshadow]

Yeah, MW3 and every other COD really is cheaper online...oh wait no they aren't.
MW3 is still 60 euros online (steam), while I can get a boxed copy for 30, in fact the elite edition would cost me 50.
Steam deals are the only things that are worth it digitally, cause new releases are always the same as retail price or even higher.
I mean I got Batman arkham city CE at retail for 60, the standard edition is now 20 at retail...guess how much it still is on steam? full price 50 euros.
Plus a disc installs in 15-30 minutes, I don't generally download 11-30GB's in that speed.

I rolleyed at penner's pre-order, because pre-orders are a means of ensuring you are getting your copy, digital releases will never run out so a pre-order is almost like an oxymoron; especially seeing how no retail preorder deals have been disclosed yet.

Oh and most games I've bought recently have manuals with pictures and story...but yeah I guess it's a declining trend.

[KrayZ33]

steam
lol
steam sold AoE3 as a deal for 20(?)€ even though you were able to download it for free (or 10cent) on gog or Windows live (can't remember) months before the deal.

and if you don't buy on amazon but at shops where they sell games among other things it will probably cost around 50-60€ too.

don't know about gamestop etc.

http://www.intkeys.com/index.php?main_page=index&zenid=rja8sajsvvchahk22vohj4h6c3

mw3 @ 16€ atm

[darkshadow]

Cute how you went on an editing spree to justify your "lol steam" reply


steam
lol
steam selled AoE3 as a deal for 20(?)€ even though you were able to download it for free (or 10cent) on gog or Windows live (can't remember) months before the deal.


More like Digital releases lol:
Retail
BAC 20 normal
MW3 30 normal

gamersgate
BAC 50 normal/ no deal
MW3 NOT AVAILABLE

gamestop PC
BAC 40 normal/ 20 deal

Gamesplanet
BAC 50 normal/ 40 deal
MW3 60 normal/ 40 deal

GMG
BAC 50 normal/ 40 deal
MW3 50 normal/ 44 deal

getgames
BAC 50 normal/ no deal
MW3 NOT AVAILABLE

Desura (intkeys)
BAC 16 normal ( till they run out)
MW3 40 normal/ 16 deal (till they run out)

GoG
BAC NOT AVAILABLE
MW3 NOT AVAILABLE

GFWL
BAC 50 normal/ no deal
MW3 NOT AVAILABLE

Gaikai
BAC NOT AVAILABLE
MW3 NOT AVAILABLE

onlive
BAC 50 normal/ 25 deal
MW3 NOT AVAILABLE

As you can see only one outlet gave reasonable pricing, and they run out of keys; MW3 even requires the user to setup a VPN because the key won't work otherwise, and regardless of how easy that may be, it's still annoying.
And even then I still need to wait a lot longer to actually download the files, while said retail disc installs in a fraction of the time.



and if you don't buy on amazon but at shops where they sell games among other things it will probably cost around 50-60€ too.

don't know about gamestop etc.


...I couldn've sworn I adressed this in my previous post? Comparing digital to retail, and I'm not from the US, didn't me using euros not make that clear? So no Amazon or Gamestop.

[KrayZ33]

Cute how you went on an editing spree to justify your "lol steam" reply

well I decided to add some reasons, sry.
I edit my comments like 20 times *after* I posted it btw, it turned out to be a habit of mine to post stuff before reading it again. just like I'd do in a chat.


...I couldn've sworn I adressed this in my previous post? Comparing digital to retail, and I'm not from the US, didn't me using euros not make that clear? So no Amazon or Gamestop.

wtf are you talking about?
whenever I go to the next shop in germany where they sell games, like "Müller" or "Karstadt", MW3 will cost me ~50€
If I go to intkeys, the game will cost me 16€
thats it, nothing to add.
if its a deal or not doesn't matter, you won't have those deals in your store around the corner here
I've yet to see a store which is cheaper than a key-store.

Amazon is probably the cheapest place to buy games whenever you want the box in Germany.
both BAC and MW3 cost over 30€ there,

to sum it up:

Price: Store>Amazon(+co.uk retailers)>Keysites


which brings me back to the question

where and when is that the case?

country and time after release?

[oyabun]

Battlefield 3 on origin cost $60 dollars on launch but I got my physical Limited Edition copy on a local retail store for only 1600 pesos, that's around $37 dollars. All the other games I have seen on steam/origin is always more expensive than the physical copy. I too does not get why the digital copy is much expensive.

[LaZie]

From Friday, April 20 at 12:01 p.m. PDT (noon), until Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT you'll be able to log in, team up with friends, and play each of the five heroic classes to level 13 as you fight to save the world from the impending demonic invasion.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/4963739

[TwisT]

Was just gonna post this. Almost done with the beta download. Only like 10 hours left until it starts now.

BTW do you guys have any idea what you gonna play as your first character yet when the game release is here? I'm gonna play a Witch Doctor if this beta play-trough don't change my mind. I thought i was gonna play Demon Hunter at first but the more i have thought about it i decided to play WD instead. But i also have an open mind about Wizard. All i know is that my first is not gonna be a melee.

[KrayZ33]

Demon Hunter
or Babarian

most likely Demon Hunter though, because I prefer range classes.

[vejita613]

Just got finished playing through as Monk. Took me about 3 hours. Really enjoyed it though. It's been a while since I've played D2, took me a bit to get used to, but it was fun.

[shinta|hikari]

I completed Demon Huntress, Witch Doctor, and Monk (all female models) on Diablo 3 beta.

I love the Demon Huntress look and skills. Balanced and useful.
Witch doctor was great at mobs, but it was a pain killing Leoric because he teleports to you. I actually died once (due to my own lack of attention) but never even got hit when using the demon huntress (Leoric gets stunned...)
The monk attacks look cool, but it was all glitchy when I was using her. I leveled far faster and was fighting tougher enemies even though I was not doing multiplayer. Must have been a glitch that caused the system to think I was playing with a party even though I was solo with the game not open to the public.

[Penner]

Played it during the weekend and pretty much confirmed the character choices i already had in mind for release, gonna go with Barb as my first character and Monk as second.

Game ran really well on my 2½ year old pc, but thats nothing really surprising since Blizzard games are known to run pretty well on damn near every system ^_^

[darkshadow]

As if 2.5 years is a lot. The 360 is almost 7 years old you know..

[Penner]

In PC terms i consider 2.5 years without an upgrade quite long, and my pc wasn't really high-end to begin with, and since i haven't owned a console since the PS2 i couldn't care less about those.

[darkshadow]

It doesn't matter if you "couldn't care less about those", the industry is console driven and diablo 3's graphical fidelity is in line with "console graphics".
Unless it's a game from creative assembly or crytek, it's foolish to think a 2.5 y/o system would be outdated in a 7 year old industry.

[shinta|hikari]

Monk is really tough to use. Barb is as easy as it ever was. Wiz damage is just so broken. Good thing they are glass cannons.

Definitely Demon Hunter when the servers go live.

[Y]

I played the open beta, which is really more of a demo. Unfortunately you really don't get far enough into the skill/rune system to experience any interesting choices or whatever, but it does seem reasonably deep and accessible (and I definitely had more powers at level 10 in D3 than I did at level 10 in D2). It seems like they overreacted to people bitching about how colorful the original previews were, because Act 1 looks like it's taking place at midnight during a goth convention.

[Archangel]

Can anyone hook me up with a trial code? No way i can afford it at 60$ right now but i'd like to give it a try, if nothing else at least to see what all the hype's about.

[Assertn]

Can anyone hook me up with a trial code? No way i can afford it at 60$ right now but i'd like to give it a try, if nothing else at least to see what all the hype's about.

Why didn't you play a few weekends back when it was open?
I dunno. Two hours in and all I had been doing was clicking the left mouse button. Over and over and over.
It doesn't even feel like there's much of a tactical difference between the classes. They all have the same pick and choose of range, aoe, freezing spells, etc.

[Dark Dragon]

I think people expectations were a bit too high. It's Diablo through and through. You right click, shit dies and loot drops.
I'm enjoying Monk right now with the different combos, but the game really is too easy so far. I think i need to play on hardcore mode now that i got level 10.

Was watching some pro-gaming stream where they were doing hardcore 4 man runs and it looks pretty frantic, so i think that's the way to go if you're not enjoying the game.

[shinta|hikari]

Blizzard dropped the ball with all the access issues.

[Dark Dragon]

This is pretty much how it was with Starcraft 2 at launch. It's a shame but i pretty much expects this for every major release that requires online.

[Xollence]

I've been able to get on without any real issues except last night.

[gos27]

Man I fucking love this game! I chose the Demon Hunter class and I'm on level 18, ACT 2. Didn't play Diablo 1/2 so this is kinda new to me, had an idea I'd like this game though as I enjoy the style. I say I'll clock a lot more time on this as I want to try some of the other classes too :)

Oh and I wouldn't call it that easy. Fair enough ACT 1 is piss, especially if you're playing co-op, but so far I've been playing ACT 2 on my own and I notice it's a lot more difficult.

[Animeniax]

I'm a level 11 monk and I'm disappointed in the lack of attack options. Is this the same for all the classes early on? I was hoping the monk would have some magic casting abilities, otherwise he's mostly a nimble warrior type.

[shinta|hikari]

Level 37 Demon Huntress, and the nightmare difficulty is a lot easier in D3 than D2, mainly because the death penalty is so cheap.

[Dark Dragon]

Yep, 36 Monk here and i'm kinda breezing through Nightmare.

@Animeniax
You need to get to around level 25 to have your full attack range available for like every class.
Go to the option > gameplay and turn on "Elective Mode". This will allow you to fully customize and equip any skill to any slot.

In my opinion, this game has potential for more depth than D2. There isn't a "wrong" or "right" build and everything else is inferior. I've gotten good result mix and matching several set of abilities and some have great synergy. So far I've done Tank/Single target DPS/AOE wave clearing/Aura + heal/Enemy debuff focus with monk and i can see a few more set of skill combos to try once i learned all of the runes.

Monk is also interesting because each of the primary skill is useful for different situation, there's even a passive skill you learn the encourage the use of multiple primaries at once.

Some examples:

If we have a Barb in the team and he's tanking, i'll go something like this to reduce damage everyone takes (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WcYdfk!ZcV!ZbaZba), If i'm the one tanking i'll go something like this (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aWgdfh!ZYX!ZZaZZa). Nightmare isn't as hard as D2, but i'm starting to see some really nasty elite packs with evil abilities combo (fuck walling/arcane) so i think something like debuff build might be useful on hell difficulty.

[TwisT]

58 Witch Doctor right now. I'm on Act3 Hell. For those that say this is easy haven't tried Hell that's for sure. Sure the penalty is cheap. But that doesn't make it easier. I'm in the first tower with the Sin Heart and man i wiped for an hour now with 2 different groups. On hell all rare spawns and champions have 3 abilitys. They can get some crazy combo's. Like Frozen, Jailer and Arcane Enchanted. Can't imagine what Inferno will be like.

[shinta|hikari]

Sounds awesome. Can't wait to go to hell.

LOL...

[Sandldan]

Breezing through hell by just mindlessly AoEing everything down with three friends at the moment, currently playing a 57 witch doctor on act 3. Hopefully act 4 or inferno will ramp up the difficulty enough >:(

It's lots of fun but I'm a bit fearful about the openness off the auction house in the end game, just buy the best gear!

[KrayZ33]

the game is difficult enough already while normal group of mobs are no problem at all, nearly every blue/yellow elite pack one shots me and needs a lot of kiting work. (lol @ ridiculous elite packs with all 3 enhancements like "Frozen, Jailer, Waller"... or "Jailer+Mortar"
the fact that you can't equip yourself doesn't help either, so the auction house is probably the only way to get decent items

i haven't found a single item on nightmare worth keeping and we are now playing hell with equipment I gathered in Normal mode...its annoying.
the smiths doesn't offer anything worth crafting either, I shouldn't have spent a single gold on that guy

All in all I've to say that D3 is by far the worst game Blizzard released so far, very...very very weak story, bad voice acting, some of the worst dialogues I've seen and disney villains.
I'd like to see some more skillslots too, 6 are simply not enough for what I'd like to have.

can't believe it took them so long to release the game, feels like a job any decent company could achieve in 2 years or so.

[darkshadow]

You think it took them more than 2 years? Hahahahahahhahaha

[shinta|hikari]

Finally got to hell, and my Demon Huntress simply cannot survive well solo. She has great damage, but is so weak, like a glass cannon. Elite enemies beat the shit out of me a few times before I manage to kill them... slowly.

[KrayZ33]

whats your build?

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#acXQVT!aYe!YbbabZ

im going with this on hell
both solo and grp.

I'd like to switch hungering arrow to something else... the Bola-shot looks nice, especially the stun version against bosses/elites.

[shinta|hikari]

I use my own. I generally don't use (or even look at) set builds because I enjoy creating my own.

The build is similar, but without the pet.

I use a skill slot for Mortal Enemy, which I use against bosses/elites with Rapid Fire.

[Animeniax]

18 hours played, act 3 on normal, level 27 monk. Not sure how many hours you guys are playing to be on higher difficulties with such high level characters.

Blizzard has its shit down, releasing at the start of summer vacation.

[Assertn]

18 hours played, act 3 on normal, level 27 monk. Not sure how many hours you guys are playing to be on higher difficulties with such high level characters.

Blizzard has its shit down, releasing at the start of summer vacation.
So I'm in act 1 on nightmare with a level 33 monk.

This is my grind setup:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aZgifQ!cbX!aZZZZa

This is my power setup:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#UegdjQ!cbX!ZZaZZa

One thing I especially love to do with the grind setup is combine cyclone with lashing tail or wave of light to alternate drawing enemies into me and knocking them away.

I also have some heavy vitality buffs on my gear, too. I think my monk has like 3600 hitpoints right now.

[Animeniax]

So I'm in act 1 on nightmare with a level 33 monk.

I also have some heavy vitality buffs on my gear, too. I think my monk has like 3600 hitpoints right now.

I went the other direction, sacrificing hp for damage. My level 27 monk has 1250hp, 705 armor, and 205 dps. He annihilates swarms of mobs and bosses quickly, but is susceptible to high damage attacks (I've died 4 times total, twice to Belial and twice to getting swarmed).

If I do play the higher difficulties, I'll probably switch to demon hunter or use the monk but beef up his hp and defense.

[Animeniax]

Holy shit, saw some of my buddies' characters (level 59 and 60) and they have ~15000 dps. WTF?? Makes my 205 seem puny now.

[Assertn]

The high vitality stats make my healing spells more useful. As far as damage, I'm currently going through nightmare act I and still feel like I'm killing stuff pretty fast. If you're overkilling, then you're not gaining anything from the buffs.

Oh I was wrong about my monk's health, btw. It's actually closer to 10000.

[shinta|hikari]

I completed normal at around 15 hours on pure solo. It took less to complete nightmare because I had a party. Hell is taking a lot more time.

[Animeniax]

The high vitality stats make my healing spells more useful. As far as damage, I'm currently going through nightmare act I and still feel like I'm killing stuff pretty fast. If you're overkilling, then you're not gaining anything from the buffs.

Oh I was wrong about my monk's health, btw. It's actually closer to 10000.

Not sure why my stats seem so puny at level 27. Maybe everything scales up when you move to nightmare mode? I've surviving everything the game throws at me on normal difficulty, so I guess I'm where I should be stats wise.

[oyabun]

I think Monk has the most puny DPs out there. With mg lvl 54 monk, I can't even pass 1k DPS. Although I don't really have any good equips to be proud of but it is decent. We are pretty much farming rare equipment right now for latter levels of hell. And don't bother thinking up combos for monks in the late game, there is pretty much 1 build you can use to survive hell alone or be useful in a party :(.

[Animeniax]

That's weird, I'm hearing that monks are essential in groups to succeed in the tougher difficulty levels, particularly as a tank.

I wonder if our puny dps is made up for by the number of attacks per second we're able to make. When I throw the fists of fury combos, I hit the mobs several times in a row in succession.


I completed normal at around 15 hours on pure solo. It took less to complete nightmare because I had a party. Hell is taking a lot more time.

Are you exploring/scouring every corner of every area? I'm at hour ~20 and still on act 3, level 29.

[Dark Dragon]

@Oyabun
At 53 Monk i'm doing around 2k DPS with 30k hp and 150~ resistance to everything using 1hand + shield.

If you're talking about the MoH spam build, that really only works on hell or below. I have 3 friends who are all Monks in inferno right now and they're using very different builds. I think tank monk is the only viable build for inferno though, since i haven't seen anyone post a DPS monk build for it.

In my opinion the best way to go is Vit > Resist > Dex in term of stat allocation.

This is the skill set (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WiXgYQ!ZYU!ZZYYYc) i'm using. I have lifesteal on my main weapon, and with this set i'm able to tank through some really dumb elite packs (arcane/invulnerable minion/freezing).

[oyabun]

But your DPS rating is still low in comparison to the other classes. Animeniax is right, Monk are really essential to a party with its defensive and healing abilities.

Yea that what I said for the latter part of the game, the tank build seems to be the best option to survive hell to inferno. Don't bother being alone though, I read in the forums that the melee types is doomed in inferno. What skill build are you using now Dark Dragon?

I am also using a shield atm for farming and tank purposes and yea my 1 hand weapon sucks, hence the 900 DPS. I pretty much hope to change that after this "farming" period.

[vejita613]

Level 43 Monk doing 780 dps and 8000 total life. Just started act 3 Nightmare and I do OK at the moment. My skill set. (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WZgdTQ!VcY!aYaYYZ)

I do OK for the most part, but I do die alot. Waiting to see if I can get some good drops or if I can get some good items from the blacksmith.

[KrayZ33]

got hacked today hnnggg.

and I just found out that blizzard will only reset d3 characters 2 times a year.
its not like I've already used it up, but it still sucks to know that someone in China knows your password and the next time this is going to happen will be the last time you can ask for support.

authenticator takes weeks to deliver too (bought it at the same time as the game)... I don't get why they didn't sell it with the game itself.

[Animeniax]

got hacked today hnnggg.

and I just found out that blizzard will only reset d3 characters 2 times a year.
its not like I've already used it up, but it still sucks to know that someone in China knows your password and the next time this is going to happen will be the last time you can ask for support.

authenticator takes weeks to deliver too (bought it at the same time as the game)... I don't get why they didn't sell it with the game itself.

Did someone just guess your pword? Was it a simple pword?

[KrayZ33]

nope, most likely china men doing their gold selling business

[Dark Dragon]

@Oyabun

Blizzard pretty much designed Monk and WD to be more utility oriented rather than damage. I can probably get close to DH or Mage damage-wise if i do dual-wield and a full dex build. The problem has to do more with damage melee builds being gimp in Inferno like you said.

On the upside, Barbarian and Monk are the only ones who can solo Inferno up to act 2.

I have a skill build in my last post. What i'm was using up till now was the Mantra of Healing + Shield Rune combine with high spirit generation attack to abuse the constant 15% shield for the party that it generate. Combine that with Blade Storm and Air Ally to generate high constant damage. This build is really broken for anything below hell because it will guaranteed that you will never die.

Now that i'm seeing harder content, it's not really cutting it anymore. I'm switching to a more debuff oriented tank build that focuses on reducing enemies damage while maximizing resistance/health.

I can't stress how dumb the Moh shield build is. I can walk into any elite packs in nightmare and stay alive just by holding down left click and constantly spam the aura button. I think this is definitely going to get nerf sometime soon.

[KrayZ33]

On the upside, Barbarian and Monk are the only ones who can solo Inferno up to act 2.


what makes you think that, every class can do it, and I believe the first one to solo inferno completely has been a mage.

[Assertn]

I'm mostly curious what's going to happen with the auction house. Things are getting a bit nuts over there the past few days, and in a bad way. Two days ago a perfect square gem would go for about 300,000g, and now it's closer to 85,000g. The market's getting over saturated it seems. It's not even profitable to combine gems up to flawless square anymore.

[oyabun]

Wail till the real money system comes online. All the goodiess will go there and the gold auction items will look like crap.

[Penner]

Yeah the auction house is abit worrying, since theres almost no use what-so-ever for items you find, because you can easily gear up with vastly superior items for ridiculously low amounts of gold, and blacksmithing seems completely useless.

[KrayZ33]

I'm mostly curious what's going to happen with the auction house. Things are getting a bit nuts over there the past few days, and in a bad way. Two days ago a perfect square gem would go for about 300,000g, and now it's closer to 85,000g. The market's getting over saturated it seems. It's not even profitable to combine gems up to flawless square anymore.

I'm sure you know pretty well why gems sell for less than x days ago, you can always remove them... thats something you couldn't do in D2 and thats why you can't trade with them in D3.

[Assertn]

I'm sure you know pretty well why gems sell for less than x days ago, you can always remove them... thats something you couldn't do in D2 and thats why you can't trade with them in D3.

Yes, I'm aware of that. However, gems above flawless square can only be crafted by players, and to craft a perfect square costs 30,000g + 3 tomes of secrets + 3 flawless square gems, which totals to about 60,000g just to make the gem. Then, to account for the 15% transaction fee at the AH, the gem has to sell for at least 71,000g just to break even. It's hardly worth the ridiculously expensive setup fee for the artisian crafting skill, as I can make more than the profit margin by just grinding for 15 minutes.

[Animeniax]

I finished normal mode and started nightmare. I don't typically replay games and I'm not really seeing a reason to play D3 again with the same character. Is there any reason to play through the 3 remaining modes besides to say I did it?

I especially don't like that you have to play with the same character class. I want to try demon hunter or witch doctor, but I don't want to play through normal mode again.

[KrayZ33]

the reason to play through all that again is the difficulty and the urge to improve your character and to see all the runes/spells etc.

thats all.

[shinta|hikari]

The challenge is what makes harder modes interesting. Still, I don't intend to play Inferno. It is too much of a timesink, so I will just switch to a wizard and create a battle mage.

Just hit 60 and in Act 4 of Hell. Azmodan has to be the easiest boss in the game.

[Assertn]

The challenge is what makes harder modes interesting. Still, I don't intend to play Inferno. It is too much of a timesink, so I will just switch to a wizard and create a battle mage.

Just hit 60 and in Act 4 of Hell. Azmodan has to be the easiest boss in the game.

Pretty much. Nightmare mode feels like a different game because you can actually die if you're playing stupid.

[shinta|hikari]

I liked nightmare over hell just because there is less frustration, that, and you are still leveling a lot.

[Animeniax]

Wow, nightmare is already a good deal tougher than normal. You have to pay attention and be more strategic. I'm going to swap dex/dps eq for more hp/vitality eq so I don't risk dying. First sub-boss had me hurting, though not in real danger.

I hope they implement a character swapping system. I'd like to play through nightmare with a new character type with comparable stats for that difficulty (level 30+, decent stats).

[shinta|hikari]

With the cash you have, you can buy abnormally good gear for your normal character and breeze through it to get to nightmare.

In any case, Act I is a far cry from Act II in any of the difficulties.

I do recommend finishing Hell because even the creators said that is technically the official end of the game. Inferno is end game material.

[Dark Dragon]

what makes you think that, every class can do it, and I believe the first one to solo inferno completely has been a mage.

Guess i was mistaken then, it's good to know that any class can finish it.

[Animeniax]

With the cash you have, you can buy abnormally good gear for your normal character and breeze through it to get to nightmare.

In any case, Act I is a far cry from Act II in any of the difficulties.

I do recommend finishing Hell because even the creators said that is technically the official end of the game. Inferno is end game material.

I wonder if fast-leveling a character through normal mode will give me the skill and experience I need to use the character effectively in the harder modes. I've considered either loading up awesome equip or grouping with friends to fast level through normal, but I don't want to use a character whose skills I'm not familiar with in the higher difficulty levels.

It's not so bad using the monk to go through nightmare after all. His HP and dex make his survivability high while still killing most stuff pretty easily.

[Assertn]

Didn't have much trouble in Act 1 on nightmare with my monk. If you're soloing, you should make sure to prioritize AoE with stun/knockback and a Serenity skill. I also like having an elemental ally to help aggro, too.

[Y]

what makes you think that, every class can do it, and I believe the first one to solo inferno completely has been a mage.

Both the successful Wizard soloing builds were obvious "unintentional use of game mechanics" and have both been patched out. In addition the solo builds relied on skipping ALL the optional trash, because even one or two really nasty mods on a champion/elite pack are more dangerous than an act boss. If you are fully geared in top inferno act 1 gear as a wizard you will get one shot killed by the trash at the start of act 2. It's impossible to defeat most trash without a dedicated tank or some kind of exploit build.

Inferno balance is going to be a big issue. I don't think Blizzard really knows how to have a skill-testing encounter within this game engine yet. Act bosses are pretty much as simple as normal mode with the caveat that you die in one hit and there's a berserk timer that comes into play when you bring a full group, while some champion packs are so fast and do so much damage it's tough to see how they could theoretically be defeated, even with the best possible gear. That isn't a fair or interesting challenge.

[Animeniax]

Didn't have much trouble in Act 1 on nightmare with my monk. If you're soloing, you should make sure to prioritize AoE with stun/knockback and a Serenity skill. I also like having an elemental ally to help aggro, too.

Yeah it hasn't been bad at all, just more challenging. I've yet to die in nightmare with my monk because I've incorporated fleeing into my strategy, something I didn't need to do in normal mode. Definitely utilizing AoE with knockback to keep from being surrounded and wailed on, plus mantra of healing to keep me alive. And my elemental ally has been a mainstay since I got the skill at level 22. He's awesome, almost unfair, like a beefed up companion who you can repeatedly summon. I do miss 7 sided strike but it's less effective than it seems.

[animus]

Too much Diablo, not enough time to watch anime.

[gos27]

My social life is going to the shitter with this game :rolleyes:

[shinta|hikari]

Just finished Hell with my DH and I must say I have lost 90% of my interest in this game. I currently have a wiz on normal, but I don't have the energy to play it. I have played almost 80 hours of the game in the last 10 days, so I guess that makes sense.

[KrayZ33]

Both the successful Wizard soloing builds were obvious "unintentional use of game mechanics" and have both been patched out. In addition the solo builds relied on skipping ALL the optional trash, because even one or two really nasty mods on a champion/elite pack are more dangerous than an act boss. If you are fully geared in top inferno act 1 gear as a wizard you will get one shot killed by the trash at the start of act 2. It's impossible to defeat most trash without a dedicated tank or some kind of exploit build.


I believe having a tank won't help at all, I'm having a much better time with my DH playing solo in act 2.
I can run around with 5 neph-stacks all the time, while my monk buddy with 534 resis, 4,6k armor and 1k life on hit has much more problems because he's melee. (I run around with less than half)

If I try to help him, then my tactic won't work anymore because they have to many healthpoints and they'll deal more damage to my monk buddy.

its just sad, the game is alot more difficult on inferno with friends than it is alone

[shinta|hikari]

That's true if your partner is melee.

I'm having a ton of trouble with the Spider Queen on Inferno. The main issue is that my laptop only has an onboard graphics card, and the game is lagging like crazy in the Arranea stages with all the web and nonsense splayed on the screen. If there was no lag, she'd be a piece of cake, but when she teleports around while you are frozen in place, things are not so nice.

[Animeniax]

I just beat Belial on nightmare and it wasn't nearly as hard as it was in normal mode.

The trick is to highlight below for the spoiler:
Stay right in the middle and attack his torso. You will avoid 95% of his attacks that way.

I'm still enjoying the game, but I can't see myself playing another round after I finish nightmare mode.

[shinta|hikari]

Okay, so I just found out that I have been playing Diablo 3 until Inferno with a handicap.

I just tried lowering the resolution, and the performance became super smooth. My DPS also increased in reality. Apparently, when the lag slows down your movement and attacks, it is reflected in the damage. But the best thing about it is that vault actually works. Apparently, I was seeing the attack animation after it has happened before this change, so I had to predict when attacks were landing instead of reacting to them, thinking the whole time that it was the same for all players.

I just finished the Spider Queen in 1 try after lowering res. It was so easy it was funny.

Thinking back, I could have saved dozens of hours had I done this from the beginning. The game looks much smoother and nicer as well.

[KrayZ33]

im about to deinstall the game, its just frustrating and not really fun on inferno
don't want to do it before beating the game fully though, so I can talk bad about that piece of... uhm, ya....shit,without jerks telling me "you mad cuz you sucked"

its not really a good game, bad server preformance make things even worse, you pretty much can't play without dying to something due to lag/1-sec screen freezes and character-set-backs

not really fun when the screen stops for a second (hi ingame-streaming) and you see mortar explosions.
not really fun when you try to run away from something just to find out that "suddenly" every mob got the vortex ability and you get set back right next to them

act3 inferno is giving me a headache though.
no exceptions anymore, absolutely *everything* one hits now, I can't survive anything, I switched Battlescars on my prep-skill to chance on cd-reset. because there is nothing to heal anymore, i'm either at 100% or at 0%

since my friend plays a monk, i know that stacking HP and Resis won't help either, unless you want to spend 20.000.000 gold. as melee its impossible to finish the game selffound...

I'm waiting for a patch, it can't stay like this

[shinta|hikari]

How do the people who manage to beat it anyway? They say that if you go around skipping elites then you should be able to finish the game, even if Inferno mode is supposedly impossible to finish.

I am currently in Act 2 Inferno. I had to buy a crossbow to beat the butcher. My DPS simply wasn't good enough, but when I switched I just chained smoke screen and he died. I focused on a crit build, and with sharpshooter my DPS is around 50k. I know that isn't really consistent, but it is what the first burst does, and that is usually what you are able to hit in Inferno anyway.

I keep dying for the stupidest reasons, like the residue poison of some enemy corpse on the ground.

Is farming the butcher worth it? I think with luck I should be able to stack 5 NVs (this is the hard part) and kill him (very easy part).

[Assertn]

Just assembled my staff of herding, waiting till a bit later to use it. Should I expect the pony level to be especially difficult?

[shinta|hikari]

It is supposed to be Act 4 level of the same difficulty, and since the requirement is to have finished that difficulty, it should be a cake walk.

[Animeniax]

I'm surprised some of you are playing on underpowered machines that won't let you fully enjoy the game. I try to play on a computer at work, but you have to play in this tiny window and you'll die a lot on harder modes because it's hard to see what's going on and the lag.

I'm getting into trouble losing track of my mouse pointer during heavy battles. Since I can't locate the pointer, I can't click to get away from swarms of elites who are hitting me for 5k damage repeatedly.

[shinta|hikari]

I bought this laptop for work purposes. My desktop is sitting idly back in my country right now.

[KrayZ33]

It is supposed to be Act 4 level of the same difficulty, and since the requirement is to have finished that difficulty, it should be a cake walk.

from what I've heart its harder, at least on inferno

mobs have more HP etc.

I'm @ Act4 inferno atm, and I gotta say, if thats true then its really hard.

[Penner]

A friend managed to get all the stuff for the pony level and we did it on hell mode, im a DH and hes a monk, i died maybe 2-3 times because of mistakes on my part but it wasn't very hard.

At the moment i pretty much have act1 inferno on farm status, and i find it pretty easy to get 5 NV stacks aswell, i can handle almost all elite pack combos, the ones a do skip are mostly packs of enemy-types that are fast by default, that has the "fast" stat on top of that aswell, those i can't kite for shit and they swarm me do death instantly, also skip most packs that have "invulnerable minions", those are a pain in the ass.

The difference from act1 to act2 in inferno is quite shocking lol

[Assertn]

and i find it pretty easy to get 5 NV stacks aswell
Can you elaborate what this means, exactly? Whenever I think I know what stacks are, someone uses it in a context that doesn't make sense to me, and I definitely have no idea what NV is an acronym for.

[gos27]

Finished Nightmare difficulty tonight. I know it's not that far compared to others, but I played with friends who were on a lot lower act/quest than me until they got where I was. Think my DH is lvl 51 now, which from what I was told is pretty good going into hell mode.

[TwisT]

Nephilim's Valor buff. It gives 15% Magic Find and Gold Find and stack up to 5 (total of 75%) and you gain a stack every time you kill a rare/champion-pack when you are level 60. Once you ding lvl60 you start getting those stacks and you get them on any difficulty (just clarifying since a friend thought you only got the stacks on Inferno). The buff holds for 30 min and refreshes every time you kill a rare/champion-pack. I farmed Azmodan before i was strong enough for Inferno and without stacks i got like 2-3 blues. With 5 stacks the spider boss and Azmodan gives at least 2 yellows and 5 blues each.

Edit: btw Whimsyshire on Inferno is no joke. Everything, even the little flower, 1-shot you. And rare/champion is almost impossible. Me (WD) and my friend (DH) went in to try it out. We managed to kill of 2 of 6 elites we found. And they had easy combos. Was just time consuming. But i can see how this can lead to profits once you can farm. If you dont open up any clouds, presents, mushrooms or the Pinata and then when you have cleared the map equip MF gear and open everything there should be some heavy loots. 200% MF + 5xNV buff. Gonna try that later on hell and see how much i get from just looting those.

[Animeniax]

Wow the elite packs on hell difficulty are insane enough as it is. I can't imagine how ridiculous they must be on inferno. I've fought a pack of 4 frogs with fire chains and molten and possibly horde. I died 4 times and haven't even hurt one of the frogs to below 75% health. Guess I'll need to group up and try it out.

[KrayZ33]

Edit: btw Whimsyshire on Inferno is no joke. Everything, even the little flower, 1-shot you. And rare/champion is almost impossible. Me (WD) and my friend (DH) went in to try it out. We managed to kill of 2 of 6 elites we found. And they had easy combos. Was just time consuming. But i can see how this can lead to profits once you can farm. If you dont open up any clouds, presents, mushrooms or the Pinata and then when you have cleared the map equip MF gear and open everything there should be some heavy loots. 200% MF + 5xNV buff. Gonna try that later on hell and see how much i get from just looting those.


the clouds are the reason why I'm going there soon, 5 stacks + 180+mf on equip is going to be awesome

if I can't handle the champion/elites there, then thats fine, just pull them all together somewhere in a corner of the map, the normal monsters seem easy enough since they don't have any special abilities like those nasty "mini-diaboli" in act 4 with their charge ability.
they arn't ranged either. probably the easiest way to farm equipment for and from act3/4.



I've fought a pack of 4 frogs with fire chains and molten and possibly horde. I died 4 times and haven't even hurt one of the frogs to below 75% health.

normal frogs from Act 1 or soul-lashers? (act 3/4 - tongue rape from 1 screen away)

on inferno you skip them, there is no way to defeat elite-soul lashers there.
the problem is, very often its impossible to skip them (at least in act3)... then you have to restart the map (hurts alot whenever you managed to get your NV stack to 5)

[Animeniax]

normal frogs from Act 1 or soul-lashers? (act 3/4 - tongue rape from 1 screen away)

on inferno you skip them, there is no way to defeat elite-soul lashers there.
the problem is, very often its impossible to skip them (at least in act3)... then you have to restart the map (hurts alot whenever you managed to get your NV stack to 5)

Not sure, they're blue frogs that glow yellow and this is in hell mode in the cemetary in Act I. I was able to get away from them and run around an area several times while healing between ass-kickings, but sometimes they did somehow magically pull me to them, so I guess that is soul-lashing. I can skip the crypt they are in, but I hate running from a fight.

Can anyone say if my stats are on-par? Whenever I read forums about D3, my stats seem underwhelming compared to others:
Level 52 monk on hell mode act I
20k hp
2650 dps
2640 armor

[Assertn]

on inferno you skip them, there is no way to defeat elite-soul lashers there.
the problem is, very often its impossible to skip them (at least in act3)... then you have to restart the map (hurts alot whenever you managed to get your NV stack to 5)

Had my first run-in with champion soul lashers on nightmare mode. They showed up in literally the first room I entered in the basement quest on act 3. They had fast and fire chain, and was the first time I physically could not kill a mob. Kind of a pity, too, because up till that point I had logged about 80 or so hours into the game and only died maybe twice.

[gos27]

Feckin hell, champions and magic enemies (Glowy blue ones) are no joke on Hell, keep getting raped by them, annoying as fuck!

[shinta|hikari]

I kill the ones I can, but completely skip the ones I can't in Inferno. DH with vault (Tumbling), SS (Lingering), and passive Tactical Movement can escape anything, even teleporters and fast, given enough space.

[TwisT]

Me and a friend kept clearing Whimsyshire Inferno today for farming. It's so much loot. The clouds, oh the clouds. Did it just like i said. Cleared it out and then put on MF gear and opened everything with 275% MF and 125% GF (I include NV ofc). On 2 runs (got DC last run and couldn't get back on afterwards) i got a yellow 2-h crossbow with 1070 DPS and like 100+ Dex. Sold it for 1.4 million. And my friend found a yellow belt that he sold for 500k and Legendary Hellrack (best Legendary 2-h crossbow) that he put up for 1 million. And he found a pair of gloves that gave 120+Int, 120+Vit and 15%AS. Similar gloves on AH was out for 3.5mil or more so he put them up for 2.9mil. Oh and i got myself some upgrades in my gear. So all in all it was a really good place to farm. Gonna continue today i guess.

btw last run when we got DCed just as we had cleared everything and was about to start looting the clouds we where only able to kill of 2 of all the elite packs. The two other runs we just killed every elite except maybe one that got a crazy combo. The last at least 4 packs had super crazy combos. Like Arcane Enchanted, Waller, Vortex, Jailer. Or Invulnerable Minions, Fast, Jailer. So usually we have 5 stacks when its looting time.

[KrayZ33]

get the NV buff from elitepacks in festering woods or something like that and enter the damn thing with 5 stacks.

[vejita613]

Does Staff of Herding disappear after you use it?

[KrayZ33]

nope....

[vejita613]

I found the answer to my own question:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5568797371#5

TL: DR Its a bug, blizzard is trying to fix it, but you will have to farm the items again although they recommend waiting until the bug is fixed before you do.

[Y]

It's not a bug. Those guys dropped it and exited game.

[Assertn]

It's not a bug. Those guys dropped it and exited game.

How udderly unfortunate.

[gos27]

Finally got to level 60 with my DH and eventually got around to looking up a good setup for my DH. Absolutely beasting on Inferno! Got some pretty sweet gear as well :)

[shinta|hikari]

What Act are you in Inferno?

[gos27]

Act 1 only, but I was playing with friends on other acts just to build stacks and farm bosses etc.

[shinta|hikari]

What gear build did you use for DH? I am still saving up to buy my own gear, so I am curious with what works best in inferno.

[KrayZ33]

I've beaten inferno with my DH using Crit Gear + Xbow

Smoke Screen (Lingering), Spike Trap (Scatter), Prep(30% cd reset), Bat, Entang.shot (chain-gang), Ele-arrow(Ball lightning, Nether works fine too)


Spike trap is *amazing* against bosses and close quarters.

[shinta|hikari]

I am thinking of copying that and dropping vault from my build. That way, all the discipline is reserved for SS. What are your passives?

[KrayZ33]

steady aim, archery and ... that movement speed+ whenever you are using SS


you might want to switch to Sharpshooter, I don't like it though because whenever I'm kiting I usally shoot once every second.... I'm not sure why so many people use it, they are not kiting properly if they let it build up imho.

its nice against bosses such as Belial though. (~6 100% crit nether tentacles are really a great way to burst down his first ~40% hp or so)

[shinta|hikari]

What was your DPS (without sharpshooter) and Dex when you beat Diablo?

I was wondering what kind of gear and stats I need to solo finish inferno. I am currently farming to get gear to beat Belial.

Do you think it is easier to finish the game solo or with a party using DH?

[KrayZ33]

Solo (bosses are easier with people though, because you can revive each other)

i'm currently at 1700 dex 50k dps without ShS, but its possible to do it with less
(and its possible to have so much more)

act4 was probably the easiest, act 3 the hardest

diablo took me ~5-6 tries only and you can do him with any weapon or DPS because you kite him for around 10 minutes or so
the second boss in act4 was the hardest for me...Rakaschu, or something like that.


and for belial, just go full dps ele-arrow with nether tentacle + mark (hatred) + bat
once you reach p3 its really easy, go to the top right and shoot ele arrows nonstop

each arrow will hit him 5-6 times
use SS whenever he's going to hit you and he should be dead in a few seconds, did him with a 800dps bow back then.

[shinta|hikari]

How do you get past the first 2 forms though? I get killed by those invisible snakes because they manage to dodge my attacks by becoming invisible on approach.

Why was Act 3 the hardest btw?

I also had trouble with Rakanath in Hell because he one shot me the whole time. I remember reading somewhere that when he lurches without crossing his arms, he is going to teleport slash you. I was able to kill him after learning that.

[KrayZ33]

the snakes are not invisible during the bossfight.

you need to burst him down though, the faster the better
if you are lucky you can get him to p3 without any or only a few snakes spawned.

you need some luck, pop SS often, get +8 max discipline (buy a cheap quiver if necessary) and maybe a preperation CD reset.
then you are fine

or just some kiting "luck"


you might want to spend your gold on a 1300+ dps bow/xbow, then he's really really easy, not going to lie, its not like I didn't die against him, but I managed to kill him with 5 stacks after the ~8th try or so (as mentioned before, 800dps bow back then), P2 is the only problem.



Why was Act 3 the hardest btw?

trash mobs are the hardest, its really hard to kite because the map won't allow you to and Azmodans black puddles insta-kill you as soon as you touch them, and they can spawn everywhere, even right underneath you

[gos27]

I don't really like SS, especially since they nerfed it after the update.

Here's what skills I use:

Primaries:
Hungering Arrow w/ Spray of Teeth and Elemental Arrow w/ Screaming Scull

Action bar Skills:
Caltrops w/ Bait The Trap ----- Vault w/ Ratting Roll
Impale w/ Grievous Wounds ----- Preparation w/ Backup Plan

Passive skills:
Vengeance, Archery and Sharpshooter



My tactic when using this setup is to use the elemental arrow w/ SC to fear my enemies and make them run away, then I spam Impale w/ GW as it's a pretty strong attack (especially if you get a crit). I usually plant a caltrop down as well to prevent enemies from dashing straight through me, also the Bait The Trap ruin gives me a higher chance of a critical if I'm standing in the caltrop. And Vault if I ever get sandwiched in by a few enemies or need to get away quickly. And finally preparation, this gives me back all my discipline so I can continue to use Caltrops and Vault (only downside is that there's a cooldown, but the ruin that I use gives a chance for there to be no cooldown).

I also use a 2 handed bow and a quiver too as you get the best dps from it.

This setup works best for me and it relies a lot on criticals as well (which I get a LOT of!)

[shinta|hikari]

I am currently using a 2h xbow with 950 damage and 65% crit damage. I am planning to replace it with something better, and has dexterity AND crit damage.

[Animeniax]

Wow, checked the auctions and the weapons for sale there are insane! My knuckle-dusters are 395 damage and I'm in the 4th act of hell mode. The weapons for auction are 1000+ damage!! Where are people finding these powerful items? Are they mostly in Inferno mode?

[shinta|hikari]

In the later acts of Inferno, to be specific.

[Animeniax]

In the later acts of Inferno, to be specific.

Would you say they unbalance the game if you used them in earlier difficulty levels than inferno? Not sure it's worth the 2 million gold asking price though.

[shinta|hikari]

Yes they do. Act I will be a piece of cake if you have a 1000 DPS weapon, for a DH anyway. Melee classes supposedly have much more trouble because of survivability issues.

[Assertn]

Lots of changes planned in 1.0.3

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6262208/Patch_103_Design_Preview-6_6_2012#blog

[Animeniax]

Wow, lots of changes. I only recently discovered the chain-rezzing ability to defeat elite packs. That sucks that they're going to make it more expensive to repair equipment after rezzing. Also the changes to rare drop rates isn't cool.

[Assertn]

Btw, commodities are back up on AH. Fire sale going on with high end gems, as many of them are selling at or below the base crafting cost up to flawless star.

[shinta|hikari]

Just got into Act 3 of Inferno. I had a hard time killing Belial because I was with an undergeared monk. We did manage to kill him though, because the monk was good at dodging all the attacks and managed to revive me twice in the 3rd stage (I always die there due to lag). DHs simply aren't made for parties, at least not it inferno.

I am now at 55k DPS without SS, but only 4k life LOL.

[Animeniax]

55k DPS? I'm hearing about DHs with 130-140k DPS. Fucking unbelievable.

I'm at 6k on act I of Inferno, but I have 42k HP. Still die in about 7 seconds against most elites, so there's a lot of running away and healing time.

[shinta|hikari]

Wait until Act 2.

[animus]

Don't feel like playing this game any more after clearing Act 2 Inferno. Maybe I'll be back when PVP is implemented, but atm, I'm either too burned out on the game or the game's just too stale in it's current state.

Time to pick up Dota 2 again.

[shinta|hikari]

I intend to finish inferno before patch 1.0.3. Zerging is going to be too inefficient when the patch comes.

[TwisT]

Hopefully you wont need to by then. There is tanks today that can tank Act4 Inferno. After the nerf more tanks will be able to tank, and the damage wont go up the more people that are in the game so tanks are gonna want to play with others. So it might be easier to clear if you join public games. Or maybe search for other good geared tanks in the chat that has already cleared Inferno.

[shinta|hikari]

I just killed Rakanath. He died in just a few seconds with all my DPS passives on.

EDIT: Izual was 50x tougher. What the hell is with those teleporting, 1 hitting friends he has??? I managed to kill him by memorizing everything about the fight, from his ice timing to how to avoid his minions completely. I think my slow aspd hurt me in this fight, because I can't kill the minions before they tele due to the slow projectile movement.

EDIT2: Just killed Diablo on Inferno. It was freaking difficult with my slow aspd. My shadow clone keeps killing me before I manage to kill it. It sneaks a single arrow in the .5 second cooldown of SS. 3rd phase was a joke. Either that or it bugged out. Diablo only attacked once in the whole phase, and it was the stupid multiple fire shot thing. I didn't even have to SS or vault once.

[Assertn]

55k DPS? I'm hearing about DHs with 130-140k DPS. Fucking unbelievable.

I'm at 6k on act I of Inferno, but I have 42k HP. Still die in about 7 seconds against most elites, so there's a lot of running away and healing time.

I finished act 1 inferno. My monk has 9-10k dps with about 30k HP. I've been going through the process of reducing my vitality in favor of armor/resistance, to maximize my EHP. No point in having a lot of vitality when you lose big chunks of health quickly and can't replenish it all with only 12k potions and 10k abilities.

[Animeniax]

I finished act 1 inferno. My monk has 9-10k dps with about 30k HP. I've been going through the process of reducing my vitality in favor of armor/resistance, to maximize my EHP. No point in having a lot of vitality when you lose big chunks of health quickly and can't replenish it all with only 12k potions and 10k abilities.

Yeah I discussed strategy with a Korean buddy (those guys are fucking professionals at gaming, I tell you what) and he said how inferno requires high resistance and dex, followed by vitality. Surprisingly, DPS is not that critical, it's more important to stay alive and whittle away at the boss's health. That doesn't help with elites who regen, but you can skip them.

What's EHP?

I can't seem to get past the Skeleton King on Inferno, so I'm going to retool my character and try with higher resistance/dex and lower vitality.

[Assertn]

Yeah I discussed strategy with a Korean buddy (those guys are fucking professionals at gaming, I tell you what) and he said how inferno requires high resistance and dex, followed by vitality. Surprisingly, DPS is not that critical, it's more important to stay alive and whittle away at the boss's health. That doesn't help with elites who regen, but you can skip them.
Keep in mind you're a monk. You're supposed to have lower dps. If your damage was comparable to a demon hunter on top of your natural tanking abilities, then that would be ridiculously OP, yo.


What's EHP?
Ok, I was going to make a longer post about this, but here's the rundown. EHP stands for "effective hit points." Simply put, it's a true measure of your survavibility when factoring in all the variables (health + armor + resist etc). This is the EHP calculator I use: http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator/
The most useful thing to me, after filling out all the fields, is to look at the column to the right of the different attributes. There, you can see how much your EHP goes up for each increment of each row. Then, focus on improving the rows that give you the biggest EHP gain, even if it means trading down some of your oversaturated stats. My monk has about 3950 armor, 346 resist, and 30k hp, and I still stand to benefit the most from resist, and a little from armor, before thinking about adding more vitality.


I can't seem to get past the Skeleton King on Inferno, so I'm going to retool my character and try with higher resistance/dex and lower vitality.
Pretty much follow that EHP calculator and you should see a lot more gain. This is also the point where most monks would tell you to pick a resist type to stack and equip One With Everything as a passive.

[TwisT]

Killed him yesterday on my barb. I nerfed down my HP to 24k to increase my all resist. So a trip to AH and i managed to get 1100+ resist. I now tank anything i have come across in Act1. Only once have i died. Was a Arcane Enchanted, Horde, Waller pack. So they walled me in completely in a very narrow space while i got like 6 Arcane Beams around me. And i swear they all hit me at the same time. But other then that i tank every mob in act1 without even being in danger. So 1100 res gives 78% damage reduction. On top of that i have 7k armor that gives 70% damage reduction. On that i have 950 life per hit, 12% dodge and 20% chance to block 3.7-4.7k damage. Only thing bad now is my low HP and low damage. Only have 5k so it takes some time to grind down all the mobs.

But i really love the playing style. Might not be as fast as my 48k dps WD or DH, but much more fun then running as soon as someone comes near me.

EDIT: And as for Skeleton King, i just tanked him straight up. Took all his blows and i never dropped lower then 80%.

[shinta|hikari]

How are monks faring Act II onwards solo?

I just tried killing Belial in inferno and he was laughably easy. I can't believe I died more than 10x (with the same gear) to that just because I had an undergeared monk with me. My strategy was laughably simple too. Just go to the corner at the beginning of the fight, then shoot at enemies. That's it.

Everything seems easier solo for a DH.

[TwisT]

Assertn that calculator was awesome. So the guide tells me i have 735k EPH with dodge.

[Animeniax]

Keep in mind you're a monk. You're supposed to have lower dps. If your damage was comparable to a demon hunter on top of your natural tanking abilities, then that would be ridiculously OP, yo.


Ok, I was going to make a longer post about this, but here's the rundown. EHP stands for "effective hit points." Simply put, it's a true measure of your survavibility when factoring in all the variables (health + armor + resist etc). This is the EHP calculator I use: http://rubensayshi.github.com/d3-ehp-calculator/
The most useful thing to me, after filling out all the fields, is to look at the column to the right of the different attributes. There, you can see how much your EHP goes up for each increment of each row. Then, focus on improving the rows that give you the biggest EHP gain, even if it means trading down some of your oversaturated stats. My monk has about 3950 armor, 346 resist, and 30k hp, and I still stand to benefit the most from resist, and a little from armor, before thinking about adding more vitality.


Pretty much follow that EHP calculator and you should see a lot more gain. This is also the point where most monks would tell you to pick a resist type to stack and equip One With Everything as a passive.
Playing solo for the first 3 difficulties and into Inferno, I had relatively high DPS to HP, little resistance, and avg equipment, and still cruised through all of it. Only now is it catching up to me where I'll have to follow the formula for solo monk success. My equipment is seriously underpowered, so I'm going to go farm level 1 on normal with NV stacks to improve my eq and raise my EHP.

[Assertn]

How are monks faring Act II onwards solo?

A lot of people have been saying monks are having the hardest time on act 2+. I tried act 2, myself. Got about 3 or 4 monsters in, then died immediately. There's really no way around it at this point than to start buying the really expensive stuff, it seems.


Assertn that calculator was awesome. So the guide tells me i have 735k EPH with dodge.
Yeah, i'm at about 600k myself, though I'm wondering if the calc is a little misleading for the monk. Seize the initiative is listed as a separate checklist item, which means I'd be double-counting my armor if I put in the armor value listed from my inventory while that passive is set. Upon correcting this, it would seem I'm now lacking in armor more than resistance. Blah.

[Uchiha Barles]

How are you guys making money to buy this gear? I'm farming the skeleton king right now, I've no doubt that I can farm the butcher, but I'm not making all that much gold. Do you sell stuff on the AH?

[KrayZ33]

im playing selffound, can't afford the gear either (the ones which would be an upgrade)

found a 980 dps 2xbow with +230%(!) crit dmg, which ends up being better than my 1200dps xbow.

i'm farming siege breaker/pony lvl
but the game is a pain in the ass, its no fun to farm siege breaker anymore because the loot is not rewarding enough, given the fact that 1 run can take up to ~20 minutes and I might die 20 times... or 0 times
ranged mobs are totally broken in this game...I have to stay focused the whole time and thats not what I want from a game like D3...

I want to calm down after work, go farm a bit and be happy about loot I may or may not find.
atm I'm leaving the game as soon as I die 2-3 times in a row to a stupid mistake, whether I have 3 or 4 NV buffs doesn't matter...its too much work

switching gear everytime you kill a boss (then switch again and put it back into the stash because it takes up 60% of the inventory), switching gear everytime you cleared the pony lvl for the clouds etc.... gosh, the inventory is way to small... everything takes ages.

[Assertn]

How are you guys making money to buy this gear? I'm farming the skeleton king right now, I've no doubt that I can farm the butcher, but I'm not making all that much gold. Do you sell stuff on the AH?

I've been able to solo the butcher on inferno using gear that ive gotten on sale. I hadn't spent more than 100k on any single item up till that point. Then again, I suppose my weapon, chest armor, and helmet were all gifted to me by another monk friend of mine, as well. I'm now at the point where I'm spending about 1M per item, so things are going to slow down for me pretty fast soon.

On a related note, the RMAH is up now. So, you can always opt to buy your gear with real money if you don't want to grind for hours on end.

[Uchiha Barles]

Yeah, I guess this is going to be slow. I'm looking at the gear costs on RMAH and for some reason I just can't bring myself to spend as much money on a piece of gear as I spent on the game, just so that I can beat inferno...I beat the game 3 times already. I'm playing a wizard though so hopefully the cheap gear will do. Though, if they eventually implement their plans for pvp and it doesn't suck, I'll be throwing money at gear.

[Uchiha Barles]

When building the Staff of Herding, does it matter what difficulty level you assemble the pieces from?

[Animeniax]

A buddy of mine who has played Diablo and WoW for years said that Blizzard intentionally makes it so you can't beat their games solo just from equipment you find in-game. You essentially have to use the auction house to buy eq, if not necessarily the RMAH.

[UChessmaster]

Untrue, at least in WoW.

[Animeniax]

Untrue, at least in WoW.

Well yeah, but I just mentioned WoW to let you know he's played a lot of Blizzard games. It might be a generalization but there might be some truth to it.

[Uchiha Barles]

A buddy of mine who has played Diablo and WoW for years said that Blizzard intentionally makes it so you can't beat their games solo just from equipment you find in-game. You essentially have to use the auction house to buy eq, if not necessarily the RMAH.

I suspect that's true to some extent to ensure the success of the AH. If everyone could reasonably progress through the game with just in game gear, then the AH would mean a lot a less and probably fail. The sheer size of the loot table caused by the number of stats and variety of combinations makes it fairly unlikely that you yourself are going to find gear with the particular stat distribution you need for your playstyle. Someone'll get it though and put it on the AH. And just to solidify things, gear most people need to progress in inferno (melee classes in particular) doesn't drop in the acts that they are capable of beating.

[Y]

That's completely untrue because, as the developers stated, they tested without the auction house active. That's the reason they were surprised by people bitching about legendaries and whatnot - because they didn't have access to ideal equipment for their level via the auction house, legendaries were more useful while leveling.

[Uchiha Barles]

That's completely untrue because, as the developers stated, they tested without the auction house active. That's the reason they were surprised by people bitching about legendaries and whatnot - because they didn't have access to ideal equipment for their level via the auction house, legendaries were more useful while leveling.

Normal, Nightmare, and even perhaps Hell difficulties, this is true. This breaks down at Inferno. They tested Inferno difficulty for lvl 61 mobs which appear in act 1. Indeed, you can beat act 1 pretty handily with only gear you find. This becomes way harder for the beyond the first, act 2 in particular, in which mobs of lvl 62-64 appear. If I remember correctly, they did NOT test for lvl 62-64 mobs.

[shinta|hikari]

They never even finished inferno. I have, and I can say that it is broken.

I am selling all of my stuff in the RMAH so that I can fund Tera online. I just earned enough to get the game as of now. I may get even more if all the stuff worth anything sells.

[KrayZ33]

made 100€ in 2 days, probably able to get around 300€ or more from my character, don't feel like selling his stuff because I might regret it

the funny thing is, I thought I could buy games and stuff in blizzard-store
basically you can't buy anything if you own every blizzard game already, gj blizzard. gj....

my only hope is that heart of the swarm is going to be released there right after release, if not, im going to be really pissed.

thats moneymaking at its finest
I wanted to buy games for my friends there and now I'm sitting on 100€ and can't spend a single one of it, they just took the money without offering something in return.... awesome

[Assertn]

made 100€ in 2 days, probably able to get around 300€ or more from my character, don't feel like selling his stuff because I might regret it

the funny thing is, I thought I could buy games and stuff in blizzard-store
basically you can't buy anything if you own every blizzard game already, gj blizzard. gj....

my only hope is that heart of the swarm is going to be released there right after release, if not, im going to be really pissed.

thats moneymaking at its finest
I wanted to buy games for my friends there and now I'm sitting on 100€ and can't spend a single one of it, they just took the money without offering something in return.... awesome

Why didn't you just select to cash out via paypal?

[Animeniax]

Why didn't you just select to cash out via paypal?

Maybe European paypal doesn't have that option, what with their economy in ruins. Or maybe he doesn't have a verified paypal account.

[KrayZ33]

I don't own a mobile phone, believe it or not, I have no use for it,
and I thought I'd be able to buy Starcraft and Diablo for my friends.


however, I'm thinking of buying a prepaid one for 5€ or something like that.

[Animeniax]

I'm with you, cell phones cause cancer and car accidents. But I got tired of having a P.O.S prepaid, so I got an Android pre-paid:
http://www.amazon.com/AT-Avail-Prepaid-Android-GoPhone (http://www.amazon.com/AT-Avail-Prepaid-Android-GoPhone/dp/B005V50FZY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1340036884&sr=8-2&keywords=at%26t+avail)

I'm finding D3 is too easy once you get super-powered eq for your low level characters. My level 25 DH is blasting through normal with 300+ dps. When I first started the game with my monk, I was lucky to have 150dps at level 25.

[Uchiha Barles]

These repair costs are ridiculous. I'm paying more for not dying than I used to pay for dying before this patch. If the goal is to punish dying, why punish not dying as well by a blanket increase in repair costs? Could they not figure something more reasonable? Geez...

[oyabun]

made 100€ in 2 days, probably able to get around 300€ or more from my character, don't feel like selling his stuff because I might regret it

the funny thing is, I thought I could buy games and stuff in blizzard-store
basically you can't buy anything if you own every blizzard game already, gj blizzard. gj....

my only hope is that heart of the swarm is going to be released there right after release, if not, im going to be really pissed.

thats moneymaking at its finest
I wanted to buy games for my friends there and now I'm sitting on 100€ and can't spend a single one of it, they just took the money without offering something in return.... awesome

If you really want to take out your money there is one option. You can have a friend with paypal account to post a an item on RMAH and you purchase it using your blizzard account. It is legal and if you don't mind the the 15% cut + $1 transaction fee, it is the best way to take out your money from your blizzard account.

[Assertn]

These repair costs are ridiculous. I'm paying more for not dying than I used to pay for dying before this patch. If the goal is to punish dying, why punish not dying as well by a blanket increase in repair costs? Could they not figure something more reasonable? Geez...

I estimate that about 10% of the profit I make from a run goes back into repairs, and that's without dying. Add to that fewer rare drops, fewer gold drops, and fewer elites from my usual run... now might be as good a time as any to take a break for a while.

[KrayZ33]

30k after dying 5 times

I die more than often enough 10 times or more in a run, depending on the rare packs

not fun....
not to mention that my IAS is so fucked up, I need to buy a bow but the ones currently avaible are simply put... shit

[Uchiha Barles]

Now might be as good a time as any to take a break for a while.

My thoughts exactly. I just have 0 motivation right now to keep pushing even with better drops farmable in earlier acts. And 30k after 5 deaths...I guess they decided to go with the high end of the multiplier range they mentioned for repair cost increases. That makes this decision easy; see ya in a few major patches blizzard.

[shinta|hikari]

I am so glad I sold all my DH glass cannon gear for money.

[Animeniax]

Wow, got to act 2 on inferno with my DH and it's tough as fuck. Even the normal mobs hit for insane amounts of damage, and as others have noted, elites can kill in one or two hits. My DH has 37k HP and 37k damage with sharpshooter. I've defeated 2 elite packs but died 6 times while fighting them. The fact that they gain the death touch if you take too long to kill them makes it almost pointless.

I might go farm act 1 but at this point I've completed the game 7 times so what's the point. Still, solid 150 hours of my life spent on this game.

[shinta|hikari]

Completion depends on the person. I personally think completing normal to inferno counts only as 1 play through. I don't usually think like that, but Diablo 3 seems like the type of game that requires the player to play all the difficulties in order to enjoy it fully.

[Animeniax]

I've never considered different difficulty levels on a game as a new game, though Diablo may be held to a different standard by gamers. If I complete the story and associated missions, then I complete the game.

Elsewise, would you consider it completed if you had to join a group in order to finish all acts on Inferno? Or would you have to solo it in order to feel a sense of completion?

[shinta|hikari]

Diablo 3 is supposed to be a single player game, and it is possible to complete it single player, so I personally would think that completion means single player completion.

That does not mean partying is easier though, unless you join overpowered players.

[Animeniax]

It might have been conceptualized as a single player game, but its implementation negated that. As you believe completion means beating all 4 acts of Inferno, have you personally completed the game?

With 1.03, partying should be significantly easier, as the elites do not scale as much to account for the added human firepower.

[shinta|hikari]

Yeah, I beat Inferno before 1.03 came out. I never really played in a party because it was more difficult for a DH. It took me 5 hours to beat Diablo (final boss), but it was a satisfying win where skill and luck all clicked into place.

[Animeniax]

That's cool. I find it seems to take as much luck as skill to defeat the big bosses. It took me 15 tries to beat the butcher on inferno, and the time I finally beat him, the flame floor didn't activate when he was down to 5% health. The previous 7 times I died to him, it was because of the flame floor going 100% once he was almost dead.

Elite packs require more skill, mostly at kiting. I just beat 3 elite packs in act 2 of inferno, but had to run from another 3 that had too powerful a combination of powers. Very dissatisfying to have to avoid them.

[KrayZ33]

but it was a satisfying win where skill and luck all clicked into place.

Can't say I agree with the skill part against Diablo as a DH,

he was pretty easy to beat imho
the only boss in act4 which pretty much did nothing, in fact all the bosses except the second one were actually pretty easy to beat

[Animeniax]

Second one meaning the Butcher or 2nd boss from Act 4? I killed the Skeleton King and Magda easily with my DH. The bosses in D3 are thoroughly disappointing. But wouldn't it suck if the bosses were near impossible like some elite packs, and then you couldn't proceed in the story? At least you can run from elite packs.

[Assertn]

It might have been conceptualized as a single player game, but its implementation negated that. As you believe completion means beating all 4 acts of Inferno, have you personally completed the game?

With 1.03, partying should be significantly easier, as the elites do not scale as much to account for the added human firepower.

Considering that Inferno mode requires strategy and preparation that is unnecessary in the previous difficulties, I'd say it's the most critical part of completing the game. That being said, I'm in no rush to beat it.

[shinta|hikari]

Can't say I agree with the skill part against Diablo as a DH,

he was pretty easy to beat imho
the only boss in act4 which pretty much did nothing, in fact all the bosses except the second one were actually pretty easy to beat

You probably have decent gear. I had decent damage, but my aspd was shit, and I die from 1 hit from anything. The clone part was the only difficult part because my nether tentacles moved at a snail's pace, so I could not kill the clone in time even with SS and the stuns from rain of vengeance.

The 1st and 3rd phases were almost too easy.

[Uchiha Barles]

Well, with the new patch out at the end of this month, looks like it might be worth it to log back in and peek at the game to see if its fun in inferno. I'm looking forward to the hydra buffs. Blizzard/venom hydra combo is alright but I do wish I could use some of the other hydras as venom hydra is just plain ugly. I'm also hoping they buff the other signature spells, electrocute in particular.

With the nerfs to some of the more annoying affixes that are coming, dying might be less of an issue, so I might bother trying to level a melee character now. There's also a 25% cost reduction in repair for high level gear, which may be good enough with the increase in gear drops, gear improvement (only weapons for 1.04), and reduction in dying from the monster nerfs.

1.0.4 Systems Preview (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6923456/104_Systems_Preview-8_10_2012)

edit: Apparently the enrage timers on some of the champion packs were designed as a dps check...if so, wouldn't it have made sense for loot that allows you to progress to drop? Idiots.

[Y]

There is really nothing to be done with D3 until new content drops, and that's a long time coming. I don't care what the content changes into because the game, unlike D2, does not encourage rapid, repetitive clears, so there's not a whole lot of reason to sit there playing it day in and day out.

[KrayZ33]

D3 is the worst game, made by blizzard, I've played so far.. and by far

I'm just glad that I got enough money from it to buy the SC2-addon when it comes out, so the money loss is not that big.

I don't know anyone who is still playing this.... and when it got released 9 of my friends bought it the first day.

[Y]

Oh yeah there's no PVP. How the hell do you let that happen? The entire endgame of Diablo II was boss runs and PVP and both of those things were missing and replaced with nothing in Diablo III. No surprise it has no longevity.

[Uchiha Barles]

Oh yeah, granted this game is far from great, but I have yet to beat it on inferno. With the changes that are coming now I should be able to realistically get gear from drops and farm my way to the end without relying on the AH or bashing my skull on the desk because of how stupidly hard and unfun it is. Once that's done, I'll maybe level a monk, and then shelve the game until the expansion is released...if I even decide to buy it. Maybe I could try running a hardcore character as well, but honestly, torchlight 2 gets released end of the month and guild wars 2 is out as well...so I'm not sure that I'll care really.

[Assertn]

Rolled some new chars with friends last night in hardcore mode. Starting fresh + the relatively unraped HC economy + the excitement of hardcore mode was very refreshing - almost like playing the game for the first time.

I suggest giving it a try.

[deathnightwc3]

Rolled some new chars with friends last night in hardcore mode. Starting fresh + the relatively unraped HC economy + the excitement of hardcore mode was very refreshing - almost like playing the game for the first time.

I suggest giving it a try.
Yeah... none of my friends are coming back.

[KrayZ33]

From what I've read in forums, they didn't fix the rubberbanding, Its to much a pain to die because of lags and poor wayfinding.

[gos27]

Patch 1.0.4.

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/5691275/Diablo_III_Patch_104_Notes-21_08_2012

Suppose a reason to get back playing it :)

[Uchiha Barles]

Trying out the patch now, and really things are much the same. I have to say I'm enjoying my arcane hydra a lot now, it's doing a good job actually killing groups of mobs, allowing me to focus on the harder to kill stuff, and swapping blizzard out for arcane meteor which helps make short work of champion packs. Dangerous playstyle, but it also lets farm quickly and efficiently with a kiting build, and if you get good at it, you won't die. Not really enough to keep me playing for very long though.

What's *really* entertaining is the backlash Blizzard is getting for Jay Wilson's (D3 Game Director) comment on facebook in response to David Brevik's (Creator of the Diablo series and lead designer for Diablo 1 and 2) interview comments.


http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/21/david-brevik-and-blizzard-devs-clash-over-diablo-iii-criticism

Facebook comments from D3 devs (http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2012/08/Diablo-Brevik-610x692.jpg)

The official forums along with mmo-champion and diablo fans went nuts over this, and it's been fun to read.

Oh, and for good measure:

Jay Wilson memes (http://memegenerator.net/Jay-Wilson-Diablo-3)

[Animeniax]

"Hell hath no fury like nerds when you mess with their game franchises." - some guy

I didn't play D1 or D2 so D3 was fun on its own merits, maybe moreso because I didn't have to constantly compare it to the previous games. I had the same emotional detachment for ME3.

The JW meme generator is awesome.

[gos27]

Been playing a bit since the patch. The whole 100 paragon levels I kind of enjoy, something to strive for I guess. Also Inferno seems a lot easier, well, the elite mobs anyway. Not dying 20 times just to kill one.

[Y]

The Jay Wilson thing is going to be especially funny when after Diablo III's lifecycle ends he is forced out of the company under similar circumstances as Brevik.

[Penner]

Reading abit about Blizzards upcoming D3 ladders (or "Seasons" as they call them)

"Seasons are a shard of the existing game where everything is a fresh start. You start with a brand new character without access to any of the gold or items you collected with your primary account for the length of the season. We plan on creating brand new, powerful legendaries that only drop within in the season. After the season ends, all of your progress — your experience, your items, your gold, etc. — will be rolled into the main roster. The goal is the fresh-start feeling — so many changes and tweaks have happened since the launch of Diablo III — it is really energizing and fun to recreate that ‘first-moment-in-a-new-game’ feeling.We’ve also added leaderboards. Players can race on a variety of metrics to try to become the leader in their region or the top of their friends and clan lists. That friendly competition angle lends itself really well to Diablo games."


Bolded part just made me quit the game. I have zero interest in ladders, but by making "ladder exclusive" items, i'm basically forced into playing ladder if i want access to all the items.

Sure, the ladder-only stuff becomes available to non-ladder once a "season" ends, but then they just start new season with, guess what, more new ladder-only items i can't get unless i play on the fucking ladder again, and again, and again...

People kept bitching and whining that they wanted ladders to be able to "compete" with other players on leaderboards and whatnot, which is fine, i couldn't care less about that stuff, but seriously, fuck ladder-only items, i hated that shit back in D2, and i still hate that shit today.

[KrayZ33]

I think its good, there is no reason to not like it because you can just enjoy the new items once a season is over, even if you decide not to take part in the ladder.
the game needs more items to be fun and if they add ~20 legs each season the game might entertain me once again and I have a reasons to start a new class now
atm, there is no reason to log on once you get ~t3-4 equipment because upgrades are way too rare

sheesh, they really do need to add alot more legendaries now that I think about it... around ~200 would be good for now

[Edort4]

I cant bring myself to get caught by the grinding in this game. In D2 I could do like 100 baal runs one after the other and not get bored. Now just 2 runs and I quit out of boredom.

Maybe it has to do with the lvl cap. I remember that I only reached lvl 99 with a few charcter each ladder wipe. And I remember that lvl +75 was already a good lvl to start doing some hell runs, an still 24 lvls away from cap. So you started grinding and experiencing end game while still getting some lvls along the way. Getting some synergy skills to max and allocating stat points was quite satisfactory in its own way.

Maybe is that what I miss or maybe is that im older and bitter and cant enjoy anything. Dunno but everytime I run d3 I cant help but remember the good old times of runs (those baal_run_1,2,3....453...) with 8 different ppl running like crazy and indentifying items on the run and dropping bad ones to leave room for the final boss drop. Usually blue crap but they were so fast to do to enjoy and to make that you could afford 20 runs of bad drops cause it was less than 1 hour.

I doubt this new ladder system is going to make anything more exciting but well i dont care that they keep adding content even if it doesnt work.

[KrayZ33]

its because the item-hunt is a lot more fun in D2, every item could be bis
remember stuff like +200% ED on "magic" weapons?

now, once you got a decent legendary in every slot, you will never look at rares again because they can't roll high enough..

[EpyonNext]

The problem here is finding a "decent legendary"

[Penner]

If this is actually legit... lol

Diablo 3 Legendary Gambling Exploit (http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/diablo-3-legendary-gambling-exploit-choose-your-own-item)


Since people claimed the screens were shopped, someone made a video.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8pOziq6jTE

[KrayZ33]

The problem here is finding a "decent legendary"

its not really a problem with loot 2.0
you can always reroll the one stat that is bugging you, so while you won't get a trifecta everytime, you get 2/3 pretty much always.

quite a few items have one or 2 fixed stats on them
take Magefist for example which will always roll decent, no matter what
or about every bracer/belt

even without legendaries, you will outgear any dropped rare once you start crafting and reforge the unwanted property