Well I've never been "high end" in D3, nor is that something I really care about attaining. I mean, my Wizard is now one of my best-geared characters, and she only has 59k DPS, 1000 resists and 4600 armor - enough to handle MP5 (pre-hotfix) but no more. But, given the insane HP increases beyond that MP level, I wouldn't care to play it anyway. Most of my characters have DPS in the 60-80k range (the Barb, now with a Skorn, is at 99k, but I'm not sure I like using it over Schaefers's Hammer), so none of them are ever going to play at MP9 or MP10, and I'm OK with that. Once I'm done trying all the builds I want to try, and get sick of playing my favorite ones, I'm going to move on from D3 anyway. And the Infernal Machine minigame does not really appeal to me, since I found bosses to be the worst part of D3. Until then my melee/meteor wizard is a lot of fun, but no, not as effective as WW, from a proc-generating perspective. But she kills very quickly (especially now that I've added Explosive Blast/Chain Reaction back in) and can take a few hits even without Diamond Skin, so she's "combat effective" even without WW. Going to try the build this guy came up with, after I get bored with melee style.
By high end I mean the people who do the posting in most of the CM/WW build threads. A lot of these guys have 100k+ dps and +70% attack speed like this guy. I just figure if everyone is running WW it is probably what I should be running to be as effective as possible.
I'm going to give this build a try tonight. Only one offensive spell (meteor), but looks to have much higher survivability than the build I've been using.
They changed the act 3 keywarden in the hotfix - he's far less crazy now, and my wizard easily killed him with a melee set up. Before the hotfix, the last time I went after him ('cause he drops loot like an act boss, not for the keys) it took several deaths to take him down - after the hotfix, zero deaths on the same MP5. I tried it now. Lots of fun. Almost makes MP5 too easy (until encountering vortex/teleport mobs, then there's a challenge). But it doesn't work unless one has a lot of AP on crit and high critical chance. I have 29 APoC myself, +2 AP regen from the passive, +2 AP regen from Familiar/Arcanot, -3 AP cost from Storm Armor and -7 AP cost from Diamond Skin, and with all these I still sometimes become AP starved versus a single target (typically an elite). Groups, though, go down with frightening efficiency. Meteors come down from the sky bam, bam, bam in a nearly-endless succession. I'm actually considering swapping out Familiar/Arcanot for Magic Missile (Seeker or Charged) for its 100% proc ratio. With 29 AP on crit, a few Magic Missile shots would quickly refill the AP bar, and deal pretty good damage in the process (charged is now at 163% weapon damage). The other alternative is to replace Familiar with Hydra - it doesn't crit, but costs nothing (15 AP once in 15 seconds) and provides a good damage boost versus tough single targets and bosses.
That is good to hear about the act 3 keywarden. I was thinking that a hydra would be a good swap on that build looking at it. I don't have enough apoc right now and replacing my source to get there would cost 25m if I wanted to do it right. Still might just grab some cheap source to give it a try.
So uh, I would be talking about the game and all after my scheduled waiting-for-the-airplane Diablo III playtime, but it just keeps telling me it needs to patch and then doesn't patch. Sadface. And here I was looking forward to finishing Inferno on my Barbarian. :(
Oh, well, that explains it. Not that it lets me play while waiting for my flight, sad-face, but I guess I'll be able to play while waiting in Denver for my connection. Woohoo!
I tried that meteor build and it is not bad but as Supper mentioned it is arcane starved quite a bit (I grabbed a different source and had 28-29 apoc when I tried this) and reflect packs just blow. I never hit a fast pack but I can't imagine that would be any fun either. I guess the only real upside of this build is you can pretty much ignore attack speed and just stack crit hit, crit damage, etc. I started using slow time with the 10% attack speed bonus on my CM/WW setup to reach the elusive over 2.73 attacks per second and man does it make a difference. Getting that last 9% on my equipment is going to cost a ton though. At this point though I am considering just using slow time instead of armor or just keeping it in place of teleport and dealing with the drawbacks. I have died a few times where I wouldn't have if I had teleport but I also know there are a few times where slow time has kept me alive as well. The missile slowing is great against charged packs and the slower attack speed definitely helps with defense.
Yeah I actually abandoned the build as well after a few days. It's fun, it's powerful against groups, but it has some glaring weaknesses. The arcane starvation against a single target I solved by adding Magic Missile (Seeker), when at zero AP, two-three shots of MM bring you back up to full, combined with the natural regen. But the problem that remained unsolved was very strong melee attackers (like Phase Beast champs/elites) and bosses (read: Siegebreaker). Even with very good armor and resists, a Wizard is not a Barb/Monk, so cannot simply stand there toe to toe with such strong attackers - unless we use Frost Nova and Diamond Skin. So I tried adding Frost Nova back in, and the result was kind of a half-hearted FN/CM build. It became clear after a while that if I'm going to be in melee range anyway, then might as well put Explosive Blast and Spectral Blades back in and go to my normal CM build. In D3 it's generally easier to deal with ranged threats than with fast and powerful melee threats, so having a build that is strong versus ranged but weak versus melee is not optimal. To add insult to injury, the Slow Time bubble does nothing against Mortar (and Quill Beast projectiles). So this was more incentive to go back to my normal CM/meteor build. I can't even imagine how much it would cost me to try and achieve those speeds. And yeah, you die from time to time without teleport (my CM/Meteor/Blades build doesn't have it), but it's manageable. Really taught me to watch for those frozen orb explosions though. The funny thing is that, in 1.05, contrary to all the cries of doom beforehand, CM Wizard in melee is so much more survivable than a Monk or two-hander Barb. Mobs just don't do any damage when perma-frozen, and when they manage to break free, there's Diamond Skin. The Crowd Control changes had an enormous impact on CM Wizards and RoT Witch Doctors, which is something the Monk and Barb can't take advantage of nearly as well (since their CC skills aren't spammable). The melee Wizard is also freakishly powerful when stacking three damage sources (Blades, EB, Meteor) which are going constantly. But ... I'm also getting bored of D3, finally. Nothing really left to try that appeals to me, so I'll probably put the game down in a few days, until the inevitable expansion. EDIT: make that, "done with D3 now". King's Bounty: Warriors of the North was released on steam. :) It's been great, D3, see you later!
About 10 runs at the Act 4 keywarden and no plans yet. Extremely frustrating. But two green drops last night, one very useful for my barb and the other should go for a few mil on the AH. Getting bored with D3 too, though, tempted to buy the Rohan expansion and let LOTRO get its hooks back into me again.
Running at MP3-4. The odds are like over 95% that it should've dropped by now. Ran it again last night and didn't drop again. Edit: Did the Act 4 keywarden probably 4-5x today on MP4 and. . .no plans. Did get a killer legendary 2-handed axe for my barb though, so not all bad.
Can't for the life of me get that f'n Act 4 plan to drop, but the repeated runs are paying off in other ways: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Mjolnir-1981/hero/3300983 The Immortal King's Irons and Skorn both dropped for me this weekend. Puts my barb's paper dmg at over 75k with 450% crit dmg. Enough to make me abandon Schaefer's Hammer.
I think their random number generator is screwed up. I went 0-6 or so on mp5 looking for keys. We dropped down to mp4 and keys started to drop far more often. As a corollary my WD always gets act 2 keys. He went like 5 for 5 on mp4. I realize we are working with small sample sizes but these runs of misses and hits seem to be very common. Nice drops there BTW. I picked up the IK 2h axe from a run over the weekend. No idea how good it is since I am not really playing him right now but it is 1460dps. Been focusing on my wizard and WD. Retooled my monk for fun. I am done with the DH. Reflect packs just destroy him and there is really not a lot you can do. Especially since they made the just terrible design decision to allow sentries to proc reflect damage but no LoH. So you drop 2 or 3 turrets against a reflect pack and you die while running away because they kill you so easy. I could go back to a smoke screen run for your life build but eff that when I can take MP6 with my wizard solo.
Also got a Unity ring that sold for 6m, so I bought a much better Cindercoat with a lot more vit. Finally got the plans, started doing fast MP1-2 run and after about 12x it dropped. Got two machines built now, we're going to each build 3, get buffs, and the 3 of us will go in at MP4-5. Major shoulder surgery yesterday, f'n sucks typing with one hand. . .and the wrong one to boot.
Why I let myself be surprised by last night is the real mystery, but my buddy and I did a few infernal portals at MP5, each with over 300% MF, and neither of us got a body part. The odds of that happening, based on what Blizz has made public, should be less than 5%. It's enough to make you quit the game, especially when you can literally kill a keywarden at MP4-5 10x before seeing a key drop, and you need 3 per portal.
Drop rates are tied to MP level not MF. We took out Kulle and Seigebreaker on MP4, my wife got a part I didn't. I have gotten all 3 parts before and made a ring and it was worthless. You can see it on my enchantress here. Chances of me getting a ring that is an improvement for my wizard are basically 0 while an improvement for my witch doctor is a little more likely (because he isn't tied to 9% attack speed items). I haven't kept track but it feels like MP4 gives up better chances than 5 although it is probably just we are getting luckier on MP4 or runs are easier so that we get more shots and more keys.
Also, heeeee's baaaaaack. Yes the demise of the whirlwind barbarian was greatly exaggerated. Run animosity (or superstition or unforgiving), use the templar, crank your crit rate through the roof and hey it still works! It is not quite as good as before but you can honest to god use whirlwind as a major source of your damage with the reduced cost and better crit rate. It is much harder to keep your wrath of the berserker going between fights but not impossible. Still way more fun than other barbarian builds for me.
Well, then, we each had a 50% chance of a drop per encounter and never saw one organ. Killing the same keywarden 10x at MP4 and not seeing a key drop. I don't know, it's Blizz so I'd lay odds the code on drop rates is borked up. But it was enough to kill our dwindling interest in the game. I'm sure I'll come back if an expansion is released or major content is dropped, but for now I'm done. Too many other titles out now designed by developers with a better grasp on how to reward player time and are simply more fun to play.
Yeah, I agree about the drop rate. It seems very off. I would like to see their overall numbers of keywarden kills at every MP level and % drop rate. Across the entire game, with those numbers it should be close to the proper percentage but it certainly doesn't feel like it in small samples. One of the things they could do is make the percentages add over time. So if you run it on MP4 and don't get a key the next time you add that 40% to your roll. So another run on MP4 would give you an 80% chance and if that fails then the 3rd time it would drop for sure. Or even if they only bump it by 1/2 after 4 runs you would definitely get a key or part at MP4.
Yeah, I realize my circle of playing friends is a very small sampling but what's telling IMO is how consistent our experience with the game is. We've all had to do a dozen or so runs for each key at MP4-5, which simply shouldn't be the case and makes for a very unpredictable, frustrating case of grinding. And my grinding days are long over with any game. And like you said, it's highly likely to be a waste of time in the end since itemization is so f*cked anyways. The smart thing would be for those rings to allow players to choose their ring's 4 properties and then the quality of each is random.
Dan Lawrence I didn't want to clutter up the GOTY thread, but this post was enough to pique my interest. I gave up in Diablo about level 50ish or so when I had to visit the auction house every 3-4 levels because I wasn't getting any decent loot drops. (I had just started on my 3rd playthrough). Do you think it's actually possible to complete the game without having to visit the auction house and you can get enough loot drops while playing to beef up your character with a minimal amount of grinding?
With the nerfs to inferno difficulty (give that there's now Monster Power if you want a challenge) and the ridiculously easy availability of decent rares, it's now pretty trivial to "complete the game" by killing Inferno Diablo (on monster power 0, anyway). Loot quality and loot drops are worlds better than they were at launch - if you haven't played since the first few patches it is well worth a second look. But there's still a lot of problems, primary among them in my mind the lack of build diversity (especially for certain classes), and the lack of legendary/set items that are interesting, as opposed to just generically good.
I know you are asking Dan but completing the game without the AH misses the point. It isn't like you could get through the high end of D2 with just drops you found yourself. I hit a wall in D2 because of that. I got a ton of time out of D2 but I wanted nothing to do with trading with other players in the manner you had to in D2. Besides I never played on Bnet, just local so the only people you could trade with were dupers and scammers so it was kind of pointless. The AH makes the game so much better now. Silly good equipment is so cheap now and you can get what you need rather than just making do with those shoulders that are great other than they have int on them and you are a barbarian. As for the build diversity meserach is talking about I think there are at least a few interesting builds per class. Like Wizard there are melee wizards of a number of flavors, archon builds, that meteor build mentioned earlier in the thread, blizzard/hydra kiting builds, etc. Barbarian has WW and the Bash/Rend build and probably others I don't pay attention to. So don't be too discouraged.
Other people have answered already but in short it depends what you mean by 'complete the game' and 'minimal amount of grinding'. I'd say its now miles easier than it was at release to beat Inferno Diablo on the default, Monster Power 0, setting but still fairly close to impossible/impossibly boring to beat him at monster power 10 (the new maximum). You definitely have a much higher chance of getting upgrades now through normal gadding about, especially if you haven't played recently, since they have sent the chance for rares to drop from normal monsters miles higher than it was at release (4 times I think?) and restored things like rares dropping from chests that were pulled out almost immediately after release before most people had a chance to really use them. In addition the chance for a legendary or set item to drop was recently doubled from the release value which in my experience tends to mean a legendary drops roughly every four hours of play-ish. The legendaries are now, while not always the absolute best items in the game, fairly 'top-tier' items so if you have only level 50 gear from around release each one that drops has a good chance of being an upgrade if it is appropriate for your character. I guess since you already have it there is no harm in giving it a go for a while and see if it clicks with you this time.
The quality of drops is so good now, compared to release, that yes, it's actually entirely possible, and even easy, to complete the game on Monster Power 0-2. You have 800-900 DPS one-handers dropping relatively regularly, which people used to pay 50-100 million on the Auction House back in July/August. But the Auction House is always there to alleviate frustration for the most unlucky with the drops. I spent entire pages of this thread retelling my experiments with the new (post patch 1.04) legendary effects and the unique (and interesting!) builds they made possible. As for build diversity, Xaroc has it right. It's about as diverse, after all the patching, as D2 was at any given patch/stage, perhaps even a bit more so. Just look at the variety of ways posted in the last dozen or so pages of this thread about how to play the Sorceress, Demon Hunter or Witch Doctor.
Not to mention that the economy is at the stage now where good gear has become ridicolously cheap due to massive oversaturation and the increase in drop rates. For example here is a guide how someone completely outfits a Sorceress for one million gold without getting any great deals. He can comfortably play Inferno Monsterpower 1-2 with it and survive in MP10.
Thanks for the heads up on this. I poked my head into the AH for five minutes earlier and upgraded both my monks weapons and half my other slots for about 700k gold. Not too shabby. It'll give me a good foundation if I find myself wanting to grind paragon levels or higher MP at some point.
Poking at the game on and off over a while, I've finally gotten a Witch Doctor into Hardcore Inferno Act 4! Just for kicks, I've been seeing how far I can get with a build based around Spirit Barrage and Rush of Essence. The good news is that with the right setup, Rush of Essence will let you spam Spirit Barrage! The bad news is that spamming Spirit Barrage is a deeply unambitious goal. Still, it has its upsides. The range is big enough to shoot monsters clear across the screen, and using Well of Souls deals fairly good damage to secondary targets. The spirits pierce walls and home in on enemies, so I can just hold down the button and never miss, even if enemies are scattered in every direction by Horrify and split to every corner of the screen. Soul Harvest, Horrify, Zombie Dogs, and Gargantuan are the rest of the build, but I still go back and forth on the 6th and final skill. Using Haunt just to pair together the two least popular Witch Doctor skills in a thematically coherent whole has its attractions, but there's no real reason to take another single-target spell except stubbornness. Then again, I am stubborn.
I poked my head into this game after abandoning it months ago due to the general lackluster "endgame". It's nice to see that so many of the problems I had with the game have been addressed. A full stack of valor and I was being showered in teh hot sexy lewts. I can safely dual wield in my monk without feeling so goddamned squishy I need to run away from the weakest of zombies. And most important of all, I feel like I'm actually finding upgrades while playing instead if having to trawl the AH every few levels. I also feel like I can run the build I want in inferno mode and not feel like I'm gimping myself. Maybe this will change if I attempt higher MP modes, but I doubt I'll be doing that any time soon. Unfortunately, I feel it's somewhat too little too late. Everyone I know has moved on from this game months ago.
The new 1.07 patch might just have enough stuff in it to pull me back in to this game. Highlights include: * big buffs to experience bonus on Monster Power levels meanign people might actually want to turn it on once in a while * some new super duper uber crafting recipes as end-game content that might actually be worth making * Monk spirit spending damage attacks getting a heavy buff (yay potential for build diversity finally!)
That's a huge buff to the experience gained via monster power, that's going to about double the speed I gain paragon levels immediately and start to ramp up from there. The moves on gems and crafting are a bit more cautious, I think both systems could still use an almost across the board buff for players still in the lower regions of the system but I guess it's better than nothing. The 'Dueling' PvP just sounds kind of half-assed in it's implementation but at least it's finally coming out so they can stop spending whatever dev energy it was using up and put that into working on the expansion pack which would be the thing I expect more current players and potential returning ones to care about.
Hmm? What's the matter with Ghostcrawler? I always liked his explanatory posts & interactions with the community. Chris Metzen, on the other hand...
Ghostcrawler is one of the many reasons I stopped playing WoW. I can't remember exactly what made me dislike him, but I think it had a lot to do with him being a dipshit.
