Ok! I just started getting into these forums, and I think I might be able to liven up this discussion a bit. I am currently farming Act II inferno on my DH (not the EASIEST feat since they nerfed smokescreen, but not that bad, especially compared to barb/WD solo). I have no problems doing either solo or group with my build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#aZVdYR!bTe!acbbZb. If anyone has any questions on my choices, feel free to ask =). When it comes to monk...they key is taking serenity, mantra of evasion, and one with everything/seize the initiative passives. My friend's build is something like this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WZjgQX!UXd!ZYcYbc, and he farms act 3 inferno fairly well right now. The big deal is that you can double up on resistances on items. So he chose physical resist (easiest to get), so you can get an item that has 50 resist all AND 50 physical resist, so you get 100 resist all from a single slot. He has around 75% damage reduction from armor, and the same from resist all, and probably around 50% evasion, so he tanks VERY well. Seriously though, the barb is screwed for soling inferno, it's utter crap. Hopefully blizz fixes it. Also wizards are overpowered, but oh well.
They did a LOT of new things right in this game, and it makes this game shine like no other. The new skill system is amazing, allowing you to try new things, build how you want, and switch it as soon as you get different gear for a different build, and that's amazing. All while still remaining very customizable. Yes there are many meta builds that are required for inferno to be doable on every class, but it's not pure builds, just subsets, which is at least an improvement over D2. So like I said with the monk, you could make most builds in inferno work with the few skills I mentioned specifically. I'm not of the opinion that inferno is really that off in terms of what blizzard wanted (it does need a few tweaks, maybe to a couple of hard counter affixes); I just think the problem lies with some class adjustments. Inferno is still challenging, and requires you to pay attention and play well, and some people just don't like the idea of having to farm the current area they can complete for months to move on to the next, which MAY be the case.
Now...on to the flaws... ITEMS BLIZZARD. I-T-E-M-S. If legendaries are going to be THAT MUCH RARER than D2, MAKE THEM AT LEAST AS GOOD. I understand that a perfect, or near perfect rare will outstrip it, and in the case of D3, they wanted even a very GOOD rare to have a shot at beating it...and that's all fine in my opinion...if it WAS that way. For armor...it's close to that. Some tweaks to affixes that they're bringing in 1.1 will correct the issue I believe. For weapons however...Ya done goofed blizz. By a lot. DPS scales SO WELL because of the way stats work, that a rare has maybe a 1% chance of pulling out ahead of a legendary, and drops like 1000 times more often, making legendaries obsolete, because of proliferation from the AH. As hard as inferno is, it's hard to make up differences in DPS with just extra stuff like proc chances (which are really low), or lifestealing or whatever. Damage is TOO important. A legendary has to spawn really big damage mods for its random affixes to compete with a rare...which means only 1/100 legendaries will compete...which makes...well...you get it. It's bad. I think tweaking some legendary armor will help a lot, but legendary weapons need an overhaul straight up. They have stuff planned, but that will be at least a month from now, and we'll see.
Lastly...ONLINE ONLY IS OK IF YOU CAN HANDLE IT. I know this game had a massive release that was beyond comprehension, and the blizz server team is INSANELY good, but still. I spend over $1000 on my computer, and over $60/mo for super awesome internet...not for 95% lag free...I could get that for 10% of that price. I pay for that last 4.99% to be lag free as well, because that's worth my money. When I get a 5 second lag spike in inferno, I'm dead. I understand why that has to be that way for balance/fun/difficulty, but really...this has to stop. They've made a lot of progress on this front in the last few weeks, but they still have work to do. I think that's all for now...I might think of more later. I am still loving the game though, despite its flaws, and my BattleTag is PsychicMufin#1169, so hit me up! Looking to take down Belial inferno this week most likely =).
I am up to Act 4.5 Hell mode now, I keep dying every 2 seconds since apparently running out of melee range is hard for me to do. I might look you up Soda, maybe run some ponies in Hell?
Defensive Monk ATM, I tried what you had suggested in your comment and it seems to be working pretty well. I just got into Inferno last night, working on the Skeleton King today. I have the pony stick up to Nightmare, I am saving gold now for the Hell upgrade.
Anyone bored to death with D3? I know I am. Grinding through Inferno seems pointless. There is nothing compelling about the gear grind like it was in D2 or other similar games.
I havent done much with other poeple tho, all solo thus far.
AH meta game isn't nearly as fun as it was in WoW...
There is little to no creativity available when it comes to builds/specs. For each class there is 1 or 2 play styles that can survive inferno and you HAVE to do it or you will fail.
I still enjoy it, although it got somewhat boring after the patch that nerfed inferno and buffed drop rates. The most efficient way to grind is now whatever act of inferno you can trivially clear. So everyone is farming act 1/2 now as fast as possible, because it's the best way to get drops. Blegh. I enjoyed challenge. I'm now leveling hardcore characters, which is always fun.
Keep in mind fatcat, that D2:LoD is the best because it had like...2 years of updates to the original launch of the game to make it awesome. When it launched, D2 was devoid of all the cool shit like runewords, and Uber Diablo. Maybe in 2 years D3 will have all the cool shit it should have launched with...but D2 might still be the best =P. D3's amazing skill/rune system is still the best thing about it, and I hope it catches on.
@magic I agree 100%. @Soda I think the trick to d3 would have been making it more like LoD, not D2 classic. A difference that many people seem to miss.
yeah, but D2 classic had to be out for a while before they came up with all the ideas for LoD, and D3 could do the same thing. Even then, it took a while and a couple of patches after LoD launch. Seems like even though blizzard makes great games, they don't hit their stride until the first xpac. Starcraft 2 being the only notable exception in the last 15 years? You could argue for WoW, but really, Burning Crusade was the pinnacle of WoW imo, supporting my point.
The problem with that argument is, D2:LoD already exists. Blizzard really shouldn't have to learn a lesson twice... It isn't really acceptable to be that shade of ignorant.
i like d3. i think it's not as good as d2x, but also that people are seeing d2x with rose-colored classes and are comparing d3 to that standard, rather than rose-colored glasses
i like d3. i think it's not as good as d2x, but also that people are seeing d2x with rose-colored classes and are comparing d3 to that standard, rather than rose-colored glasses
rofl @ inferno. Anyway, yeah you have a good argument with the 'learn your lessons twice', but seriously, its' a whole new game with a whole new set of problems. They're not ALL applicable, so they have to learn new things about it.
i like d3. i think it's not as good as d2x, but also that people are seeing d2x with rose-colored classes and are comparing d3 to that standard, rather than rose-colored glasses
Are you in inferno yet?
nope. but i read enough bitch threads to know that people who complain that legendaries aren't BIS seem to forget how prized good rare rolls were in d2x (or even how much BSoD/JMoD were sought after). or people who bitch that the most efficient way to play is to overgear for an area and run it quickly (hello meph/pindle/baal runs - these didn't have the BEST loot, you could just run them the fastest).
or the fact that people view all the acts as incremental gear checks (these existed in d2x just as much, unless you were a sorc).
Yeah, diablo post IAS nerf was kind of a bitch though, ugh. My DH took SUCH a dps nerf. It did make my clone at lot less of a bitch though, but with smokescreen, damage doesn't matter, just speed...and they nerfed that. I'm back to being able to farm act3 inferno again though, after some more gear upgrades...which sadly to say is harder than diablo. Hardcore is fun though, and leveling is fun too. Hope they work on endgame soon.
nope. but i read enough bitch threads to know that people who complain that legendaries aren't BIS seem to forget how prized good rare rolls were in d2x (or even how much BSoD/JMoD were sought after). or people who bitch that the most efficient way to play is to overgear for an area and run it quickly (hello meph/pindle/baal runs - these didn't have the BEST loot, you could just run them the fastest).
or the fact that people view all the acts as incremental gear checks (these existed in d2x just as much, unless you were a sorc).
It isn't good rares though. It's anything but the worst rares are better than anything but the best legendaries. Combine that with the scarcity of legendaries and there might as well not be any.
It isn't good rares though. It's anything but the worst rares are better than anything but the best legendaries. Combine that with the scarcity of legendaries and there might as well not be any.
My wife and I are both enjoying D3 quite a bit (then again, we've both played D2 & LoD on and off from the time of their release right up to when the D3 servers opened up). We tend to approach things from the standpoint of 'better gear is better gear' (regardless of what class it falls into)... sure, it kinda sucks to pick up a legendary item that's junk but it's not like that didn't happen in LoD. The one thing I really do miss about D2/LoD, though, is that it seemed to have better/larger randomly generated dungeon maps, no?
As for the auction house, we're playing as though it doesn't exist for the time being.
Except that the game's difficulty is designed with the AH in mind, and without it, one is constantly behind the difficulty curve due to not having found cool enough items on one's own. I tried playing that way at first, but I would just die all the time, and my damage was unable to keep up with my teammates enough to be helpful. I was bored just following along and clicking on things, but not really helping. When my friends started buying things at the auction-house for me, I realized it was just part of how this game works and I gave in, but I'm still not having fun.
Even ignoring the Auction-House, though, just knowing it's there can ruin the experience, and its existence definitely effects your drops. I mean: if the game dropped good stuff for everyone, as it would have to without an auction-house, then the auction-house would be uselessly flooded, and prices would be too low. The game creates demand for the items by making them drop so infrequently.
For a lot of people the game is about grinding the levels, and buying and selling at the auction house. For me, niether of those things is fun. I want a game where I play through once from beginning to end and the difficulty (which includes drop frequency) scales correctly.
What the game really needs is a mode in which the game drops items for the characters at a more reasonable frequency, but which also cuts off that characters ability to trade with others.
Of course, that would make co-operative mode still less actually co-operative, but at least it would be a game, rather than whatever this mess is.
I remember entering hardcore and having a lvl 56 (ilvl 57) regular 2h bow that had like, 225 DPS. After farming hell act IV for a while, I managed one that had like 275 DPS, it was sweet. I got into inferno, and everything took like 15 seconds to kill. Normal, pansy white skeletons. That made it pretty much not possible in any way. 200k gold later (which wasn't that hard to get, as it was just sitting on my character after finishing hell), I had an 800 DPS bow, and it had like 15% IAS to boot. My overall character's DPS went from like 6k to 25k. Blizzard has claimed that they balance the game for no AH before, because they "didn't have one to balance against without everyone playing", but they absolutely took a guess and balanced against that, because that right there is just unplayable without the AH.
Anyway, that's actually a fairly interesting idea CB. It could be like, a friends-only mode, where there are no public games (which pretty much prevents trading), no AH, and like 10x drop rates. You can only join games with people you're battle.net friends with. I guess it would be hard to totally shut down, as you could just discuss it on forums/channels/whatever, and then just hop in as friends and make trades, but it would make it so difficult that people wanting to do that would probably just use the normal mode that has an AH. I would definitely play this mode, and probably level every character with it over the course of a few years, even if just occasionally playing with friends.
I like the game so far. I understand some of the criticisms, but I like a lot of the changes they made. It's interesting how D3 seems more like Torchlight and Titan Quest stylistically than it does to D2.
Also, D2 vanilla was kinda crappy in a lot of ways. It wasn't until later updates and especially D2:LoD that the game got awesome. Give it some time chaps, Blizzard's pretty good about improving their releases.
Comments
They did a LOT of new things right in this game, and it makes this game shine like no other. The new skill system is amazing, allowing you to try new things, build how you want, and switch it as soon as you get different gear for a different build, and that's amazing. All while still remaining very customizable. Yes there are many meta builds that are required for inferno to be doable on every class, but it's not pure builds, just subsets, which is at least an improvement over D2. So like I said with the monk, you could make most builds in inferno work with the few skills I mentioned specifically. I'm not of the opinion that inferno is really that off in terms of what blizzard wanted (it does need a few tweaks, maybe to a couple of hard counter affixes); I just think the problem lies with some class adjustments. Inferno is still challenging, and requires you to pay attention and play well, and some people just don't like the idea of having to farm the current area they can complete for months to move on to the next, which MAY be the case.
Now...on to the flaws... ITEMS BLIZZARD. I-T-E-M-S. If legendaries are going to be THAT MUCH RARER than D2, MAKE THEM AT LEAST AS GOOD. I understand that a perfect, or near perfect rare will outstrip it, and in the case of D3, they wanted even a very GOOD rare to have a shot at beating it...and that's all fine in my opinion...if it WAS that way. For armor...it's close to that. Some tweaks to affixes that they're bringing in 1.1 will correct the issue I believe. For weapons however...Ya done goofed blizz. By a lot. DPS scales SO WELL because of the way stats work, that a rare has maybe a 1% chance of pulling out ahead of a legendary, and drops like 1000 times more often, making legendaries obsolete, because of proliferation from the AH. As hard as inferno is, it's hard to make up differences in DPS with just extra stuff like proc chances (which are really low), or lifestealing or whatever. Damage is TOO important. A legendary has to spawn really big damage mods for its random affixes to compete with a rare...which means only 1/100 legendaries will compete...which makes...well...you get it. It's bad. I think tweaking some legendary armor will help a lot, but legendary weapons need an overhaul straight up. They have stuff planned, but that will be at least a month from now, and we'll see.
Lastly...ONLINE ONLY IS OK IF YOU CAN HANDLE IT. I know this game had a massive release that was beyond comprehension, and the blizz server team is INSANELY good, but still. I spend over $1000 on my computer, and over $60/mo for super awesome internet...not for 95% lag free...I could get that for 10% of that price. I pay for that last 4.99% to be lag free as well, because that's worth my money. When I get a 5 second lag spike in inferno, I'm dead. I understand why that has to be that way for balance/fun/difficulty, but really...this has to stop. They've made a lot of progress on this front in the last few weeks, but they still have work to do. I think that's all for now...I might think of more later. I am still loving the game though, despite its flaws, and my BattleTag is PsychicMufin#1169, so hit me up! Looking to take down Belial inferno this week most likely =).
I havent done much with other poeple tho, all solo thus far.
AH meta game isn't nearly as fun as it was in WoW...
There is little to no creativity available when it comes to builds/specs. For each class there is 1 or 2 play styles that can survive inferno and you HAVE to do it or you will fail.
Diablo2:LoD will always be the best
Keep in mind fatcat, that D2:LoD is the best because it had like...2 years of updates to the original launch of the game to make it awesome. When it launched, D2 was devoid of all the cool shit like runewords, and Uber Diablo. Maybe in 2 years D3 will have all the cool shit it should have launched with...but D2 might still be the best =P. D3's amazing skill/rune system is still the best thing about it, and I hope it catches on.
@Soda I think the trick to d3 would have been making it more like LoD, not D2 classic. A difference that many people seem to miss.
or the fact that people view all the acts as incremental gear checks (these existed in d2x just as much, unless you were a sorc).
As for the auction house, we're playing as though it doesn't exist for the time being.
(ofc I also have a wizard that's using the AH and just hit 60, so we'll see how that goes).
Even ignoring the Auction-House, though, just knowing it's there can ruin the experience, and its existence definitely effects your drops. I mean: if the game dropped good stuff for everyone, as it would have to without an auction-house, then the auction-house would be uselessly flooded, and prices would be too low. The game creates demand for the items by making them drop so infrequently.
For a lot of people the game is about grinding the levels, and buying and selling at the auction house. For me, niether of those things is fun. I want a game where I play through once from beginning to end and the difficulty (which includes drop frequency) scales correctly.
What the game really needs is a mode in which the game drops items for the characters at a more reasonable frequency, but which also cuts off that characters ability to trade with others.
Of course, that would make co-operative mode still less actually co-operative, but at least it would be a game, rather than whatever this mess is.
Anyway, that's actually a fairly interesting idea CB. It could be like, a friends-only mode, where there are no public games (which pretty much prevents trading), no AH, and like 10x drop rates. You can only join games with people you're battle.net friends with. I guess it would be hard to totally shut down, as you could just discuss it on forums/channels/whatever, and then just hop in as friends and make trades, but it would make it so difficult that people wanting to do that would probably just use the normal mode that has an AH. I would definitely play this mode, and probably level every character with it over the course of a few years, even if just occasionally playing with friends.
streaming winfrey and I in A1.
(no spoilers for winfreh, plx)
also feel free to hop on vent and dick around with us
Also, D2 vanilla was kinda crappy in a lot of ways. It wasn't until later updates and especially D2:LoD that the game got awesome. Give it some time chaps, Blizzard's pretty good about improving their releases.
as boring as D3 which I haven't played since...hmmm
assuming your d2 endgame was the same as mine (item runs), your d3 endgame is basically the same, at higher resolution, with more variety.