Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

[cageymaru]

I have an authenticator on my WoW account but someone fiddled with it also after I had quit in 2010. Seems they were botting all of 2011 with it and into February 2012. Blizzard won't give me answers to any questions about it. I assume it was due to their backdoor they discovered around August of this year. The botters had my account for so long that they couldn't even do a restoration according to the GM's. Naturally I was clueless as I wasn't playing it or visiting Blizzard's website. I did notice a ton of "Buy WoW Gold" spam in my inbox. My email has 2 step verification and I don't even know my own password. Gmail calls me and tells me when I need to change it.

I use a bank account with the bare minimum in it to cover purchases made by me now. So if someone does get it all they can do is get rejected as I don't have overdraft protection on it. Would like to know who paid for my WoW account as Blizzard and my bank determined it wasn't me. Blizzard wiped my transaction history when they gave me my account back. Must have been some deep stuff. I did see refer a friend added to it before they wiped it.

As far as not giving out factual answers to security questions that's fine until you run across companies like EA where you have to know what you typed into those boxes when you joined them. EA goes by birth date. So if you make it up and can't remember what you made up, then you lose your account. You can send in all the bank statements with transaction history that you want to, but until you can prove that you were born on the day you signed up with, you will be locked out of that account.

And personally I'm not a good liar so I would be screwed royally. And for passwords I just make up random strings and tie them to a file on a DropBox type service. If I need to log into a game I have to access the service to get to it. Again the password to the service is 2 step authentication so they have to call my phone to verify that I'm changing the password. I hope that's good enough.

I asked my nephew just then about what he told the rep to get XBOX Live turned back. He said what I thought all along. He said the rep told him that my XBOX serial number was as good as my password. So asked my nephew what my email address was, and what the serial number was. Then he asked the stupid dog question and told him to hook it up to the internet. That's all my nephew needed at the time to charge items to my Live account as I was using the Live account to play PC games. Thus the CC was tied to it naturally.

I wonder if Microsoft still does that with XBOX Live or did they change their policy. At least I know now that deleting your personal login information off the hard drive does not stop someone from accessing your account.

 

[yetieater]

Yep one of the better ways to get speed out of a wizard.....but only works on lower levels or on uber wizards

I'm naturally treating the game as an optimization problem. My goal for my wizard is to reach paragon level 100. The most important metric to assess here is EXP / hr. I mentioned way back in this thread that I had some guy help me to get my first Hellfire Ring -- I paid him 6 million gold in order to make this happen for me. Even though he was capable of perma-freezing MP10 ubers, he still preferred to run MP1 for its speed when it came down to Paragon leveling.

The path is clear

 

[Harkamus]

I'm naturally treating the game as an optimization problem. My goal for my wizard is to reach paragon level 100. The most important metric to assess here is EXP / hr. I mentioned way back in this thread that I had some guy help me to get my first Hellfire Ring -- I paid him 6 million gold in order to make this happen for me. Even though he was capable of perma-freezing MP10 ubers, he still preferred to run MP1 for its speed when it came down to Paragon leveling.

The path is clear

The only reason I run mp1 is because I clear it in the same time as mp0. But yea, 84 paragon levels later, mp1 is still the best for me.

 

[chockomonkey]

Yep one of the better ways to get speed out of a wizard.....but only works on lower levels or on uber wizards

sorry, what do you mean exactly by the last part?

 

[Breath_of_the_Dying]

sorry, what do you mean exactly by the last part?

2 Reasons I think.

1. At higher MP levels, monster HP is usually your bottleneck and not run speed. At low levels, you should face melt so quickly that you spend more time running than attacking. Unless you dps is so high that you also face melt higher levels too, there no point pushing your run speed with scramble until you get to face melt status at higher levels.

2. They also hit harder at higher MP, so if you taking hits can be very risky since they can probably one shot you. Unless you have the EHP to survive a lot of hits safely, then there's no point in constantly activating it at higher MP

 

[Business6]

I'm seriously addicted to movement speed. Farming Signet with 99% movement speed: Firewalkers + Lacuni on gear, Bash w/Instigation, Whirlwind w/Hurricane, Sprint w/marathon, War Cry w/charge, Battle Rage w/Fray, WoTB w/Chaos. Passives are Unforgiving, Ruthless, and Boon. 10 minutes to clear and I don't have to attack anything since the burning ground from the firewalkers kills enemies except when I need to get a bit of a fury boost.

124% movement speed with a Fleeting Shrine with everything popped and omg I'm in love

 

[stevedave]

I'm seriously addicted to movement speed. Farming Signet with 99% movement speed: Firewalkers + Lacuni on gear, Bash w/Instigation, Whirlwind w/Hurricane, Sprint w/marathon, War Cry w/charge, Battle Rage w/Fray, WoTB w/Chaos. Passives are Unforgiving, Ruthless, and Boon. 10 minutes to clear and I don't have to attack anything since the burning ground from the firewalkers kills enemies except when I need to get a bit of a fury boost.

124% movement speed with a Fleeting Shrine with everything popped and omg I'm in love

+ 1 But with monk instead.

2 Reasons I think.

1. At higher MP levels, monster HP is usually your bottleneck and not run speed. At low levels, you should face melt so quickly that you spend more time running than attacking. Unless you dps is so high that you also face melt higher levels too, there no point pushing your run speed with scramble until you get to face melt status at higher levels.

2. They also hit harder at higher MP, so if you taking hits can be very risky since they can probably one shot you. Unless you have the EHP to survive a lot of hits safely, then there's no point in constantly activating it at higher MP

Yep this. Part of that spell is getting Hit and if you can't get a lot without a case of the deads then its useless. I was using it when I last played my wizard but higher than mp2 I was catching a cause of deadabeaties trying to build speed.

If they ever up the monster density the wizard will be really good for a couple of builds. One of the main ones will be the tornado teleport build which currently only works on like maps one of those maps not being keeps.

 

[Rdzona]

I'm seriously addicted to movement speed. Farming Signet with 99% movement speed: Firewalkers + Lacuni on gear, Bash w/Instigation, Whirlwind w/Hurricane, Sprint w/marathon, War Cry w/charge, Battle Rage w/Fray, WoTB w/Chaos. Passives are Unforgiving, Ruthless, and Boon. 10 minutes to clear and I don't have to attack anything since the burning ground from the firewalkers kills enemies except when I need to get a bit of a fury boost.

124% movement speed with a Fleeting Shrine with everything popped and omg I'm in love

Um...obviously, because you're farming for a LS. What else would you need to focus on? Defense? lol

 

[dav2287]

You guys farming for the LS to resell? or for yourselves?

 

[trungerz]

You guys farming for the LS to resell? or for yourselves?

I just started farming for this yesterday.. I would like to use it for myself to Paragon level my DH.. which is at about level 40 right now.

No luck yesterday, but I did get 9 legendaries... Two actually dropped off of a 3 person mob.

I'm running it with a Monk with 402%MF after 5 stacks..

 

[chockomonkey]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...oy-playing-Call-Duty-Fifa-ran-1-150-bill.html

There really is no excuse to not know if your money is being spent. When it comes to any account with any of your payment accounts (bank, credit, etc) they should only be tied to emails you have full and, almost always, exclusive access to. You should get emails for any automatic transaction done through those accounts. That is the first line of defense. If you e ever give hardware to someone else, scrub the entire account. Even if you leave the account, you still should've gotten emails for purchases.

I don't care if its your son, brother, dad, nephew, whatever. You still need to watch any account that has your money tied to it.

The second line of defense is actually checking your accounts often for every transaction you did. It takes minutes to log in to your account and check all recent activity. Going for more than a month without knowing of purchases is basically inexcusable, unless you are in a remote town with no Internet access. Even then you should take preventative measures.

The only way people get around that is for signing up with completely different accounts using your credit. That should be checked yearly with free credit reports.

Those have nothing to do with video game purchases. People just need to learn to watch their money.

Edit: to bring it on topic. If parents are managing their kids battle net account, they either need to properly learn how to restrict access payments for their kid, or remove payment methods completely. I see no blame on the gaming industry on kids spending their parents money

This is all fine and dandy, but 2 things:

Blizzard wants to charge me for the 'real' authenticator--i don't have a smart phone, so fuck them. People get hacked with authenticators, so i'm not buying into their shenanigans.They won't even take the time to add support for more complex passwords, like i dunno, maybe make them cap sensitive?--why would i buy their stupid thing to excuse them from having a shitty password system? Still, i have never been hacked and i assume that's because i have a 100% unique password on my bnet account.

My dad got burnt for about $150 after he used his credit card to purchase some xbox live time for my brother. At no point during the setup or purchase was he told that his card would be tied to the account and could later be used for anything. He did notice the money on his CC statement, and called Xbox support. The guy he spoke to said that from the time he got into the call center in the morning to the time he went home, he was fielding calls from parents who were in my dad's shoes. IMO, it's an intentional blunder in order to get more money, as they refund absolutely nothing.

Back on topic: WTF is this Signet everyone's been talking about for the last couple pages?

 

[stevedave]

I can't really see the benefit of farming LS. You can get one for about 30 million and Farming Inferno, I would imagine, would net you 30 million faster.

Unless the drop rates are crazy high for LS. I personally haven't tried it.

also what Kind of EXP do you get on a normal run?



I had a run last night that should of been recorded.

Started out in Core with 3 Mobs and a movement shrine. Got 2 more movement shrines and 2 exp shrines. Drops on this 1 run include Compass rose, IK Belt, IK boots, Tiklandian Visage, and Unity......too bad none of it use able by me.

Best 10 minutes I've had soloing in this game.

 

[cageymaru]

At no point during the setup or purchase was he told that his card would be tied to the account and could later be used for anything.

It's the biggest scam of all time. I even went so far as to remove my credentials from my XBOX and the customer service reps happily reinstated it when they saw that the serial number on the XBOX was tied to an account with a CC on my PC. They were like if you sell this thing and someone knows your email address; we're going to reinstate your account again. Then they tell you how you can police your children from buying things by watching them more, blah, blah, blah. Or have them arrested to get your money back.

Never purchased another Microsoft console device, or game since. Wouldn't buy another in the future if hell froze over. What I do now is when I cancel service on dubious companies like Microsoft I call in my CC lost or stolen. I get a new CC with a different number in the mail. Less headaches that way.


On a D3 note I sold some crappy yellow on the RMAH for $3. Blizz kept $1 and in 3 days I can get more gold to purchase more things. Think it should be about 6 million in gold as I have 20 cents left from a previous sale. Going to upgrade my chest to a Zunimassa's Marrow with more pick up radius. I'm at 39 yards of pick up radius right now.

Might rename my character 'Dust Buster" or "Roomba".

 

[chockomonkey]

So i looked up that Signet ring... i guess it's so sought after because it's a farming ring? I can't believe those shitty stats cost that much.

Is it not possible to get the same stats on a rare?

Also, I thought that there were no loot tables, and that everything could drop everywhere... so this is not true? People are farming certain areas that the ring drops.

 

[Mabu]

It's the exp bonus on the ring that makes it so valuable, not the stats.

EDIT: to answer your second question: no, not everything can drop everywhere. Item levels are basically tied to monster levels, which are in turn basically tied to difficulties. There are item level ranges within the monster levels/difficulty levels. This is most easily seen in Inferno where the lowest ilvl item will be 58.

Since the ring has a very low item level, it in term drops in only the lower difficulties. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I believe that Act 2 Normal is the first act where the ring can drop. And since there are little or no other legendary rings that can drop from monsters in Act 2 Normal, you have a very high (if not 100%) chance of a legendary ring dropped in Act 2 Normal to be Leoric's Signet, compared to other Acts/difficulties where other legendary rings can get thrown into the mix.

 

[chockomonkey]

It's the exp bonus on the ring that makes it so valuable, not the stats.

So can rare rings not roll experience bonuses?

 

[Mabu]

They can roll +experience, but not bonus experience%, which is a HUGE difference.

 

[Xilikon]

Damn, I now have to build a Monk just for that and call it Roomba !

 

[yetieater]

It might take a while for you to chance upon Leoric's Signet. I had a Legendary ring drop for me in MP10 of Normal in A2 the last time that I ran the farming route, and it wasn't the Signet. On the plus side, there are two very lucrative drops that can come from farming A2 Normal: Leoric's Signet and Cain's ... something. The plans for crafting the Cain's set are worth a lot.

 

[cageymaru]

Damn, I now have to build a Monk just for that and call it Roomba !

Ha ha ha!

 

[yetieater]

Guys, guys, look at me! Look at me!



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[DJS4000]

No luck yesterday, but I did get 9 legendaries... Two actually dropped off of a 3 person mob.

I'm running it with a Monk with 402%MF after 5 stacks..

I had a run last night that should of been recorded.

Started out in Core with 3 Mobs and a movement shrine. Got 2 more movement shrines and 2 exp shrines. Drops on this 1 run include Compass rose, IK Belt, IK boots, Tiklandian Visage, and Unity......too bad none of it use able by me.

Best 10 minutes I've had soloing in this game.

i am beginning to think there is something wronghere. yesterday afternoon the game hemorrhaged 4 legendary drops within 10 minutes. crap mostly, but nevertheless. in a public game, mind you, i.e. MP0. i checked and i was at about 200% MF at the time of the last drop.

then last night i was farming MP3 with a friend. got 3 drops in 2 hours. he had 4, one of them an IK boulder breaker with 1600dps and 300 STR/VIT.

dafuq is going on?

 

[Phuncz]

It might take a while for you to chance upon Leoric's Signet. I had a Legendary ring drop for me in MP10 of Normal in A2 the last time that I ran the farming route, and it wasn't the Signet. On the plus side, there are two very lucrative drops that can come from farming A2 Normal: Leoric's Signet and Cain's ... something. The plans for crafting the Cain's set are worth a lot.

I got two Leoric's Signets after about 16 hours of running Act 2 Normal MP10 with 308% MF and 75% from NV stacks, going from "Vault of The Assassin" (5-8 elite) to "Sewers Of Caldeum" (1-2 elite), continuing to "Black Rock Mines" (1-4 elite) and "Road to Alcarnus" (1-2 elite), ending it in "Dahlgur Oasis" (Keywarden and x elites).

I used my monk with the Mantra of Conviction - Submission, as many affordable +pickup radius, MF and movement speed as I could find, giving me 25% permanent movement speed, 25+ pickup radius and 308%MF (300 is item cap). I just walk past everything to kill it and a run like that takes me about 7 minutes without Dalhgur Oasis, where I would finish at 10 minutes when my Mantra would run out (passive skill makes it last 10 minutes)

Those runs also found me plenty of good low level gear which I have happily used lvling my new char and then selling for 25k each. I also found about 11 legendaries total, no sets though. The thing I noticed is that Inferno drops way more rares.

 

[Xilikon]

Ha ha ha!

And I did last night, leveled up to 8. Wish I have someone rush me thru at MP10

 

[Phuncz]

This is how I leveled my Demon Hunter:
1. get a Hellfire Ring (no lvl req) with dexterity (keys, ubers, organs, ring)
2. buy or farm Leoric's Signet ring (lvl 14)
3. buy for about 200-500K 3 or 4 parts of Cain's set (lvl 23) with socket in helm, sockets in pants
4. fill everything except weapons with gems (no lvl req) like Emeralds for plenty of dexterity (for Monk or DH)
5. buy up lvl ~15, ~20, ~25, ~30,... weapons with high dps and socket
6. use Rubies on your weapons for added min-max damage, later until lvl 30-40 switch to Emeralds for Critical Hit Damage
7. until you are oneshotting about everything, up your MP level
(I went through Normal and Nightmare at MP10 without flinching with above gear, only had to lower it in Hell because my insane advantage was lowering)
8. if any available, use level requirement reduction equipment
(max is 18 lvls on lvl 60 items, so lvl 42 at the earliest)

With this method, I was having about 380% bonus experience and I went from 1 to 60 in 16 hours total.
Not a record but I was doing most alone and I didn't have massive amounts of gold (about 500K) to spend on all the gear.

I got help for my Hellfire Ring, I farmed the Leoric's Signet myself (16 hours for 2, can only equip one per character), had many gems lying around (1 Flawless Star Emerald, plenty of Star Emeralds and Rubies) and was able to sell all my low level gear within days for 25K gold each.

Also, your follower can also carry a Hellfire Ring and Leoric's Signet for you, which counts for 1/5th, so 35% and 20-30% = 55-65% * 1/5 = 11-12% extra bonus experience for you.
Also +exp per kill kan be found on almost all armor, including Cain's, I had between 70 and 140 per kill, which on Normal can save you a lot of time too.

Movement speed is also very important, it helps a lot when you faceroll everything to not slow you down, so try to get the capped 25%. Some characters can use passives or skills to help this.

 

[stevedave]

i am beginning to think there is something wronghere. yesterday afternoon the game hemorrhaged 4 legendary drops within 10 minutes. crap mostly, but nevertheless. in a public game, mind you, i.e. MP0. i checked and i was at about 200% MF at the time of the last drop.

then last night i was farming MP3 with a friend. got 3 drops in 2 hours. he had 4, one of them an IK boulder breaker with 1600dps and 300 STR/VIT.

dafuq is going on?

Nobody but blizzard knows. My guess would be blizzard sets parameters which then get randomized. Like they can say put 1000 IK belts into the Item pool and 1 stone of Jordan....or something of that effect. To get a bit tinfoil hat this could be tied to the Auction House to help control item values, but that would require more work and I know humans don't like extra work.

I have close to 1000 hours. Never once have I felt like it was random. When I play cards or dice I feel the random effect. When I play diablo 2, Torch light, or Titans quest I feel the random effect. But when I play diablo 3 I don't feel that. My drops come in waves. Its not like I get an Item here and an Item there. I get 5 Items within 20 minutes or so and 0 items for 10 hours.

I know a thing or two about statistics, as it is my field, and I know that even with 1000 hours my sample time isn't quite long enough for things to start evening out. but it is long enough to make an educated observation about drop rates and their lack of any type of true randomness.

 

[Mav451]

I'm seriously addicted to movement speed. Farming Signet with 99% movement speed: Firewalkers + Lacuni on gear, Bash w/Instigation, Whirlwind w/Hurricane, Sprint w/marathon, War Cry w/charge, Battle Rage w/Fray, WoTB w/Chaos. Passives are Unforgiving, Ruthless, and Boon. 10 minutes to clear and I don't have to attack anything since the burning ground from the firewalkers kills enemies except when I need to get a bit of a fury boost.

124% movement speed with a Fleeting Shrine with everything popped and omg I'm in love

Sure you don't still miss Enigma?

 

[chockomonkey]

Yea I was farming MP1 last night for exp, and really wanted to see an epic. Got 2 Plvls before i was tired enough that i just called it quits before seeing one. Pretty dumb that i didn't see jack shit in that whole time.

Also, rares are still stupidly stupid. I vendored probably 10 whole inventories full of them, not a single thing worth a damn.

A question--is Whimsywhatever worth anything?

 

[Breath_of_the_Dying]

Nobody but blizzard knows. My guess would be blizzard sets parameters which then get randomized. Like they can say put 1000 IK belts into the Item pool and 1 stone of Jordan....or something of that effect. To get a bit tinfoil hat this could be tied to the Auction House to help control item values, but that would require more work and I know humans don't like extra work.

I have close to 1000 hours. Never once have I felt like it was random. When I play cards or dice I feel the random effect. When I play diablo 2, Torch light, or Titans quest I feel the random effect. But when I play diablo 3 I don't feel that. My drops come in waves. Its not like I get an Item here and an Item there. I get 5 Items within 20 minutes or so and 0 items for 10 hours.

I know a thing or two about statistics, as it is my field, and I know that even with 1000 hours my sample time isn't quite long enough for things to start evening out. but it is long enough to make an educated observation about drop rates and their lack of any type of true randomness.

The problem with any statistical analysis based on personal experience whether or not the sample size is sufficient enough is that its human nature to lose full objectivity of the statistical analysis. Most stories used with I or second person (my friend told me) usually don't always tell the full story. People leave out facts to tell their story better. Stuff like "I played for 4 hours with 300% magic find and found nothing" must be taken with a grain of salt. That person migh have neglected that they sacked their killing speed for MF, and didn't even do a full act 3 clear in those 4 hours. I see people cry about it all the time.

The second issue with personal stories is that now there is value associated with drops, so people's perception of rng is again skewed. The post I linked about MF on diablodans remained objective, it used multiple people and none of them took into account how "good" items are beyond affix count (part of the analysis). Taking a step back to look at that and the rng make sense. Taking out if a legendary is worth a lot or not of the picture helps remain objective in the statistical analysis.

The legendary drop rate is so low that its impossible to reverse-engineer the true science behind the math, however the conclusions they made do seem plausible, and everything I've seen so far does not fall out of the realm of what they've shown.


I really don't care if they influence drop rates and quality or not, it hasn't impacted my experience with the game. It's just tiring when people jump to conclusions based only on first and second person perspective stories. This is like someone who flipped a coin 5 times, got heads 4 times, and jumps to the conclusion that all coins have 20% chance to land tails.

 

[stevedave]

The problem with any statistical analysis based on personal experience whether or not the sample size is sufficient enough is that its human nature to lose full objectivity of the statistical analysis. Most stories used with I or second person (my friend told me) usually don't always tell the full story. People leave out facts to tell their story better. Stuff like "I played for 4 hours with 300% magic find and found nothing" must be taken with a grain of salt. That person migh have neglected that they sacked their killing speed for MF, and didn't even do a full act 3 clear in those 4 hours. I see people cry about it all the time.

The second issue with personal stories is that now there is value associated with drops, so people's perception of rng is again skewed. The post I linked about MF on diablodans remained objective, it used multiple people and none of them took into account how "good" items are beyond affix count (part of the analysis). Taking a step back to look at that and the rng make sense. Taking out if a legendary is worth a lot or not of the picture helps remain objective in the statistical analysis.

The legendary drop rate is so low that its impossible to reverse-engineer the true science behind the math, however the conclusions they made do seem plausible, and everything I've seen so far does not fall out of the realm of what they've shown.


I really don't care if they influence drop rates and quality or not, it hasn't impacted my experience with the game. It's just tiring when people jump to conclusions based only on first and second person perspective stories. This is like someone who flipped a coin 5 times, got heads 4 times, and jumps to the conclusion that all coins have 20% chance to land tails.

while your point and it is quite true and valid. I am as objective as 1 person can be (which is not that objective) and am more like the person who flipped a coin 5 times and got 4 heads then flipped the coin 100 more times and got heads 80 times. As we all know with each flip that should get closer to 50% if it were random and for me in diablo 3 it is not getting closer to 50% it gets farther and farther away with every Ivory tower drop...at 13 now.

I disregard stats that an Item has and only document total time played and item found.

I also have no real issue with Blizzard modifying the Legendary item pool or rarity as its a global change that effects everyone.

I am one of the few who views D3's inventory system as one of the best features of the game. Nearly 1000 hours in the game and at any point I could still get an upgrade, though it becomes rarer and rarer with time. Nobody has entirely perfect gear yet.

Yea I was farming MP1 last night for exp, and really wanted to see an epic. Got 2 Plvls before i was tired enough that i just called it quits before seeing one. Pretty dumb that i didn't see jack shit in that whole time.

Also, rares are still stupidly stupid. I vendored probably 10 whole inventories full of them, not a single thing worth a damn.

A question--is Whimsywhatever worth anything?

Its worth checking out once or twice and if for what ever reason you are farming Act at MP 1 its worth popping into. No Cow Town that's for sure and farming it isn't as good as ACT 3.

I haven't been there in months.

 

[chockomonkey]

Its worth checking out once or twice and if for what ever reason you are farming Act at MP 1 its worth popping into. No Cow Town that's for sure and farming it isn't as good as ACT 3.

I haven't been there in months.

Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. I guess I'll save my gold then and not make the staff.

IMO, they should find a way to buff that place (which is funny, because it was a hit and you had to farm a staff to get there, yet then they nerfed it because it was too good for farming... lol?)

 

[cageymaru]

Nobody but blizzard knows. My guess would be blizzard sets parameters which then get randomized. Like they can say put 1000 IK belts into the Item pool and 1 stone of Jordan....or something of that effect. To get a bit tinfoil hat this could be tied to the Auction House to help control item values, but that would require more work and I know humans don't like extra work.

I have close to 1000 hours. Never once have I felt like it was random. When I play cards or dice I feel the random effect. When I play diablo 2, Torch light, or Titans quest I feel the random effect. But when I play diablo 3 I don't feel that. My drops come in waves. Its not like I get an Item here and an Item there. I get 5 Items within 20 minutes or so and 0 items for 10 hours.

I know a thing or two about statistics, as it is my field, and I know that even with 1000 hours my sample time isn't quite long enough for things to start evening out. but it is long enough to make an educated observation about drop rates and their lack of any type of true randomness.

Playing in Act 3 I've gotten every epic in Stonefort except for 1 in off Azmodan and 1 near Rakkis. The game isn't about RNG in the manner as a person defines "luck". I would bet that it's more akin to WoW where the server "preloads" the bosses as soon as a person enters the instance. In WoW if I remember right it was based on time and a complex formula that determined what was going to drop before you pulled a mob.

In D3 I would assume that there is a table like the devs toss around showing what your chances to get items are. Then you enter the instance and say 5 mobs are determined to be loot mobs in that instance. When those mobs are killed the server looks at your current MF and determines if you win the jackpot that instance or not. That roll is truly RNG just to see if you will get the "hot" items or not. The items are on the mobs regardless of whether you win the roll for it or not. It's just not visible to you if you lose the roll.

Since I got nearly all of my legendary loot from Stonefort, then I can surmise that since I refuse to wear MF gear and rely on Paragon levels, the server also does a charity roll as my gear negates me being able to fully participate in legendary drops from the entire instance. I can tell you about how long it is before I'm going to get another legendary. Every 3rd or 4th run completed without a legendary ends in me getting one at the end in Stonefort. Runs where I don't get a legendary usually end in rings and amulets on the way to Grom. So I believe there is a charity accumulator in the drop rate also as rings and amulets are worth just as much as legendary items and are pretty rare drops.

Before the 1.05 patch I got absolutely nothing of note from drops in the game world. So my chance to get items to progress with was a flat 0%. Now I have guaranteed legendary items on a set time table. When my drops deviate from the legendary every 3 or 4 runs, I end up getting 2 in the next run or so. It all evens out in the end.

Now you could argue that it's RNG and I'm full of crap. Then why haven't the rest of the mobs in the instances yielded goods for me? I surmise that their drops are tied to Paragon Levels. Since I have rerolled every class and thus my highest Paragon Level is 19, I don't qualify for guaranteed drops from those mobs. I can only get legendary items from them in a truly RNG manner. I wouldn't be surprised if those 500 strength 1300 dps staffs weren't legendary rolls gone bad. No Skorn for you today; how's about a nice staff to link in General and laugh about?

Now the rare items drop too frequently and roll so many different ways I'm not going to try to figure out what the deal is with those. If you watch Twitch streams you'll notice that 99% of them are left on the floor even if they can possibly roll high because of the range of possible RNG rolls on the items. With legendary items propped up to be "better" than rares stat wise, it makes more sense to kill faster and only stop for specialty rare items and legendary items. Specialty rare items are lower drop items such as rings and amulets.

That's my sense of how the game works in simple terms. Feel free to poke holes in my assumptions and observations. But the next time you're on a Paragon Level 10 - 20 character pay keen attention to where you get your legendary items at when you play it. Save Stonefort for next to last and the path to Grom as last. See if what I just said doesn't ring true over say a week of constant play. I define constant as 4 hours a day at least.

Not dissing the game's drop rates as they are in a much better place than launch; just my personal observations. As far as the AH being tied to the drop rates I'm not so sure. I have been known to refresh Witching Hour listings for 8 hours straight waiting for the deal of the century to get posted. The longest time between postings has been maybe 5 minutes while the expired auction go off the boards about 1 1/4 listings a minute. Maybe the 1/4 missing are from people that log out and keep it, give it away, or use it. You may get lulls in the action but it's pretty constant on weekends.

 

[chockomonkey]

^^ Hey, where's Grom? I usually skip Stonefort after my exp runs on MP1, but i'll start adding it in to test this. I'll add in Grom too, just need to know where!

After so many runs last night yielding zero gear, i want some charity epics lol

Also another question--which rares do people pick up outside rings/amulets? I'm tired of vendoring inventory after inventory of 200 dps 1-handers and 500 dps 2-handers.

 

[Harkamus]

^^ Hey, where's Grom? I usually skip Stonefort after my exp runs on MP1, but i'll start adding it in to test this. I'll add in Grom too, just need to know where!

After so many runs last night yielding zero gear, i want some charity epics lol

Also another question--which rares do people pick up outside rings/amulets? I'm tired of vendoring inventory after inventory of 200 dps 1-handers and 500 dps 2-handers.

I dunno about other people, but I pick up items that have the potential of being worth a lot of gold - gloves, boots, and jewelry. Beyond that, I pick up all fist weapons because I'm a monk. I also pick up all archon pieces. Sets and legendaries go without saying. Sometimes I pick up slayers and desolator wands.

My inventory is rarely full of rares after a run. I prefer it that way.

 

[Breath_of_the_Dying]

Playing in Act 3 I've gotten every epic in Stonefort except for 1 in off Azmodan and 1 near Rakkis. The game isn't about RNG in the manner as a person defines "luck". I would bet that it's more akin to WoW where the server "preloads" the bosses as soon as a person enters the instance. In WoW if I remember right it was based on time and a complex formula that determined what was going to drop before you pulled a mob.

In D3 I would assume that there is a table like the devs toss around showing what your chances to get items are. Then you enter the instance and say 5 mobs are determined to be loot mobs in that instance. When those mobs are killed the server looks at your current MF and determines if you win the jackpot that instance or not. That roll is truly RNG just to see if you will get the "hot" items or not. The items are on the mobs regardless of whether you win the roll for it or not. It's just not visible to you if you lose the roll.

Since I got nearly all of my legendary loot from Stonefort, then I can surmise that since I refuse to wear MF gear and rely on Paragon levels, the server also does a charity roll as my gear negates me being able to fully participate in legendary drops from the entire instance. I can tell you about how long it is before I'm going to get another legendary. Every 3rd or 4th run completed without a legendary ends in me getting one at the end in Stonefort. Runs where I don't get a legendary usually end in rings and amulets on the way to Grom. So I believe there is a charity accumulator in the drop rate also as rings and amulets are worth just as much as legendary items and are pretty rare drops.

Before the 1.05 patch I got absolutely nothing of note from drops in the game world. So my chance to get items to progress with was a flat 0%. Now I have guaranteed legendary items on a set time table. When my drops deviate from the legendary every 3 or 4 runs, I end up getting 2 in the next run or so. It all evens out in the end.

Now you could argue that it's RNG and I'm full of crap. Then why haven't the rest of the mobs in the instances yielded goods for me? I surmise that their drops are tied to Paragon Levels. Since I have rerolled every class and thus my highest Paragon Level is 19, I don't qualify for guaranteed drops from those mobs. I can only get legendary items from them in a truly RNG manner. I wouldn't be surprised if those 500 strength 1300 dps staffs weren't legendary rolls gone bad. No Skorn for you today; how's about a nice staff to link in General and laugh about?

Now the rare items drop too frequently and roll so many different ways I'm not going to try to figure out what the deal is with those. If you watch Twitch streams you'll notice that 99% of them are left on the floor even if they can possibly roll high because of the range of possible RNG rolls on the items. With legendary items propped up to be "better" than rares stat wise, it makes more sense to kill faster and only stop for specialty rare items and legendary items. Specialty rare items are lower drop items such as rings and amulets.

That's my sense of how the game works in simple terms. Feel free to poke holes in my assumptions and observations. But the next time you're on a Paragon Level 10 - 20 character pay keen attention to where you get your legendary items at when you play it. Save Stonefort for next to last and the path to Grom as last. See if what I just said doesn't ring true over say a week of constant play. I define constant as 4 hours a day at least.

Not dissing the game's drop rates as they are in a much better place than launch; just my personal observations. As far as the AH being tied to the drop rates I'm not so sure. I have been known to refresh Witching Hour listings for 8 hours straight waiting for the deal of the century to get posted. The longest time between postings has been maybe 5 minutes while the expired auction go off the boards about 1 1/4 listings a minute. Maybe the 1/4 missing are from people that log out and keep it, give it away, or use it. You may get lulls in the action but it's pretty constant on weekends.

Every pseudo random generator "preloads", its called a seed. Computers are incapable of truly randomly generating numbers on their own, that's why they have we pseudo random generators. Pseudo random means its not really random, but it creates a statistical equivalent of being random. For instance, if I make the seed 1, a 1/0 flip might go 1,0,0,1,1,0,1,0. It's pseudo random because statistically it has an even distribution of numbers. If I make the seed 2, it might be something different, but still have a 50/50 chance of 1 and 0. The catch is if I reseed back to 1, the sequence will be exactly 10011010, the same as the first time I made the seed 1, and it will be the exact same sequence ever time I reseed as one (using the same pseudo random generator algorithm of course).

In the world of programming, pseudo random generators are sufficient in most cases. Where WoW failed is (as the rumor goes), the seed was based on factors that a smart guild could control: raid leader, time and day of week the instance was created. If guilds could replicate seeds every week, they could reproduce whatever drop rate they've experienced in the past. Note they couldn't reverse calculate the seed they needed to get every drop they wanted, they could only clone the outcomes they've seen by reseeding following weeks.

A simple fix is seeding by current time to the milisecond. Even if two generators used the exact same seed, they could never be replicated in the future.


As for your theory on plvl 10-19, it seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I once heard someone say they only get legendaries before 5 stacks, so when they get to 5 stacks they drop the stacks. You're limiting your sample size in a way that makes the facts favor your argument.

Keeping track of some of the stats to influence drop rates you mentioned would be a programmers nightmare. The easiest way to make it fair is to make it as random as possible.

Edit: here is the link to all things magic find,rares and legendaries. They have well documented drop rates of rares to draw reasonable conclusions. They have it down to a science. For legendaries, it's a bit harder. They make some assumptions, and their conclusions on the assumptions are sound. Though they may not be exact, the theories behind legendaries are close enough to get an understanding of their drop rates
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/57939-magic-find-and-its-efficiency-a-statistical-insight/#S6-3

 

[stevedave]

The only thing I know for certain is that I don't know.

I decided to take a look if someone listed the most popularly used Items and found this.
http://diablo.somepage.com/popular/items

Out of that list I have found 14 out of the 25....Not too bad

also that site has some cool stats on it like 98 % of monk players between Paragon 50-100 use Sweeping wind.

 

[chockomonkey]

I decided to finish my last Act 3 alk. run tonight on Stonefront, just in case the boss felt lucky and dropped a key on MP1.. He didn't, but i did get a Witching Hour out of a random chest woot.

I could put it on and gain 16k dps, but i'd lose 70 AR. That seems to be how things are going for me recently... if i want more dmg, i gotta drop AR. Rabble!

 

[Harkamus]

I decided to finish my last Act 3 alk. run tonight on Stonefront, just in case the boss felt lucky and dropped a key on MP1.. He didn't, but i did get a Witching Hour out of a random chest woot.

I could put it on and gain 16k dps, but i'd lose 70 AR. That seems to be how things are going for me recently... if i want more dmg, i gotta drop AR. Rabble!

16k dps versus 70 AR should be an easy choice. What's your AR at now anyway?

 

[chockomonkey]

16k dps versus 70 AR should be an easy choice. What's your AR at now anyway?

Actually I see it's only 10k dps now, without all my dps buffs on. 427 AR without Force Armor, with the belt on. 534 with Force Armor on, but i used to have a rough time on MP5 Ubers even when i was at 700 AR with a barb's buff.

 

[Harkamus]

Actually I see it's only 10k dps now, without all my dps buffs on. 427 AR without Force Armor, with the belt on. 534 with Force Armor on, but i used to have a rough time on MP5 Ubers even when i was at 700 AR with a barb's buff.

10k is still a good chunk. I'd go with the 10k damage upgrade. You weigh the pros and cons. In this case, the 10k far outweighs the loss in 70 AR in my opinion.