Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

What does this patch do to barbarians? I feel like without a boat load of gold I'm never going to beat act 3 inferno. :mad:
 
Probably an oversight....SShhhhh keep this on the Downlow I'm in Akon mode 90% of the time.

Akon.jpg

Akon mode?:D
 
All I see is, I made $3k from this game and I still have something to bitch an moan about.

Do people expect this game to cure cancer and stop world hunger all at the same time?

Ha ha it's a Blizzard game. Doesn't matter if it's this or WoW; same reaction. :)
 
I thought inferno seemed to do a lot of damage. so them saying "we’re going to reduce all damage in Inferno by at least 25%" makes some sense, except for the part that they're only realizing this months after the game was allegedly done, and after another massive damage change already happened, and until you hear they're reducing your defense by almost as much, making the final result not much different anyway. so, uh, yeah, I guess regular players will still be paper, rich players and barbarians will still be god, and monks will still be weak? great?
 
It's a straight up buff for glass cannons that hardly rely on defensive abilities. I should be able to change from prasmatic to pinpoint, and hardly take a hit to survivability with at least a 7k dps gain. Monster power will be loads of fun as a glass cannon.

Yeah, I was thinking of swapping prismatic armor with pinpoint armor either now or after the patch. I often find myself letting energy armor fall off because I'm stuck in Archon mode. I don't have galvanizing ward so it falls of quickly, but I still do fine most of the time. The things that can kill me now are things that could kill me even if I'm prepared for them, such as some combinations of phase beasts and anything melee with fire chains + a way to close the distance (extremely fast, teleporter, vortex, etc.). Heavy hitting ranged elites can still pose a problem though (Winged Moloks, spear throwers, fat ass casters). They've been less threatening lately, but losing 40% resists can change that back.
 
I thought inferno seemed to do a lot of damage. so them saying "we’re going to reduce all damage in Inferno by at least 25%" makes some sense, except for the part that they're only realizing this months after the game was allegedly done, and after another massive damage change already happened, and until you hear they're reducing your defense by almost as much, making the final result not much different anyway. so, uh, yeah, I guess regular players will still be paper, rich players and barbarians will still be god, and monks will still be weak? great?

Not at all; what will happen is there will be a slight decrease in overall damage taken. By having such high damage numbers combined with such strong damage mitigation skills, you create a perverse system in where you either stack all defense to try and stop it, or become a 1-shot kill and just try and stack damage.

By nerfing both, they're attempting to create a more balanced system in which there can be more compromise between the two. If you just left the damage high and buffed the skills, it would simply reinforce the "must have" nature of the defensive skills. If you choose to keep the defensive skills, you'll take even less damage.

Also, not sure where you get that monks are weak; a few of my friends I run with just crush everything as monks in a 4 person game, while the 3 of us are running just to keep up with him.

What does this patch do to barbarians? I feel like without a boat load of gold I'm never going to beat act 3 inferno. :mad:

You'll take less damage.
 
Knowing what the drop rate is for this game, I can't help but feel sorry for you... You could have made 9k, spending the same amount of time working a minimum wage job...

lol except working at mcdonalds isn't as fun as playing diablo 3
 
lol except working at mcdonalds isn't as fun as playing diablo 3

Not the way people bitch an moan about it.

"Oh my God this game sucks!!!"
Me:"Why do you play it then?"
"So I can make $$ off the RMAH"
Me:"How much money are you making?"
"I'm using the money to buy GW2 then I'm %$^#$@! done with this game"
Me:"Why dont you just buy GW2 and stop playing this right now?
"Hey I have to pay bills and ^#$%, I only have so much money to go around"
Me:"If you're that tight on money, maybe you should be using all the time you spend playing to work at getting a second job, or further your career to get a better job"
Silence......

Anti-trolling on trade chat can be fun sometimes.
 
I like the game for the first 30 minutes I play... then for every 5 minutes after that I hate it more and more.

Fun gameplay... shit itemization. I've yet to find an upgrade in around 20 hours...
 
I did calculations, in my current gear. A 26.7% decrease in inferno mob damage would yield the same damage I'm taking now, if I changed prismatic to pintpoint come 1.05.

Thats a little optimistic, but one can hope :)
 
If my math is correct, lvl 63 monsters would have to do 33% less damage to me (or 67% of what the currently do) to be equivalent to right now. I hope my wording on that is accurate. My EHP will drop from 508.7k to 342.1k (vs 63) with zero bonus to resists and a 35% armor bonus. I also have glass cannon on, so that skews the values a bit.
 
I thought inferno seemed to do a lot of damage. so them saying "we’re going to reduce all damage in Inferno by at least 25%" makes some sense, except for the part that they're only realizing this months after the game was allegedly done, and after another massive damage change already happened, and until you hear they're reducing your defense by almost as much, making the final result not much different anyway. so, uh, yeah, I guess regular players will still be paper, rich players and barbarians will still be god, and monks will still be weak? great?

Not at all; what will happen is there will be a slight decrease in overall damage taken. By having such high damage numbers combined with such strong damage mitigation skills, you create a perverse system in where you either stack all defense to try and stop it, or become a 1-shot kill and just try and stack damage.

By nerfing both, they're attempting to create a more balanced system in which there can be more compromise between the two. If you just left the damage high and buffed the skills, it would simply reinforce the "must have" nature of the defensive skills. If you choose to keep the defensive skills, you'll take even less damage.

There's also the fact that lifepools aren't going to change, so even with reduced armor/resists (from skill boosts) the reduced incoming damage will effectively boost the value of each point in your lifepool.

As for:

"It’s worth noting that we’re going to provide additional alternative defensive options for the wizard such as adding flat melee damage reduction to Ice Armor and creating a Familiar variant that provides passive Life regeneration."

It's good to see that they're acknowledging that nerfing good skills isn't going to magically make other skills more attractive. Many of the skills and passives in the game are garbage purely because of how they "balanced" Inferno in the first place - which was to ham-handedly reduce snares/stuns/etc. across the board, leaving many control-based skills without their control functions...and of course many of the skills are just bad as-is (I.E. why does Wave of Force have a 15 second cooldown?).

The removal of the 65% resistance for CC should at least boost the value of some of these skills. As for snares, a tooltip that says "60%" actually is 36%...that's a HUGE difference, particularly in Act 2 where there are a ton of cheap enemies that leap across the entire screen as soon as they see you or cloak while they cover the distance. Then there's also the challenge of the "fast" affix being everywhere...there's no reason to nerfs snares/slows by 40%.
 
Also, not that I want to clutter up the thread, but anyone have any idea what this might go for on the AH? The most expensive STR/MF/GF belts on there are around 14M and they don't have anything close to all these other stats:

nm2Re.jpg
 
The stats on that belt make it worth very little without the gold/mf, so honestly it isn't worth that much. If you where to get 2-3m I'd take it and be happy. I'd probably list it with like 1m bid 5m (or no) buyout and see what happened. You might get more becasue capped mf and almost max gf, but I think it would take you a while to sell it while you kept relisting it.

For reference if you drop the stats a little you can get 159 str, 79 all res, 19 mf/gf belt for 750k. That one has 12h left on the auction and hasn't sold. Another one very similar to that is listed at 300k bid with no bids on it and under 10h remaining
 
Yoshiyuki, you should try this madness out, I think you have more base damage than I do since i've been stacking IAS

Magic Missle
Frost nova with bone chill rune (15% damage while frozen)
Force magic weapon
Sparkflint
Archon with arcane destruction (explosion on transformation)
----something----

Glass cannon
Cold blooded
Arcane dynamo

Get to 5 stacks, hit frost nova, then explode with arcane destruction

I hit butcher for 1.6 mil and I've crit normal mobs for 2mil+. It's not really viable for anything else besides epeen numbers :p
Edit, looks like frost nova consumes AD, so if you really want to get trick, you'd have to 4 stack, nova, then signature to 5 stack, then explode. I guess that should be easier to pull off in inferno come 1.0.5
 
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Purchase flawless star ruby plan from the AH for like 600K...find one in-game 2 hours later. Motherfu--

:p
 
Yoshiyuki, you should try this madness out, I think you have more base damage than I do since i've been stacking IAS

Magic Missle
Frost nova with bone chill rune (15% damage while frozen)
Force magic weapon
Sparkflint
Archon with arcane destruction (explosion on transformation)
----something----

Glass cannon
Cold blooded
Arcane dynamo

Get to 5 stacks, hit frost nova, then explode with arcane destruction

I hit butcher for 1.6 mil and I've crit normal mobs for 2mil+. It's not really viable for anything else besides epeen numbers :p
Edit, looks like frost nova consumes AD, so if you really want to get trick, you'd have to 4 stack, nova, then signature to 5 stack, then explode. I guess that should be easier to pull off in inferno come 1.0.5

Yeah, I actually tried getting 5 stacks again before nova wore off, but it might be too short to pull off. I found that living lightning stacks AD very quickly and I might be able to pull it off if I'm lucky. I saw a 2M crit figure drop one one of my tests :D Servers are shutting down atm so I cant make another game for testing though. It kinda sucks being 1-shot by damage reflect elites haha, but strangely enough I was still an Archon after I ressed.

EDIT: Here's what I got:

crits.png


EDIT2: Here's the video: http://youtu.be/AbCgFRjbkQE
Judging by the numbers, I'm not sure if Cold Blooded or the Bone Chill rune has much of an effect. Notice that the farthest guardian wasn't frozen, but the crit damage was similar to the one that was. On a side note, it looks like there was a secondary "white crit" number right after the big 2.27M crit on ZK. I noticed that he seemed to have been 1-shot, but the first crit alone wasn't enough to do that. An 869k hit finished him almost instantly after the initial burst. Perhaps the damage bonus was rolled and applied separately as that white damage. (2.27M * 1.2 * 1.15) - 2.27M = ~866K so its pretty close.
 
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I started Magic Find farming runs in Act 3 this weekend. My lord, I should have tried this earlier. All of the MF nay-sayers are full of shit. I'm @ 320%-ish MF with a 5 stack.

This weekend, over 10 runs, I've found

1x Depth Diggers
2x HellRack (what a POS...)
2x Strongarm Bracers
1x Gladiator Gauntlets
2x Burning Axe of Sankis

Shame the only thing really worth anything was the Depth Diggers
 
I feel like everyone else is starting to get the hang of farming in this game and I'm still completely lost :mad:

Get some incredible gear and shoot things in Act 3 or hang around Act 1 in starter gear. There are routes that you run to farm in D3; sure someone might help you there.

Learn what is a good drop and what is better left on the ground. If you get ilvl 63 drop sell it in General as an unidentified item as you're more likely to make money that way. Ask some of the guys here for a list of high level items to look for. Quite sure they'll be nice enough to oblige you. :)
 
Oh, I know what I'm doing. I just never find anything decent. I've got 69 hours in on my Barb and haven't seen one Legendary drop yet.
 
Oh, I know what I'm doing. I just never find anything decent. I've got 69 hours in on my Barb and haven't seen one Legendary drop yet.

Took me a little over 200 to see my only legendary but I never had more than 250 MF. Try stacking magic find like the other guys to 325+ and practice killing multiple elites in one hit. Rome wasn't built in a day. :)
 
I started Magic Find farming runs in Act 3 this weekend. My lord, I should have tried this earlier. All of the MF nay-sayers are full of shit. I'm @ 320%-ish MF with a 5 stack.

This weekend, over 10 runs, I've found

1x Depth Diggers
2x HellRack (what a POS...)
2x Strongarm Bracers
1x Gladiator Gauntlets
2x Burning Axe of Sankis

Shame the only thing really worth anything was the Depth Diggers

Yeah I get about one orange a run with about 350% MF. I farm the 3 dungeon levels and Areatt Crater through Azmoden. I have found 4 Hellracks to date, so dread every time I see "crossbow" drop.
 
I have found 4 Hellracks to date, so dread every time I see "crossbow" drop.

But But ...what if it were a Manticore?! ;)


Hmm...Well. Anyone have tips on gear to change or skills to change?

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Skyvalley-1789/hero/1801989


I would say try and go for a decent amount of crit % (having an axe in main-hand + weapons master passive helps, eventually with enough crit from armor you'll use mighty weapons), and become a whirlwind barb and spin act 1 to death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6puADSLZwVU
(this video is old, but the mechanics are the same)
 
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I like the game for the first 30 minutes I play... then for every 5 minutes after that I hate it more and more.

Fun gameplay... shit itemization. I've yet to find an upgrade in around 20 hours...

Sadly this is how I'm starting to feel in a major way. I have 270% MF in A3 and I didn't find jack shit all weekend. I mean, is this really how they envision players "enjoying" their game?
 
It's an inevitable, natural consequence of a system where the best rolls are the rarest. I frequently find "good" gear that would have been worth millions back then, but they're almost worthless now due to excessive supply. You simply can't keep getting better and better stuff at a steady rate forever to compensate for good gear losing value. I think a lot of people who talk about getting "bad" drops have been too shortsighted to realize this.

I agree that it is a problem by design though. Getting a steady income from item sales diminished greatly over time because of this system. We need consumable commodities to have high demand as well as a steady supply to generate a steady income. Earlier, I went on a rant about crafting gold costs and how it bottlenecks the system. To the business-oriented crafters, they may not see the difference between:

Buying cheap materials and paying a high craft price and,
Buying expensive materials and paying no crafting price

But to the seller (casual or otherwise), it'd make a huge difference. They could pick up each gem and salvage each ilvl 61+ magic/rare to make some money steadily. They may also be more willing to participate in crafting things for *themselves* (a novel idea eh?). Sure there would be a greater opportunity cost, but it's a different *feeling* from taking away gold already in your possession. With or without the cold hard math behind it, the feeling of the players' experience needs to be accounted for. Now that the game has been out for a while now, Blizzard should really re-evaluate the commodity market, Bump up the *material* costs of items, eliminate the gold fee and offer new incentives to the current system. Alternatively, reduce the drop rate of materials and keep material costs the same, though that would be more difficult for salvage materials due to the sheer number of drops from MFing players now. Perhaps something less gambling-oriented because they suffer the same problem as MFers in terms of diminishing gear value.
 
It's an inevitable, natural consequence of a system where the best rolls are the rarest. I frequently find "good" gear that would have been worth millions back then, but they're almost worthless now due to excessive supply. You simply can't keep getting better and better stuff at a steady rate forever to compensate for good gear losing value. I think a lot of people who talk about getting "bad" drops have been too shortsighted to realize this.

I agree that it is a problem by design though. Getting a steady income from item sales diminished greatly over time because of this system. We need consumable commodities to have high demand as well as a steady supply to generate a steady income. Earlier, I went on a rant about crafting gold costs and how it bottlenecks the system. To the business-oriented crafters, they may not see the difference between:

I'm not really sure I have a solution to this but I'll give it a shot. Are you familiar with what a normal distribution looks like?
Can been seen here and is just being used as a graphic to talk about.

Ok, so when you first start playing the game the average properties all items have should fall in the middle. And really great stats should be to the far right and really bad rolls should be to the far left. Meaning 70% or something like that should be average rolls and 2.1% to 0.1% should be awesome rolls.

Well as you play the game and accumulate 200, 300, 400 hours on your character, I don't think you should be subject to the same distribution of loot. It would be cool if your chances to get that gear on the far right side of the curve got better. Because if your gear is already in the 80th percentile, well I have zero use for for the 80% and below. I only care about the remaining 20%, like legendaries/sets and rares with good rolls. So if they could somehow make the loot distribution dynamic based on your char progression, I think that would be pretty damn cool.

Of course this brings up a major issue. Well then, these high level chars can feed lower level ones and throw the whole economy out of the window. Well I suppose this could be tackled a few ways. One could be that the loot you find is bound to your char, but this would render the AHs and trading useless. Or you could somehow tag the loot with a certain paragon level requirement.

Ex
Like lets say I'm a plvl 50 barb and because of this, my loot table distribution has slide to the right by x which essentially yields me better rolls and more legendaries/sets. So lets say I find an immortal kings chest at plvl 50. Well that piece could be tagged with a p50 requirement or something and you have to be atleast a plvl 50 to equip it.

This probably isn't perfect, just thought it up in a short time, but it would essentially help people gear up better as they progress. For myself and for the AH. They could even do it in increments of 5. So when you hit plvl 30, you could check the AH for gear at that level, which would have dropped at an appropriate distribution for plvl 30s. Then the next tier could be at plvl 35, where there should be and even slightly better number of gears and better rolls on those better items.

Then taking it to the extreme, when you're plvl 100, all the loot falling from elites and bosses should be set items and epic legendaries with the best rolls. But only plvl 100s can use them, and you should have no problem being decked out in the best of the best gear. I mean, when your plvl 100, why on earth would you want shitty blues and yellows, doesn't make any sense. Thats progression in my eyes.

I just dinged plvl 33 yesterday and my gear is the same as when patch 1.04 released. I mean, how epically boring is that? Honestly, I'm suprised I still play. I must be insane, b/c didn't Einstein say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome?

Heck, just throwing a bone to Blizzard, if they still wanted to be greedy, they could just charge people for the ability to use higher plvl gear. So if you're impatient and only plvl 20 but want to use a legendary for plvl 50, you just have to pay some real cash for it. Blizz can still make money, the AHs can continue the way they are now, and people are guranteed to be rewarded for putting in the hours farming and leveling up.

Sorry for long post :)
/rant
 
If you are Plevel 33, you have (among other things) +100 free main stat since 1.0.4. You *are* progressing, and getting more powerful, even without any new gear. Not saying it is fast or worth it, just saying it is happening :p
 
If you are Plevel 33, you have (among other things) +100 free main stat since 1.0.4. You *are* progressing, and getting more powerful, even without any new gear. Not saying it is fast or worth it, just saying it is happening :p

True, but that is like bailing out the titanic with a teaspoon :D. And I could also argue that is a small lame static progression. Why should you earn the same stats from plvl 1-2 as you do from plvl 99-100? Thats NOT appropriate progression.
 
True, but that is like bailing out the titanic with a teaspoon :D. And I could also argue that is a small lame static progression. Why should you earn the same stats from plvl 1-2 as you do from plvl 99-100? Thats NOT appropriate progression.

The first 10M gold on the AH gets you 90% of what you can get for 100M, at 10% the price. Same way with experience and Plevel stats :)

(I agree with you btw, just playing devil's advocate).
 
The underlying desire of your suggestion is quite descriptive of yet another rant I made about predictable progress :D, which I agree that the game needed. Paragon levels also apply to this form of progress and it has extended the game's life for many. However, in the long run the predictable stat rewards are small and the other reward (MF) only helps you in obtaining yet more unpredictable rewards. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of making gear acquisition itself more predictable with guaranteed "better" loot, but I do think a predictable, yet rewarding system that doesn't diminish is needed. The question for me is what kind of system can do that without inflating player power to absurd levels (like the one you suggest about paragon-level-required items)? Most people scoff at the idea of soul-bound items too and it doesn't feel right in a Diablo design sense.

And no gear upgrades at plvl 33 since the patch? You must either have the worst luck or your gear was already ahead of the curve. I've made over 100M gold and doubled my DPS while playing regularly since the patch came :eek:!
 
The first 10M gold on the AH gets you 90% of what you can get for 100M, at 10% the price. Same way with experience and Plevel stats :)

(I agree with you btw, just playing devil's advocate).

I'm not really sure what you said but I like it! :D

Yeah I agree, mid to mid-late game is kind of trivial because so many players reached the upper end and well the AH is flooded with good items now. My idea is mainly aimed at the late game crowd, for which 10M won't get you squat. Hell that won't even get you a radiant star.
 
I think many people lose perspective when looking at the AH and what is considered good gear. They see what's godly on the AH and think they need that, but see the long road ahead to reach that and think the economy is broken. The drop rates and the economy can be improved, but it is by no means broken.

The baseline when considering the quality of drops is what is the bare minimum to beat inferno. Legendaries are not required to beat inferno, not even godly rares are required. Coming from beating inferno before the nerfs, considering how much it has been nerfed, the drop rates improved and drop quality improved, the baseline is very very low. Super sayian farming speed level of gear is still expensive, but it's still much easier to gear up than before. Items that I would have payed 8 figures near launch I'm struggling to sell for 100k now.

As you gear up it should be harder to improve gear, a logarithmic function of improvement over time gives the best chance at ever catching up to the top 1% or whatever. If gear improved faster or even linearly, the gap between those who have amazing gear and those who don't would widen and never level off until people maxed out at perfect rolls.

I'd like to see the profiles of those that aren't seeing legendaries, and whether or not they're gear swapping. I'm getting a legendary maybe every 4-7 hours or so, but I run with about 150mf before valor and I clear most areas in a very speedy matter. What are the kill counts and elite kill counts? How many hours played?
 
The question for me is what kind of system can do that without inflating player power to absurd levels (like the one you suggest about paragon-level-required items)? Most people scoff at the idea of soul-bound items too and it doesn't feel right in a Diablo design sense.

And no gear upgrades at plvl 33 since the patch? You must either have the worst luck or your gear was already ahead of the curve. I've made over 100M gold and doubled my DPS while playing regularly since the patch came :eek:!

Yeah I think we're both in agreement and after the same thing. I'm not sure how that system would look either. I'm not really sure where I stand on soul-bound items, haven't really given enough thought to how that would work and what kind or ramifications it would have. But discussing inflating power levels, what would be so bad about plvl 90 and above players being uber powerful and getting appropriate gear to drop consistently? And the plvl requirement would keep it in that plvl 90 tier.

And actually I misspoke, I have gotten one nice upgrade. I got a nice ammy with cc/cd and high str, 7K dps upgrade. Although I'm not currently using it, because my old one with 8.5 cc, 65 AR and low str is better for survivablitity right now.

And I don't know how people like you say you've earned over 100M gold. The most I've ever had was just under 40M, and that was hard earned since release, bit by bit. Nothing sells for me. And I haven't hit the lottery with any epic high value items. :( I must be playing it wrong. Thats why I need some kind of predictable progression system.

e/ And nice post you linked back from July. I actually do remember reading that. You sir, were ahead of your time! And I liked the way you expressed it. Kudos to you. And I for one thinks that predictability is sexy! People love working towards goals and given outcomes, not towards just more randomness.

Why can so many great ideas float around in the community and it seems like Blizz are the last ones to figure it out? Le sigh :rolleyes:
 
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There is a site I was on a few months ago that broke down the magic find based on a few heavy users data. It pretty much showed that you really don't start taking advantage of magic find until you get close to 300 MF......This also correlates with mine and my friends findings as well.

For example we run a group of 4 1 below 200 two below 300 and 1 above 300. (I'm at like 220) The dude who is at 350 MF finds at least twice as much as all of us. and the guy at 120 MF find the same as me at 220.

We played about 15 hours this weekend. the 3 Under 200 MF found 4 Items total 2-1-1 and the dude above 300 found 7. It happens like this every time we play.

So in my experience Magic Find is pointless.......Until its not.

side note I found an Inna's belt with max all res....Sold it for 90million instantly....should have priced it higher.
 
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There is a site I was one a few months ago that broke down the magic find based on a few heavy users data. It pretty much showed that you really don't start taking advantage of magic find until you get close to 300 MF......This also correlates with mine and my friends findings as well.

For example we run a group of 4 1 below 200 to below 300 and 1 above 300. (I'm at like 220) The dude who is at 350 MF finds at least twice as much as all of us. and the guy at 120 MF find the same as me at 220.

We played about 15 hours this weekend. the 3 Under 200 MF found 4 Items total 2-1-1 and the dude above 300 found 7. It happens like this every time we play.

So in my experience Magic Find is pointless.......Until its not.

side note I found an Inna's belt with max all res....Sold it for 90million instantly....should have priced it higher.

You know I was thinking this very thing this weekend. You would assume that its linear but it doesn't feel that way. And just from things I've read, I would completely concur with you and your friends findings. Well I'm at 270, so I'll grind out 10 more levels and if I don't start seeing awesome drops I'm seriously gonna choke someone out. And even though I'm bitter about it, congrats on that find, atleast someone's finding good shit.

My equivalent find was the 2H weapon that goes with that set, forgot what it was called. Anyway, sold it for 1.2M, yay, go me. :rolleyes:
 
What i don't understand is the people who say, "you can beat inferno with under 1 mil gold in gear"...

I guarantee that my total gear worth is WAY over that mark. Yet i still get beat down. There's no way i could beat inferno.
 
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