Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

[Shantarr.Dalrae]

ah that's right. Do ppl in the beta also get to test the templar?

Yes.

 

[Aix.]

There are some pretty amazing legendary effects. Maximus summons a demon, and puts a very nice fire chain between you and it. Great for TR monk. It feels really rewarding throwing back those affixes that gave you nightmares from pre nerf infero.

BTW, Maximus already does that in the regular D3 game.

 

[stevedave]

BTW, Maximus already does that in the regular D3 game.

With loot 2.0 Maximus will be usable in both HC and Softcore on top of having that cool ability....That's the key point I'd think.

Currently Maximus is only a good weapon in HC.

 

[Aix.]

With loot 2.0 Maximus will be usable in both HC and Softcore on top of having that cool ability....That's the key point I'd think.

Currently Maximus is only a good weapon in HC.

I was under the impression that it wasn't really a good weapon in either mode unless you happened to get your mainstat, lifesteal/LoH, and crit damage. Did they make the fire chain do crazy damage in the RoS beta or something?

 

[chockomonkey]

I was under the impression that it wasn't really a good weapon in either mode unless you happened to get your mainstat, lifesteal/LoH, and crit damage. Did they make the fire chain do crazy damage in the RoS beta or something?

hopefully they do what PoE does with Legendaries.. make them always have the same mods, but roll them in a range.

 

[Aix.]

hopefully they do what PoE does with Legendaries.. make them always have the same mods, but roll them in a range.

.........you mean what D2 did with 'legendaries'? I was so mad that I had to play that game. I don't want any D2 in my D3 thank you very much.

 

[errer]

.........you mean what D2 did with 'legendaries'? I was so mad that I had to play that game. I don't want any D2 in my D3 thank you very much.

So do you want your legs to be 99.82% garbage? or is the sarcasm flying over my head

 

[big_aug]

I always liked D3's legendary system. Rolling stats within a range is kind of... meh. Having the chance to roll any stat in the game on an already powerful item... that's awesome.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

I always liked D3's legendary system. Rolling stats within a range is kind of... meh. Having the chance to roll any stat in the game on an already powerful item... that's awesome.

Most of them aren't powerful due to the fact that the rolls are random.

 

[Aix.]

So do you want your legs to be 99.82% garbage? or is the sarcasm flying over my head

Heh, it flew over your head.

The reason uniques were so good was not only because they were items designed to be powerful, but also because they were the few constants in an otherwise completely random environment. You could see a name and know, at a glance, what the item was and what the item was good for.

Making legendaries in D3 rely on landing a random lucky roll to even be considered useful (not to mention the embarrassingly bad items the devs considered to be 'legendary' before the 1.0.4 patch...see below) showed how little the devs really understood about the franchise they were working on.

D2 thrived for years even with mass duping and botting; people loved the itemization, they just hated the insane drop rates of a lot of the stuff. The D3 devs looked at it differently and attempted to solve the D2 'problem' of powerful uniques by making them as random as all the other garbage that dropped in the game. But just listening to any dev interviews it really seems like the team's entire approach to designing the game was from a "fix D2's problems" perspective instead of an "enhance D2's greatness" perspective.

 

[mope54]

nearly everyone in the game would have found that maximus to be an exciting drop if it weren't for the AH that was thrown into the game during the last couple months of development

 

[LeninGHOLA]

nearly everyone in the game would have found that maximus to be an exciting drop if it weren't for the AH that was thrown into the game during the last couple months of development

Naw. I self found monk fists with higher raw damage than that.

 

[Aix.]

nearly everyone in the game would have found that maximus to be an exciting drop if it weren't for the AH that was thrown into the game during the last couple months of development

That's a level 60 TWO-hander...forget "legendary" standards, that was awful DPS by any standard.

Edit: Wait a minute...are you actually defending that as good item design?

 

[mope54]

Naw. I self found monk fists with higher raw damage than that.

well sure, items aren't always going to roll the best stats and that's what makes the loot hunt fun and interesting.

but the discussion was about useless rolls and loot 2.0. that weapon isn't an example of what loot 2.0 is going to address. if it had rolled int instead of vit or zombie dog cooldown reduction instead of damage converted to life then it'd be indicative of what has been so problematic about current rolls.

under loot 2.0 you'll still have weapons that roll damage that isn't enough for your wants but the stats that would make sense on a two hander, like damage, life steal, resistance, etc. are going to be on them.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

well sure, items aren't always going to roll the best stats and that's what makes the loot hunt fun and interesting.

but the discussion was about useless rolls and loot 2.0. that weapon isn't an example of what loot 2.0 is going to address. if it had rolled int instead of vit or zombie dog cooldown reduction instead of damage converted to life then it'd be indicative of what has been so problematic about current rolls.

under loot 2.0 you'll still have weapons that roll damage that isn't enough for your wants but the stats that would make sense on a two hander, like damage, life steal, resistance, etc. are going to be on them.

I guess my point is that outside of the damage roll on that item, the mods aren't particularly interesting or build enabling either.

 

[Aix.]

well sure, items aren't always going to roll the best stats and that's what makes the loot hunt fun and interesting.

but the discussion was about useless rolls and loot 2.0. that weapon isn't an example of what loot 2.0 is going to address. if it had rolled int instead of vit or zombie dog cooldown reduction instead of damage converted to life then it'd be indicative of what has been so problematic about current rolls.

under loot 2.0 you'll still have weapons that roll damage that isn't enough for your wants but the stats that would make sense on a two hander, like damage, life steal, resistance, etc. are going to be on them.

Well yeah, your statement was that "nearly everyone in the game would have found that maximus to be an exciting drop if it weren't for the AH" which was outright ridiculous, and the only reason we continued discussing it.

My argument would be that a well-designed legendary would have everything it needs on it by default, with reasonable stat ranges to keep it interesting. Or imagine if the game had something like a Divine Orb or some ability to re-roll the random affix you got...that would have helped the current loot at least. Perhaps the Mystic will provide such functions in RoS. I would hope so, considering that I can't just trade for the legendary I want anymore.

 

[stevedave]

I really don't have anything positive to say about D3's Items. I'd say it was the games weakest point.

Having put a significant amount of time in TL2 and PoE now neither of those did items and loot very well either but D3 is probably the worst of the three in this area.

Dark Souls however did gear near flawlessly with such balance and purpose in each item...mmmm Dark Souls is tasty. I'd love it if an ARPG took the Dark Souls approach to items especially if they added more layers with things like poise and weight

 

[LeninGHOLA]

I really don't have anything positive to say about D3's Items. I'd say it was the games weakest point.

Having put a significant amount of time in TL2 and PoE now neither of those did items and loot very well either but D3 is probably the worst of the three in this area.

Dark Souls however did gear near flawlessly with such balance and purpose in each item...mmmm Dark Souls is tasty. I'd love it if an ARPG took the Dark Souls approach to items especially if they added more layers with things like poise and weight

If they adapted that kind of system to the standard Diablo clone, they would need to add a sprinkling of random world drops (and more) that had variable rolled stats. With the way random loot works in Dark Souls, it wouldn't be enough for people to grind out thousands of hours. It works perfectly for the way the game was intended, but a little too rewarding to fit seamlessly into a Diablo clone.

 

[errer]

Heh, it flew over your head.

The reason uniques were so good was not only because they were items designed to be powerful, but also because they were the few constants in an otherwise completely random environment. You could see a name and know, at a glance, what the item was and what the item was good for.

Making legendaries in D3 rely on landing a random lucky roll to even be considered useful (not to mention the embarrassingly bad items the devs considered to be 'legendary' before the 1.0.4 patch...see below) showed how little the devs really understood about the franchise they were working on.

D2 thrived for years even with mass duping and botting; people loved the itemization, they just hated the insane drop rates of a lot of the stuff. The D3 devs looked at it differently and attempted to solve the D2 'problem' of powerful uniques by making them as random as all the other garbage that dropped in the game. But just listening to any dev interviews it really seems like the team's entire approach to designing the game was from a "fix D2's problems" perspective instead of an "enhance D2's greatness" perspective.

Whew I agree with you 100%. Which reminds me the D3 clan I was in had a legendary competition last spring with about 20-30 clan members participating. It lasted I think 6 hours and we came out with like 300 legs, the top 3 teams won all of the legs (which is irrevelant) but out of all 300 only 1 was actually worth anything...That says something right there.

 

[mope54]

Well yeah, your statement was that "nearly everyone in the game would have found that maximus to be an exciting drop if it weren't for the AH" which was outright ridiculous,

it's not ridiculous in context. we were talking about useless affixes and that piece has every good affix for a melee character the just didn't roll high enough in your opinion. That doesn't make a piece of gear "worthless." Worthless is strength on a wizard hat, intelligence on a might weapon, or strength on a fist weapon. That shouldn't have ever happened on a legendary or set piece and I don't really care if it happens on every other piece of gear. Legendaries aren't always BIS. It's the same way in Titan Quest and WoW--the rares are more powerful than the legendaries (not by design).

That was also an old Maximus, as he said before 1.04 patch, and they have been buffed:
now the least dps it can roll is 983
http://www.d3lexicon.com/item/maximus

 

[Aix.]

That was also an old Maximus, as he said before 1.04 patch, and they have been buffed:
now the least dps it can roll is 983
http://www.d3lexicon.com/item/maximus

I know...I posted that in the first place and it was integral to my point.

it's not ridiculous in context. we were talking about useless affixes and that piece has every good affix for a melee character the just didn't roll high enough in your opinion. That doesn't make a piece of gear "worthless." Worthless is strength on a wizard hat, intelligence on a might weapon, or strength on a fist weapon. That shouldn't have ever happened on a legendary or set piece and I don't really care if it happens on every other piece of gear. Legendaries aren't always BIS. It's the same way in Titan Quest and WoW--the rares are more powerful than the legendaries (not by design).

And yes, it is ridiculous in any context because D3's design is about that big DPS number first and foremost. We weren't just discussing useless affixes, we were discussing design of legendaries and how they shouldn't rely on random properties to be good.

 

[Breath_of_the_Dying]

Even with the mystic to reroll any one stat on an item, you cant go pure dps, you'll need survival to get through the tougher difficulties. Yes some skills and items are broken, but by design you'll need a lot more survival stats. Trifectas dont roll at 70 from what I've seen, and by 70 you'll be hard pressed to keep lvl 60 trifectas because high mian stat rolls come close to the damage upgrade trifectas brought, but probably wont provide the survivability stats you'll need.

Hi I just wanted to come in and provide additional detail on some of the damage philosophy stuff we talked about at the Blizzcon Community Booth. I think everybody at the booth was able to internalize the core of the philosophy and I want to make sure people reading this write-up afterwards understand what is happening too.

When I say we want mechanics in the game that cause unavoidable damage this absolutely does NOT mean you’re supposed to just die. The idea is not “random damage, now you’re dead LOL” the idea is to give people a sense for where they stand. I think right now when some people hear “unavoidable damage” they think “unfair deaths”. This is not the intention. Paradoxically by adding unavoidable damage in controlled and moderated amounts we are working to make death feel MORE fair. Confused? Let me explain.

Right now deaths in the live environment don’t always feel fair for a variety of reasons. One of the many reasons deaths don’t always feel fair is the game doesn’t clue you in on how much survivability you should gear for. Indeed you can be cruising along slaying some monsters and suddenly get Vortex’ed into a Frost Orb and die instantly. Up until that Vortex/Frost Orb combo, you weren’t taking any damage at all.

Why did you die instantly to the combo? Maybe it’s low survivability on gear. But you had no idea!

Let’s say that most players with “average” gear have 300,000 effective health. How much damage should a monster melee attack be doing? Maybe 25K damage? That lets you take 12 sizable melee hits. Sounds about right. Now imagine a particularly skilled demon hunter has sacrificed all defense on their gear to maximize damage and has only 50,000 effective health. This Demon Hunter is incredibly squishy but the game feels “right” because she’s still taking 0 damage through skilled play. Now you get hit by a Vortex/Frost Orb combo which chunks off half your health, followed by a single melee hit from a monster which kills you. This death feels incredibly unfair. From the Demon Hunter’s point of view, she was taking no damage at all, and then suddenly she was dead. There was no warning, just a vortex and a death.

So now let’s highlight a specific change coming in Reaper of Souls for Desecrator. Currently on live Desecrator appears under your feet and deals no damage for the first 1.5 seconds or so. After the first 1.5 seconds you start taking continual damage over time until you leave. In Reaper of Souls this is changing so that you start taking damage immediately. The damage per second is less than it currently is on live to offset the fact that it starts immediately. Why is this a good change?

For starters, it means that the faster a player exits Desecrator, the less damage they take. Previously there was no difference between leaving the Desecrator in 0.7 seconds vs 1.4 seconds. With the new Desecrator, a player who gets out in 0.7 seconds will take half as much damage as the slower player. There is a continuous spectrum that basically says “You’re going to take damage, but how much damage you take depends on how quickly you get out.”

Additionally, this change gives the Demon Hunter from our previous example a much better sense of where she stands with respect to her survivability. On MP0 you might take 10K damage per second in Desecrator. With 50K effective health she notices she’s missing some health but she says to herself “I could stand in that for 5 seconds if I had to”. However, she turns up the MP and suddenly now she’s taking 25K damage per second. Now she’s thinking “That Desecrator is starting to hurt, and it’s stressful. I can only stand in it for 2 seconds before I die, and even getting out in 0.5 seconds I am losing 25% of my health”. By doing moderated amounts of unavoidable damage, the player can get an intuitive sense for how risky they can be. You can still perform much better as a highly skilled player but there are less surprises. Suppose 0.5 seconds of Desecrator, a monster melee attack and a Frozen explosion all do roughly the same damage. At the point that you notice a Desecrator is “pretty scary” you now have the information to extrapolate that a Vortex/Frozen/Melee attack combo is going to kill you.

Ideally Diablo is a game where both your play skill matters and your gear matters. This applies to damage and survivability. We have survivability stats on gear for a reason and we want to make sure you get a tangible benefit from it. Your skill allows you to minimize how much damage you take, your gear determines how much of a buffer you are comfortable with.

With the spikey damage issue addressed, healing stats on gear are just as important. You might be able to survive a decent amount of time, but you'll need a way to recover health. The potion does straight up percent healing now, but thats still on cooldown. You'll need LoH, LPS, LonKill, LonResourceSpent, ect (there is no more life steal) and what type of healing you want is whatever is good for your playstyle. The elemental absorb rings are pretty OP and I expect them to get nerfed, but freezing pulses, lightning storms, and arcane sentries can still kill me while I stand on plauge and fire.

Crushing blow (chance to reduce a mobs health by 25% of its remaining life) is an interesting mechanic that will need a lot of tweaking, but if you stack a good amount of it, even mobs with billions of hp can be reduced down much quicker than without it. But then you'll still need high dps to finish them off in an efficient manner. This affix counts as an offensive stat, so should you go for crit/critD rings, or AS/CB rings? What about reduced resource cost? My damage is going up, but now I'm looking at trading away some of those damage rolls for reduced resource cost so I can spam more waves of light which might up my overall DPS, but most likely up my clear speed.

Obviously not every legendary is good, sometimes you have better, sometimes they're just not interesting. I'm fine with that, because I need all of those too. New legendaries salvage to a new crafting mat, and each time I want to reroll a legendary affix, it costs that map. Keep in mind that I dont always get the roll I want the first time, so some items are waiting in my bank becuase they're not useful enough without the right roll.

So yeah, theres a lot of good items and a lot of ways to build your gear, it's not as straightforward as Trifecta gloves and trinkets, crit bracers, crit helm for dps.

 

[Harkamus]

So yeah, theres a lot of good items and a lot of ways to build your gear, it's not as straightforward as Trifecta gloves and trinkets, crit bracers, crit helm for dps.

Not in RoS beta, so I have no way to confirm, but it looks like there can't be any trifecta with crit chance, crit damage, and attack speed in RoS, unless there's a legendary that happens to have all three. It looks like you can only roll a max of two of those three damage mods. Just talking about crit chance, crit dam, and attack speed, mind you.

 

[Breath_of_the_Dying]

Legendary potion

Drinking Kulle-Aid allows you to burst through walls summoned by Waller elites for 5 seconds.

 

[dav2287]

I haven't played any D3 in awhile, and thinking about starting it back up again. Any advice for a Monk? I'm paragon level 12, but I have no idea what the best gearing/specs are these days.

 

[Dashboard]

I haven't played any D3 in awhile, and thinking about starting it back up again. Any advice for a Monk? I'm paragon level 12, but I have no idea what the best gearing/specs are these days.

The TR/Bell combo is probably the most used build.

However, I can't find myself using it... not my type. I prefer the classic SW/TC build

 

[Breath_of_the_Dying]

This is my HC monk built around TR/Wave of light. For softcore, you wont need as much survival as I do. TR revolves around having enough spirit regen and a slow weapon to use TR endlessly, then dropping a bell on an elite pack for one or two shot. It's geared for speed, so its mostly built for MP0 or MP1 runs.

It's a click light build, mostly holding r-click throughout most of the dungeon, and then dropping bell (2 in my case) sparingly. Sometimes I have to left click with my spirit generator to gain some spirit back, but its not a click spam build like others are.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Deliverer-1886/hero/33882289

 

[Climber]

I'm going to give it a whirl again and just stary from scratch. Any thoughts on a barbarian? My first and oy character was the mage.

 

[GOD'SlittleSERVANT]

I'm going to give it a whirl again and just stary from scratch. Any thoughts on a barbarian? My first and oy character was the mage.

Barbarian is fun, imo. Wirlwind build is good for farming.

 

[Climber]

Holy crap being sick and typing on my phone was a bad idea. Thanks for answering though. I loved me a poleaxe ww barb in d2. Guess I'll go old school then!

 

[Harkamus]

Boo. PS4 gets a feature in RoS that I'd love to have on live.

TL;DR - if you die by a slain monster, it opens a portal, heads to town, randomly targets a person on your friend's list, receives a new player name (named after the human player it just killed), and hunts down the new player on the friend's list. If the new player kills it, you (the one that died) and him get loot. If it kills the new player, it gets renamed to that person, leaves through a portal, levels up again, and randomly hunts down another player on the friend list.

Now most things are just like “hey, we’re connected, whatever, blah, blah, blah”; Avenger Kills are where it’s at! Our game director Josh Mosqueira love to say “Love the player”, that’s his big philosophy in life, love the player — it’s a good philosophy when you’re making videogames. But sometimes you’ve got to give a little bit of love back to the monsters, because you know, they’re the ones getting murdered — they’re getting killed by these players. So you’re adventuring, and a monster kills you — bummer, you’re on the ground and waiting to resurrect — and that monster is going to level up, and a portal is going to appear, and he’s going to jump in the portal and disappear. Then he’s going to pick somebody in your list of friends who plays Diablo III, and he’s going to jump into their game.

They’re going to see a unique-named monster, and it’s going to say ‘you are being hunted’, and that monster is going to be named after you, and it’s going to come and hunt them, and have new powers. If they kill it, they get loot and you get loot. If it kills them, it’s going to get named after them and it’s going to level up, have more powers, and jump into their friends list and hunt another one of their friends.

So it’s that idea of: we’re not playing together, but we’re connected as adventurers going through Sanctuary. That’s out version of social today, in a sense. Those three features are unique to console.

 

[mope54]

it's just a feature using infrastructure already available to the ps4
the pc team will think about it and decide if they'll develop and implement the feature

We asked Humphreys if these features might make their way into the PC version of Reaper of Souls as well, and she told us, “this is something that’s kind of part of the PS4 platform, so that’s why we started looking at it. Like any of our features, then the PC team would take a look to see if that makes sense for the game and for their audience.”

To confirm, we also spoke with John Hight, production director on the PC version of Diablo III. When asked if these social features might come to PC players, he told us, “we love some of the stuff we’ve seen on the console side. I think Avenger Kills is a really cool feature. We’re all one team. Julia sits two bays down from me, so we’re all sharing the ideas, and I think that certainly I wouldn’t put it past us to steal any good ideas from the console side, and obviously console’s taking what’s already been developed on the PC and making it fit for that audience.”

 

[rflcptr]

I just started the game from scratch as a monk, and having I'm a ton of fun.

 

[rflcptr]

I got my monk to 46 over the weekend, hoping to hit 60 by Friday. If anyone wants to add me, send a PM.

 

[Harkamus]

I got my monk to 46 over the weekend, hoping to hit 60 by Friday. If anyone wants to add me, send a PM.

I'm one of the few people here still playing. I won't have time 'til Thursday. I'm in grad school. It's the end of the semester. Will help this weekend. Maybe get you a hellfire ring too. EDIT: Just let me know your battle tag so I can add you. Mine's somewhere in this thread. Do a search. I don't recall it OTOH. hah. might be harkamus#1584. Not sure.

 

[clayton006]

I can meet you online too. I probably will be free on Friday or Saturday and possibly late Wednesday. My battle tag is Triden#1600 also if you get online and don't see me, add me to steam =EGC= clayton006

 

[cougarsoccer]

feel free to add me. battletag is garnip#1580

speaking of hellfire rings... I have plenty of machines to do them so let me know.I am usually on just messing around. This is what i play while i'm on my laptop and watching tv.

 

[rflcptr]

added you fellas. mine's Beefalo#1182 for reference.

 

[mope54]

I play occasionally but it's finals week coming up and I still have a ton of papers to grade. I'm only on hardcore, though. any of you guys want to play hardcore two of my friends play every night

 

[Business6]

12 machines here. I messed around with some different builds for my barb that used to be able to tank mp10 ubers pretty well but now needs to get carried at MP7 ubers, lol.

I'm trying to make dex and intelligence hellfire rings to help speed up the rest of my characters. I've got a Barb, Wiz, Monk all at paragon levels (68/15/4) and slowly working on a WD. #Business1943