Hell is not frozen yet! (Diablo 3)

[Crni Vuk]

Prior to 1.03 this was definitely not the case and you having bought a weapon on the AH is an indicator of this. There was no way you would ever get a 900+ DPS two hander, or even an 800+ DPS two hander in act 1. Maximum item lvl for acts 1 and 2 were 61 and 62 respectively. This was the irony, in that the gear you needed to effectively beat the current act was only dropping in the later acts. If you were really lucky in act 2 you could roll a two hander up to 900ish DPS, but such drops were extremely rare.

This was really more of a problem for barbs and monks since they are inherently more gear dependent. The ilvl 60 and 61 gear is mostly garbage.

Of course, act 2, 3 and 4 have been nerfed and all ilvls have a chance to drop in any act, so these problems don't exist anymore.

How big was the chance of getting enigma for a usual player without cheating?

Impossible.

You would have to make a full time job out of Diablo 2 to achieve that. And Enigma is not even the best kind of possible armor. It just requires lots of rare stuff. Including runes and armor with the correct sockets.

Now you say. But wait a min! I never cheated to get it? But you traded equipment for it and the chance that some of it was not found in legal ways was very high. That is why so many stuff in Diablo 2 was so "cheap" at some point. Everyone and his dog could get an enigma at some point because of dupping/cheating on the runes.

So just because once a weapon was bought in the auction house does not mean equipment is dropping better or worse compared to Diablo 2. Again. Finding the REALLY good equipment in D2 could take you ages. Strange though that people have not even played D3 for a week and already complained "where is my super gear!".

 

[Ilosar]

options for building your character

Agree on the rest, not sure on this. People have been running melee wizards builds, glass cannon monks, WD with semi-viable summons in Inferno, ect. Granted, it takes good gear to make a non cookie cutter build viable, but it was the same in D2 for the most part.

One weird thing Blizzard did is make you lose stacks of Nephalem Valor if you swap skills. So if I want to use AoE attacks on the way to the Butcher, but want to switch to single-target to beat the boss, no can do. It kinda invalidates their philosophy of not being stuck with one build ala D2 (and that game eventually got a god-sent respec button you could use anytime).

Also, Molten Horde Invulnerable Minions Extra HP elites absolutely suck as a Barb.

 

[Korin]

So just because once a weapon was bought in the auction house does not mean equipment is dropping better or worse compared to Diablo 2. Again. Finding the REALLY good equipment in D2 could take you ages. Strange though that people have not even played D3 for a week and already complained "where is my super gear!".

Not sure what you're saying... I'm talking about people needing to buy gear on the AH because the gear they needed wasn't dropping in acts 1 and 2. This was a physical limitation on the types of items that could drop in these acts. It wasn't a small percentage, it was a 0 percentage.

 

[Snackpack]

I didn't start playing in 1.0.3, I had beaten seigebreaker prior to the patch.

I got an 870 dps staff in act 1 that I used until i got a 940 dps oni blade in act 2. Extremely lucky drops I'll admit, but like I said, no-lifing it will get em for you. I then bought a 1085 dps staff off the ah, not because it was necessary to progress but because it was really cheap, had life on hit, and cold elemental damage, both of which i wanted to experiment with.

An item being item level 63 doesn't even make it better, it just has a higher cap for stats, and therefore could be better.

40k dps, 20ish crit chance, 200% crit dmg, 30k hp, 400ish resist all, and I'm wearing 2 or 3 item level 63 items.

I do agree though that the old drop rates did make it much harder for monks and barbs. On the other hand, now that I'm leveling a barb and am In hell difficulty where it's starting to get a little tricky, playing melee feels so much more rewarding and overall has been more fun than my wizard. I've duo'd most of the game with a monk and watching him standing in a pile of mobs that kill my wizard pretty much instantly if i get in range blows my mind.

 

[PlanHex]

Crni's right tho' (just this once).

I have no idea how many hours of D2 I've played, but it's waaaaaay past the 1k hour mark.
And even with 600+ MF gear, I'd get stuff worth at most a Pul (that's a shit rune for those of you who don't know) for 4-6 hours of work.
And then trade up and trade up, until I got the good stuff.
It wasn't hard work, mind you. Running Meph, Diablo, or Baal was not challenging with such a setup, it was just time consuming.
I used to watch MST3K while doing runs to pass the time. And some times I'd play D2 while watching MST3K to pass the time, because neither requires your full concentration.

I never got fucking rich.

The best item I ever got in the 3-4 ladders I participated in was a 3soc 30frw tiara. Worth maybe 300fg at the time. And I got that through gambling. FUCKING GAMBLING!

But you know what? Even if there's a better chance of getting awsum itemz in D3, I think I still prefer D2, because the grind wasn't unfairly challenging.

I like challenging games, but if the game revolves around mindless grinding, then making it fucking hard/impossible to grind ruins the game for me completely.

 

[TheWesDude]

buy an authentificator and buy stuff (lots of it) trough the real money auction house. Thats what Blizz wants from you.

actually people have looked into it...

blizz gets their authenticators from some company in china.

for no custom designs they are 5.50 each USD shipped to the US per 1k lot.

with custom designs they are 8.50 each USD shipped to the US per 1k lot.

the server license is like either 1 time payment without support for like 45k US, if you get it with updates/support its 75k. per server.

im pretty sure blizz isnt paying 75k per server, but i am willing to bet that at 6.50 per authenticator, they definately are taking a loss of at least the shipping, and possibly more.

probably the only place blizz is actually doing it in consideration of the customer.

plus i would always much rather have the physical auth than the phone based one.

 

[SuAside]

Strange though that people have not even played D3 for a week and already complained "where is my super gear!".

The issue isn't "super gear", it's that a) uniques suck b) uniques and sets are ludicrously rare c) even good rares are very hard to come by d) you need better quality items to beat certain acts than what you can find in them (without grinding for hours). Plus the actual number of modifiers on items, options for building your character etc. are dramatically reduced over Diablo II.

Well, my gripe isn't that it's hard to get good gear. That's fine. It's that it's boring as shit to farm.

There is little challenge and usually fairly little skill involved. Either you can hack it, or you can't depending on your gear. The strategies are known, the builds are pretty much set. You can stray from these builds if your gear can take it, but otherwise you're pretty much stuck if you want to go for progression.
In the end, if you're at the top of your capacity, you just have to be lucky with affixes on bosses.

 

[Crni Vuk]

But you know what? Even if there's a better chance of getting awsum itemz in D3, I think I still prefer D2, because the grind wasn't unfairly challenging.

(and the rest what you said)

Exactly! Finally someone who understands. You nailed the issue on the head without just complaining knowing that most of the things in D3 are very similar to D2. Time consuming farming. Low to now drops etc. I see you are another D2 hardcore player oh the joy of wasting your childhood with gaming

Though I agree that the combination of affixes on some enemies can make it pretty difficult, and sometimes impossible to beat them in D3.

But playing your barb on hell in D2 if it was not a perfect build wasn't really easy either. Gosh! Playing against Diablo alone with a lvl 90 Barb using Immortal King set would get you killed sometimes simply because the enemy in Diablos realm had Iron maiden wich would reflect damage. Pretty awesome as melee fighter when you cause the damage to your self. Whirlwind in the group. Suddenly dead with the first 2 sec.! I just played recently before the release D3 with the barb again. It seems they changed that spell. It has no effect anymore. Not like in the past.

Some combinations on the elites in D2 could be quite powerful. Ever got an elite with immunity to physical damage, extra strong and mana burn? Oh the joys of that fight ... it was worse then a fight with Baal sometimes ... because the minions had mana burn as well.

Strange though that people have not even played D3 for a week and already complained "where is my super gear!".

The issue isn't "super gear", it's that a) uniques suck b) uniques and sets are ludicrously rare c) even good rares are very hard to come by d) you need better quality items to beat certain acts than what you can find in them (without grinding for hours). Plus the actual number of modifiers on items, options for building your character etc. are dramatically reduced over Diablo II.

Did you even played Diablo 2?

What you describe here can be said almost as well about D2. Most of the uniques sucked there as well. Except when you started to make them elite which was not easy either (with the cube and runes). Most of the green set items have been useless as well. I sure almost never used them. And even with hours of grinding you would most of the time not even find a single good item. Again, I got most of my stuff by trading. With runes and gems. And I had my MF sorce in D2. Multiple characters. Thousands of Baal-Meph etc. runs. Rune runs. Playing characters only because of the rune quests. And so on. I was much younger at that time and I had much more time and friends in D2.

Maybe D3 is a bit different, for sure. But when I read the complaints regarding equipment it feels like people really never ever played Diablo 2.

So just because once a weapon was bought in the auction house does not mean equipment is dropping better or worse compared to Diablo 2. Again. Finding the REALLY good equipment in D2 could take you ages. Strange though that people have not even played D3 for a week and already complained "where is my super gear!".

Not sure what you're saying... I'm talking about people needing to buy gear on the AH because the gear they needed wasn't dropping in acts 1 and 2. This was a physical limitation on the types of items that could drop in these acts. It wasn't a small percentage, it was a 0 percentage.

Then I am curious how the people got their hands on the stuff they sold on the auction house if it was a zero chance?

Guys. Someone MUST have been able to find the stuff by grinding one way or another.

I will say it again. You could play MONTHS of Diablo 2 in Hell and NOT find a single GOOD peace you needed for one of your characters. The amount of garbage you might get was very high. In D3 at least you can give it to your smith which makes the progress with low lvl characters much easier. There was a french guy which managed to get the enigma in around 1 or 2 months.

Of. Playing. D2. As. Full. Time. Job.

It was the high number of cheating back then (and now) which increased the number of valuable equipment in D2 and mde it easy to buy and trade the stuff. Seriously there was literally no chance to get for example the Immortal King set in "time" if you never traded with other players. With all the hours I played D2 I cant remember a single time I had the soul cage as drop. Or Tyraels Might. Or something like that. It takes really ages to get those things.

Now you buy it over the auction house. Might be that this is at the moment not really "great" because of the prizes. But those will drop eventually. Things will get normal.

Maybe I am wrong with this no clue. But it feels to me like people play Inferno for 1 or 2 months now (since the game is released) and expect that it works like Diablo 2 after 1 or 2 years! Strange enough, A friend told me that those coming from D2 accept things as what they are - he is playing Inferno with his friends and he played for years with me D2. Though people which moved over to D3 from other games like WoW ... now complain. Well. Make out of that what ever you want now. Finding the best stuff or just acceptable gear in the highest difficulty was always "hardcore gaming" in Diablo terms the rest of the usual players had only the chance to trade or buy. I don't know why people complain about that now at least if you are coming from "old" Diablo games as how like many people claim.

It's that it's boring as shit to farm

same question to you. Did you played Diablo 2?

 

[mobucks]

I must have little cohones maing because I could never play a item farm game for months as you describe. *Sneeringly*Lot better ways to produce dopamine.
SO a while back I started getting into Sacred. Went on a forum to see how to make a good char.

Step 1: Craft and farm months for gear with goal of maxing out +magical item find.

Step 2: Now that you are wearing an entire suit of magical item finding clothes, farm for months to find each item you need.

I uninstalled it after a few hours of looking for magical item finding gear.

 

[Ilosar]

I never liked the concept of magic find. So you tell me that, in order to avoid ridiculously low drop rates, I should farm to find equipment that will allow me to farm better equiment? Why not just make the drop rates decent in the first place, or am I missing something here?

 

[Crni Vuk]

the effect of magic find is not as huge as people believe. Even if you had 500 % or more MF in D2 the "help" you got from it was even less then 1%. There are MF calculators for that even. The real difference is between 0% and 100% because the jump here is much bigger then lets say from 100 to 500%. So in other words, you can farm with all characters equally. It pretty much makes no difference. But its obvious why people chose a sorc. Teleportation and powerful spells. You concentrate on certain enemies and you finish the MF run in a very fast time. You took high MF with you because it was not a huge problem in combination with the skills. Playing a 500 or 600% MF sorc though is rather borderline on becoming a useless build (cant kill fast enough). So in other words I would have never used more then 200 or 300 MF on ANY character in D2 and to get such values was really not impossible. Some gear with enough sockets inside for the gemz (perfect Topaz 24% MF) gives you already around 75% or so.

And in D3 the MF seems to be even of lower importance. It seems more important that you get a char that is fast enough in dealing with the mobs for the neph-buff. If you have around 30 or 40% MF that is more then enough. Again. It almost makes 0% difference. Though regardless how many calculations you show to some people, they still believe they get the super phat loot only because of the MF ... though it really is not worth it in D3 to sacrifice DPS or other skills for MF. That is what you have the Nephalem buff for - which is different to the "usual" MF from equipment.

 

[SuAside]

It's that it's boring as shit to farm

same question to you. Did you played Diablo 2?

They changed the game mechanics, they changed the way boss mobs work and they changed the play style. They implemented a whole system to cash out on drops. I would expect they're hoping for this game to be played very long term.

At this time, there is nothing to do but farm. One would expect they would make this farming more interesting?

Am I at fault to expect an improvement?

PS: Yes, I did play D2, a lot. Not as much as you did though.

 

[Crni Vuk]

improvements would be welcome. And I agree that I dont see here any compared to D2, in fact some parts are even worse in my eyes ... like the layout of the maps the whole visual design and the way how the story is set up. But the people working on Diablo now are a completely different team compared to the past.

But it seems to me people complain about things which have been already present in D2. Farming there was boring as fuck as well. They just offer the same experience now with D3.

Though how could you make farming in D3 interesting? Diablo was never world of warcraft when it comes to that. Farming is always boring anyway not just in Diablo. Thats why I decided a long time ago not to do it anymore. Neither in D3 nor any other "online" game.

Again. It seems that Inferno is meant to be "hardcore". The absolute end-game. This goes of course for the items as well. So I would expect here that it requires quite a lot of grinding and farming if you want to play Inferno without trouble.

If I remember correctly Blizzard said it by themself Inferno was meant for the real die hard Diablo fans. Those which play it several hours each day. <s>And of course for milking their player base, using the action houses and all that stuff.</s>

 

[SuAside]

Well, I do think WoW bosses were often more fun & varied than D3 bosses. And that's sayin' something.

All you've got in D3 is "oh fuck, not that affix again".

It would be nice if it was more about knowing how to handle your class and a certain situation rather than purely which gear you have. (though obviously gear should remain very important)

The supposed randomization of the areas is also a big let down. At least you'd see a lil' variation while farming. Now it's all the same, with certain spots on a map that spawns an event & that's pretty much it.

 

[Crni Vuk]

completely agree with that. Hence why I said I really don't like D3s map design that much. In the past this was stupid because for farming you wanted to kill a low number of enemies. So randomized exit/entry was stupid. But now with the nephalem buff it actually is worth it to go trough the mobs particularly since they drop better stuff then most bosses. Randomized maps would be good here.

 

[Makagulfazel]

Fighting elite/champion packs is so much funner than running the same boss fight over. and over. and over. But my friends and I don't play much more because grinding in general becomes lame. PvP will be a nice addition once they get their shit together.

 

[Korin]

Then I am curious how the people got their hands on the stuff they sold on the auction house if it was a zero chance?

If you were a wizard you could cheese your way past act 1 like I did. Not to mention all the exploits, glitches and overpowered skills people could use early on (like the old force armor). There were resplendent chests that had 0 enemies between them and you that could be farmed for rares. Most of the high DPS blues that flooded the AH were probably from Izual kills before they nerfed his loot table (since you could basically just keep restarting the game and killing him every 3 minutes).

the effect of magic find is not as huge as people believe. Even if you had 500 % or more MF in D2 the "help" you got from it was even less then 1%.

Magic find had a diminishing return, that's why it wasn't useful to stack it past a certain point.

And in D3 the MF seems to be even of lower importance. It seems more important that you get a char that is fast enough in dealing with the mobs for the neph-buff. If you have around 30 or 40% MF that is more then enough. Again. It almost makes 0% difference. Though regardless how many calculations you show to some people, they still believe they get the super phat loot only because of the MF ... though it really is not worth it in D3 to sacrifice DPS or other skills for MF. That is what you have the Nephalem buff for - which is different to the "usual" MF from equipment.

I gear swap to about 340% magic find (with follower and 5 neph stacks) before elite and boss kills, and yes, it does greatly increase your chances of getting better loot. The purpose of magic find is to increase the chance that your items will be of a higher quality. So instead of a white, you are more likely to get a blue. Instead of a blue, you are more likely to get a rare. Magic find doesn't affect the item level or the actual roll of the item. It only affects the 'quality'. However it is still important enough to use. It is the difference between killing an elite pack and getting 0-1 rares and getting 2-4 consistently. The next time you see an item level 63 blue weapon on the ground just think what it might have been had your magic find rolled it up to a rare quality.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

It would be nice if it was more about knowing how to handle your class and a certain situation rather than purely which gear you have. (though obviously gear should remain very important)

Part of the problem is that they didn't want classes to have "roles" beyond melee and ranged so the classes are a bit lacking in focus. I'm not saying that all of the classes play the same, just that there could be a lot more interesting gameplay than there is, especially in group play.

I never liked the concept of magic find. So you tell me that, in order to avoid ridiculously low drop rates, I should farm to find equipment that will allow me to farm better equiment? Why not just make the drop rates decent in the first place, or am I missing something here?

Agreed. There are a few item modifiers which are just plain boring: Magic Find, Gold Find, Gold & Health Pickup Radius being the worst offenders. At least there isn't any Light Radius modifier anymore...

EDIT: Conspiracy theorists were right, it appears that Diablo 3 is likely coming to consoles.
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/posting.html?id=11000CQ

 

[clercqer]

THE HUMANITY!

 

[Buxbaum666]

I hate these enemies that spawn these... what are they called? Spinning electricity bolts? Whatever. I take it that's a good piece of armor there?