I've been enjoying D3 since June now, and wanted to share my thoughts. I played the crap out of D1 and D2, and definitely enjoy 3 in the Diablo spirit. Got rid of some annoyances, added some, and right now feels like something isn't quite right.
The biggest problem is that there is no commitment or weight to anything. Choices don't matter. You don't los anything but a little gold for repairs, when you die, you can change skills at any time, the only thing that matters is gear...and Plvls, I guess.
I just wish there was more to this game. A reason to roll an alt, some choice to make beyond AH or vendor. Min / max items is only so exciting,, especially when there are only a few stats that really even matter.
I don't think I've ever found a drop that excited me and made me reconsider my playstyle, or have to make a subjective decision on what is really better for me.
The idea of having a 'stat' stat and vitality isn't that far from the truth. All the stats do the way they are now is make a significant portion of drops vendor trash or at best ah.
There are other avenues to maintain a long term player base. Additional gold sinks, additional content, additional classes. Decreasing the viability of popular builds is destructive and not at all a long term solution.
Can you think of a viable way to increase the speed of, say, a witch doctor to the speed of a WW/Sprint Barb? I'm not sure how to do it without seriously messing with balance or creating weird new problems.
Yep. Spirit walk is 50% bonus move speed and there's passives which let you reduce cooldowns from your abilities by killing enemies. You can't be perma speed, but you can probably make it pretty easy to get a burst of speed between each pack, while moving at +24% the rest of the time.
Sweet, now just find a way to kill monsters with the WD by running through them and spirit walking away, leaving them to die behind you and you're golden. :P
Exactly. I run at 24% and vault with tactical advantage between every pack, much faster than your proposed WD. My speed is absurd and my gear (4 piece legacy nat, 2 piece inna, double socket manticore) is close to top tier.
Alk farmed close to 3 times faster because he did not need to stop to kill things. He could kill them while running almost straight through a level. No other class can apply consistent, outstanding dps while moving super quickly with immunity to CC permanently.
Just curious, how much did you bid to win that? I def need to start auctioning instead of buying out...patience is not one of my virtues when it comes to Diablo, even though it's 100% necessary to be patient, haha.
I had a max bid of 23m and won it for something like 21.5m . I definitely think that you can save a bundle of money by gravitating toward bids rather than buyouts. When I'm selling I see this pattern a lot:
* Post for 1m min bid, 2m buyout
* Auction expires and nobody bites
* Post with a 1.5m buyout
* Bought out reasonably quickly
There's a couple things that discourage the average person from bidding on an item:
1) Have to tie up your money and wait until the auction is over
2) You don't know how high an auction will go, or if it will get bought out before it expires (since there's no AH history). It's easy to see an auction with a buyout price and an auction with no buyout and assume that the ending price on both will be about the same. In that case many buyers are just going to go with the buyout.
On the flip side it's quite easy for sellers to throw an item up with no buyout and assume they'll get a fair price for it (without going through the trouble of researching a good buyout price).
In this space of lots of bid-auctions but not very many bidders there's a lot of room for enterprising buyers to get deals. That's why I changed all my auctions to buyout only, and just relist for a lower buyout when they don't sell.
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I played a bit yesterday and got up to Diablo on hell. A little annoying that I didn't manage to beat him while I had five stacks of nephalem valor up.
Did they nerf Izual? I beat him on my first try on hell, but it took a lot of tries to do it on nightmare a while back.
I just accidentally looked at my US D3 profile. Apparently someone got a level 60 Witch Doctor on there while my account was hijacked a while ago. Tons of gold find, so I guess it was probably used for farming.
Add me to your friends list. I'll be on all weekend. Find me. I will give you a bunch of stuff that should be an upgrade for you.
You may want to change your mind about the AH, or follow Hex or someone around for a long while before you try inferno.
It's not that I refuse to, I just haven't really bothered to outside of a few items. I suppose I could get a 1000+ DPS weapon if I want to spend most of my gold on it.
Crap. I didn't catch that you were EU. Sorry bud =/
If you are reading this add me.
D3: HexDex#1281, PSN: DireOtter, Live: DireOtter
There are other avenues to maintain a long term player base. Additional gold sinks, additional content, additional classes. Decreasing the viability of popular builds is destructive and not at all a long term solution.
Can you think of a viable way to increase the speed of, say, a witch doctor to the speed of a WW/Sprint Barb? I'm not sure how to do it without seriously messing with balance or creating weird new problems.
Yep. Spirit walk is 50% bonus move speed and there's passives which let you reduce cooldowns from your abilities by killing enemies. You can't be perma speed, but you can probably make it pretty easy to get a burst of speed between each pack, while moving at +24% the rest of the time.
Sweet, now just find a way to kill monsters with the WD by running through them and spirit walking away, leaving them to die behind you and you're golden. :P
It's called grasp of the dead and wall of zombies. WD have an assload of powerful AOE dots.
If you can't continuously whirlwind then it's not a whirlwind barb. It's not even close to analogous to smokescreen.
Whirlwind is a spender. Sprint is a spender. You are obviously not intended to be able to continually whirlwind and sprint, else they wouldn't give them costs. Continually whirlwinding and sprinting is a problem. Using whirlwind and sprint is not a problem.
It may be that the devs consider continually whirlwinding and sprinting is a problem but it is most definitely not a problem
Actually the real problem is this:
Shortly after Diablo III launched, I remember watching Jay play his barbarian. He was having a blast, killing monsters left and right, but something was bothering him. (from the most recent dev journal)
No one likes his class getting nerf'ed, including the one who decide matters.
Just curious, how much did you bid to win that? I def need to start auctioning instead of buying out...patience is not one of my virtues when it comes to Diablo, even though it's 100% necessary to be patient, haha.
I had a max bid of 23m and won it for something like 21.5m . I definitely think that you can save a bundle of money by gravitating toward bids rather than buyouts. When I'm selling I see this pattern a lot:
* Post for 1m min bid, 2m buyout
* Auction expires and nobody bites
* Post with a 1.5m buyout
* Bought out reasonably quickly
There's a couple things that discourage the average person from bidding on an item:
1) Have to tie up your money and wait until the auction is over
2) You don't know how high an auction will go, or if it will get bought out before it expires (since there's no AH history). It's easy to see an auction with a buyout price and an auction with no buyout and assume that the ending price on both will be about the same. In that case many buyers are just going to go with the buyout.
On the flip side it's quite easy for sellers to throw an item up with no buyout and assume they'll get a fair price for it (without going through the trouble of researching a good buyout price).
In this space of lots of bid-auctions but not very many bidders there's a lot of room for enterprising buyers to get deals. That's why I changed all my auctions to buyout only, and just relist for a lower buyout when they don't sell.
I find its really worth it to periodically check the AH for items that are about to expire. You can get really good deals bidding like this.
It's called grasp of the dead and wall of zombies. WD have an assload of powerful AOE dots.
You're really reaching here. You can't just pull out two skills with long cooldowns (and relatively low damage) and compare them with a skill with no cooldown that you don't even need to stop and use. Though I'd happily eat my words if you can show me any WD that is farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer.
I'm not saying "nerf barbs now" but the classes are pretty clearly not on equal footing.
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It's called grasp of the dead and wall of zombies. WD have an assload of powerful AOE dots.
You're really reaching here. You can't just pull out two skills with long cooldowns (and relatively low damage) and compare them with a skill with no cooldown that you don't even need to stop and use. Though I'd happily eat my words if you can show me any WD that is farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer.
I'm not saying "nerf barbs now" but the classes are pretty clearly not on equal footing.
I have a 60 of every class. I can tell you that grasp of the dead does shitloads of damage if you're geared up and has a low cooldown. Not to mention the build I was talking about uses a passive that lowers cooldowns of spells by 1 sec for each enemy killed (boosted by pick up radius).
It's not as good as what barbs have, but it could work decently well.
Personally I can't stand the double WW build and hope it gets nerfed. More diversity in builds please.
It's called grasp of the dead and wall of zombies. WD have an assload of powerful AOE dots.
You're really reaching here. You can't just pull out two skills with long cooldowns (and relatively low damage) and compare them with a skill with no cooldown that you don't even need to stop and use. Though I'd happily eat my words if you can show me any WD that is farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer.
I'm not saying "nerf barbs now" but the classes are pretty clearly not on equal footing.
No WD is going to be farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer, because WD's as a class are four months behind everyone else.
At 42 I got a -18 level req 2 hander which I used until about 51...in the mid 40s I had 220+xp and a star ruby in my helm the rest of the playthrough...I didn't really pick up items or go to town for anything just constantly out fighting and questing.
I think I finished 60 right after rakanoth, which surprised me I made it that far into act 4. I did all the quests until then, pretty much solo'd the whole thing, and didn't spend more than like 50k on any items...the -req weapon was a donation my buddy just happened to find while I was at 41 or so.
It's called grasp of the dead and wall of zombies. WD have an assload of powerful AOE dots.
You're really reaching here. You can't just pull out two skills with long cooldowns (and relatively low damage) and compare them with a skill with no cooldown that you don't even need to stop and use. Though I'd happily eat my words if you can show me any WD that is farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer.
I'm not saying "nerf barbs now" but the classes are pretty clearly not on equal footing.
No WD is going to be farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer, because WD's as a class are four months behind everyone else.
The third highest PLevel is a WD though...
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
that is why you dedicate three plus skill slots to it and choose specific items that benefit that style of play
you are not thinking of this in diablo terms. self sustaining fury does not provide a massive advantage over other builds, it enables viable ones
infinite wotb on the other hand is a problem because it provides too much of an advantage for one specific build/class
Can you get infinite insanity wotb because infinite toc is just awesome as opposed to gamebreaking in my opinion.
Edit: Oh just realized with a 50plus crit build slaughter looks pretty deadly. In any case, toc is the only one you can make infinite based on my quick (a bit late) perusal of the runes and that's only 25as 20ms 10crit.
the CC immunity is what makes it broken. it trivializes a lot of affixes on rare packs, as well as giving barbs ridiculously fast runs from the ms and sprint together
blizzard (in d3) has nerfed builds/skills that trivialized content, ie original critical mass build, 3 second smoke screen, etc.
i can see permanent wotb as trivializing content just because of how fast you kill things, as well as how much leech you get without any cooldown. but it seems more like that specific wotb rune that needs to be looked at, perhaps giving it a cooldown to the bonus duration or a cap of some kind.
I take issue with the fact that they nerf this shit. They never nerfed porting summonecroes or hammerdins or any of the other ridiculous op shit in Diablo 2, and that's the way it should be. The challenge should be finding fun builds that may not look like they'd work on paper, and then making them work. If some build synergizes like crazy and can be exploited to breeze through the game then who gives a shit? The game is item finding, not trying to push againt a brick wall and take down raid encounters. If I wanted a game that's all about gear checks then I'd play an MMO. I want a game that's about absolutely blowing shit up with complete impunity, while trying to find that perfect item to let me blow shit up even harder, or to let me blow shit up in the same way on a different character.
CM and 3s ss didn't really take any gear or setup
I mean you needed some crit for CM, but that was it.
I am okay with crazy nd powerful builds that trivialize content as a result of your gear and its synergies with your build
not just a build or skill on its own destroying all the unnerfed inferno content without taking damage
CM builds can't farm efficiently without critical hit, critical damage, AP on crit and a decent base weapon. Yes, you can trivialize content and get the Inferno clear achievement. Whoop.
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darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
CM builds can't farm efficiently without critical hit, critical damage, AP on crit and a decent base weapon. Yes, you can trivialize content and get the Inferno clear achievement. Whoop.
let me know when you can do that while running through monsters without having to stop to cast spells
I have a 60 of every class. I can tell you that grasp of the dead does shitloads of damage if you're geared up and has a low cooldown. Not to mention the build I was talking about uses a passive that lowers cooldowns of spells by 1 sec for each enemy killed (boosted by pick up radius).
It's not as good as what barbs have, but it could work decently well.
You made me curious so I checked the skills of the top Paragon WDs. One person in the top 10 used Grasp of the Dead, but for a suicide dog build. Nobody is using Wall of Zombies. Zombies Bears seems to be by far the most popular damage spell. Horrify - Stalker is quite popular as well, I am guessing for the few seconds of move speed buff after it's used. I'm going to try using Jaunt for my SW rune and replacing dogs with Horrify and see how things go.
Anyway I have no doubt that WDs have tools to help close the gap between them and the double tornado build, but my point all along has been that they're not going to get there.
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
CM builds can't farm efficiently without critical hit, critical damage, AP on crit and a decent base weapon. Yes, you can trivialize content and get the Inferno clear achievement. Whoop.
old CM
I literally spent 100k then and could do inferno. this was when inferno was unnerfed and the average gear level was shit.
CM builds can't farm efficiently without critical hit, critical damage, AP on crit and a decent base weapon. Yes, you can trivialize content and get the Inferno clear achievement. Whoop.
let me know when you can do that while running through monsters without having to stop to cast spells
CM can trivialize content because of permastun. WW doesn't have that luxury. Seriously, I urge you to try and achieve infinite WotB. The build is not invincible without several hundreds of millions of gold. Not even close.
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
Personally I can't stand the double WW build and hope it gets nerfed. More diversity in builds please.
No. Reducing the number of builds is not how one brings about build diversity.
Bringing it in line with other builds is not eliminating it as an option. It's too good right now IMO.
If anything there isn't enough "too good" in the game as a whole, so no. Buff other skills/builds (well, what few actual other builds there are) so they become similarly effective, rather than defanging a build that actually lets people feel powerful for a change.
CM builds can't farm efficiently without critical hit, critical damage, AP on crit and a decent base weapon. Yes, you can trivialize content and get the Inferno clear achievement. Whoop.
old CM
I literally spent 100k then and could do inferno. this was when inferno was unnerfed and the average gear level was shit.
Was it A2? Because starting at A2, I got pretty much destroyed by everything.
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
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The biggest problem is that there is no commitment or weight to anything. Choices don't matter. You don't los anything but a little gold for repairs, when you die, you can change skills at any time, the only thing that matters is gear...and Plvls, I guess.
I just wish there was more to this game. A reason to roll an alt, some choice to make beyond AH or vendor. Min / max items is only so exciting,, especially when there are only a few stats that really even matter.
I don't think I've ever found a drop that excited me and made me reconsider my playstyle, or have to make a subjective decision on what is really better for me.
The idea of having a 'stat' stat and vitality isn't that far from the truth. All the stats do the way they are now is make a significant portion of drops vendor trash or at best ah.
Exactly. I run at 24% and vault with tactical advantage between every pack, much faster than your proposed WD. My speed is absurd and my gear (4 piece legacy nat, 2 piece inna, double socket manticore) is close to top tier.
Alk farmed close to 3 times faster because he did not need to stop to kill things. He could kill them while running almost straight through a level. No other class can apply consistent, outstanding dps while moving super quickly with immunity to CC permanently.
Want to try again?
I had a max bid of 23m and won it for something like 21.5m . I definitely think that you can save a bundle of money by gravitating toward bids rather than buyouts. When I'm selling I see this pattern a lot:
* Post for 1m min bid, 2m buyout
* Auction expires and nobody bites
* Post with a 1.5m buyout
* Bought out reasonably quickly
There's a couple things that discourage the average person from bidding on an item:
1) Have to tie up your money and wait until the auction is over
2) You don't know how high an auction will go, or if it will get bought out before it expires (since there's no AH history). It's easy to see an auction with a buyout price and an auction with no buyout and assume that the ending price on both will be about the same. In that case many buyers are just going to go with the buyout.
On the flip side it's quite easy for sellers to throw an item up with no buyout and assume they'll get a fair price for it (without going through the trouble of researching a good buyout price).
In this space of lots of bid-auctions but not very many bidders there's a lot of room for enterprising buyers to get deals. That's why I changed all my auctions to buyout only, and just relist for a lower buyout when they don't sell.
Crap. I didn't catch that you were EU. Sorry bud =/
D3: HexDex#1281, PSN: DireOtter, Live: DireOtter
It's called grasp of the dead and wall of zombies. WD have an assload of powerful AOE dots.
Actually the real problem is this:
No one likes his class getting nerf'ed, including the one who decide matters.
/end cynical post
I find its really worth it to periodically check the AH for items that are about to expire. You can get really good deals bidding like this.
You're really reaching here. You can't just pull out two skills with long cooldowns (and relatively low damage) and compare them with a skill with no cooldown that you don't even need to stop and use. Though I'd happily eat my words if you can show me any WD that is farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer.
I'm not saying "nerf barbs now" but the classes are pretty clearly not on equal footing.
I have a 60 of every class. I can tell you that grasp of the dead does shitloads of damage if you're geared up and has a low cooldown. Not to mention the build I was talking about uses a passive that lowers cooldowns of spells by 1 sec for each enemy killed (boosted by pick up radius).
It's not as good as what barbs have, but it could work decently well.
Personally I can't stand the double WW build and hope it gets nerfed. More diversity in builds please.
No. Reducing the number of builds is not how one brings about build diversity.
Now to never play her again.
No WD is going to be farming 80% as fast as Alkaizer, because WD's as a class are four months behind everyone else.
At 42 I got a -18 level req 2 hander which I used until about 51...in the mid 40s I had 220+xp and a star ruby in my helm the rest of the playthrough...I didn't really pick up items or go to town for anything just constantly out fighting and questing.
I think I finished 60 right after rakanoth, which surprised me I made it that far into act 4. I did all the quests until then, pretty much solo'd the whole thing, and didn't spend more than like 50k on any items...the -req weapon was a donation my buddy just happened to find while I was at 41 or so.
the CC immunity is what makes it broken. it trivializes a lot of affixes on rare packs, as well as giving barbs ridiculously fast runs from the ms and sprint together
No, this one is actually blue. Like exactly the same as magic items.
CM and 3s ss didn't really take any gear or setup
I mean you needed some crit for CM, but that was it.
I am okay with crazy nd powerful builds that trivialize content as a result of your gear and its synergies with your build
not just a build or skill on its own destroying all the unnerfed inferno content without taking damage
Bringing it in line with other builds is not eliminating it as an option. It's too good right now IMO.
If you want a challenge then play hardcore or Dead Souls.
let me know when you can do that while running through monsters without having to stop to cast spells
Paragon level 85 is about 65% of the EXP needed to get to 100. And I don't know if the WD is account sharing or not.
You made me curious so I checked the skills of the top Paragon WDs. One person in the top 10 used Grasp of the Dead, but for a suicide dog build. Nobody is using Wall of Zombies. Zombies Bears seems to be by far the most popular damage spell. Horrify - Stalker is quite popular as well, I am guessing for the few seconds of move speed buff after it's used. I'm going to try using Jaunt for my SW rune and replacing dogs with Horrify and see how things go.
Anyway I have no doubt that WDs have tools to help close the gap between them and the double tornado build, but my point all along has been that they're not going to get there.
I literally spent 100k then and could do inferno. this was when inferno was unnerfed and the average gear level was shit.
CM can trivialize content because of permastun. WW doesn't have that luxury. Seriously, I urge you to try and achieve infinite WotB. The build is not invincible without several hundreds of millions of gold. Not even close.
If anything there isn't enough "too good" in the game as a whole, so no. Buff other skills/builds (well, what few actual other builds there are) so they become similarly effective, rather than defanging a build that actually lets people feel powerful for a change.
Was it A2? Because starting at A2, I got pretty much destroyed by everything.
your build doesn't feel powerful?
no