(05-27-2012, 12:42 PM)MongoJerry Wrote: Exactly. I wish I could find those pre-release developer diaries, but I recall one very clearly where they said that they were developing items and sets that would drop specifically act-by-act in Inferno. It was expected that people would farm Act I for a while, then progress to Act II to farm for a while, then to Act III, etc.
Something else Jay said seemed to contradict that, that Act 4 Hell was expected to be a longer-term farm spot. You could find great inferno-worthy items in A4 hell, they'd just be much rarer. So that means you could always fall back to hell if you wanted some "casual" farm runs.
When people are saying "the gear you need to beat X doesn't spawn before X", I'm not sure if this is completely true. It may well just be much rarer, it is supposed to take a month to find when the game has been out hardly two weeks. If you push ahead you'll surely see more drops, and maybe farming in such rough spots is more efficient, but that doesn't mean it's the only place you can gear up. We don't have any data to confirm drop chances with, just the anectodes of people that haven't been playing the game long enough.