LL D3 Tourney

[MonTy]

The second week for my Barb was a stark contrast from her starting week. Largely due to being locked into her skills without sprint or leap, so it felt like I was going at a snails pace. Combine that with larger zones to clear (and double-backing), pretty bad latency, mediocre gear (was on my old weapon from lvl 21 until 29)- I'm not surprised she was only able to reach lvl 30.

But I do have so say her skills are fun and work together quite well. I LOVE weapon throw, especially since I really don't use that much rage and always have ample amounts for when I need to pelt runners or those exploding lanatics. Cleave, Earthquake, and Ignore Pain work as expected, all are awesome for AoE, Bosses, and Champion Packs. Rend is definitely the least used skill as cleave normally does the job. I'll use Red against melee mobs where I have to hit and run, such as the Khazra or the Demonic Tremors.

But all in all things are going great, having a lot of fun with her. Had to drop some +exp gear for vitality as soon as I entered zones where the fallen lanatics were eagerly awaiting to ruin the party. Look forward in seeing how my DH fares in week 2.

[Kevin]

• No Twinking, Auction House, Blacksmith, or Vendors for gear. If you reach Inferno you're allowed to buy gear from any of the Vendors (woohoo). If you reach a special vendor in the dungeon maps you're allowed to purchase only the rare from him.
  

I'm assuming this includes not being able to repair items either?

[MonTy]

I'm assuming this includes not being able to repair items either?

You're allowed to repair

[TheDragoon]

I finished up week 2 on my wizard at level 28 having just finished Ghom. Things were fairly slow going for much of the play period as I didn't find a weapon upgrade for most of the play period. I also got locked into my skills (though not necessarily the runes) so that slowed things down a bit since they are a bit light on DPS. On the plus side, they're pretty heavy on CC and survival so I didn't really have any major "Oh crap" moments. It was pretty smooth (if slow) going.

[Crushar]

Well RIP to my 13 barb died to a bunch of goatmen powered up by a drum.

[MonTy]

Well RIP to my 13 barb died to a bunch of goatmen powered up by a drum.

RIP indeed. I also underestimated those enraged goatmen "surely they can't almost kill m----oh yes they can". But also be sure to add me under monty#1150.

BTW I'll usually update characters in the root post every other night.

[ErickTheRed]

After 5 hours of play my barbarian is at lvl 14 about to enter the halls of agony. There was one close call with a vortex spider champ right at the start of the spider place.

For now I have reasonable single target and aoe abilities, a heal and a movement power. I'll have to swap out the heal and movement eventually. I liked mobility on my softcore barb so never really have used Ignore Pain. Hopefully I get to practice with that a bit before I die.

[Kylearan]

I didn't have much time to play because of business trips and other RL issues, but finally I'd like to report on my progress - better late than never, I guess. General background: Compared to most (all?) of you, I'm a total D3 noob. I've only beaten Normal once with a Barbarian, and have a hardcore Witch Doctor just before Normal Diablo - and that's it. So while I have played D1 and D2 excessively, a lot of D3 still feels very new to me.

Because of that, I don't expect to win this tournament and decided to play my Wizard first without looking at the skills of the other two characters, simply because I haven't played a Wizard yet. For reference, here is his skill set; what follows are my thoughts about the skills.

• Magic Missile/Split: Sounds a bit like Poison Dart/Splinters, not much to say here. (Of course it turned out I was wrong...)
  
  
• Disintegrate/Chaos Nexus: Looks like a standard beam skill, probably good against single targets. Chaos Nexus doesn't sound so good however, as I don't intend to be near enemies...but on the other hand, I seem to lack an escape skill, so this might become unavoidable.
  
  
• Diamon Skin/Prism: I've read a lot of Wizards use this, and it reads like it'll be a great protection skill. Good! I have no idea how useful Prism will be.
  
  
• Energy Twister/Storm Chaser: I've read no Wizards use this :p, so I've probably entered massive variant land here. From the description I suspect aiming/reliability will be hard. Storm Chaser sounds like a free extra Twister with less damage but bigger area. It's unlocked at level 52 however, which I doubt I'll reach.
  
  
• Ice Armor/Chilling Aura: A protective skill against melee. It only triggers when being attacked, which in principle I'd like to avoid, but since it's cheap and lasts a long time, I won't complain. Chilling Aura actually sounds useful for avoiding being hit in the first place.
  
  
• Archon/Slow Time: From what I've heard, Archon is very powerful so I'm looking forward to this. Reaching level 30 sounds doable, level 52 for Slow Time however...not so much.
  

All in all, I think what this build really lacks is a crowd control skill and a way to escape from emergancies. In addition, I suspect that I lack a good area of effect spell as well, although Energy Twister might work. All this means I'll probably have to kite a lot in Normal already, and I doubt I'll get far in Nightmare. But I'll have fun on the way, of that I'm sure!

For most players, Normal probably isn't exciting anymore. Still, I plan to report on my progress in a little bit more detail anyway - less about strategy or individual fights, but more about random thoughts I had during my sessions. I guess the main reason is so that when my Wizard dies, I won't forget about his adventures so easily, and that the journey will mean more to me. I hope you won't get annoyed by me cluttering up this thread. Feel free to skip my reports.


So welcome Simpleton, my Wizard with limited abilities. The beginning was easy enough, of course. I used Magic Missile most of the time and Ray of Frost against bigger monsters. In the cathedral, I found this:



Nice! This went into my stash for later use for one of my other hardcore characters.

Also, whenever I saw a bookcase in the cathedral, I got kind of sad.



Especially now with my Wizard, every bookcase reminded me of the spell books in Diablo 1, which I miss terribly. I loved that extra dimension of randomization the spell books provided! I know I know, D3 is a different game, but still - the bookcases make me nostalgic.

The tournament rules require us to make a full clear, which suits my playstyle very well. I also tried to pop most barrels, urns etc, but didn't go overboard in that regard. What I planned to do though was to read more journals. My Witch Doctor had accidently found out that Leah adds more entries to her diary while the game progressed, so in true celebrity stalker fashion I routinely returned to her room to take a look.



But damn, I somehow missed entry number two! Annoying. Anyway, I got to entry number eight during the first five hours, which also provided me some modest XP.

When I entered the Fields of Misery, at first I thought the game was broken. I cautiously advanced into the area along the border, trying not to wake up too many monsters at once...only I didn't see any, at all! I walked, and walked, and...no monsters.



It took some more time before I finally had my first encounter, but this was really odd.

Another thing about the Fields of Misery I don't understand:



Has anyone actually ever been hit by one of these traps? Neither your follower nor monsters trigger them, only you. And the hit area is so small that I have no idea how you can get damaged by this, even if you don't pay attention...

Act I contains one of my absolute highlights of this game:



The battle with the spider queen! I love that part. Not because of the difficulty, the AI or any special tactics (you don't need), but because of the music. Only in this encounter the music changes to a fast-paced, low-level drum tune which in me induces a feeling of absolute threat and urgency. It creates a perfect atmosphere for such a mini-boss encounter inside a closed arena, and I really wonder why no other boss fight has a similar piece of music. In fact, I cannot really say what music other boss fights have - it must be something unobtrusive. But the spider queen fight absolutely stands out to an acoustically-oriented person like me. Love it!

The game drastically changed for me when I hit level 13. That was the time I got locked both into the Split rune for Magic Missile and into Energy Twister, which meant my DPS went down the drain. More about Energy Twister in my next report, but first let's talk about Split. I found out it's not like Splinters at all, where you rapidly fire three darts in the same direction, but one missile gets split into three and fired into different directions.



What happens is that when I fight a single, small monster, often only the middle missile would hit while the two outer missiles miss the target. That means my damage in this case went down from 110% (normal Magic Missile) to 50% (only one missile hits). WTF?!? Argh, that really hurts. Even against mobs where all three missiles hit, they often hit different enemies. I'd rather concentrate my fire against one monster at a time to take it out quickly. I feel this is essential without a crowd control skill - so with Split I made the first step into Variant Land, and it took some time for me to adapt. At least against big monsters, Split does more damage than a vanilla Magic Missile...

My first five hours ended exactly at the gates to Leoric's Manor, at level 14.



By the time of this writing, I'm almost at the Butcher. I hope to find enough time to get to ten hours until tomorrow, but we'll see. I'm also looking forward to reports on how you others are doing!

(Argh, we're only allowed 10 images per post? Damn. Have to remove some smileys...)

[Quark]

I've been a bit behind this week, and will be for the weekend as well. Should be able to catchup next week.

[Chesspiece_face]

What happens is that when I fight a single, small monster, often only the middle missile would hit while the two outer missiles miss the target. That means my damage in this case went down from 110% (normal Magic Missile) to 50% (only one missile hits). WTF?!? Argh, that really hurts. Even against mobs where all three missiles hit, they often hit different enemies. I'd rather concentrate my fire against one monster at a time to take it out quickly. I feel this is essential without a crowd control skill - so with Split I made the first step into Variant Land, and it took some time for me to adapt. At least against big monsters, Split does more damage than a vanilla Magic Missile...

One thing of note with MM/Split: You can control the cone of the split to some degree by altering the distance of your cursor. The closer your cursor to your character the wider the split, the further away your cursor the narrower the split. This is really useful when trying to target down single mobs. Just fire it off with your cursor as far away as possible and you can often hit single targets with all of the missles.

[MonTy]

Compared to most (all?) of you, I'm a total D3 noob.

Woohoo, time to make fun of anything you say not being up to 1337 standards!

Because of that, I don't expect to win this tournament

You never know- gear is going to be a major factor since it can only be from items you find.

As far as your Wizard's skillset, your saving grace is disintegrate+archon+diamond skin. Will be especially good against boss encounters. Although I have to admit I'm laughing at energy twister being your AoE skill. Good luck with that one ;)

All in all, I think what this build really lacks is a crowd control skill and a way to escape from emergancies.

I agree, and it's a good thing we're allowed to pick passive skills. I'd go with defensive ones and since Magic Missle + Twister both do arcane damage, when (I have faith!) you make it to temporal flux that should help with fast mobs.

I plan to report on my progress in a little bit more detail anyway

If you find the time, please do so! I greatly enjoyed reading the write-up.

[Chesspiece_face]

Finished up week two with about 10 minutes to spare. Hit lvl 30 and locked in all of my primary skills. Ended up slightly before Cydaea

So far so good. Rain of Vengeance is much stronger than I expected it to be and turned out to be a great skill versus Phase Beasts of all manner. The only skill I have that is underwhelming is Companion/Spider, and frankly that skill blows to the point of being broken. When the spider actually attacks something the slow it adds is completely wonderful. Unfortunately the aggro range on the bastard must be something like 2 yards because all it does is sit there watching my templar and I fight. Not only that but it very often just decides to stop following us and stays in the prior room, down a flight of stairs, or at the last doorway waiting to make sure things are clear. The most frequent sight I see after I clear a huge room is that little shit come running up like "Hey guys! What's going on here?"

[MongoJerry]

As far as your Wizard's skillset, your saving grace is disintegrate+archon+diamond skin. Will be especially good against boss encounters. Although I have to admit I'm laughing at energy twister being your AoE skill. Good luck with that one

Nah, Disintegrate will be his primary AOE skill, but I can see him tossing out a couple of Energy Twisters when the mobs are bunched up and then switching back to Disintegrate.

But, yeah, the lack of crowd control and/or escape skills is really going to hurt. Have fun with Archon, though. It can get addictive. Pop it when you see a huge screenful of white mobs to rack up the timer and then run from mob pack to mob pack racing the timer.

[Kevin]

I've lost track and don't feel like doing the math are we up to capped at 15 hours or 20 hours right now? My monk is at L28, 10 hours 28 minutes played, just killed Ghom, which was interesting thanks to the poison actually hurting now, it wasn't hard, just interesting. He dropped double socket yellow chest, double socket legs, and an emerald, not just a chipped or flawed but a full on emerald. I also found a decent socketed cap to put a flawed ruby in to help with exp. I've gotten enough flawed amethyst to socket both weapons, and I've been able to socket the chest and legs with flawed amethyst and emeralds.

I had a couple of interesting encounters. One of them was finding myself surround by exploding fallen. I'm not actually sure how it happened, but I had 5 or 6 of them and they were all around me. I was actually glad to have cyclone strike as one of my skills as I was able to nicely group them then drop a bell on their heads (wave of light) and not feel so nervous anymore.

I've also stuck with the templar over the enchantress. Much of that is being able to deadly reach stuff that he is tanking. There was a fight where I had some molten skeleton archers, which are quite annoying as they run away a lot and the trails they leave need to be avoided. I was very proud of Kormac holding a horde of things off in another doorway, in part thanks to a a demonic tremor being in it too, while I was able to do my best to maneuver around the other small room and hallway and mop up the archers.

But I'm pretty sure I've got a fair bit more time on him, I've had some busy weeks here, and I've wanted to play my bigger monk (who died at L53 to me getting startled by the door bell while I was dealing with arcane molten waller archers in Hell Act I). So now sadly my tourney monk is now my highest level toon (since I don't really play SC yet, but I'm going to because I really do want to get to inferno which I still haven't made it to and it's clear with my 4 dead L44 - 53 toons that I'm not good enough to get there in HC ...)

[Chesspiece_face]

We are capped at 15 hours this week.

I've finished off week 3 with 50 minutes to spare. Made my way through Normal and into Nightmare up to killing Araneae. I could push forward further with that extra 50 minutes but I think the next 'safe' checkpoint is after clearing Leoric's Manor and don't think it's a good idea to stop at a checkpoint which could be trapped next time I log in. Seriously doubt I could full clear all the way through the Leoric checkpoint in 50 minutes.

So far the only fright was the Diablo phase 2 transition. It was extremely difficult to avoid damage at the start of phase 2 and took awhile to stabilize with the lack of Health Shrines and minimal Orbs. Once stabilized though Diablo dropped as easy as anything else.

Should be smooth sailing for a few weeks I think. Things are starting to slow down and I foresee myself taking every ounce of time needed to break everything for the chance at good upgrades now. No point in rushing these next couple weeks.

For everyone else that will be pushing the end of Normal soon: Good Luck! Hope to see you on the other side.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

people are in Nightmare already, huh? Well, here's a report from a slower one.

First off, regarding my Magic Missile/Split problem:

You can control the cone of the split to some degree by altering the distance of your cursor. The closer your cursor to your character the wider the split, the further away your cursor the narrower the split.

I'm not sure this helps. What I tried is this: I positioned the cursor at the edge of the screen and, while standing still, fired off a series of magic missiles. What happened was that the split between the missiles varied considerably in distance. There's some randomization at work here, and I think it's independant of the distance of the cursor. (I took a series of screenshots, but unfortunately only one was actually taken.) This makes the rune even weaker in my opinion, as the random factor makes it less plannable/reliable.

Speaking of unreliable spells, let's talk a bit about Energy Twister! During my first session, I really hadn't liked the spell. The movement path of the twisters is so erratic that I found myself unable to target it properly. Especially in open territory, the twisters would often move away from the mobs, hitting nothing. And if they hit something, the damage was...underwhelming. The only time the spell was remotely useful was in narrow spaces, like in the cells in the Cursed Hold:



But honestly, with the narrow door and my templar blocking off the monsters, I could have easily killed them off with Magic Missile anyway. So at first it seemed like a completely useless spell. Untargetable, and weak damage? Ugh, that's just horrible!

But as it turned out, part of the problem was that I could only spam 3-4 twisters. Now, with more arcane power and the Mistral Breeze rune, I can spam 10-15 twisters. My attack routine now is to spam Energy Twisters, pop Diamond Skin once the first monster of a mob gets into melee range, then spam more Twisters. If Diamond Skin ends and there are still survivors, I cast Wave of Force to finish them off (or to enable me to retreat). This works surprisingly well, and has reconciled me somewhat with Energy Twister.

I still have to do a lot of kiting though. And that's me still being in Act II Normal... that doesn't bode well for later. I need 3-4 casts of Magic Missile to kill an Act II wasp and several more for Snakes or other tough brutes, which also seems to imply I didn't have the best of luck with item drops. Especially the snakes give me headaches:



I dread the fight with Belial, where I won't have that much maneuvering room - the fight with the snakes in the narrow spaces of the command post almost killed me because of that.

Champions and rares provide for interesting fights as well, of course. One event led me into the Lair of the Lacuni, which I hadn't seen before. I was surprised by the amount of Lacuni unburrowing around me, ran, and got trapped on a small bridge with tough monsters on both sides (bad play on my part here!). I almost died; here's a shot from when at least the white Lacunis where dead and I finally had more room for running.



Several more close calls involved Waller and Jailer wasps.



It's not fun if you get walled in on three sides, have no escape skill and their wasp missiles are closing in from the only open side...

Another fun fight was against two champion packs and two white mobs in the Dalghur Oasis.



One of the packs spawned when I freed Mikal, a captive villager, and kiting it woke up the other pack and the white mobs. But with that much maneuvering room, it only took time and I never got into real danger. To thank me, Mikal gave me an item...a white Morning Star. Uh, yay.

What I like best about Diablo 3 so far are the events. I guess most of you who have played a lot more than I have don't find them so interesting anymore, but I still love how much effort Blizzard has put into them.

I met Hadi in the deserts, who got sucked underground by a Monstrous Dune Thresher that I had to fight afterwards.



Later I found his mine - not sure if this was pure chance, or if these two events are linked.



But the best and most sophisticated event I had was in the Dalghur Oasis, where I had to turn two wheels (and fight two special mobs) just to open a tomb, and in there had to find a lever to open a treasure chamber. I like objectives that say "Find the treasure of Khan Dakab" - sure, will do!



At level 21, I had to switch out Ray of Frost for Disintegrate. The upside of Disintegrate is that I can now target dangerous monsters that hide behind other monsters. The big downside however is the damage: 155% for Disintegrate versus 215% for Ray of Frost (280% after 1,5 seconds with Snow Blast). I feel like I don't have anything with good DPS against tough monsters anymore, and I'm not sure how I should deal with Belial, or any other boss monster for that matter. We'll see.

At 9:43 play time, I'm level 21 and in the process of reviving Kulle. I hope I'll find some more DPS gear, or otherwise I foresee some problems with Belial.

As a silly closing remark, doesn't this look like an opening?



Must have been some invisible wall of force preventing Simpleton from going there...

-Kylearan

[wkd1]

Oh man people are already getting into Nightmare, eh? Well, I haven't been able to play since the first week of the tourny so I have some catching up to do. After a quick scan of this topic I did finally see that we are almost to the end of week three, with a cap of 15 hours.

As a quick reference, Monty, you should have which week we are on and its correpsonding time-cap in the root post. I do see you added a Leader- Chesspiece at level 36! Hax! Seriously though, nice job... hopefully I can catch up... My third character is a DH so maybe its time to tap into that class...

[wkd1]

Well, within moments of resuming my Witch Doctor... she fell to a pack of Teleporting beast chargers... *shakes fist* I wasn't expecting much out of her build but I thought I'd make it a bit further than that.

Oh well, moving on. Still got my Barb and DH.

[MongoJerry]

First off, regarding my Magic Missile/Split problem:

You can control the cone of the split to some degree by altering the distance of your cursor. The closer your cursor to your character the wider the split, the further away your cursor the narrower the split.

I'm not sure this helps. What I tried is this: I positioned the cursor at the edge of the screen and, while standing still, fired off a series of magic missiles. What happened was that the split between the missiles varied considerably in distance. There's some randomization at work here, and I think it's independant of the distance of the cursor. (I took a series of screenshots, but unfortunately only one was actually taken.) This makes the rune even weaker in my opinion, as the random factor makes it less plannable/reliable.

One of the key benefits of split is the extra Prodigy procs. Every piece of a magic missle split that hits something will proc the +4 AP, which will make it easier for you to spam your Disintegrate and/or Energy Twister.

By the way, I've found Nexus to be the best rune with Disintegrate. The range is pretty good. I don't have a good numerical feel of distance, but I'd guess it's around 15-20 yards -- definitely outside of melee range. You'll see that Disintegrate is an AOE spell of wtfpwn. But with the Nexus rune, it can also be useful against single targets, because you can hit the mob with both the main beam and the Nexus shots giving you an effective 195% weapon damage on the spell.

[MonTy]

Made my way through Normal and into Nightmare up to killing Araneae.

Oh wow, nice progression for week 3. Don't think I can match that with my barb since I lost my movement buff skills. But I'll certainly try!

As a quick reference, Monty, you should have which week we are on and its correpsonding time-cap in the root post.

Done, good idea. And sorry to hear about the WD. I felt my Wizard's life was also cut way too short.