Gearing and drop rates, AH use almost required to progress.
#1
Hey all,

Something I've been wondering about, it seems that normal is easy to complete in relative rubbish and any mix of skills.
Nightmare turns up the heat considerably, and i found that progression required not only a good selection of skills, but also a good source of items.
Items that seemed to not be coming my way, now it might just be bad luck, but i when to the AH and brought, at considerable cost, some set pieces and high dps and stat items, that made it easier to continue, without dying every elite pack along the way.
The thing is, i have never yet found these items myself, and have upgraded from the AH regularly now.
So i'm wondering, is this intentional? have Blizzard adjusted the odds of a character finding items they can use to make the AH a required part of the game? Reinforcing their "on line" only game plan.
Now, i have a few hundred mats in my bags that i could be making items with, but their normal mats, and i don't see them making anything worthwhile.
It seems to me a copy of WOW's crafting, where you had to be a certain level to get the mats to make the items, but by the time you did, you'd have found better elsewhere.
So, am i missing something? or it that the idea?

Mist
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#2
If you're patient you can probably get through hell with self found stuff, though there'll be long dry spells between levels where a new craft opens up.

You can't really progress through Inferno with self found gear though.

People complain about drop rates, but that's a red herring IMO. Drop rates are, if anything, better than D2 in terms of good stuff found per hour. The problem is that D2 was a) considerably more forgiving to undergeared characters, and b) gave you options to get guaranteed stats on items (runewords, crafts).

The itemization in D3 is simply not robust enough.
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#3
I have not purchased a single item from the AH. Early on, I sold a junk piece for 420g, mostly just to see how awful the AH setup is. My wizard is halfway through H4. I die a lot, and am somewhat embarrassed to say I often stair kill something like invulnerable vortex fire chains, but I have not skipped a single pack or side dungeon/quest. The only repeated areas have been chunks lost to afk/sleepytime inactivity disconnects. It is doable, but requires patience, at least through Hell. I don't know if I will work on Inferno but I will at least dip my toes in to see how tough it is.

You also need to consider using pieces that don't fit the idea you have for your toon's equipment. For example, my wizard is running around with a 2 hand sword bigger than he is because of the massive damage boost it gave him.

Also, for crafting, you may have to toss many tries to get something that is an upgrade. If you compare the item level to your level and what you are already using, you will never see anything worth crafting. Using up your stacks of mats to try and try again, it is likely you will find stats that look much better and actually benefit your toon. It does no good to hang on to stacks of mats because they will become useless (unless you hold them to twink another toon). Of course, you have to level your artisans along the way to have any hope of them being useful. Remember that you are leveling your crafters for the account, not just the current toon.

(07-04-2012, 12:42 AM)Athenau Wrote: b) gave you options to get guaranteed stats on items (runewords, crafts).

I wish they would not have removed the ability to add sockets to items. It would also be nice if they had gems to add resists, weapon speed and movement speed. So many pieces I look at and get a little warm fuzzy until I think "Oh, but I can't do without ??? on my equipped gear."
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#4
Quote:I wish they would not have removed the ability to add sockets to items. It would also be nice if they had gems to add resists, weapon speed and movement speed. So many pieces I look at and get a little warm fuzzy until I think "Oh, but I can't do without ??? on my equipped gear."
Yes being able to add a socket would be great. I'd also like to see recipes with gems as a component which give you a guaranteed stat on the result (ala blood/safety crafts in D2). For example on a weapon you could do something like ruby (+% damage), amethyst (life steal), emerald (+IAS), topaz (+magic find/gold find).
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#5
I think that the intended use of the AH was as a mechanism to make trading significantly easier than it was in D2.

In D2 you could reach plateaus in your gearing (especially at the end of nightmare difficulty) where you wanted to stay and farm where you were a while. Right before the Maggot Lair in hell diff, for example, you might want to make sure you have a fair bit of poison resist. You may actually end up framing the end of Act I a while if you wanted to do that.

With the AH there, people don't stop and farm. They just go to the AH, and there it is buy, done, bam. The convenience factor is so high that people don't even consider stopping and farming a few levels for some gear. The result is that you end up somewhere that you maybe don't belong for either your level, gear, skill or all three. I don't think there should be shame in repeating areas a few times to get some levels or gear or mats for crafting, but a lot of people think that the game should be played straight through. I'm 100% certain that the developer intention was not for you to finish Act IV hell and step straight into Inferno. How long they expected you to stop and farm in Hell is debatable, but I'm certain that they intended you to farm in Hell difficulty for some time before entering inferno.

The thing about gearing in Diablo games is that very little of it is tied to the level of the gear itself.
Similar to what Lochnar said, Mostly it's tied to the affix rolls, which is just a numbers game. Eventually you'll get a good roll, so you need to try a LOT of times in order to get that good roll of just the right stats.

The other thing is that Diablo III seems significantly easier with some defensive stat focus & builds that don't rely exclusively on kiting / avoiding as their defense. However, it seems that many players don't really like this approach. There seems a strong tendency for people to go full offense and then they end up dying a lot. Until inferno, it's easy to go to the AH, grab a big DPS upgrade and continue on destroying things with a full offensive build. Then the brick wall hits in inferno when this is no longer feasible (either for lack of any DPS upgrades, or for lack of gold because those upgrades are too expensive).

I think it's a player mindset vs. developer intent kind of thing. There was clearly a disconnect between the two at launch, and the blame for that can't fall on the players. You can't make the players do something they don't want to and feel happy about it. From the comments I've seen of their playtestting, it seems like they sided heavily on the casual one-time through players and not heavily enough on the players that would sustain the game long term.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#6
In D2 you could brute force your way through the game with pots and some patience, even with subpar gear. Farming for upgrades would make your life easier, but wasn't necessary for the most part. And getting an upgrade was much easier in D2 with the prevalence of cheap runewords.

The D3 endgame is totally different. Inferno is a hard gear check, and your equipment is all rares, which are total crapshoots (and the chance of rolling a really good rare is astronomical, just like in D2).
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#7
(07-04-2012, 02:19 AM)Athenau Wrote: In D2 you could brute force your way through the game with pots and some patience, even with subpar gear.

True, but cheesy.

Quote: Farming for upgrades would make your life easier, but wasn't necessary for the most part. And getting an upgrade was much easier in D2 with the prevalence of cheap runewords.

Runewords were not initially in D2, it was a later addition, and early runewords were okay, as the runes needed for most decent ones were equally rare to a well rolled rare item. The issue with runewords came when they were very powerful and the runes necessary became more plentiful. Then it was just getting to be a community gear handout. That coincided with synergies, as I recall, and the game was pretty lame at that point.

Quote:The D3 endgame is totally different. Inferno is a hard gear check, and your equipment is all rares, which are total crapshoots (and the chance of rolling a really good rare is astronomical, just like in D2).

The loot endgame is not all that different from D2 classic. Inferno is, but as I stated before, the way in which it was presented demonstrated a disconnect between the devs and the players. This was clearly the largest mistake made. Devs clearly intended Hell farming to be a considerable amount of time and many, many players pressed into inferno an hour to a day after completing A4 Hell. Something was seriously overlooked in the testing of how to introduce players to inferno. Some kind of keying like the ubers in D2 would perhaps have helped with that.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
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#8
For my Monk, I didn't use the AH, for purchasing, til I was almost done with Act III on Hell. Nothing was too much of a challenge that self drops, and friends on Hell as well, couldn't throw my way. For my DH, even with stuff passed down from my Monk/Friends, I used the AH a lot; he seemed to have way more trouble. With subsequent characters, I haven't really used it for purchases at all since anything I find, on my higher characters, do fine.
Eff
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#9
I ran into a pack that i couldn't get by last night.
3 Morlu spellcasters with Arcane, knock-back, teleporter.
They sucked, the were casting that big meteor spell, and if i got close they knocked me back into it, and the were 3 of them, all with 4 extra images doing the same thing.
Only time i've exited the game to get a new refresh of the level.
Some combinations are just killers, up until them i thought the Frozen / Molten packs were the worst.
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#10
(07-04-2012, 12:42 AM)Athenau Wrote: If you're patient you can probably get through hell with self found stuff, though there'll be long dry spells between levels where a new craft opens up.

You can't really progress through Inferno with self found gear though.

I finished hell difficulty with my witchdoctor using only self-found items, single-pass full-clear played entirely solo. It seemed more challenging than an equivalent run in Diablo 2 -- I died a lot more than even my most variant Diablo 2 characters. Also more fun -- more entertaining elite/champion fights (I like the increased variety of elite abilities in D3 over D2), and less time spent clearing areas where nothing posed a challenge.

And then I stepped into inferno, and yes, it is clearly an entirely different game. Fortunately I don't feel I need to play inferno in order to enjoy the normal-nightmare-hell game (which some people seem to have a problem with).
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#11
Let me ask, Jaffa - do you think now that you've trained yourself on knowing boss attacks and all that, do you think that you could manage single pass full clear in HC? I understand that's an optional challenge mode, but Blizzard has claimed they do consider HC for balancing. Or even full clear with some minor farming if you had some bad drop luck? Not that I'm going to be playing HC with online only play unless I get a much more reliable ISP, but I feel OPFC HC play ought to be possible for skilled players.
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#12
(07-05-2012, 04:50 PM)ViralSpiral Wrote: Let me ask, Jaffa - do you think now that you've trained yourself on knowing boss attacks and all that, do you think that you could manage single pass full clear in HC? I understand that's an optional challenge mode, but Blizzard has claimed they do consider HC for balancing. Or even full clear with some minor farming if you had some bad drop luck? Not that I'm going to be playing HC with online only play unless I get a much more reliable ISP, but I feel OPFC HC play ought to be possible for skilled players.

Hardcore doesn't suit my play-style. I got one hardcore character into hell difficulty in Diablo 2, but never managed a guardian. I'm too impatient, and I preferred going for increasingly sub-optimal softcore builds instead. I'm not sure how that's going to work for Diablo 3, which doesn't really have character builds, but one character of each class will certainly keep me occupied for a while.

I would have died less if I'd picked a more defensive build (I was stubborn about sticking with my zombie dogs Smile ). I think a skilled (and lucky) hardcore player could manage a one-pass full-clear through the end of hell, but it would be difficult. But the difficulty is very spiky, you could make it a lot easier with a bit of farming and being willing to park the most insane elite/champion packs.
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#13
Regarding gearing up through hell, do keep in mind your blacksmith. I run into a lot of people who have gotten the impression that the blacksmith doesn't matter until you're in Inferno. However, if you're doing a OPFC, being able to turn a lot of those random blues and blacksmith pages and tomes into rare gear along the way is very helpful.

Quote:The loot endgame is not all that different from D2 classic. Inferno is, but as I stated before, the way in which it was presented demonstrated a disconnect between the devs and the players. This was clearly the largest mistake made. Devs clearly intended Hell farming to be a considerable amount of time and many, many players pressed into inferno an hour to a day after completing A4 Hell. Something was seriously overlooked in the testing of how to introduce players to inferno. Some kind of keying like the ubers in D2 would perhaps have helped with that.

Agreed, Concillian. I think the idea was that people were supposed to farm hell for at least a week before even trying to venture into Inferno. I think that they could have forced people to farm more along the way if they had removed the ability to resurrect during the set piece boss encounters. That is, they could have made it so that the moment someone died in softcore, the encounter ended and everyone went back to the previous checkpoint to start again. The ability to resurrect made it so that people kept going past points where there should have been a gear check telling them, "Woah! Slow down and farm a bit before you move on!" That and also, there should have been more of a gradation in mob levels in Inferno. That is, instead of level 61 in Act 1, 62 in Act 2, and 63 in Acts 3/4, there could have been levels 61 and 62 in Act 1, 63 and 64 in Act 2, and 65 in Acts 3/4. That way, there could have been a more gradual increase in difficulty and rewards rather than the sharp spikes in difficulties that started in each act.
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#14
I look at D3 in the wrong way, and perhaps that's because of the time gap from D2, I've forgotten about the farming needed for better items to progress.
Also, i think that a lot of people playing the game today have also been so used to game being playable from start to finish, IE that you should find the items that will carry you through at you progress, this is not how Diablo works, and i think that i and a lot of people have forgotten that.
And where as D2 had numerous ways of obtaining better items through farming, D3 seems to have forgotten that, the BS is almost useless for you main character, relegating it to a item shop for your alts, but even than your main will find far superior items as they played through, making it even more useless.
The Gems are OK, but without the ability to add sockets to items make them far less useful then they could have been.
Given that the maps are not random, but randomly placed quests, makes the game more a chore to replay then it could have been, and as others have said those "quests" are mostly variant on a theme.
Given the speed that most people seem to be progressing, i'd imagine that DLC wouldn't be far away or planned already, cause i personally don't think that those that aren't Diablo enthusiasts will be playing it in another 4-6 months without something to do differently.
But then, what would i know, just a personal opinion.
All in all, the game could have been and should have been better from the get go, given the amount of time it took to make it.

Wink
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#15
A brief oversight, but I guess I didn't realize that ilvl 61/62 items actually do drop in Hell Act 3. Then I saw a 870 dps 2 hander drop. Sure it was 61 and crap, but that was surprising. Although the rate is low, it's no longer impossible to be geared for inferno via hell drops.

Of course, if you are inferno-capable this means nothing, but it actually is pretty useful for hardcore players. With paragon and NV in mind, I actually think it's better off simply ignoring crafting period. You may want to salvage the 61s for exquisite essences and then once you enter inferno, you'll be well equipped for endgame crafting. It's actually extremely easy to get the first paragon levels when you have 5 valor stacks. From the start of Act 3 to siegebreaker on my hc wizard I've already gained half of paragon 1 without actively trying to farm exp. But of course, I'm so heavily twinked I one-shot mostly everything that's not an elite. :p The AH is fun but actually with the changes involved in 1.04, one could eschew the need for the AH until at least act 3 of inferno.

Barbs and monks are significantly harder to gear and would need help earlier, though.
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#16
(07-21-2012, 12:31 AM)mistique Wrote: I look at D3 in the wrong way, and perhaps that's because of the time gap from D2, I've forgotten about the farming needed for better items to progress.
Also, i think that a lot of people playing the game today have also been so used to game being playable from start to finish, IE that you should find the items that will carry you through at you progress, this is not how Diablo works, and i think that i and a lot of people have forgotten that.

Maybe you forgot it because it isn't really true. Certainly not with the original Diablo. Largely not in D2 at least until LoD or possibly until the very late patches. Did people farm for the best loot in those games? Quite a lot, to be sure. Did they need to farm in order to make progress? Usually not. You could start a new character in D1 and beat hell difficulty by the end of the weekend, without any help from previous characters or other players. Not saying that is necessarily a good thing, but people forget. Games weren't always measured by the size of the time sinks.
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#17
Yes, the "farm to progress" thing is unique to D3 inferno, AFAICT.

Some time spent gear hunting in D2 nightmare was a good idea (though not strictly mandatory, depending on the build/character you played) to get over the initial hump of hell, but once you passed that you could progress pretty normally.
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#18
In D2, a 3 diamond shield and smoke runeword alone would be able to overcome the resistance penalties in hell. Keep smacking nightmare countess if you really have to-- this isn't something that's very hard at all. Hell, the main concern was finding a nice shield and armor to socket them in, but you could use anything if you insisted. This isn't even accounting for charms, and is really all you need. Melee classes still need a weapon, but it was pretty trivial to vendor hunt or find an exceptional spear to build insight and let your merc carry you for a bit. It was however kinda silly to not allow that runeword in single player.
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#19
Yeah, I really miss having magic weapons be worth a damn. Being able to shop for a cruel weapon was such a godsend if you were gear poor.

The itemization in D3 still needs work. Lots and lots of work.

The combat itself is super fun, the skill system is great, but the items...urgh.

Quote:It was however kinda silly to not allow that runeword in single player.

Runeword mod. I was happily running around with an Obedience Cryptic Axe on my SP chargeadin.
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#20
Hmm, blues are quite good in d3. The damage can be on par with the best rares; but the mods will be lacking, which is about right.

Problem is coming across them. Smoke and 3d shields weren't a matter of if but when you would get them. You can even just transmute up to them not too badly. Hell, Ancient's pledge as a substitute resist shield is essentially handed to you. It simply was that trivial given a little effort. The "standard" inferno gear items are a bit analogous to D2's elite uniques (or perhaps super high end exceptionals like Buriza) with um runes socketed in them. That can't be relied on to drop. You woudn't be prone to finding a windforce in D2 but you didn't need to either.

Honestly, regardless of how poor you were, using the many options for the act 2 merc pretty much makes any build viable. Almost. :p

D3's "elite" loot is actually more generously dropping than D2's "elite" loot. Zod runes and crap were pretty much a dream. It's just that the higher end loot is now more mandatory.

So the paragon system was very good at addressing the problem a little. Higher base stats means equipment means less and the naturally increasing MF means the poor have to not spend as much in investing in a luxury stat to actually get stuff. It's still not that reliable, but farming your way through to inferno belial is very doable, if not annoying. Still, this is closer to the original concept of farming hell til you can reach inferno concept.
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