Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[Quark]

Spiderlings anything is ridiculous for casters. They're too fast to kite, and do lots of "small" damage (the small being relative), where Wizards are built to take a few large hits. Mortar is better than pre-1.0.3, but in the process they bugged it out. Near corners you can get hit by it at point blank range - like walls are cutting into the minimum range for it.

[Lissa]

Spiderlings anything is ridiculous for casters. They're too fast to kite, and do lots of "small" damage (the small being relative), where Wizards are built to take a few large hits. Mortar is better than pre-1.0.3, but in the process they bugged it out. Near corners you can get hit by it at point blank range - like walls are cutting into the minimum range for it.

Add scavengers to that list as well...and this is the same, for the most part, for DH as well. Anything faster than the DH and the DH is effectively screwed.

[Chesspiece_face]

Spiderlings anything is ridiculous for casters. They're too fast to kite, and do lots of "small" damage (the small being relative), where Wizards are built to take a few large hits. Mortar is better than pre-1.0.3, but in the process they bugged it out. Near corners you can get hit by it at point blank range - like walls are cutting into the minimum range for it.

This isn't new. Mortar would always bug out near walls. Pre 1.03 if you stood near a wall and a Mortar enemy was in melee range of you it would fire it's Mortars at the wall and they would all land on you point blank. It's possible that the 1.03 changes exacerbated this issue, but it was always there.

[Archon_Wing]

Elite spiderlings are terrible for any class really. They move fast and can overwhelm anyone. And there's so many of those little fuckers. If they have arcane + death pool, it can be hard to see. Or illusionist.

[Trevan]

Damned if they do, damned if they don't, I guess.

This is the eternal RPG conundrum, no? You have a challenge at a certain difficulty, and you can diminish that challenge by doing other, lesser challenges. (Usually, "non-challenges," AKA grinding.)

You can specify what kinds of grinding yields benefits, but if you get rid of the entire grind-to-make-it-easier system, then you've basically removed progress entirely, and might as well just put character progression on rails, like a metroidvania, where you get the tools to do the next part as a consequence of finishing the last part.

I do get that people will farm the best items wherever it's easiest to do so, which is a problem. Perhaps they should put uber-gear in acts 3 and 4? It'll break the gear curve, but at least you'll feel like you got something out of it.

-Jester

This is why personally, inferno appealed to me. For the average player, you could not grind to make it easier, which is a fault of every rpg game with an "insane" difficulty I've found (mass effect, tales of games, etc.).

I don't actually play this game to deck out my character though. For the most part, I beat inferno and now that character is shelved and I've moved on. Time to see how far my HC DH can get.

[FireIceTalon]

Another way to balance Inferno would be to make it so that monsters that have an inherited ability cannot spawn with a certain trait - this means things like Burrowers, Spiderlings, and Soul Lashers can never spawn with the "fast" trait, for example. Or monsters that have a naturally large health pool cannot spawn with the "extra health" attribute and so on and so forth. And some monsters shouldn't spawn as elites period, such as morlu mages that already have several inherited abilities in their normal forms.

[Occhidiangela]

Here's an idea:

Sometimes, you have to pick your fights.

One of the things I learned in D I and DII was that some bosses had to be parked, depending upon your build. The problem I see being discussed here, from a game design perspective, is that in a "go-go-go" designed game, which D III feels like, parking isn't always a choice.

[Elric of Grans]

Parking is often not an option, either, as enemies can, and often do, move faster than you do. Seems a silly design concept to me.

EDIT: Me forget good the English.

[Treesh]

Parking is often not an option, either, as enemies can, and often do, move faster than you do. Seems a silly design concept to me.

EDIT: Me forget good the English.

Well, as softcore you can easily park any of them. Run somewhere away from the last checkpoint where you'll respawn and let them kill you. =) Then you just have to remember not to go down there. I'm sad to say I did forget that last part on the group I tried to park.

[smegged]

Yeah there's no portal parking in this game. Which is a bit of an annoyance. I'm not sure what HC characters would be able to do to park.

[Athenau]

Invulnerable minions and enemies that are way faster than you are need to GTFO of this game.

Even super dangerous stuff like EF ES Fanat moonlords were escapable in D2 and that's a good thing. The PC should always have the option to retreat upon first engagement.

[Yricyn]

So I've reached the point where I can do Act 1 inferno without dying. Tanking the Butcher is no longer a problem. Very few boss/champ packs give me much of an issue. Act 2 Inferno is no longer unplayable, but about 50% of boss packs are unbeatable. I had a break through in Act 1 when I began valuing resist gear over vitality. I went from 200 resist all and 50k health, to 500 resist all and 30k health. I started living through previously impossible encounters.

So my question is, if 500 resist all 6k armor works for Act 1. What do you need for Act 2?

[Ashock]

So I've reached the point where I can do Act 1 inferno without dying. Tanking the Butcher is no longer a problem. Very few boss/champ packs give me much of an issue. Act 2 Inferno is no longer unplayable, but about 50% of boss packs are unbeatable. I had a break through in Act 1 when I began valuing resist gear over vitality. I went from 200 resist all and 50k health, to 500 resist all and 30k health. I started living through previously impossible encounters.

So my question is, if 500 resist all 6k armor works for Act 1. What do you need for Act 2?

What class?

[Yricyn]

Monk, Sorry should have mentioned this.

[Elric of Grans]

My Demon Hunter is similar. I have around 35K Life, 400 Res, 4K Armour and find Act I a snooze, but Act II fairly punishing. It would be far worse for a Monk because you get hit more often, so I would imagine you would want more Life than me.

[Archon_Wing]

700 resist 6k armor and 40k life got me through prepatch act 2 as a monk, though it was pretty annoying against elites. I don't know what kind of stats will save you from those. :p The thing that helps the most is life on hit though. You already have the defense, but you'll need a way to recover your health.

My advice is to buy a 650-700ish dps weapon sword or monk weapon with a socket and 100 +dex-- I see a 720 dps, 100 dex, socketed sword going for 200k atm, and buy a +300 life on hit gem for 600k(Star Amethyst I think). It'll cost around a million gold but it's far superior to the ripoff loh weapons running around the AH. You want a fast weapon. The fastest would be a dagger, but again, a huge ripoff.

[Occhidiangela]

can you craft such a weapon, or does it only drop from uber high boss types?

[Concillian]

can only craft (up to) ilvl 62 weapons. (up to) ilvl63 are only drops.

You can only craft ilvl 62 weapons if you get an ultra-rare pattern drop to teach your blacksmith. Which may or may not be the base item type you're after. I think crafted (high level) weapons are also limited to 4 affixes, while drops can be 6.

In general, mlvl 60 monsters are Act IV hell, 61 Act I inferno, 62 Act II, and 63 Act III/IV. Similar to Diablo II, just having monsters of the right level doesn't guarantee a high base item type, and there is only a small chance to even have the right base item type (and level) for the drops.

I think the crux of the gear issue is that they streamlined too much.
Every class wants DPS weapons. So once you're level 60, everyone is looking for the same 2 affixes types (+% damage and +xxx-xxx damage). Plus whatever their class flavor affixes are.
Similarly, every class needs a baseline level of +all resist, so armor without a +all resist on it is an order of magnitude less valuable.

In D2, the affixes were more spread out. There were builds that wanted +skills and low damage was okay. There were builds that wanted high damage, and no +skills were okay (but additional skills helped). This meant the community as a whole could share a little more. Also, +all resists was a unique only attribute, so you had to mix and match individual resists. This was kind of a pain (especially since there was a resist cap) but it meant that more gear was useful to more people. It seems to me, there's just too high a percentage of people after the same affixes due to the game design.

[Lissa]

can only craft (up to) ilvl 62 weapons. (up to) ilvl63 are only drops.

You can only craft ilvl 62 weapons if you get an ultra-rare pattern drop to teach your blacksmith. Which may or may not be the base item type you're after. I think crafted (high level) weapons are also limited to 4 affixes, while drops can be 6.

In general, mlvl 60 monsters are Act IV hell, 61 Act I inferno, 62 Act II, and 63 Act III/IV. Similar to Diablo II, just having monsters of the right level doesn't guarantee a high base item type, and there is only a small chance to even have the right base item type (and level) for the drops.

I think the crux of the gear issue is that they streamlined too much.
Every class wants DPS weapons. So once you're level 60, everyone is looking for the same 2 affixes types (+% damage and +xxx-xxx damage). Plus whatever their class flavor affixes are.
Similarly, every class needs a baseline level of +all resist, so armor without a +all resist on it is an order of magnitude less valuable.

In D2, the affixes were more spread out. There were builds that wanted +skills and low damage was okay. There were builds that wanted high damage, and no +skills were okay (but additional skills helped). This meant the community as a whole could share a little more. Also, +all resists was a unique only attribute, so you had to mix and match individual resists. This was kind of a pain (especially since there was a resist cap) but it meant that more gear was useful to more people. It seems to me, there's just too high a percentage of people after the same affixes due to the game design.

No, there are patterns for crafting 6 affixes for both weapons and armor. The patterns are as followed:

Exalted <item> - 4 Affixes
Fine Exalted <item> - 5 Affixes
Grand Exalted <item> - 6 Affixes

[Treesh]

I've been thinking about this lately and I still don't think D3 is fundamentally broken, despite all the issues. I think what's really broken is the idea the devs bring to the game. When players find something that the devs didn't forsee (some combination of either gear or skills or what-have-you), Blizzard seems to automatically react with ways to prevent it, ways to stop the players from playing how they want to. If you continually try to force people to play in a way that they don't enjoy, yes, they'll leave and/or complain loudly. I think that's really what the big problem is with this game. They're trying to hard to force people into one type of playstyle rather than letting folks find what they enjoy to do.