Diablo 3 is fundamentally broken

[FireIceTalon]

Already tried that, and it doesnt work. Pretty sure this is some sort of enrage timer mechanism that starts after about 3 mins.

Uh, yeah, it was in the patch notes. Walls come down more often and he does more damage. Get more DPS.

Uhm, I have 32K dps, which is plenty. The problem isn't damage here, the problem is survivability - I shouldn't be being one shotted with 43k health and 700+ resists. This is sign of a broken system, period.

[Archon_Wing]

Eh? I have 15k dps and kill him long before the enrage happens. I'll kill him for you. :S Btw, watch out for that tornado-- that's surprisingly damaging and occasionally hard to notice.

[ErickTheRed]

I think you will find most of the people complaining about that are not melee players, but ranged players who are sick of melee attacks hitting them from half-way across the screen. They have added a lot to melee combat, indeed, but ranged play has taken a severe hammering as a result. For a personal view, I always play the archer-class and love ranged combat in all games, finding melee quite boring. In Diablo III, I despise the mechanics for ranged play, finding most of the fun and tactical elements have been removed, and instead find myself enjoying melee more than ever before.

I haven't made up my mind about ranged combat yet, except that the endgame is broken for demon hunters. I always play a melee character first and then try a ranged later. I find games hit and miss with ranged characters. Sometimes they have tools that let them trivially kite or pets that tank for them, or other crowd control tools, and sometimes they don't and things get tedious. It's a hard balance to find.

I have a demon hunter that is part of a static group that is level 36 now in nightmare. At this low level I think the class works pretty well. A variety of skills let me avoid trouble in different ways, and while I'm fragile nothing seems unfair. I don't remember frustrating instances where online lag causes monsters to hit me when they shouldn't. I'm sure it happens, but I'm able to recover so it's ok.

I know what's coming though. Every single demon hunter that plays with this style gives up in inferno, at either act 1 or act2. The reasons are pretty well understood, they need to use discipline to kite to kill boss packs without any abilities, and of course there are many very unfriendly abilities that make damage unavoidable. Gearing defensively doesn't seem like the solution because even if you get to the point where you survive many hits you still run out of discipline and die. Going full offense just means you die all the time.

I think the issue isn't that ranged combat is terrible, but that Demon Hunters don't have the tools available given gear or skills to match the Inferno damage profile. For my barbarian there is no set of champion mods that can't be answered. Take something stupid, like a champion pack illusionist, nightmare, arcane. Each of the illusions can fear and make arcane sentries (This is very dumb and should be fixed) so I'm chained feared running uncontrolled through a room of death. Except I have Wrath of the Berserker which makes me immune to all crowd control effects and more than doubles my damage for 15 seconds allowing me to burst one of them down. This doesn't cost me that much - I still have my other abilities available. Demon Hunters don't have anything that comes close to this when dealing with their problem packs.

The other problem is the itemization. I did a Google search, and it turns out Demon Hunters are viable in act 3, and I wasn't that surprised when I saw what someone did. They geared defensively with a lot of Life on Hit, and stacked skills that proc it well: gas grenades, jagged spike caltrops, shuriken cloud, ball lightning. Preparation and Shadow Power: Gloom were the defensive skills. All of a sudden you have a very tanky character that doesn't have to kite and in fact does not want to because of the placed aoe damage. The listed damage was low, but good enough with all the stacking effects. There are other options, but all classes seem pushed in this direction.

I wish there were other ways that gear amplified skills. As it is now all snares and stuns become worthless. What if there were item abilities that made crowd control effective again? I'd love seeing something like that instead of the unimaginative take less damage from elites. Really anything that you could stack and maintain the more ranged oriented style that works in nightmare.

[FireIceTalon]

Eh? I have 15k dps and kill him long before the enrage happens. I'll kill him for you. :S Btw, watch out for that tornado-- that's surprisingly damaging and occasionally hard to notice.

Yea, I have to see this to believe it.

[Archon_Wing]

Well, I run him regularly and I tested by killing him twice in the last 5 minutes, but hopefully 2 player games won't make him that much harder. :o Then again my enchantress must be helping a lot? :p She does do 3.5k dps. Also, what class are you? :S

Add me then.

[Quark]

Uhm, I have 32K dps, which is plenty. The problem isn't damage here, the problem is survivability - I shouldn't be being one shotted with 43k health and 700+ resists. This is sign of a broken system, period.

You're hitting the enrage with 32k dps? And much higher defense than I have? What are you doing?

[Chesspiece_face]

You're hitting the enrage with 32k dps? And much higher defense than I have? What are you doing?

More importantly, what is your build? I'm having trouble thinking of a Wizard build that would have trouble with that fight anywhere close to the stats you have.

[ViralSpiral]

Maybe he went without any defence skills? That's about all I can think of.

[FireIceTalon]

I was using a fairly defensive build with Arcane skills as offense. For defense, Teleport with Fracture rune, Diamond Skin with Crystal Shell, Energy Armor with Prismatic. For offense - Magic Missile with the dmg boost rune, Arcane Orb with Tap the Source, and Magic Weapon with Force Weapon. Passives are Astral Presence, Glass Cannon, and for the third passive I even tried Blur, Galvanizing Ward, and Flux.

At any rate, Archon tanked for me last night and we finally brought him down. Now, Belial is the problem. Came close a few times in a co-op but seems like you need 60k dps to beat him.

[Bolty]

Now, Belial is the problem. Came close a few times in a co-op but seems like you need 60k dps to beat him.

I'm confused by this. I play a highly defensive Barbarian build and I have 11.7k dps according to my character sheet. I can solo Kulle and Belial. Yes, I don't have to kite like you do, and I have Wrath of the Berserker to double my damage every 2 minutes, but you say you have roughly three times as much base DPS as I do.

These bosses are actually harder for me in groups, because I lose my follower which is a significant portion of my DPS, and I'm not contributing a "fair share" of DPS in a group. I really need to just abandon the concept of being a tank and go with a more offensive build, because it doesn't pan out. But that's another story.

[Archon_Wing]

Does it feel like the AH is the real game, and then you play minigames to get loot? :p

[ViralSpiral]

Basically, yeah. I like how it's practically impossible after NM for anything useful to drop, in part because of ultimately junky affixes like "+ single resist" which are unnecessary in NM and outclass in Hell by resist all, but remain forever to junk up your rares. Normal has a relatively clean affix pool, and NM has a few facepalms, but it's still mostly good stuff. Once you get the L50+ items though there's so many junk affixes flying around.

I will admit that at least most gear that can have sockets seem to spawn them pretty often. I know in D2 1.08 they increased the chances of enhanced armour/damage so at least historically they've been able to tweak items to be more likely to spawn affixes people actually want.

[Elric of Grans]

I was so depressed by Diablo III that I reinstalled Torchlight last night. Diablo III has better graphics, a superior combat system and (potentially) a more interesting skill system, along with more variety in environments and enemies. Torchlight has good and interesting items dropping constantly, levelling is actually rewarding and gives you a chance to do something vaguely RPG-like with your character, and there is no enormous disconnect where regular mobs are a push-over yet Elites steamroll you before you even see them. Diablo III is depressing; Torchlight is fun. Though Diablo III aught to be the superior game, lacks fun and that is what has turned me away from it.

[Archon_Wing]

Well, I was gonna make a thread, but it's fine here. I decided to play hardcore a bit since softcore is extremely boring atm and found out...

Apparently you can't refuse trade windows (unless you run away from people :p). You can do this to people on the field. This is bad.

Well, I haven't heard of accounts of "trade window pk" yet...

But really, that's a ridiculous oversight. Just allow trading in town. :S

[Treesh]

Apparently you can't refuse trade windows (unless you run away from people :p). You can do this to people on the field. This is bad.

Well, I haven't heard of accounts of "trade window pk" yet...

But really, that's a ridiculous oversight. Just allow trading in town. :S

I can't check currently thanks to maintenance *sigh*, but I could have sworn there was a checkbox in the settings that allowed you to refuse all trades. I'll have to poke around once bnet is back up and running.

[Mavfin]

Diablo III is depressing; Torchlight is fun.

Torchlight was fun for me for one playthrough per class. After that, it's just a complete faceroll, no challenge or danger at all. Just felt like I was in God mode. Sure, it was fun for a while on each class, but...I haven't touched it in 8 months, I just looked. The infinite dungeon just became monotonous. I didn't feel like it had a purpose, other than random quest #3 zillion to find <random thing> and <random named mob>. The story part was over after the end boss, and there isn't another difficulty, just the infinite dungeon.

I guess it depends on what your expectations were. I *like* the elites showing up. To me, they're a minigame unto themselves. To each his own.

[Elric of Grans]

I like the concept of the Elites, but there is far too much of a disconnect. If the game were balanced such that trash mobs were, well, trash and Elites provided new and interesting challenges, it would be fine. As it is, however, there is a middle-ground that is entirely gear-based: trash mobs are trash, but Elites will stop you into the ground if your gear is not good enough (or you are unlucky), yet you need to kill them to get the required gear. I think I have just faced one too many Jailer/Arcane/Desecrator/Vortex, or Extra Health/Reflects Damage/Mortar/Waller, or many other combinations that are more tedious than fun.

[FireIceTalon]

For those who are playing in Act 3 Inferno, or even better yet have completed it, what is a viable damage reduction percentage to aim for to get through it without wanting to tear your hair out? My guess is somewhere between 75-80%? I have 66% at the moment which seems sufficient for Act 2 but not nearly enough for Act 3.

[Archon_Wing]

So someone tell me how they expected melee characters to kill elite suicide minions? I'll be waiting.

[ViralSpiral]

Pre-Inferno A3 in a nutshell:
1) Equip a ranged attack.
2) Faceroll.

Seriously - the ranged threats for the act include low hp skeletal archers, fallen shaman packs, icy quill rats, succubi, and the one actual dangerous one, hulking phasebeasts. Note that Ghom, Siegebreaker, and Azmodan are all significantly more threatening to melee toons as well. Apparently A3's resemblence to pre-1.10 A5 D2 goes deeper than just terrain. Wall-to-wall melee threats, nearly a pinata party for ranged characters.