My thoughts so far-
(Profile is in my signature for gear frame of reference)
-Pile on radius is still a bit small. Maybe with practice and zero CD you could learn to use it, but I doubt it would become optimal. It's zombies doing a highropes wrestling dive, so I'm happy the skill is at least in a usable state, because the animation is still probably my favorite in the game.
-I will probably be playing at Monster Level 4 with my current gear. I switched from acid cloud to bears to make the jump to ML5 - kill speed while using bears was about the same, but if I ever ran OOM the damage felt like it came to a halt. Given - I'm not very familiar with bears so was maybe playing badly, but I think having your soul harvest / vengeful spirit doing significant damage to white mobs is a good benchmark for what ML you should play at.
-Monster health scales very hard with ML but monster damage not so much. As you can see my defensive stats are pretty terrible, but even at ML 5, where health started to become a problem in kill speed, damage was still quite manageable.
-you can see gruesome feast stacks. it basically starts a timer when the most recent stack was acquired, but stacks still fall off in order they were picked up (a new health globe doesn't refresh the timer on all) same as before.
-I don't have a fast attack speed (Skorn), but i had about 3 fetishes around me with the new fetish sycophants. Wouldn't be surprised if dagger users could pull 4-5 easy.
-Mass Confusion is fun. I'm not sure if it's really going to earn a place on the bar but we'll see. While it's great CCing a pack for 9 seconds, they don't seem to do massive damage to each other the way I hoped, and it might be better to just pack more damage yourself (Manitou or something instead).
-The new range on well of souls is kinda cool, but will still probably not be used because 1) The skill is so F-ing floaty and slow I don't know anyone who has the patience for it 2) For it's mana cost it still gets completely outclassed by other skills. If you can find a way to get rush of essence into your build you could use it as a primary, but those passive slots are pretty well spoken for currently.
-Overall CC changes are interesting. Hex is an actual eternity, although I never had much fun with that skill, even when it was good. Could possibly have some use with Uber Bosses? Addling toads duration still isn't long enough to warrant using frog pathing as a primary.
-I opened a resplendent chest while 5 stacked and got 4 rares.
-Drop rates are insane - mostly 60+ items now. If you thought the rare market was flooded already...
-Overall quality of loot seems about the same. Even at ML 5 I wouldn't say there was a "noticeable" difference, although I had way more MF than I do live in 1.04, so I'm sure I was getting some extra affixes here and there.
Probably won't spend too much more time on the PTR.
Any questions? Anything I forgot to mention or needs more testing?
For some reason the PTR worked perfectly for me when I tried it just now. Well just now means 15 minutes ago, I somehow survived without any deaths as a WW barb while fighting 2 champ packs and the whole core of arreat zone =O. That shit took FOREVER. The elite out of the champ pack (or champ out of elite idk) ahd 52m hp. My conclusion as a WW barb; 7.6% lifesteal and 350 LoH works awesome =) You can WW for DAYS on a single target, and now that it's super hard to keep wrath up I'll be switching that out. Also I now hate molten. a LOT.
Great stuff on Pile On, gonna test it for the sheer hilarity of the circus zombies.
Improved Fetish Sycophants is another I'd like to try, had so much fun with it pre-Inferno. Love those ugly little turds.
I expected to be able to farm consistently at around level 4~6 but checking out your gear I'm afraid I'll be stuck at level 3, maybe 4 when the patch hits live. Bummer.
Tried it out myself as a WD. Def going to need some upgrades before moving to MP 4. Then again my primary attack (firebomb) was falling through the floor in act 1 and doing 0 damage... so that made some tough going. A bug report is in on this, so its not just me.
At my dps, ~83k on WD, my reaction after a bit of Act I/II/III farming on monster levels 3-5 tells me, ML 3-4 is going to be the sweet spot for now. Even at lvl 5, felt the difference in kill time extending to a point where the extra magic find won't balance it. That said, at lvls 3 to 4, still felt very close, good extra magic find as a bonus at roughly same kill speed as 1.0.4.
To net it out, bonus magic find just for hitting patch and the ability to farm Acts I and II in addition to Act III. Act IV due to size is probably still not efficient / viable. Extra bonus of Infernal Machine stuff -- only have 1 key so far from Act III (had maybe 2 or 3 stacks of Valor when I got it). Also came across Act II warden but no drop.
From what I've noticed from the PTR was that monster level 0 or 1 will the best for exp/loot farming. I was hoping for the higher ML to be more efficient but 25% MF just isn't worth the extra hp (assuming you're already maxed MF you only get like a 4% bonus by getting 25 MF).
Level 0 is so easy it might be possible to create a crazy build where you just run into a pack and everything instantly dies without having to stop to cast anything.
I hadn't tested it that much -- my thought process was that at a certain dps level, MP 1, 2, 3 might die about the same speed. My thinking was if I overkill MP1 by x%, I might be able to also overkill MP2 at same speed, and then ok MP3 there isn't any more overkill, things actually take more hits. That line of demarcation may happen at different levels depending on current stats and setup but that was the thought. Things still die so fast at MP3 -- though I don't doubt you are correct on efficiency in that you did an in game comparison that I did not.
That said, whatever the efficiency, I'm kind of bleh on just mindlessly running through with no challenge. At some point, the game being fun to play should actually trump efficiency - else why are we even playing, and even MP3 borders on being mindless for me right now. I've actually been thinking of bumping up to MP4 for farming even though I know that will be less efficient -- just so I have to pay attention -- at least a little :).
That said, whatever the efficiency, I'm kind of bleh on just mindlessly running through with no challenge. At some point, the game being fun to play should actually trump efficiency - else why are we even playing, and even MP3 borders on being mindless for me right now. I've actually been thinking of bumping up to MP4 for farming even though I know that will be less efficient -- just so I have to pay attention -- at least a little :).
Yeah I'm thinking 4 for the exact same reason - it still feels like I'm interacting with the things on my screen.
That said, it might be fun to try to brew up a complete autopilot build.
Here's my attempt- http://us.battle.net...YdgT!YgW!bcYYca
assuming 30K thorns damage - you'd probably only be refreshing manitou / lingering spirit if your damage is high enough, with the occasional locust cast.
Legendaries to possibly include:
Firewalkers
Manajuma's set
Maximus for your follower
Band of Hollow Whispers
My opinion on this matter may have just slightly shifted after facing Infernal Machine Ghom / Rakanoth on MP4 solo in my standard farming build. Ouch.
Knowing what I know now, next time I think I'll likely end up loading a different build geared more specifically to Infernal fight, killing 5 quick packs in cemetery even if build isn't ideal and then going. Still need to determine best MP level I can take on Infernal though cause once it's open, mats are gone, you better kill it.
EDIT: The Ghom/Rakk infernal is honestly going to be interesting unless you have enough life leech / LoH / resistance / etc to just stand in clouds and tank the damage. If you can't then at some point, you get at range and Rakk just instagibs you. Still trying to find a spec/strategy to beat this at MP4 given current gear -- challenging -- may not be possible without sufficient LoH/Leech.
That said, whatever the efficiency, I'm kind of bleh on just mindlessly running through with no challenge. At some point, the game being fun to play should actually trump efficiency - else why are we even playing, and even MP3 borders on being mindless for me right now. I've actually been thinking of bumping up to MP4 for farming even though I know that will be less efficient -- just so I have to pay attention -- at least a little :).
Probably good advice. Lately I've been thinking hard about why I still play the game and if it's actually still fun. I've decided to slowly sell all my gear and quit. Too much efficiency will burn you out!
Try Infernal Machine before you quit -- the Rakk/Ghom fight on MP4 is the first time I've felt challenged by D3 since the initial gear-block back in the early days. Siegebreaker/Kulle and Skeleton King/Maghda look equally challenging -- not impossible they will be trivialized by the right setup / LoH gear, but at least they are making me think.
Try Infernal Machine before you quit -- the Rakk/Ghom fight on MP4 is the first time I've felt challenged by D3 since the initial gear-block back in the early days. Siegebreaker/Kulle and Skeleton King/Maghda look equally challenging -- not impossible they will be trivialized by the right setup / LoH gear, but at least they are making me think.
Will do, thanks for the suggestion. I'll probably play for a week or so just so I can try all the ubers once. I'm not looking forward to farming them though so once I've done them once I'm pretty much done.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
(Profile is in my signature for gear frame of reference)
-Pile on radius is still a bit small. Maybe with practice and zero CD you could learn to use it, but I doubt it would become optimal. It's zombies doing a highropes wrestling dive, so I'm happy the skill is at least in a usable state, because the animation is still probably my favorite in the game.
-I will probably be playing at Monster Level 4 with my current gear. I switched from acid cloud to bears to make the jump to ML5 - kill speed while using bears was about the same, but if I ever ran OOM the damage felt like it came to a halt. Given - I'm not very familiar with bears so was maybe playing badly, but I think having your soul harvest / vengeful spirit doing significant damage to white mobs is a good benchmark for what ML you should play at.
-Monster health scales very hard with ML but monster damage not so much. As you can see my defensive stats are pretty terrible, but even at ML 5, where health started to become a problem in kill speed, damage was still quite manageable.
-you can see gruesome feast stacks. it basically starts a timer when the most recent stack was acquired, but stacks still fall off in order they were picked up (a new health globe doesn't refresh the timer on all) same as before.
-I don't have a fast attack speed (Skorn), but i had about 3 fetishes around me with the new fetish sycophants. Wouldn't be surprised if dagger users could pull 4-5 easy.
-Mass Confusion is fun. I'm not sure if it's really going to earn a place on the bar but we'll see. While it's great CCing a pack for 9 seconds, they don't seem to do massive damage to each other the way I hoped, and it might be better to just pack more damage yourself (Manitou or something instead).
-The new range on well of souls is kinda cool, but will still probably not be used because 1) The skill is so F-ing floaty and slow I don't know anyone who has the patience for it 2) For it's mana cost it still gets completely outclassed by other skills. If you can find a way to get rush of essence into your build you could use it as a primary, but those passive slots are pretty well spoken for currently.
-Overall CC changes are interesting. Hex is an actual eternity, although I never had much fun with that skill, even when it was good. Could possibly have some use with Uber Bosses? Addling toads duration still isn't long enough to warrant using frog pathing as a primary.
-I opened a resplendent chest while 5 stacked and got 4 rares.
-Drop rates are insane - mostly 60+ items now. If you thought the rare market was flooded already...
-Overall quality of loot seems about the same. Even at ML 5 I wouldn't say there was a "noticeable" difference, although I had way more MF than I do live in 1.04, so I'm sure I was getting some extra affixes here and there.
Probably won't spend too much more time on the PTR.
Any questions? Anything I forgot to mention or needs more testing?
Improved Fetish Sycophants is another I'd like to try, had so much fun with it pre-Inferno. Love those ugly little turds.
I expected to be able to farm consistently at around level 4~6 but checking out your gear I'm afraid I'll be stuck at level 3, maybe 4 when the patch hits live. Bummer.
To net it out, bonus magic find just for hitting patch and the ability to farm Acts I and II in addition to Act III. Act IV due to size is probably still not efficient / viable. Extra bonus of Infernal Machine stuff -- only have 1 key so far from Act III (had maybe 2 or 3 stacks of Valor when I got it). Also came across Act II warden but no drop.
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
Level 0 is so easy it might be possible to create a crazy build where you just run into a pack and everything instantly dies without having to stop to cast anything.
That said, whatever the efficiency, I'm kind of bleh on just mindlessly running through with no challenge. At some point, the game being fun to play should actually trump efficiency - else why are we even playing, and even MP3 borders on being mindless for me right now. I've actually been thinking of bumping up to MP4 for farming even though I know that will be less efficient -- just so I have to pay attention -- at least a little :).
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
Yeah I'm thinking 4 for the exact same reason - it still feels like I'm interacting with the things on my screen.
That said, it might be fun to try to brew up a complete autopilot build.
Here's my attempt- http://us.battle.net...YdgT!YgW!bcYYca
assuming 30K thorns damage - you'd probably only be refreshing manitou / lingering spirit if your damage is high enough, with the occasional locust cast.
Legendaries to possibly include:
Firewalkers
Manajuma's set
Maximus for your follower
Band of Hollow Whispers
Knowing what I know now, next time I think I'll likely end up loading a different build geared more specifically to Infernal fight, killing 5 quick packs in cemetery even if build isn't ideal and then going. Still need to determine best MP level I can take on Infernal though cause once it's open, mats are gone, you better kill it.
EDIT: The Ghom/Rakk infernal is honestly going to be interesting unless you have enough life leech / LoH / resistance / etc to just stand in clouds and tank the damage. If you can't then at some point, you get at range and Rakk just instagibs you. Still trying to find a spec/strategy to beat this at MP4 given current gear -- challenging -- may not be possible without sufficient LoH/Leech.
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
Probably good advice. Lately I've been thinking hard about why I still play the game and if it's actually still fun. I've decided to slowly sell all my gear and quit. Too much efficiency will burn you out!
D3Progress: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/emberos-1608/Emberos/51824579
Will do, thanks for the suggestion. I'll probably play for a week or so just so I can try all the ubers once. I'm not looking forward to farming them though so once I've done them once I'm pretty much done.