Yes it is exactly what you are stating. Being able to spend 10 hatred on a skill that does effectively 500% weapon damage is a tad ridiculous don't you think?
You are not being punished for your play style. You are simply given skills to try out during the leveling process to slowly develop a play style. If you were to move the "Last rune" to earlier levels that would completely defeat the purpose of a rewarding leveling process... Then you would have every rune / skill combination at level 30, getting over 10 skills per level that you could try out. That to me is just overkill. I remember being sad that I never got my Seven-sided strike Fulmination rune until level 60...guess what? I hated it at 60, felt stupid, sure someone might like it, but even though i really wanted it the rune just didn't fit my play style.
What i guess i am trying to say is, being eased into all the skills is a good thing, try out all the skills, don't have a closed mind. Try out skills as you level to help you get a feel for your class.
The idea is that they want you to keep getting new skills throughout the game. What is the fun in starting at level 1, with every single skill available. Levels would do almost nothing for you but a few stat boosts. Now every time i level my new character I can get a new skill, passive, or rune. It provides a more entertaining and rewarding leveling experience. I use the first unlocked rune on my monk for a few skills, and the final unlock for others, it is all opinionated and depends on your play style etc.
To be honest, i would just recommend swapping out Transcendence with Resolve(Works amazing with sweeping winds, might want to change to fire circle for increased radius) , drop cyclone strike and get blinding flash (either the increase in damage or the increase miss chance by elites) it will probably help A LOT. Another thing is you might want to try to invest in a ring with AS, or more LoH. I found a 60 dex 60 vita 150 LoH ring for something like 300k, which really isn't bad. Remember Increased Attack Speed is REALLY good. You can probably drop some all resists for some life on hit/ attack speed since you probably are dying from not being able to sustain a fight rather than burst damage.
Edit: Currently on US servers there is an 8% life, 96 dex, 26 cold resistance, 172 life on hit amulet i would recommend (95k atm) I did not realize you have 45k hp, i currently have 31k hp with a lot less defensive stats than you and survive fairly well (sometimes molten / plague cause problems but that is it, kiting pretty much solves the problem (kite -> serenity dps -> kite)
If you look at the guy above me we has a few key things that you seem to be missing, i can't really tell by your screenshot (The numbers are kind of blurred) but it looks like you have 1.52 aps, which is pretty low. Even though you have 800 Life on hit, upping your aps to 2 will drastically increase your survive ability. Also, are you using resolve? If so are you keeping it up on targets, sweeping winds can help A LOT with keeping up resolve while kiting. Movement speed can also help when kiting mobs. I personally am still stuck on act 3, but have a lot worse stats than you (450 LoH, 1.9 APS, 550 All resist, 4.5k armor, 31k life, 26 block) however, after reading these forums these tips helped me a lot through act 2, never underestimate attack speed ^.^
Well obiously life steal was not really included in my question. It falls in the misc category, like freeze on hit and stuff.
Ok, life steal is not included, it doesn't make my other point false. I would MUCH rather have a weapon with 1.7 APS with 1k DPS than a weapon with 1 APS and 1.1k DPS. The increased life on hit (almost twice as much, due to higher speed) is still something to take into consideration. So you still have to look at crit, increased crit damage, APS , and damage. THEN you can only look at stats...and also procs like Fear, Stun, Freeze, Life on Hit, etc.
Also, as others said above crit% and crit damage cannot be calculated in weapon damage because it depends on your other gear. IE: Crit damage% does more if you have more crit and vice versa.
so basically, when choosing a weapon, I should only look at the general DPS and +dex/str/int/vit, cause all other stuff is insluded in the DPS anyway?
EDIT: I´m pretty sure +crit modifiers are included already...
Not necessarily, for me (a monk) i would take 600 LoH, and a 1.7 Attack Speed weapon over a weapon with 1 APS and no life on hit(or even with 600 life on hit) any day, even if they have slightly less damage. Just because something has higher damage doesn't mean it will be better for you.
To be fair, act 1 and 2 are not really a problem if you got the proper gear. But as a WD, even with great gear I get one-shot by mostly everything in act 3 and beyond. I understand that the difficulty should take a leap, but getting one-shot by ranged monsters does get tedious.
Meh, that's how i feel like as a monk in inferno for act 2 atm, like everyone said "Oh, just farm gear and get over it" Which, is true. However, i HATE act 2, it is a melees hell. Monks have 0 slows (that are worth taking) and running in circles from the dozens of mobs that can kite you (not to mention when the elites get to have molten / fire chain / fast affixes on) it does become tedious and quite annoying. I am also pigeonholed into a build taking 4 defensive skills (Breath of Heaven, Blind, Serenity, Aura) and my other 2 skills are also for defense even if they aren't "defensive" (Sweeping winds with large AOE to put up resolve(a passive) and my spirit generator which increases armor). If i drop any of these skills i die just that much faster, not to mention if i try to go toe to toe with something without a cooldown i die. Resulting in me kitting for a tremendous amount of time. Currently i have about 500 resist, 6k armor, 26 block chance for 3k damage and anything past maghda is almost instant death with all of my defensive skills ;/
However, act 1 i can put up 5 offensive skills with 1 defensive skill (remaining with my defensive passives) and face tank everything without a second glance (enless its a really lame affix like Frozen /molten/plague/firechains; which i only have to kite a little bit) The jump in difficulty is just a little too intense for my taste. I liked diablo 2, mindlessly farming and trying out different builds all day. I can't stand being pushed into one singular defensive build that cannot kill anything and still cannot survive effectively.
What's this talk about 5 second matches? Maybe I'm out of the loop already but didn't blizzard want to do a most kills in X amount of time setup?
Yes, this is what was showed at blizzcon. I am hoping it is very fast paced though. I would love to one shot, or almost one shot people. I can't stand WoW where i can sit on a healer for 30+ minutes and not drop his mana or hp below 50%, it gets a little ridiculous.
You can check personally by turning healing / damage numbers on...but iirc Way of the Hundred fist has a modifier, so it uses something like 90% life on hit for the first strike, for the second strike (the 6-7 or w/e strikes) it uses like 10% life on hit per hit, and the final strike does 90% life on hit. Sweeping winds i dont think it actually lifesteals, but i could be completely wrong. Again you can turn on Healing and Damage numbers for a quick second to check it out ^.^
Uhm....Christ, really disappointing to be honest. The Secret Cow level was funny, i loved it. However, there we had HELL bovines, and Huge standing cows with giant halberds in massive herds with gloom and doom graphics...They just created a childs color book and put it on the screen, i really, really, dont like it :/
Nerfed means they make something good and make it worse (like "Nerfing" damage by 20%, or "nerfing" stun duration to 1 second from 2 seconds)
IAS = Increased Attack Speed, so if it is nerfed (in this case effected too? lol) it does not do as much (or has lesser values in general)
To add to that list:
PvP - Player Versus Player
PvM - Player Versus Monster (AI)
GF - Gold Find
AR - All Resist
What i guess i am trying to say is, being eased into all the skills is a good thing, try out all the skills, don't have a closed mind. Try out skills as you level to help you get a feel for your class.
Edit: Currently on US servers there is an 8% life, 96 dex, 26 cold resistance, 172 life on hit amulet i would recommend (95k atm) I did not realize you have 45k hp, i currently have 31k hp with a lot less defensive stats than you and survive fairly well (sometimes molten / plague cause problems but that is it, kiting pretty much solves the problem (kite -> serenity dps -> kite)
Ok, life steal is not included, it doesn't make my other point false. I would MUCH rather have a weapon with 1.7 APS with 1k DPS than a weapon with 1 APS and 1.1k DPS. The increased life on hit (almost twice as much, due to higher speed) is still something to take into consideration. So you still have to look at crit, increased crit damage, APS , and damage. THEN you can only look at stats...and also procs like Fear, Stun, Freeze, Life on Hit, etc.
Also, as others said above crit% and crit damage cannot be calculated in weapon damage because it depends on your other gear. IE: Crit damage% does more if you have more crit and vice versa.
Not necessarily, for me (a monk) i would take 600 LoH, and a 1.7 Attack Speed weapon over a weapon with 1 APS and no life on hit(or even with 600 life on hit) any day, even if they have slightly less damage. Just because something has higher damage doesn't mean it will be better for you.
Meh, that's how i feel like as a monk in inferno for act 2 atm, like everyone said "Oh, just farm gear and get over it" Which, is true. However, i HATE act 2, it is a melees hell. Monks have 0 slows (that are worth taking) and running in circles from the dozens of mobs that can kite you (not to mention when the elites get to have molten / fire chain / fast affixes on) it does become tedious and quite annoying. I am also pigeonholed into a build taking 4 defensive skills (Breath of Heaven, Blind, Serenity, Aura) and my other 2 skills are also for defense even if they aren't "defensive" (Sweeping winds with large AOE to put up resolve(a passive) and my spirit generator which increases armor). If i drop any of these skills i die just that much faster, not to mention if i try to go toe to toe with something without a cooldown i die. Resulting in me kitting for a tremendous amount of time. Currently i have about 500 resist, 6k armor, 26 block chance for 3k damage and anything past maghda is almost instant death with all of my defensive skills ;/
However, act 1 i can put up 5 offensive skills with 1 defensive skill (remaining with my defensive passives) and face tank everything without a second glance (enless its a really lame affix like Frozen /molten/plague/firechains; which i only have to kite a little bit) The jump in difficulty is just a little too intense for my taste. I liked diablo 2, mindlessly farming and trying out different builds all day. I can't stand being pushed into one singular defensive build that cannot kill anything and still cannot survive effectively.
Yes, this is what was showed at blizzcon. I am hoping it is very fast paced though. I would love to one shot, or almost one shot people. I can't stand WoW where i can sit on a healer for 30+ minutes and not drop his mana or hp below 50%, it gets a little ridiculous.