DiabloFans

ya the patch today basically means go back 1 act

yea overload dat server

it was going to be my first character, but after about 13 patches of nerfing its probably going to be my 2nd character now

epicenter barbarian

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WdcUhR!gTZ!bZbacc

leap attack into a huge mob, drop overcharge & rend as many times as possible, furious charge out and repeat. frenzy is to single target down whatever is left

If you want top tier end game gear, it will take you very very very long. furthermore, unique items won't necessarily be the best, and that inferno craftable rares have the potential to be better than unique items because in some cases they have more attributes (6 random).

it also depends on how the defense/armor mechanics work in d3, because you might actually inflicted less damage if there is some kind of absolute damage reduction.

for the sake of argument lets say you are fighting an armored monster that reduces whatever damage you deal to it by an absolute amount of 26 (ignoring any % damage reduction mechanic) and that you do 100 damage. So when you just punch him, you actually do 74 damage.

So if you use sss with indigo and crimson you would do the following damage:
crimson = (7 hits) *(234-26) = 1456 damage
indigo = (14 hits) * (130 -26) = 1456 damage
So in this situation any monster that reduces damage by an absolute amount of more than 26 than crimson is better, and if it reduces damage less than 26 indigo is better.

So it really depends on how much damage you actually do in combination to the defense of the monster: if you intend to use on tough monsters/bosses crimson and your actual hits just are scratches than crimson will probably do more damage; or if your hits do a significant amount of damage then indigo will probably be better.

Also keep in mind that those skill stats are for lv 60 characters with lv 7 runes attached to them, so this is the absolute best situation possible. Which is why I agree that the ED from exploding palm is probably a straight stack.

someone told me that spirit cap increases with level and a lv 13 monk has a cap of 200. I don't think exalted soul passive is worth it because becaon of ytar does increase spirit cost (50% increase so, sss/wol will be 75 spirit instead), but if spirit cap scales as you level an additional 100 will just be a drop in the bucket (unless its a typo and it should 100% instead)

and i noticed you didn't pick a mantra and i think you really need one as they all provide pretty good buffs, especially mantra of evasion or conviction. So i think you should trade off lashing tail kick for a mantra, because it won't be worth its spirit cost if there aren't any cooldowns. I think a good way would be to consider it as damage/per spirit.

Let say you do 100 damage
Lashing tail kick (with lv 7 rune) 312/37.5 = 8.32 damage/spirit
sss (no rune): 910/75 = 12.3 damage/spirit

therefore I think without cooldowns sss is better bang for your spirit than tail kick in the end late game for targeting a single strong monster/boss.

TLDR; don't think exalted soul is not worthit, any other passive will be better. you should use sss and trade tail kick for a mantra.

Does the monk's maximum spirit pool increase overtime with levels or is it static?

the biggest barrier in buying a new computer is the fact that technology changes so rapidly and increasingly complex its hard to know what hardware is actually better.

naming/jargon:
four digits; first signifies generation (first gen often omits this and is only three digits instead) the second digit is the most important and signifies performance, also intel icores, "k" signifies if the processor is unlocked for overclocking

i recommend looking a benchmark website as it will give you a good idea of the hardware you are looking at the give a good basis for comparing different hardware. link below has cpu & videocard benchmarks, i like this site causes if also gives you pricing from newegg and amazon, a preformance to price ratio and pricing trend

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

when picking out a computer the most important thing is the cpu/motherboard (as you will not likely change those parts until you decide to get a new computer because its likely that next gen cpus will have different sockets whereas ram and vid cards are pretty much standard), but end of the day, best deal will be to build it yourself (business that assemble customs pcs have to make money somehow).

here are my recommendations from newegg if you change you mind for a solid pc on a budget (hard drive not included:

Antec Three Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Galaxy 60XGH3HS3CUD GeForce GTX 465 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit DDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL
ASRock P67 PRO3 SE LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost)
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus

785.58 (tax + shipping w/o rebates)


*EDIT
just checked ecollegePC, if you do go with that site or any other custom pc site, you should at the very least, buy the vid card through newegg or some other site. as it will probably save you ~ 40 dollars and installing a vid card is pretty easy

Quote from Cybersuicide

I really hope there is the server AH becuase it is the only thing that keeps 75% of the players involved in the game. This is how the little guy can make money just as easy as the big guy who plays 15 hours a day. It also makes me wonder if you will only be able to get one or two artisians rather than all of them permanently. Kind of like professions in WoW.

last of what i heard, all the artisans are unlocked via quests. so you do have access to all of them permanently but its up to you whether you upgrade them or not. what i'm not sure if and i never found out, is if you lose temporary access to them when you start over in nightmare/hell; e.g. like how you lost deckard cain's ability to id items until you actually did the quest to save him again.

Quote from Hpnot1Q

Is it possible if 3 players kill a boss and 2 out of 3 players get 3 epix and the other one only gets 1 epic for example ?

i would assume so, as all drops are "random" so its very possible that you run through a dungeon and you get nothing as your friend gets a lot of stuff. it doesn't mean that the system is broken, but is a testament to the randomness of diablo, which is partly why they instituted a crafting mechanic, so you can kind of make your own gear to compensate/offset not finding enough of it.

Quote from snared04drummer

I f-ing hated the shako in Diablo II. I think Blizzard made it just to piss people off and force them to choose between a gay looking cap and good stats. I really hope there aren't gear choices like that in Diablo III.

lol, i think they mentioned that in one of the force podcasts. but i wore that trusty green shako with pride =)

that's just an example of item progression, i believe jay wilson said that there are 14 levels of item progression during the Q/A section of blizzcon.