Quote from RiffSphere»
Everyone knows that paragon points are strong. The worst levels are 600-800, since they only add a little power per 4 levels.
The increased MF, GF and xp/kill I've never heard, and I'm not sure about it. It used to give MF and GF in vanilla. Then again, only 10% of your MF adds to legendaries, and at high paragon (where it would matter) nobody cares about gold anymore
Also, as paragon gets higher, the items get stronger. In S1 I think they ended around Grift 50, S2 Grift 60, now they are passing 70 already, with not that much more paragon (reset in season). They introduced ancient items and the new sets that multiplies your damage by a lot, and now F+R rings. So the paragon value is getting less every patch.
bolded the important part, the original poster doesn't mean that paragon points directly increase these in game stats (although gold find it does very marginally), he/she meant that over the course of a gameplay session, you will find more magic items/gain more gold from kills/gain more xp per hour based on your kill speed with a higher paragon level than another player 100+ levels below you on average, which is entirely true and one of the biggest issues with the game right now from a gameplay perspective, player power is far far too wide of a chasm now in relation to those that have the means to farm daily Grifts 45-50 speed running wearing xp gain gear, relative to those who have not got this option, and as a result of this huge discrepancy a large portion of the playerbase that push for solo ranks have given up playing the game due to the inequality that exists between those that have managed to get stupidly high paragon levels and those of us who are still in the "above average but nowhere near relevant enough to matter" range (i'm talking those who are 1200+ compared to my ~760 or so).
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I agree that Blizzard are very unlikely to actually do anything about Botting, I'm just saying that if they wanted to they could, and I don't mean banning, I mean making it technically impossible for bots to play the game would be very easy, if they genuinely wanted to get rid of the botting issue once and for all. I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that the use of botting is quite widespread and/or has been used by high profile players for a long time. If that is the case, getting rid of botting may have significant negative financial repercussions for Blizzard, and it *may be* one reason why they act like it isn't there. I sure would love it if a player who got invited to one of their tavern talk videos actually rasied questions about it what their response would be. I suspect they would sweep it under the carpet and try to act like it is a non issue.
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However I do think it can be very risky for new players who don't know about hacked 10K players as they can find themselves getting massively boosted before they have even had a chance to decide how they want to play the game. It can ruin the experience for them before they ever really got started causing them to simply quit D3 for something else -I've seen it happen.
What I'd like to see is the ability to "filter out" players who are (x) paragon levels higher (or for that matter lower) than you, so that they simply can't join your games, and you can't join theirs.
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I can add some insight into Q1 as I've been running two multishot fire builds, a Windforce/Strongarms/Evasive Fire|focus strictly for solo and Odysseys End/Entangling Shot|Justice is served for multi.
My purely annecdotal evidence is that the Windforce build is stronger, even though the bow has less dps. It certainly feels as if it is much easier to proc iceblink with evasive fire than it is to proc Odysseys Ends +% debuff, and I think the reasons are that you need to aim the thing better and the slow + knockback of Iceblink and Windforce combined seems superior for crowd control.
However in mltiplayer where you have a zdps knockback can mess up the WD and I think Odysseys End comes into its own. I tend to run Toxin gem which combined with bow is giving a 35% debuff to any other dps characters in the party. Hitting things and proccing the bow is much easier when there is someone pulling and controlling the mobs.
ps. I deal with reflect damage by swearing alot. In all seriousness, I think it is a broken game mechanic (at high grift levels) and at the very least players who choose defensive stats on their gear should be better rewarded/protected from this type of damage (and others) than they currently are.
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As far as I'm aware Area Damage is the preferred roll. The reduced cool down value will depend on your other skills (I assume wolf or bat and preperation) but half the time I forget to pop these straight after cooldown anyway, so human error is a factor, whereas area damage is a straight 20% chance to proc, and with lightning you are hitting so often I imagine it procs a lot. Also works well with the idea that mobs are being pulled together by a zdps class..
in the end I guess it depends on how many cooldown skills you are running and whether you are runnning solo or in a group.
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It is probably my favorite gem at the moment as for a Demon Hunter playing solo, it forms part of a critical strategy for crowd control (along with a Templar decked out with Eun-Jang-Do or Azurewrath + lightning stun and lots of attack speed)
I do wonder at what point gems that can scale infinitely will overtake it? At the moment I'm running Iceblink/Trapped and Zeis, but I have a level 57 Toxin and if I kept pushing it up I can't help but feel the damage potential it offers might at some point overtake Iceblink (same with Pain Enhancer).
at the moment though, that crowd control (and synergy with Trapped and Cull the Weak) just feels too important.
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Yes, there are certain mob types and Rift Guardians that make survivability a real issue. In fact Blizzard themselves admitted they need to imrpove the effectiveness of defensive stats on their latest play your way stream. They also made some comments about Rift Guardians. For example Orlash is a very tough boss, but to be honest he is a boss that requires you to really "play". Many of the bosses simply either one shot you when they teleport on top of you, but have no real gameplay mechanic, and simply require some luck that they get stuck in a corner tanking with your follower(s) etc at which point you just hit the fire button pumping out as much damage as you can and not even moving. It is hardly what you could call great gameplay. So anyway, they need to look at the cheap "one shot" kills and they need to imrpove the effectiveness of defensive stats to that they create a genuinely stronger character.
btw, I am make a lot of criticisms but I do love the game. I just think it could be better and I do struggle to understand some of their design decisions.
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So I think I'm going to just jump in and make a couple of comments about the game that I really do wish was different.
I make the comments within the context the I freaking love the game, but feel it has some genuinely serious issues that undermine what would otherwise be an almost perfect game.
1) Balance and progression. The endgame for Diablo 3 is fantastic, and has very long legs, to the point where I feel the game only really began after hitting level 70 and the grind began to kick into high gear. But what does end game really mean? essentially it means pushing your way into ever higher GRIFTS and to a lesser degree speed farming T6 with ever increasing efficiency (not really a priority for me but some people put a lot of effort into this aspect of the game, if only so they get maximum reward for the time they put in, which is understandable). If we had no GRIFTS, I would have stopped playing this game as it would have felt like there was no longer anything left really to do. The point is we need to therefore look carefully at GRIFTS and the experience they provide. So the problem I see is that GRIFTS define success in a very limited way. How fast can you rip though it and kill the rift guardian? The whole way you gear your character is based on achieving this goal. I can only really speak to the Demon Hunter class (I do also have a monk but don't play it much) but I am "forced" to aspire to a very small handful of builds. In all cases the builds need to achieve the same thing. As high a DPS as possible. The devs must surely know everyone chases GRIFTS with favourable RNG that allows their high DPS to blast through the GRIFT fast enough to beat the Boss. For patch 2.2 when I went to the UE build, I happened to get a lot of ancient gear that favoured toughness. It was what the gear was offering me so I went with it. What I found though is that all that toughness counted for almost nothing. It made me a bit less squishy against weaker attacks, but other than that lightning; jailer; reflect etc were all still blowing me away, and of course I had less firepower as my attributes were going into defensive stats.
So it ends up being the same for everyone, you build a high dps glass cannon and go hunting for GRIFTS with sweet RNG. I think what we need is variation in GRIFT objectives. Keep what we already have because it is not wrong or bad, but there has to be other challenges that favour other sorts of builds. What about a GRIFT that rewards you for not dying so much and has no timer?!? Of course before they could even go down that route they need to take a serious look at the way monsters currently do damage, if only to make a tough character a viable build. What I mean by that is I don't define toughness as the ability to spawn invincibility skills like smokescreen permanently etc. What I mean is if someone builds a character that choses vit; armour and resist all over +damage; resource cost reduction etc then that should have a meaningful impact on how that character can handle damage in the higher GRIFTS and currently that is totally not the case.
If you take a look at how you level, after hitting 70 all you get is paragons. Other than that, it is all about getting the best gear you can (that has fixed stat limits) and then grinding your gems up, one step at a time. I feel that when you level your character could grow in a more meaningful way, and thus scale with the GRIFTS better. I don't want to get bogged down in how this could be achieved but I believe it is absolutely doable and would be better than the current model. I understand the dev team say Diablo is all about the loot, but even with that being the case, just switch character progression over to item progression. ie. why not allow you to incrementally upgrade your gear?
2) RNG. I'll be honest, I find this aspect of the game very addicting and not in a good way. Obsessively gambling for better gear with Kadala is a game playing mechanic I'm hooked on but don't actually feel adds to the game itself. I have so many examples of how RNG creates a miserable game experience, but as a simple one who else has had 60% chance to upgrade a gem and had 3 failures in a row? That shit really burns and that is only a trivial example. What about trying to reroll an attribute on some gear and getting 15% + damage on every single skill you don't want it on? I actually like RNG and would hate to see it removed from the game, but the way it stands now feels very wrong to me. Rewarding effort should not be left in the hands of RNG to the degree it currently is. Trying to farm gear by gambling Kadala or endlessly doing bounties/T6/RIFTS/GRIFTS until RNG plays nice may appeal to my obsessive compulsive disorder but it is not in itself great game design. What I'd like to see is a way to chase targeted items of interest. If I want a Calamity for example, I think there should be a set quest (bounty or whatever) that allows me to acquire that item. Sure, leave the roles on it in the hands of RNG, but for the love of Jesus at least give me a way to reliably acquire one rather than just dumb luck through endless grinding/gambling. I mean is this a game or a glorified poker machine?!? Things have really only gotten worse with the U.E. build as it needs +discipline so getting great weapons that are rendered rubbish because of bad RNG has only increased with this new patch.
3) Sets. I know they seem like a great idea and every new patch brings a flurry of excitement as people redefine their character classes with the new kits to see how much more powerful they can make them but you know what? I don't actually enjoy the UE. game style as much as I enjoyed the 2.1 maurader build. When 2.2 went live I stayed cold M6 for a while; switched to iceblink and focus and restraint and I freaking loved this build. It felt very tactical and I love being able to slow things down and control the battlefield. I also enjoyed the heavy hitting style of using cluster arrow, it made your character feel very powerful. Sadly when I tried U.E. there was no real way back, as it jumped half a dozen GRIFT levels. They say they want you to "play your way" but the sets they create are telling you to play it their way. U.E. is very restrictive as it locks you into multishot; gear with max disc; and focus and restraint kill off the last chance of creativity by being best I slot and forcing you to dump RORG. And sure I know you can use Kridershot/Meticulous Bolts and spam balls of lightning, but even if I had an ancient Krider with 12 disc the game play just does not look like fun. As the excitement of the new patch dies down, I'm left feeling like we are going in the wrong direction with this game in terms of sets, which simply means your character dies and is reborn every new patch, sort of like Dr Who when he regenerates. I would have been much happier if M6 had not been comparatively gimped in relation to the new king of the hill, so that playing U.E. is a choice, not a necessity, based around the performance metric.
So what is the solution? I think they need to take a very hard look at sets; especially 6 set bonuses, as they kill creativity and render a very large amount of their existing gear pointless. Hell even some of their new gear is killed off by the set gear. I really liked Convention of the Elements but I just can't use it as F and R outperforms it, plain and simple.
In summary, perhaps if they stuck with 4 set bonuses; allowed better character or gear progression and offered more than one way of beating a GRIFT than just pure speed, didn't base your progression so heavily on grinding/gabling for gear/RNG this game could be even better than it currently is?!?
Just my 2 cents. Please don't hate, I love the game, obviously I'm passionate about it or I would not have written a rant like this. ps. I am a PS4 player, and tend only to play solo, group games are filled with hacked items. I'm an older gamer and really don't have time for all that silliness.
Peace.
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I think it is important to recognise the difference between honest and constructive criticism and "whining". I'm sure everyone who agrees with this video, or most of its content still loves the game. I know I do. The point is, as someone who sinks a lot of hours into it, it is only natural that you come to recognise aspects of the game that add nothing, or in fact detract from the enjoyment. Several of the points he listed were all things I myself have experienced, and wondered why on earth the devs don't address the issue, in light of the fact that they so actively support and patch the game on an on-going basis.
Along those lines, I would also like to recognise and thank Blizzard for doing so. It is most unusual and they have no real obligation to continue to evolve the game the way they do. Other software houses would have closed up shop on this game a long time ago and moved their dev team onto new projects. Clearly they have an underlying philosophy of on going support for their games (and fan base) and for that I have to be very grateful. It does not change the fact that there are issues with the game that I feel should have been sorted out a long time ago.
There are also some fundamental design issues (yes I'm talking about the obsession with RNG) that I think this game would be much better without -however that is almost another topic as it relates to the basic concepts underlying the game itself.