I don't see what the issue is if wizards and WDs have builds that use signatures only. Don't we want items that change HOW we play?
The issue with Depth Diggers is that it highlights a fundamental weakness in resource generators and not a fundamental "OPness" with WD/Wiz signature spells.
God forbid someone gets Depth Diggers and Rhen'ho Flayer. They might actually have access to different builds based on Plague of Toads. Whoop dee fucking doo? I don't see what's so inherently bad about that. It breaks general paradigms. It works well with Carnevil. It works well with Mirrorball. It works well with Combination Strike. Aren't those kind of synergies what most players actually want from the game?
- shaggy
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Member for 11 years, 10 months, and 4 days
Last active Thu, Nov, 26 2015 02:41:53
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Jul 15, 2014shaggy posted a message on Depth Diggers Changes Explained, Fetish Counters, Tempest Rush Changes, Paragon Levels on UEE, Play Your Way ThursdaysPosted in: News
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Sep 17, 2013shaggy posted a message on Diablo III Auction House is Shutting Down on March 18, 2014Posted in: NewsQuote from maka
Wow, people are really coming out of the woodwork. Where were all you bastards when I was being outnumbered 20 to 1 on the whole AH issue?
I jest
The crowd that comments on the news is very different from the ones that post on the forums. In general, if you read news comments, it's basically the b.net crowd.
I, personally, don't give a shit if they remove the AH. I haven't used it for quite a while and I didn't plan on using it in the future. But I think without some way to facilitate trading that amounts to more than sitting in trade chat and competing with the chat bots.... that this is a myopic solution.
My biggest concern is that D2 was better-equipped to handle trading (better chat interface, named games, no need for battletags to join a game) than D3 currently is. That means, without some kind of improvement... trading in D3 is going to be worse than D2 and, likely, going to amount to forum use.
One thing I have always taken issue with is any "trading" solution that requires alt-tabbing. It's lazy, sloppy, and something that was appropos in 1998 but is completely unacceptable in 2013.
It has no bearing on how I play, but I can clearly see this as a major stumbling point. If someone chooses to trade an item it shouldn't take a feat of herculean strength to arrange a trade. -
Jun 24, 2013shaggy posted a message on Archon on Demon Hunters and Powerful Builds, The Art of TeknoKyo Customs, Curse Weekly RoundupPosted in: NewsQuote from Zero(pS)
Great video from Archon.
It's one of the things Blizzard should really have done early on. They probably didn't take the "fix" route because of the outcry from having things like DH's Smokescreen and Monk's Serenity nerfed like that.
500 kids cry in a forum that Blizzard always "nerfs everything" (and that's usually because everything else is in line and working as intended, as Archon himself pointed out) and suddenly we're stuck with "broken" builds for almost a year
Something dawned on me the other day. When you sub to WoW you get forum access. D3 has no sub so you basically have forum access forever, factoring out banned people obviously.
That means that purchasing D3 (or acquiring a key somehow) basically gives you the ability to troll the fuck out of the official forums without actually having played. It's kinda the polar opposite of the people who claimed they quit and then were "outted" by the armory.
Now I'm not saying that people who quit have worthless opinions, but it does seem more likely that people who are actively playing the game will not go the full-on troll route. So I can only wonder how many of the people on the official forums are 1) just raging because it's the "cool" thing to do, or 2) haven't actually touched the game in months.
It's rather a shame that Blizzard never took action on WotB and Archon from the get go and instead was held hostage by the same morons who claimed that the IAS nerf would make IAS useless. A lot of people get on Blizzard for playing "daddy knows best" with us, but I really think that sometime they need to just tell people to STFU and deal with it because not making those particular changes due to a handful of people who whine over OP things being nerfed... well that's detrimental to the game for the rest of us. -
May 30, 2013shaggy posted a message on Diablo III: Book of Tyrael Coming This October, CMs and Their Personal D3 Accounts, Titan Project Delayed Until 2016Posted in: NewsQuote from Buu
I saw that coming when Rob Pardo "MOVED" Jay Wilson out of Diablo 3, and weeks later was confirmed that was in Project Titan Team.
Shortly after Titan get a reset just like the ones he did to Diablo 3 for five years.
Keep him there for long enough and Titan will be a crap released in the next decade.
Project Titan just got jaywilsoned. Guesses of when Rob Pardo will commit Hara Kiri for his decision?
The Diablo 3 reset came directly from Vivendi and it was because they were not going to have Blizzard developing two MMORPGs at the same time.
They hired Jay Wilson AFTER Vivendi told Blizzard that the D3 MMORPG was not going to fly and to fix their shit. Jay Wilson had absolutely zero to do with D3s restart.
Just to cite that Vivendi shitcanned the original D3 game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blizzard_North
On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North. A key reason for the closure was Blizzard North's poor development of what was to be Diablo III which did not meet the expectations of Vivendi.
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May 4, 2013shaggy posted a message on The Making Of: Diablo, Blue Posts, Community Commentary: Why Can't We Be Friends?, Mephisto's Visage Fan Arthttp://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo/creditsPosted in: News
There were plenty of "underlings" who made Diablo 1 happen. It may have been the vision of 1, or 3, people, but they had tons of help. -
May 1, 2013shaggy posted a message on Watch Tower and Weeping Hollow Density Adjusted, The Process of Adding Changes, Game Devs Don't Work on the Website, Console andPosted in: NewsQuote from maka
Ridiculous. The dude "just" wants to be able to WW from one end of the zone to the other, and is upset that now he can't. And the crazy thing is that Blizzard is taking its feedback from people that get outraged that "sometimes there is an empty screen between mob clumps". OH NOES!!!
Yeah that's basically the exact same thought I had. Sadly this thread exhibits the same issue with two people whining about a nerf to Watch Tower as if Blizzard didn't just spend months buffing 90% of the game.
Evil Blizzard. Shame on them for putting in some very minor nerfs with the massive amounts of buffs that this patch has. They're obviously trying to ruin our fun with 1.0.8. I swear some people in this community would probably leave their hands and feet in the bed when they woke up if they didn't have wrists and ankles. The stupidity is sometimes overwhelming.
It's pretty sad that Blizzard has to continue to waste time by repeating that the web team isn't the team that develops the game and that the console team is different and this and that. It's boring, it's old, it's something that anyone with a brain knows. Yet, instead of meaningful dialogue they have to waste their time addressing the total morons out there. -
Apr 19, 2013shaggy posted a message on Public Test Realm: Patch 1.0.8 Notes (Updated 4/18)Posted in: News
I wasn't aware that 4% HP/sec, 20% armor, and 20% resist all was even in the same realm of awesomeness as Overawe is. Hell, even WDs have a ridiculously-strong DPS buff. To say that Inspiring Presence + Warcry + Impunity is the "best" buff is severely... stupid.
It's good that Barbs get a solid defensive group buff. It's certainly better than Mantra of Healing, but it's hardly the absolute best buff in the game. Frankly, I think they should encourage people to bring synergies to groups anyway. Sacrifice a little personal DPS for a very large group survivability buff, or a very big DPS buff.
I know I typically don't run BBV on my WD, but every time I'm in a group I switch it in for something. -
Apr 18, 2013shaggy posted a message on Datamined PTR 1.0.8 Class ChangesI'm pretty sure this thread has 10-ish people who don't even know what War Cry is.Posted in: News
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Apr 3, 2013shaggy posted a message on Developer Journal: Multiplayer ImprovementsPosted in: NewsQuote from maka
The tags going onto PTR are Questing, Full Act Clear, Keywarden, and PvP.
Hmm.....Questing and Full Act Clear are pretty similar, and none of them are really what I would consider "farming".
I would heartily suggest that you provide that feedback through the PTR channels as well. I'm sure that Blizzard is eager to hear what "tags" we want, which ones we'd use, etc.
After all, these things are, indeed, one of the reasons these patches take a stop at the PTR first. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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If you're p1000, and you have an amulet without primary stat, you're still going to have up to 750 less primary stat than someone else who is p1000 and has primary stat on their amulet. There isn't any "making up" for it. It's just a matter of what's best. 950 is still more than 200. 1150 is still more than 400. Regardless of Paragon level, you're still going to be short by a certain amount, not to mention that those levels require a pretty hefty amount of XP. The only question that needs to be asked is if primary stat is "worth it" for your build on a five-prop amulet.
That being said, this is where five-prop amulets (and rings) come into play. If you don't want to sacrifice stats, that option exists.
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The fans more or less demanded that /players be reintroduced.
Jay gave us Monster Power. Josh revised that, basically, into what we have today.
People criticizing that aspect of D3 are suffering from nothing more than selective memories because the way D3 does it isn't fundamentally any different from how D2 did it.
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Consider it vs even Sun Keeper...
Lower base damage (since it's 1.4 APS vs 1.2 APS)
Up to 30% less elite damage
And, for that, you gain 10% int. Why? So you can overkill those pesky white monsters 10% harder and, still, kill elites slower? Noooo thank you.
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It makes me violently angry when people talk about "longevity" as if it's something that can, and should, be the #1 priority of the developers. Just reduce the drop rates so that everyone has to play 2,000 hours before they get good stuff. No! Don't do that! Make me keep playing because it's fun, not because you've created a Sisyphean task for me to complete.
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For the record, I know for a fact that Jesus was actually a Korean zombie who had a foot fetish and liked to be cuckolded while listening to Hootie and the Blowfish CDs because Steve Jobs went back in time to invent the CD player for our Lord and Savior. Furthermore, his mother, Mary, was actually a transgendered Puerto Rican rococo dancer whose stage name was Slutty Miguel whose favorite food was sushi and was also an avid fan of the WNBA. Jesus also had a half-brother from a legal adoption his father and gay life-partner (Stephen) had before Joseph realized he liked unshaven women more than oily men. His brother, 34 years his elder, and in fact older than both his parents, was named Evgeni and he liked to play Nintendo but never really understood why the fuck Battletoads had to be SO FUCKING HARD.
Don't ask me for proof. Just believe. Inhale deeply and believe.
/troll off
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Why in the world would you want to slog through garbage spells that are shitty-on-purpose so that you can appreciate the good ones? That's masochistic and it also means that stuff like icebolt weren't anything more than filler spells until you got to X level when you unlock <spell that's better in every circumstance>.
I don't want items that suck. I don't want skills that suck. I don't want the philosophy behind upgrading my character to be "hey, this item doesn't suck, and you've spend 30 levels getting nothing but things that do suck... so isn't that great?" We already have that with legendaries and it SUCKS. No one gives two shits about an Angel Hair Braid. They're speedbumps. They're fodder for enchanting and crafting. They are, by design, exactly the things that you say make character progression awesome in ARPGs.... yet the community absolutely hates them.
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Your tables bring all the boys to the thread.
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The OP didn't test anything in a scientific fashion so his conclusions are clouded with heaps of ambiguity.
Just switching Sun Keeper for Azurewrath involves a lot of variables and even if you kill faster with Azurewrath it's logically wrong to conclude it's because of IAS (or APS). As someone from Reddit suggested, maybe it's just the high chance to freeze preventing monsters from escaping Soul Harvest range as much. As others pointed out only doing 5-8 rifts per setup isn't really enough to compensate for the hugely-random nature of the rifts either.
The simplest way to test this is to keep your gear static. Do not change any items. Remove all paragon points in int and all paragon points from the Offense tab. Then test each stat individually (int, CDR, IAS, CHC, CHD) with 50 points. Do this across roughly 50 rifts each, which should account for most of the randomness of rift tilesets, monster selection, and monster density. Then come back and give us information on each clear time (this is important so we can see outliers), as well as average clear time for the following:
Control group (0 points in int, CDR, IAS, CHC, CHD)
50 points in int (250 int), 0 points in everything else
50 points in CDR (10% CDR), 0 points in everything else
50 points in IAS (10% IAS), 0 points in everything else
50 points in CHC (5% CHC), 0 points in everything else
50 points in CHD (50% CHD), 0 points in everything else
With that information we could actually begin to evaluate how worthwhile each stat is. Now, much like WoW simming, some of the stats are going to be dependent on the player's current gear setup, so it would be helpful if someone who were to do this were using fairly-representative items. For instance, if a player had only 5% CHC on their gear, the value of CHC would be disproportionately higher than someone who had a "normal" amount of each stat.
Even with that shortcoming, that method will more closely isolate the variable (the stat which you're increasing) as opposed to just randomly swapping in items and doing a handful of rifts. There's simply too many variables which aren't controlled at all in the OPs data for it to be considered anything other than a hypothesis. Lump on top of that how most of the changes are statistically-insignificant given the outrageous margin of error from improper testing (his "base case" is 7:19, and everything except one scenario fell between +12 seconds and -19 seconds), and it's a wonder why this is even being discussed.
There are ways to gather information. What the OP did is not the correct way. When you don't gather information scientifically it really hurts your ability to draw conclusions from that data.
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I've found that rift density and monster types play a much more significant role in my clear times. For instance, if I get Corpse Raisers and Maggot Broods, I'm more likely to finish faster than if I have Mallet Lords, Morlu Incinerators, Death Maidens, and things that like to run away. Hopefully multiple rifts covered for that somewhat, but even by your outline I'm not sure that you isolated IAS adequately.
What would be interesting is if you had 0% IAS from paragon and did 50 rifts like that and then added a full 50 points for 10% IAS and did another 50 rifts like that. No other item swaps. Just 10% IAS difference.
EDIT
I'd just like to echo a lot of the responses you've received on Reddit as well. There are a ton of variables just on the weapon swap. Azurewrath vs Sun Keeper isn't simply a matter of IAS. There are differing base attack speeds, different stats, etc. It's very possible, as someone suggested, that a rather high chance to freeze helps Jades out because it keeps monsters grouped up better for SH. Who knows?
There is no doubt that 10% IAS > 0% IAS. If you're not sacrificing anything, in the case of Paragon, then surely it's going to help you clear faster. But it's a matter of how much faster you clear. You really should be doing this test with the EXACT SAME gear setup each time and 0% Paragon IAS for many runs and then 10% Paragon IAS for many runs. Demonstrate what value 10% IAS has in terms of total clear times across MANY runs, not just 5-8 per item swap. It will give a significantly-clearer picture one way or the other.
You've simply jumbled so many variables together with gear swaps that it's impossible to have any reasonable conclusion. One of the basic principles of attempting to evaluate a hypothesis is to isolate your variable. Without doing that it adds considerable "noise" to the results of the testing.
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I'm OK with BiS items, but I think it's healthier for the game if they're on a spec-by-spec basis. I'm not fond of items that are across-the-board BiS. It makes me think back to Enigma in D2 and why it was bad.
That being said RoRG is particularly difficult to balance because its bonus means that it has to be balanced against other rings but that every other slot has to be balanced against itself. One of the reasons that Zunis and JH WDs use RoRG is because both Mask of Jeram and Quetzalcoatl are significantly stronger than the set helms. So even if RoRG was balanced against other rings, it would still be "necessary" for those builds because there's a fundamental power differential between those helms.
Allowing it to drop in any act would be a decent start. The fact that such a powerful item is obtainable only from bounties in a specific act means that bounties in other acts are, instantly, less-interesting. I've started to do all A1-4 bounties per game now instead of just doing A1 bounties and it's actually more enjoyable because I'm repeating less content. It keeps everything feeling "fresher."
I can do this because, at the moment, I'm not looking for a RoRG. It's liberating. It makes the game feel significantly more fun even though bounties aren't as rewarding as they should be as compared with rifts. Adding variety is the single biggest thing they can do to encourage longevity. RoRG, unfortunately, removes variety.
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By defining a correct way to play, a best area to farm, and being implicitly OK with limiting options he rubber-stamped the notion that going forward it's OK to have a best way to play and it's OK with everything else being inferior-by-design. That's why you keep hearing people asking for "incentives" to play seasons or "incentives" to do achievements. Most players don't need "incentives" to play hardcore, or ladders, or do achievements. We either play those modes or do those things because we like them.... or we ignore them.
The whole "incentive" bit is basically players keying in on Josh's philosophy that there should be one "best" way to play and everything else should languish in its wake and, more or less, begging for his blessing that their chosen playstyle will be what he picks as the #1 super excellent mega farming place. I mean there was a thread a few weeks ago with some guy saying that paragon LEVELS should roll over to standard from ladder... levels, not XP. He had a few other suggestions, but it was clear that he didn't want fairness, he just wanted ladders to be declared the "right" way to play and everyone else to get a big middle finger.
Unfortunately, this mentality is pervasive in the community right now because the developers clearly don't have the know-how, or maybe just the guts, to stop that train in its tracks.
Achievements do reward you. Achievement points are a point of ePeen for some and banner rewards are things that give you a degree of exclusivity without altering character power.
Every "reward" in the game doesn't have to make you crit harder. It's a shame that people can't do things because they find them fun. If it doesn't have +5 damage attached to it then it's garbage.
If you're not really interested in ePeen or cosmetic rewards then achievements, simply, aren't for you. And that's OK. Not everything has to be for everyone. The sooner the playerbase realizes and accepts this the sooner we get past this shit where everyone thinks that everything should be rewarded with character power and we can move away from this narcissistic "I should be rewarded for playing the game this way" mentality.
We should all be rewarded, relatively equally, for playing the game. Whether we have to restart on death, restart every X months, or never restart. Whether we're farming X, Y, or Z. Whether we're hunting achievements or not. If you want achievements to be "more rewarding" then the problem is that most achievements cannot be done in a rift... and since rifts are "the best way to play" that means that most achievements involve playing the game the "shitty" way.
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BLIZZ B CLOSIN FORUM ON <date> ... MUST B FORESHADOWIN SUMTHIN ... *drools*
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Open that same cache on the PTR 50 times, though, and if it always contains a RoRG, you might just be on to something.