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- Bagstone
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Member for 11 years, 7 months, and 5 days
Last active Mon, Apr, 29 2024 03:55:35
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Jan 10, 20144
Jaetch posted a message on Stats need to be dynamicNote: I read like every other post here because I was mostly fixated on page 1 when I was typing this up. Anyway, highly doubt something like this will happen, even if you change the names of str-dex-int. This will more or less undo everything the developers are trying to accomplish with smart drops and what the individual classes mean for players. Shaggy covered this. The vast majority of players will not try to deviate from what the class is intended to be. The vast majority will want high dex and vit on their DHs, even if you decide to tell them, hey, you can get more regen from intelligence, or gain average damage from strength (or whatever arbitrary bonus is assigned to their non-main stat). Blizzard likes using the phrase, "fulfilling the fantasy." If you picked a WD, you anticipate commanding a horde of creatures to do you bidding, curse enemies with debuffs from afar, and attack with deadly voodoo skills while your pets act as meat shields. The standard player will not be picking a WD to stand solo in front of a target and tank indefinitely (cough, CoB WDs). I spoke to Wyatt Cheng about this at BlizzCon. I used my Ninja Wizard build as an example (funny thing about the Ninja Wizard build: it was so successful that I've had people contact me thinking that I was playing an unknown D3 class; they really thought it was a ninja class). Just how many wizards do you see playing this game stack 1K+ dexterity along with near 3K intelligence? How many monks want the extra AR from intelligence and decide to stack the stat on their Won Khim Laus? How many barbs do you see stack double dex-str for the dodge instead of str-vit? Sure, there will be players who dare to be different. But in the end, a barb is a sturdy warrior and represents strength. A DH is a fluid, agile hunter and represents dexterity. A wizard is a mystical spellcaster and represents intelligence. Those are the archetypes. Even if you give strength the chance to block (or again, whatever arbitrary secondary bonus you want to assign it), the vast majority of players won't give it a second look because they won't care about being able to block damage because the wizard is a ranged spellcaster who does not want to get touched by enemies to begin with. If you want to dare and be different, you use a shield. And how many wizards do you see running a shield full time? Not many. It doesn't fulfill the fantasy of being a wizard. I mentioned the conversation with Wyatt. We're focused on smart drops now. The developers received the feedback already. Over a year's worth of feedback. Enough with the non-main stats that your class doesn't "need." No more intelligence on quivers. DHs don't care for it and don't want to do anything with it. One DH player out of 100 may. But too bad for that one player. Blizzard is not going to baby that one player and upset the other 99. To come close to satisfying 100% of players will require ridiculous man hours and resources to endlessly balance every little detail and stat to make sure there are enough options to make everyone happy. Not everyone will be happy. That's fact. There will always be dissatisfaction. By having non-main stats rolled onto items when the majority of players clearly don't want them to be there will not make people happy. Make do with all the many new primary stats that Blizzard is already introducing in RoS. Like Bagstone, I agree that things are looking pretty good for build diversity. There are already quite a few theorycrafters who are fairly well-known for their work in the community already in the Beta. Count on them to break the game between now and the release date (hell, I know a DH who managed to achieve immortality on Torment VI. Guaranteed some tweaks to come for DH's Smokescreen). At the end of the day, I think more options would be great. However, changing how core stats like strength, dexterity and intelligence work for classes that don't normally use them doesn't "fit." To force these stats to fit will require overhauling the smart drop system, undoing all of the developers' work, throwing in the extensive rebalancing across all items and classes to accommodate the changes, so on and so forth. I don't see it as a feasible idea and I don't see it happening for this game. @Enty - Back to renaming str-dex-vit to something more tuned to a class: that sounds great and awesome and I'd love to be able to customize my wizard like that. But again, that'll involve shredding the smart drop system. It'll also negatively affect players who don't want str-dex-int roll on their pair of gloves. Then you have to rip apart the Mystic to allow her to do something else besides rerolling a single stat. Then you'll have to look at the other classes and assign different properties to each non-main stat and make them work for certain ways the class can gear. Okay, so my wizard wants dex for bonus frost. Then what does dex do for a barb? What will that same dex do for a crusader? How will these stats affect the existing skills? Now you have to balance that with the existing skill bonus properties that already roll on gear. What's too much? What will you scale down here in order to accommodate the new stats? Do you want to throw non-main stats back into paragon points? They used to be there, but Blizzard took them out in favor of something more useful to the general population of players. What if a wizard wants arcane but strength gives fire and dex gives frost? What if you want to trade this now frost glove to a WD? Will it remain frost or will it magically change properties to suite the WD? What if the WD wants to trade it to another class? Now think about the developers who have to come up with the system. It could work. Okay, now they have to bring all these templates to the actual programmers responsible for making these ideas a reality. Time and again ideas do not become reality because of technological limitations. I smell a major headache with these altered stats because you really have to rip apart primary stats from the ground up and tune numerous other stats just to make these new stats viable yet not underpowered nor overpowered. ANYWAY, major TL;DR - Doubt revamping the main stats system will happen. You have to change so many things and undo so much work that has currently been poured into itemization (creating it, tuning it, fixing it, reintroducing it) that it'll create far more headaches than relieve.Posted in: Diablo III General Discussion -
Jan 9, 20141
miles_dryden posted a message on The trading issue for ROSPosted in: Diablo III General DiscussionQuote from GDI
They have built this game so that items represent 100% of your characters power and skill. Just because you have no friends in the game doesn'tQuote from miles_dryden
I just don't see why you need to be able to trade with people to have fun killing demons.
Ok, now I'm certain I didn't get my point across. My point is this: whether or not you can trade has no effect on whether or not killing demons is fun, regardless if you mean solo or coop. Killing demons by yourself should be fun and rewarding, even if you can't take the items that aren't good for you and give them to other people. Killing demons with your friends should be its own reward, not an opportunity to gear each other up. If playing the game isn't fun because all your drops are crap, then that's a problem. Taking BoA out of the game without also introducing some type of new trading system AND/OR improving drops is not the solution to that problem. At this point, it is much more reasonable to expect improvements to itemization than a complete back-pedal on Blizzard's philosophy regarding trading. If we get the improvements to itemization, that's awesome. If, down the road, Blizzard decides to give trading another shot, that's also awesome. BoA itself is not the issue.Quote from shaggy
No, it's the very right solution. BoA and smart drops were supposed to improve the experience. For me, that meant that the struggles of playing self-found on live would be ERADICATED in this system. It meant that I wouldn't be constantly fighting for an upgrade (can we admit that an 80k DPS WD has plenty of room for improvement?). It meant that I wouldn't be finding tons of useless items.Quote from miles_dryden
In short, if you want trading because you honestly think the act of trading is fun or because you like to socialize in this game, then you and I simply don't agree. If you want trading because you think the itemization in this game is still not up to par, then I think you are asking for the wrong solution to the problem, at least at this point in time.
By "killing demons", I don't mean doing nothing but mindless grinding. The game could absolutely use more variety. Rifts and bounties are a great step in that direction, and I'd love to see more stuff like that. Ladder and PVP are other potentials; I'm not crazy about them, but that's really a whole other discussion. If you want more ways to play the game, that's cool. If you think trading, by itself, is fun and that your experience is somehow worse simply because trading isn't there, then I just don't agree with you. I don't think we need trading for getting loot and improving your character to be rewarding, and I don't think insisting on bringing trade back to the game simply to have more options is a good attitude. More options /= better.What I'm saying is that I don't disagree with the idea that "killing monsters is fun." I disagree with the follow-through on that that says "therefore everyone should do it at all times when playing Diablo 3." It's that absolutist attitude that has directly led to this whole situation. It's black, or white, but not grey. The insistence on treating this as black or white only is stunning coming from Blizzard. They make the big bucks to come up with creative solutions that appeal to a large fanbase. This solution is anything but creative. It's punitive and divisive. -
Jan 9, 20142
OptimusPrime posted a message on "Thank you for calling Gamestop..."Posted in: Diablo III General DiscussionGamestop: "How may I help you today?"
Me: "Hey are you selling the collector's edition of the expansion for Diablo 3, Reaper of Souls?"
Gamestop: "Let me check for you (clicking noises, some kid crying in the background about being good enough to deserve an Xbox One) yes sir, we are selling it."
Me: "Awesome! Since you are a brick & mortar location, will you be having a midnight release?"
Gamestop: (laughs) "Its not that big of a game, so probably no...."Me: "You didn't get into the Beta did you?"
Gamestop: "Actually, no. I didn't."
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Jan 9, 2014
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miles_dryden posted a message on The trading issue for ROSPosted in: Diablo III General DiscussionQuote from shaggy
It is? My experience on the PTR is that "farming" is actually even more boring than it currently is on live. My experience is that none of this hand-waving has really worked and that the heart of the game hasn't truly improved. When I got on the PTR I expected to be blown away with the experience. Clans are awesome. Skill balancing is great. The new items (particularly the rares that are completely dominated by skill-specific rolls) and the actual hunt for those items, though... left tons to be desired.
BoA was supposed to IMPROVE the self-found experience. Sure as shit doesn't feel like that to me.
Not sure if I got my point across. If you feel that the items are still not interesting enough, or that farming isn't fun, then maybe that side of the game needs to be improved. But that has nothing to do with whether or not coop, or just combat in general, is fun. Simply removing BoA wouldn't make the items better.
I said a long time ago that Blizzard needs to either make a new trade system or just make solo viable. If they don't want people trading but they also haven't made the item hunt fun and rewarding, then that is a major problem. I just don't think "remove BoA" would solve the problem. They would need to go a lot further than that, otherwise we'll just be back to D2.
At this point, I would much rather see rebalancing on droprates and item rolls than yet another complete shift in philosophy. If a few months down the line it becomes apparent that it isn't working, then they might give trading another shot, but there is simply not enough time between now and RoS to make that happen.
In short, if you want trading because you honestly think the act of trading is fun or because you like to socialize in this game, then you and I simply don't agree. If you want trading because you think the itemization in this game is still not up to par, then I think you are asking for the wrong solution to the problem, at least at this point in time.
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Jan 6, 20142
shaggy posted a message on Stats need to be dynamicPosted in: Diablo III General DiscussionI still have yet to hear any compelling, logical, or rational argument as to why ANY RPG needs "strength wizards" or "dex barbarians" or anything like that. Face it, that concept appeals to a very narrow portion of the playerbase. Most people pick a wizard to cast spells, not to tank - in fact, the way D3 devolved into facetanking everything was a real put-off for people who enjoyed DHs, Wizards, and WDs because the idea of monsters punching you in the face while you just stood there casting spells belies how those classes are SUPPOSED to work.
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Jul 30, 2013
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Jaetch posted a message on ☆ The Archon Video Guide Series: by Jaetch [PRE 2.0 PATCH]The Archon Video Guide Series CompiledPosted in: Wizard: The Ancient Repositories
The following video guides are designed to help players who are new to (or confused about) the Archon wizard build, or simply need some pointers. Most experienced players may find much of the content in these guides very familiar, but hopefully there are some elements here that can still prove to be enlightening.
Disclaimer: names, items, places, etc. featured in the videos belong to Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All music used belong to their respective recording artists. All included footage credited to their original recorders. No copyright infringements are intended. These videos are not to be used for personal profits.
Guides are currently Patch 1.08a viable.
===================================================================
The Archon Guide
CHAPTER I: Overview (00:02:14)
CHAPTER II: Gearing (00:03:40)
- Gear Choices (00:04:14)
- Upgrading Demo (00:29:29)
- FAQs (00:45:52)
CHAPTER III: Skill Selection (00:49:10)
- Active skill choices (00:49:42)
- Passive skill choices (00:51:20)
- Alternate skill choices (00:54:15)
CHAPTER IV: Gameplay (00:55:41)
- Using Archon - Using Critical Mass (00:56:55)
- Tips & Tricks (00:59:31)
CHAPTER V: Farming (01:02:49)
- Act I, II & III Routes - MP Selection (1:12:58)
- Paragon Farming (1:15:37)
CHAPTER VI: Ubers & Bosses (01:17:46)
CHAPTER VII: The Future (01:20:17)
Approximate run time: 86 minutes
===================================================================
The Archon Guide: XPAC I - Paragon Leveling
With the news of an expansion (Reaper of Souls) arriving for Diablo III, along with a new "Paragon 2.0" system, many players are now scrambling to raise their characters' paragon levels...
Approximate run time: 8 minutes
===================================================================
Notes:
- On occasion, pop-ups will show up on the screen. Feel free to pause the video to read them as they act as supplementary information to what I'm talking about.
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Nov 25, 2013
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Jaetch posted a message on Reaper of Souls: New Wizard Spells/Passives - Animations & EffectsThis is a video showcasing the new wizard spells and passives and how they look in-game.Posted in: Wizard: The Ancient Repositories
Also includes some visual updates to existing spells.
Magic Missile - Glacial Spike
Magic Missile - Conflagrate
Spectral Blade - Flame Blades
Spectral Blade - Ice Blades
Spectral Blade - Barrier Blade
Ray of Frost - Sleet Storm
Arcane Orb - Spark
Arcane Orb - Scorch
Arcane Orb - Frozen Orb
Slow Time - Time and Space
Slow Time - Point of No Return
Wave of Force - Impactful Wave
Wave of Force - Debilitating Wave
Wave of Force - Arcane Attunement
Wave of Force - Static Pulse
Wave of Force - Heave Wave
Energy Twister - Mistral Breeze
Energy Twister - Gale Force
Energy Twister - Raging Storm
Energy Twister - Wicked Wind
Energy Twister - Storm Chaser
Hydra - Blazing Hydra
Meteor - Lightning Bind
Meteor - Meteor Shower
Meteor - Molten Impact
Ice Armor - Frozen Storm
Magic Weapon - Ignite
Magic Weapon - Deflection
Archon
Black Hole - Supermassive
Black Hole - Absolute Zero
Black Hole - Event Horizon
Black Hole - Blazar
Black Hole - Spellsteal
Power Hungry
Illusionist
Galvanizing Ward
Dominance
Other significant passive changes/additions -
Nov 13, 2013
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shaggy posted a message on Travis Day on "Legendaries/set items being soulbound"For me the absolute ideal solution is to be able to freely trade with anyone on my friends list and in my clan provided they've been there for 7+ days.Posted in: Diablo III General Discussion
Pros:- No timestamps means I can give any item to anyone that otherwise qualifies - none of the "sorry, you weren't my friend when this dropped" shit.
- A delay (in this case, 7 days) would prevent people from dropping/adding friends/clans just to trade. If it's lengthy enough, you'd be BETTER OFF just sticking with your existing friends/clan than trying to find that new friend who has your item. We know this to be at least somewhat true because buyouts on the AH were, in many cases, more popular than bids. People want their shit NOW, not seven days from now!
- Reduces "mass" trading without infringing on trading among friends who choose to do so.
- Does not force people into playing four-player games to expose themselves to more drops.
- No ridiculous two-hour window to come to an agreement and execute a trade.
- The delay (in this case, 7 days) does feel quite artifical and means that you cannot trade with a LEGITEMATE friend immediately.
- Still benefits people who have more friends as compared to those who have fewer friends.
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Nov 12, 20131
trocadero_fuerte posted a message on What We've Learned From BlizzCon, Ladders are Still Experimented With, RoS BlizzCon Fan ReviewsPosted in: News & AnnouncementsQuote from Zero(pS)
By the way, can't we all like agree that this is their ultimate stance in order to fight third party website trading (it's a CONSPIRACY!) and pretend there's nothing we can do to change it? This way we can kinda move forward with the argument and discussions, instead of being in this endless stalemate.
I don't know if that is true or not, but at least believing in that would make us move on, like we had to do with "online only DRM" or "unmoddable game" issues.
Of course this is the "nuclear option" against 3rd party trading sites. Just like online only was to combat piracy and hacked client-side items (that are infesting the console like a damn plague). You'll never get Blizzard to actually ADMIT this though. But they knew chopping off the AH would just bring d2jsp back unless they did something drastic. This is not as drastic as it could be (no trading anything whatsoever), but it's a hell of a lot more drastic than I figured they had the stomach for. They've been so wishy washy about this game, I never thought they'd have the guts. Too bad they don't have the guts to kill Magic Find. -
Oct 11, 2013
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miles_dryden posted a message on New Datamined Patch - Class Changes, Passive Effects, Item Graphics and MUCH morePosted in: News & AnnouncementsHeroDetails.txt- *Life Steal is less effective when you are higher level.
- *At level 60, Life Steal gains a 0.10x multiplier.
- *At level 70, Life Steal no longer functions.
- To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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Moved to wizard forums - and welcome to Diablofans!
There's a bunch of issues with your build, I'll go through them one by one.
Okay, those are some general hints. More specifically, it seems like you're *almost* playing the standard Manald Heal build, but not quite. There's tons of guides for it... for example, check out this one by Wudijo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSWV5xjk7yQ or the link I posted above for in-depth mechanics. It's not an easy build to learn, but it's the easiest to get to GR70 once you master it. No other builds will let you get to GR70 that fast for wizard, to be honest.
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The average blood shard count for Taskers on Necro is 10k, for wizard and WD it's 8250 (Necro is a bit worse because it has two non-set, class-specific gloves). It's a bit easier, but getting it within 1k shards is just PURE RNG.... you got really lucky there
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Taskers are a level 60 item, so low-level gambling like for the Necro ring doesn't make sense. It's just RNG. And Taskers are a rare pair of gloves, so it'll take a lot of shards: on average 10k, and even after 23k shards there's still a 10% chance of not getting it.
It's all RNG
I'm gonna lock this since otherwise those threads usually derive into a list of everyone telling their RNG story, and we already have a thread for that.
Good luck with Kadala!
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1. The wings and recipes that you already know can be sold to a vendor. You can also get rid of the pages since they have no real use in the game; it's just for collecting stories or clues or Easter Eggs but they don't lead to anything, so no need to leave them in your stash. For potions, I wouldn't keep *that* many. I keep one per type but even that's probably too much; usually the best potions are the Kulle Aid, the armor one, and the life on hit one for a few builds. Next, you have 3 of the 4 mats for the Staff of Herding. Throw away two of the Gibbering Gemstones (you only need one) and try to find the Liquid Rainbow to make the staff - it's sometimes useful if for some reason you want to go to the pony level. See here for more info.
2. Which legendaries to keep and which to throw away is a tough one. I generally tend to keep items that are well-rolled and/or ancient if I think I'm ever gonna use them. But it just takes some time to get familiar with all the items and know which ones are useless and which ones are useful... if you have stash issues, throw away if in doubt, especially if it's non-ancient. You can also just check our build database and see if there's a build that uses that item (enter the name in "required item".
3. Yes, Haedrig's Gift gives you the WHOLE SET
You get one Haedrig's Gift per season, so if you claim it now on your Necro, you don't get another one for another character (or even other game mode if you switch between softcore and hardcore) *this season*. But next season you get a new Haedrig's Gift of course (after finishing the four chapters again).
4. As others already said, re-roll the Impale damage to whatever damage spell you use (and if it's not available, then re-roll it to movement speed instead). Those boots are awesome. As for the augment (Caldessan's Despair), you put this item in cube, 3 Flawless Royal Emeralds, and a gem of rank 50 or higher (for jewelry the minimum level is 40, for weapons 30). Which level you choose depends entirely on what you can get without too much hassle. In general I think most people augment something between 10-20 tiers lower than their highest clear, because that's where you can get your gem levels up to really really fast. Items can be replaced, so you shouldn't augment an item with a gem that took you 20+ hours to upgrade.
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Brainless Builds Comparison
Why "brainless"? Because Torment farming is boring and monotonous, and I want to be able to watch something while playing and not having to pay attention to cooldowns, CoE rotations, and so on. Also, I don't have time to practice a dozen builds for 5 hours; I just have a go at it. So here are my rules:
- 12 minutes of rifting.
- No practicing of the build; just have a go!
- No goblins, except for Blood Thiefs.
- Always test on T8 and T10, go higher if build looks promising.
- I test all the builds that were proposed in this thread.
Obviously there is still RNG involved, but it's a bit smaller since all tests are conducted by the same player, it's always about the same paragon, gems, and the same skill level (i.e., very low ;-)). Also, I've been playing all classes on and off for 2 years now but never went for a DPS role in groups or solo pushes, so I have no crazy augmented gear that would skew the results.In addition to the Death's Breath per session (take that times 5 to get the DB/hour), I also make my own very subjective assessment of each skill according to 4 categories:
- Off (offensive): Perceived damage output, burst on elites.
- Def (defensive): Toughness, especially how much I had to dodge.
- Speed: How fast does it *feel*.
- Lazy: Can I just randomly push buttons or are their cycles, rotations, timing, resource handling etc?
Okay, enough rambling. Here's a playlist with *all* videos (34 so far), and below you find the table with the results!=============================================================================================
Build Comparison Table (12 minute rifts, no goblins, T8, TX, T11+ opt)
- (*) The 181 DB on T11 were with insanely good rift RNG, so I did a re-run. See Q&A for details.
- (²) All Tal Elecrocute runs were unfortunately a bit flawed (bad RNG etc.), so numbers are a bit lower than they should be. Still, Tal EB is stronger. See Q&A.
=============================================================================================Q&A
Q: Why are you not running T9? And why not focus on T13?
A: The answer is in this simple graph. Going from T8 to T9 is only a 9% improvement in DB drops, but obviously the usual 19% increase in difficulty, so it's a bad trade-off. T10 and T11 are fine again. T12 and T13 are overall really bad for Sage's builds. The reason for this is that Sage's does not *double* your DB drops, but it drops *an additional one* whenever a mob drops any DB (regardless the amount). So when you get 3 DBs on T13, Sage's just gives you a fourth, which is a small benefit compared to T8 where you have a 85% chance for a single DB drop and thus almost double your DB gain. In short, T8, T10, and T11 are the best tiers for DB overall.
Q: 12 minutes of rifts is a laughably short time. Why not run longer?
A: I did 34 runs of 12 minutes, so that's already 7 hours of videos. If I had run a full hour run that would be 34 hours. Including setup time of builds, editing the video, uploading, and so on, the patch would be out before I'd be finished. However, I did an estimate about how high the error rate is, and I was surprised to see that 12 minutes might be better than expected (see next question). But bottom line, I'd rather run more builds on more difficulties.
Q: How high is the error rate?
A: (TL;DR: About 12%). For the monk SWK LTK build on T11, I actually got insanely good RNG. As you can see in the video, basically elite-stacked open area maps non-stop. I immediately new the 181 (which would sum up to 900 DB/hour!) was an outlier. So I did another run, and as I had hoped I got "extremely unlucky" with only long tube maps except for one Oasis (but that had one had almost no elites). I also hit the endstone two times, which means losing 2 times ~25 seconds where I'm just standing around. So this 145 is the lower ceiling, and therefore I think if we take the average for that run (163) and assume an error rate of very roughly 12%, it might not be too far off. Which is very surprising and makes DB hunting less RNG-dependent than other activities, such as GR key farming!
Q: So looking at your numbers, it looks like some classes just suck at DB farming. Should I make an LTK monk?
A: Absolutely no. First, look at these charts: T8 and TX comparison of top builds per class incl. error bars. As you can see, all of them are basically in range of their respective error bars. Second, those results are for *me* and are more representative of *my* personal build preferences. Third, running Torment will also yield a lot of loot; you should always run Torment on your main class (or at least a class where you get useful loot, like a barb when you're gearing a LoN bomb crus).
Q: I'm an author of one of the builds. You played it all wrong! Can you re-do the run?
A: In short: no. One of the perks of labeling this comparison "brainless" means that if I failed your build, it's not good for a brainless player. Of course your build might still be awesome! Feel free to make your own "pro-player comparison" where you showcase each build including hours of practice ;-) That being said, if you're the author of one of the builds and want feedback, feel free to post here or PM me. Or if you're not an author and have questions, of course post as well!
Q: Build X for class Y sucks, you should've run my build Z. Can you run it?
A: Feel free to post your build. If I have time and a build piques my interest, I might have a go at it. However, after recording all those videos I have more DBs than all other (white+blue+yellow) mats combined, so I'm currently running non-Sage's builds (ironic, isn't it).
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month/day/hour? Oo I guess that would be 07/20/17. Interestingly 17 is also true for year
Next Thursday, 5pm of your server's timezone. I made a countdown here:
http://d3resource.com/journey/
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You gain max XP by running the highest GR you can run considerably fast and consistently (3-5 minute clears). Bonus XP gear has been nerfed to death and is mostly useless, with some exceptions but those don't apply here. Just gear for max DPS (or max survivability and buffs, if you're the support character in a group, which is what your Cain's character and the guide you linked is about).
And a general note: Quin has sadly left Diablo 3 and is just playing WoW these days, his guides are outdated for the most part as he hasn't touched the game nor his guides in about a year, and some stuff has changed since then. So look for other builds in the build tool and always make sure they're from this current patch.
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1
Updated for Season 11! Now even with countdown timer.
Also, I made a thing:
http://d3resource.com/seasons/
Shows a comparison of previous seasons.
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Here's a "professional" fact, not even opinion:
We don't know. Meta has changed in every other season mid-season, and the meta as we saw it one week before season start has almost never been exactly the same at the end of the season.
Currently, it looks like 4p is sup monk, sup barb, LoN WD, and necro as RG killer. In 3p you take any of those out (except for monk). In 2p it's even more uncertain, probably monk+WD and monk+wizard and monk+necro depending on what you want to fish for (RG with adds for WD or good mob type for an RG killer DPS). But honestly, all that is just super second guessing. We have no clue, especially since we might not even have seen all of the necro changes, and the current iteration is just out for one week. And I personally am 100% sure there's gonna be other exploits/bugs so I expect a rough season with lots of changes and potentially even a shortened season (like S2).
2 DPS necro is unlikely; you can certainly do that, but having two classes is almost always beneficial, and especially once you go above GR100 the monk is almost irreplaceable thanks to its powerful healing (alongside lots of other useful buffs). But it can work - there's a GR105 clear in 2p in Europe currently by a Hammerdin+wizard. But of course they're paragon 3000 and could potentially clear GR110 solo themselves, so that puts that GR105 in a different spotlight.