Quote from maka
Quote from CardinalMDM
Really awesome stuff in this batch. I still hope a lot of those item passives aren't just on rings...my theory, they're just put on Rings to make testing easier, and they'll be distributed appropriately to legendaries in other slots.
That much was stated on the 1st or 2nd batch of datamined stuff.
I'm sure it was. Like many others, I just want to be sure, and one of the few methods of that is seeing it all go live in 5 or so months.
Quote from Lomaxe
i like the passive with block, but no wizz or WD will use it - you cant expect to trade 50% dmg for that, but ill do crusader for sure with 2H and shield
It's all a matter of what skills you choose, how the cooldowns are affected, and what exact item it appears on. If this kind of affix appears on a Shield (which it seems suited for), I'd love a reason to throw a high block chance Shield on a Wizard. Though, it could just as easily appear on a Helm or even an off-hand.
Honestly, I think that's a big part of what Loot 2.0 is trying to accomplish...getting people out of a mindset that just because their damage NUMBER goes down, there are skill choices that can likely make up for it. Damage per SECOND might go down, but depending on what skills are getting their cooldowns reduced, it could make for better utility over longer-term battles, better survivability, etc. I doubt an affix like that will stack, so I'm sure putting other legendaries on other slots will have plenty of opportunity to make up some of that gap.
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Thing is, it was still really twitchy feeling. If I'm going to go that route, I'd rather just pick one of those two as opposed to changing back and forth.
As for spamming Blades to build Dynamo charges, yeah, I'm not too fond of that part. Feels exploity, even if it's not a particularly effective part of the build. Then again, it's not bad fundamentally. Personally, I'd rather build up some Armor, Life, Vitality, more Int/All Res, and other defensive stats so I can run a close-up Blades/Orbit/Mines build without needing to spam air, :-)
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I ID'ed a Pig Sticker and a few other weapons and got a Transmog message, though. That would be pretty nice, to be able to unlock transmogs in the patch. I mean, we're unexpectedly getting it a whole month before the expansion. Chances are, people who come back are going to be going at the game pretty intensively, so they're bound to find a good handful of legendaries to unlock Transmogs for before the expansion releases, :-D
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My SC Monk has been carrying around a Skorn, and yeah, naturally on the live game, I've found it almost impossible to upgrade from. Had I used the AH to find a couple really high damage fist weapons with CHD, sockets, and other good stuff, probably would've been easy to upgrade from the Skorn, but I've been playing my Monk self-found.
Here's the thing though...on the PTR, I managed to find a 1200+ DPS Won Khim Lau...socket, big boost to Lightning skill damage, probably Dex and Vit...and a 1200+ DPS Gift of Silaria...socket, probably Dex and Vit, and I think Move Speed, that was kinda cool to have on a weapon...and between both of those, I FINALLY managed to get my damage to a high enough place to compete with my Skorn, and be a more traditional dual-wielding Monk. I was absolutely thrilled.
Ultimately, people like CHD because combining that with high enough Crit Chance, high enough Mainstat and high enough Attack Speed equal huge damage. However, if all they're worried about is getting a damage number high, raising Mainstat high enough will do almost the same thing. Crit Chance, obviously, is a little more touchy, as it procs certain skills and SHOULD be a tad harder to get. But CHD, at the end of the day, is just extra damage, and that can be acquired in other ways.
Thank goodness.
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But yeah, I'd agree with Zero, lots of things about all the classes' skills have been reworked, so I'm sure there are a couple old builds that might work the same, many that I've played with are far more potent and have a lot more cohesiveness. Experiment as much as possible. I had a lot of fun on the PTR experimenting with builds because so many skills worked so well together.
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What I love about D3, though, is that it'll be a lot easier to customize mixtures. From what I remember about D2, most Sorceresses, for example, had to specialize in one element. I almost always wanted to be at least a dual element, but it was really difficult to get endgame spreading your skill points out that far. But of course...if you specialize in only one element, especially in solo play, you'd hit a massive wall when you met WHITE MOBS with elemental immunities. But in D3, you'll be able to customize your elemental preferences how you like.
Although...and I could be wrong...but I felt like, in some small ways, elites on the PTR with specific elemental affixes felt like they had ever so slight elemental resistances. I can't remember if it was fighting Thunderstorm elites with my Lightning Monk, or Frozen elites with my Ice Wizard, but it felt like some attacks weren't as effective. Could just have been my imagination.
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And very often, those things aren't reflected in your damage or toughness ratings in your details sheet, so it's not like adding Reduced Resource Cost by 4% raises your damage by 5.43% and it's a clear-cut upgrade. A lot of those types of things, you have to kinda play with and experiment with to see if you like them or not.
Seems to be a big theme in the updates...the devs encouraging players to find playstyles they like, as opposed to playstyles they feel obligated to use because "efficiency."
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If you frequented the Auction House, and are pushing 700k+ DPS on all your characters, depending on what stats you're prioritizing and what kind of build(s) you're shooting for, you may have SOME trouble upgrading. Items will be rolling with primary stats (like attack speed, crit chance, life regen, all res, mainstat, vitality, etc.) and secondary stats (like health globe healing bonus, thorns, +XP) separate, but often rares don't roll with more than four primaries. So trying to upgrade a Quintfecta item that boosts your DPS by over 100k may be hard to do, at least before the expansion when items can roll level 70 values.
Then again, if you played self-found, finding upgrades, even for specific trifecta+ rares and even legacy set pieces, should be no problem at all. I imported my live characters to the PTR maybe 3 times, and each time, I didn't have much trouble upgrading, on just about any class.
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As far as considering one or more my "main"...it started as a Wizard, but I allowed him to get corrupted by the Auction House, and started up a self-found Monk, which has gone great. I've since self-found my Wizard's gear and the stuff on all my other characters, so I've been tempted to revert back to my Wizard as my technical main...
Three? You mean...fire, ice and lightning? So no love for Arcane? Arcane Wizard is likely the direction I'll go in. It's been my strongest and most comfortable element so far on the live game, and it's likely the direction I'll be continuing in the expansion. Unless I get some elemental specific gear, then who the hell knows. ;-) Though, I do think I'd like to do a Fire Wizard. That seems to be good and challenging considering Fire attacks don't offer much in the way of crowd control. So I'd need to gear in some ways to figure that out.
With far more options both in terms of cohesive build choices and personalization, any of my characters could feel like my favorite on any given week. So for now, I'm going to keep my mind open to as many possibilities as I can. Who knows when that next item might drop that causes me to rework an entire character's build and ends up becoming the most fun I've had playing this game since launch.
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For my playstyles, it just seems like way too much theorycrafting and not enough monster killing. Though, I respect other players who want to theorycraft, especially in a game like this that encourages players to just get out there and "dare to fail", experiment, try new combinations of stuff and see what works, and walks that fine line between efficient damage output and personal fun.
To me, this kind of build seems like too much of a balancing act. Like, you'd need to know how much damage you're taking vs. how much total mitigation you have from Armor, All Res, etc. Regen and leech just enough to not die, but still stay low enough to be working away.
I mean, your Crits are going to be 100% when you're below 25% life with that item...but when you happen to go above that, your Crits rely on just skills and gear. So damage output ends up being rather inconsistent, and potentially unreliable.
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But really, even that's shaky at best.
Since hearing how Barbs are apparently getting some kind of short end of some stick or another, I decided to test out Whirlwind for myself, and found it really isn't so bad as long as your damage is nice and high and you have reasonable ways of keeping your Fury up. Like War Cry - Charge, certain runes on Overpower and Revenge, things like Ground Stomp, Leap and Threatening Shout also Generate, I believe, so using them smartly when they come off cooldown is a good idea (not to mention getting Cooldown Reduction Gear, and putting Paragon Points into CDR). Unforgiving seems like a popular choice, because I'm sure most Barbs hate that their Fury degenerates, and with a fourth passive slot, it should be easier to justify using it. I've had good luck with Animosity, that's good for extra Fury Generation and stocking, so you can Whirlwind as long as possible. Not to mention, there's now a WW rune called Hurricane that draws enemies closer to you as you Whirlwind close to them. So that's handy for grouping up guys, hitting them with Ground Stomp, pounding away with Bash - Instigation, things of that nature, then Whirlwinding again.
All in all...Whirlwind has NOT died. The OP/permawrath/spin-to-win Barbs have died, and good riddance. I'm probably going to throw Whirlwind on my own Barb(s) to find a cool way of using it, since so many people are convinced it's no longer worth it.
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Games like D2 were really fun, but players made it so that things like Meph Runs and Baal Runs and Bloody Runs and Pindle Runs were even a "thing." I'm glad that Adventure Mode makes a formal place where there's 1) randomized objectives, 2) more reasons to explore, 3) farther along tiers of randomization in the form of Rifts for even bigger rewards. Plus they added that nifty feature that resets quests in Campaign Mode, so if anyone particularly wants to run the Campaign over from the beginning, they can. I think that's really cool.
And yeah, the skill balancing has been tremendous. I'm actually having a hard time finding smartly assembled skill combos that don't work to even some small degree. With some more Paragon Points, and Enchanting gear...players have a lot more freedom to customize builds how they want...but without the AH, ya gotta play for it. :-D
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But again...those are things not reflected by your "damage" number going up or down. Crit Chance procs certain skills, which is why it was nerfed a bit in Paragon Points, but Crit Damage is just damage. And when you look at how a lot of legendaries WILL cause people to make SOME sacrifices in damage for better builds...
I think straight damage builds are going to have a TON of competition.
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Anyways, I want to be aggravated by this, but here's the thing...
In a game like Diablo 2, I hated the idea of powerleveling...mainly because part of the replayability was leveling a brand new character from scratch. If you don't like that aspect, it's not the game for you. But people did it in droves, and while I think that kinda sucked, well...clearly the D2 devs did nothing to stop it. Powerleveling, that is.
In Diablo 3, you're not busy rerolling brand new shiny toons in Softcore for new builds. Dying isn't punishing, and you keep your gear, and gear is a primary way to build a playstyle...thus, once you level a Softcore toon to 70? Great. You never have to level a class to that level ever again. So while you've gained a TON of XP really really fast...that's also a lot of Adventure Mode, Bounties, Rifts, Gambling, and other stuff you could've been doing to build up resources and collect new items, plans, etc. Your loss.
With Hardcore, I suppose it could be considered a tiny bit more of an exploit, but again...gear is a big part of builds, so if your Hardcore character dies and loses some sweet gear, leveling a new toon to the cap in 15 minutes, again, is a series of missed opportunities for you to build resources and gold and materials, collect items, etc.
So in a way...I'm almost glad that an unfortunate accident/feature like that is there. Part of the reason the requirement of going through the game 4 whole times per EVERY difficulty was removed was because playing the game over and over the same exact way was largely boring. If people really want to miss out on all those opportunities for gold, gems, materials, items of all levels, etc., I guess that's their choice.
After all...part of the changes is that Paragon Leveling has its cap removed, and can go almost to forever. So if people want to instantly circumvent content...just like the AH...they're missing out, and it's their own fault.
My only hope is that they don't blast forward to level 70 on a class they're not familiar with, start begging chat channels what the best builds are, then flooding the forums with QQ because they don't know how the class works, when they could've easily gotten more familiar with it DURING the leveling process, and learned its ins and outs.
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Then again, I think on the news blurbs today or yesterday, the official site made mention of updates coming next week regarding kinda the exit strategy of how the Auction House is going to close, what's going to happen to items in the queue, things like that. Plus, that tweet in the news blurb did say...2.0.1 is right around the corner. People can poke fun at that with Soon(TM) jokes all they like, but...Blizzard has gotten a lot better about that, at least in Diablo terms.
They say soon...it could be as early as a few days or a week out.
I can't tell if this info is legit or not, but...tops, we're looking at a month for the expansion. My question is...if the patch goes live before the AH officially closes down, what will happen to the AH in-game between the patch and shutdown day? Maybe there will be a button to access buys and sells, and maybe only items put up on the AH before the patch can be allowed to stay there, and transactions can continue to be made until they're all done?
I mean...would they let people buy and sell Loot 2.0 items on the AH before it gets shut down? Granted...yellow, blue and white items are fully tradeable, but why allow people to get used to making transactions with updated gear only to shut the AH down a couple weeks later?
Sounds rhethorical, apologize for that...I'm just curious is all.