New Blackrock Cards: Dragon Egg & Dragonkin Sorcerer
Hero Rotation for March 17, 2015, Blizzard Stream Awards Last Call
BRF Item Level Increase Effects, Class Representation by Ilvl, Blue Tweets, DLC #481
New Cosmetic Wings
Mads Lund uploaded another cosmetics preview video from Patch 2.2, with the new cosmetic wings. Keep in mind that, for all we know, these are only coming to the Asian servers with the new to be implemented Store. Check the video out!
Ancient Weapons Talk
An interesting chat happened today between a few community members (Monstrous, Angzt) and Wyatt Cheng on Twitter. The developer believes the issue of needing to find ancient weapons stems from another problem: the power gap between weapons themselves. He also talks about how ideally they want weapons to be more than "stat sticks". Read below.
Originally Posted by Blizzard
@candlesan Are you guys happy with how hard it is to get a specific ancient weapon? I am honestly curious, no ill will intended.@Raz_Matt Getting a specific legendary ancient weapon is rare, but I believe the root cause is the power gap between weapons. (Twitter)
Rather than make a specific ancient weapon easier to get, we'd rather improve underperforming weapons so it's not as much about "the one" (Twitter)
@candlesan Be careful not to move away from the "rarity = power" concept you introduced with RoS, finding rare items is exciting.@MonstrousD3 @TheAngzt yes, agree. Also, items should be more than a boring stat stick like Furnace. More Wormwood, Torch, etc. (Twitter)
Quinsane vs GR 52
Quinsane has been trying to get Rank #1 with his Monk for a couple days now - you can even check out a failed attempt that seemed to cause him a lot of frustration. But yesterday he finally did it - by defeating a GR level 52. Congratulations on your achievement, sir! Check out the playthrough below.
It seems to me that ancient weapons just recreated the socket problem that existed on weapons pre-RoS.
At this point, I just shard it if it isn't ancient.
You know how I know micro transactions will come to the US? Because Blizzard is smart - they'll release some kickass transmogs/vanity items in Asia and we'll be begging for the same. Resistance is futile.
Some of those wings just look like the ones from the different Shadow Power runes... lazy, boring, unoriginal...
I don't get all the hate for micro-transactions. If it doesn't give an advantage to the person who buys from it then what does it matter to you? Don't like it? Don't buy from it.
I cant seem to get a good ancient weapon as well I say down with ancient items in season and have them only drop non-season
Ancient items, period, create a big problem in the loot system. Diablo 3 gear already has too much RNG - Did you get the piece you needed, did the piece itself have good stats/amounts on it, and then they up and added Ancient. Previously, getting the "needed" piece from any legendary drop is something like a .1%, getting a "good" needed piece is something like a .01% chance from any legendary drop, and perfect, .001% chance to drop. With Ancient, its even worse. Blizz needs to curtail some of the more useless stats (+life%, specific resistances, +gold/health globe pickup, among many others), and reduce the possible stat range to, say, 10% difference, rather then the current 50% difference. Only then would Ancient items have been a good addition to the loot roll, instead of just adding another layer of useless RNG to looting.
I cannot imagine they would not release the micro transactions in NA and EU. Good lord think of the money they lose out on if they don't.
Congrats Quinsane can you please post your monk setup - gear, runes on your skills, passives and your paragon points distribution?
This is the full guide for the build he's using =]
Gratz Quinn on that awesome clear. The reaction in the end is hilarious xD
Spot on. The issue is that weapon slot is SO MUCH of your damage that a flat buff to that damage means that a halfway decent Ancient is better than nearly any non-Ancient. And as you point out, at the absolute highest levels this means you're buffaloed if you can't get the right Ancient to drop; for most everyone else, it means grinding mats to craft until you get a decently-rolled Ancient.
Do want to point out a side effect of this, though, which may be intentional. I am, by the standards of diablofans posters anyway, super casual (350ish paragon, don't play seasons). I had a 4100 DPS Schaefer's Hammer drop, and I completely rearranged my character to make use of it. I think Blizz does want the odd amazing drop for a casual player to completely change their character, if only so someone is using a weapon beyond whatever the five most popular ones currently are. How you can get this effect without driving most people to craft and making leaderboard eligibility a matter of extreme RNG...I dunno.
The problem (as I see it; correct me if I'm wrong) is that having an Ancient weapon is so important that any non-Ancient weapon that drops may as well be a Forgotten Soul. In the first week of 2.1, I saw lots of people posting about how to craft Ancient weapons (mostly Devastator) - all those other weapons you've found now pale in comparison to a vanilla legendary that does 20%-25% more damage. The random weapon that changes your life is nice...but since Ancient is more important than anything else, easiest thing to do is just craft away till you get the higher number you need.
I did this for my Wizard, got a 2400 DPS devastator (with life on hit, which is huge for his weird-ass build) that will moot everything he saw previously...once I get a Ramaladni's gift. Speaking of annoying mandatory random items...
Agreed, but the way people are flipping shit on the feedback thread over how stash space and character slots will "ruin the game" (or atleast were last time I looked, same with threads that got instant locked) its kind of looking bad :c
I doubt something like that would ever happen. Blizzard might make questionable decisions every now and then, but I doubt we would ever see something dumb like that in Diablo. They can't afford any more negative PR, and something like this would kill their millionaire brand.