May 2015 Rank Card Back - Ninja
Release Hype Tweets, ESL Major League
Patch 6.2 Zone Preview: Tanaan Jungle, Upcoming eSports Events, Blue Tweets, Pepe
Patch 2.2 Discussion
A very interesting discussion has recently been gaining popularity over at Reddit. The original post argues that Patch 2.2 has made Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls better than ever, and the replies are very interesting. Some of them agreeing with the OP, some of them only doing so partially and bringing up what they see as problems.
What is your feel towards Patch 2.2 and the current state of Diablo? Is it one of the best Diablo 3 versions we have ever played? Leave your opinion there, or on our comment section!
I am having more fun with this game than I ever have before and I've been playing it off and on since launch. So many things are improved.
I started playing again a week ago. I had last played before season 1 came out. Now I have an S3 Monk with 4p SWK and 6p inna's paragon lvl ~100. I've played maybe 20 hours? I dunno, my sleep schedule has suffered. Please help me.
I can agree with that. There are still small things I'd like.
For example, better balancing of sets. Weapons that make any skill relatively equally balanced. A bit more balancing on actives, runes, and passives. And one inventory tab per class (to keep alt sets and class specific weapons) plus one shared tab. I'd also love to see things moved to an inventory tool bar: all materials, potions, and gems with caps of 10,000.
With all that in mind, most are just QoL improvements. The game is great and getting better every time.
Same here. I didn't even come back for 2.2 specifically, I've just always played sporadically and probably always will. I'm having a blast this time around!
Yes 2.2 is an improvement. Pretty much everything since RoS (and even just before) has improved the game. But some of the major flaws still exist:
Set items dominate end game and make it stale, basically eliminating build variety.
Ancient Items were a step in the right direction, but I'd really like to see another proper TIER of items.
Additional elite affixes or modifications to existing affixes at higher difficulty levels instead of just increase of HP/Damage. I'd like to see a beyond torment tier unlocked which has its own 1-10 difficulty.
Blizzcon Contests
Whenever there's a Blizzcon we are always sure to have amazing community fueled contests, with the most incredible machinima videos, cosplay costumes and talent displays. A blog post came up with a highlight of last year winners as well as a few directions for each type of contest. Read more below.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The time has come to begin your preparations for this year’s BlizzCon contests! All of the contests from BlizzCon 2014 will be returning—Costume, Talent, Art, and Movie—and we can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with to impress the world this year. Information on how to sign up and official rules are coming soon, but if you’d like to start planning your creations in advance, here’s a bit more information on what to expect.
Live Contests
BlizzCon 2015 Costume Contest
The Costume Contest is coming back, and we’re already trying to guess what heroes, adventurers, villains, and oddities we’ll see onstage. Eachyear your creations get more elaborate and spectacular, and we’re sure that this year will be no exception. As in prior years, we’ll be opening up online signups for the contest in the coming weeks. The number of contestants will be limited, and those who don’t make the initial cut will be placed on a wait list. Final contest registration and participation confirmation will take place on Friday morning at BlizzCon, so please make sure you have a purchased BlizzCon ticket in hand, secure your place in the contest or on the wait list during the online sign-up, and have your costume finished well in advance. Spread the word to all of your cosplay friends — BlizzCon is the place to see and be seen! Remember:It’s important to keep safety in mind as you’re planning your creation—that means you must be able to easily and safely see out of and maneuver in your costume without assistance, and make sure your costume allows you to see clearly and move easily. In addition, no real weapons, dangerous materials, or large motorized costumes will be allowed.BlizzCon 2014 First Place Winner - Py WilsonBlizzCon 2015 Talent Contest
The Talent Contest will also be returning to the stage at BlizzCon 2015! Last year’s competition featured performances by some truly talented participants, and this year, we’re looking forward to seeing an even wider variety of acts—juggling, dancing, hooping, we want to see it all!—so even if you can’t carry a tune, your other skills might carry you to the stage. If you’ve got serious performance chops, you could have a chance to showcase your Blizzard-themed talent live on stage at BlizzCon in front of a massive audience and win great prizes (including a trip to BlizzCon and lodging). We’ll be accepting video applications of your performances in the near future, so start rehearsing!BlizzCon 2014 First place Winner -- Awesome City LimitsWhatever you choose to show us, please make sure your video is 2 minutes or less in length, choose a good (higher is better) resolution, and keep it simple—we want to see you just as you would be performing live. Since your audition video could be shown onstage at the show, please make sure that there are no non-Blizzard brand logos present in your shoot.Online Contests
BlizzCon 2015 Art Contest
The Art Contest offers talented artists a chance to showcase their work at BlizzCon. As you prepare to craft your masterpiece, please keep in mind that you’ll need to submit high-quality jpegs no larger than 5MB. Also, the content of your work needs to be your own original creation, so no PhotoShop manipulations of existing work will be accepted. BlizzCon 2015 Movie Contest Aspiring auteurs in animation, machinima, live-action filmmaking, and more—we want you to entertain us! Start storyboarding now, but keep in mind that the length of your film should be 3 minutes or less and the size of your file no larger than 100MB. If you’re shooting a live-action piece, please make sure that there are no non-Blizzard brand logos in your video.BlizzCon 2014 First place winner -- Mushanga (Jeffrey Cuiper) "The Sore Loser"Complete rules and more information on all of the upcoming contests will be available soon. Signups begin in the near future, but there’s no better time to start preparing than now! Have BlizzCon contest-related questions? Email BlizzConContest@Blizzard.com Need more inspiration? See more of BlizzCon 2014's winners and runners- up here.
Solo Key Farming Barb
Since lots of players rolled a Barbarian this season, and there may be quite some time until Trial Rifts are removed, ReaLBashman has uploaded his setup for farming high Greater Keys solo as a Barbarian. A pretty interesting setup worth checking out!
Hello Guys,
I want to show you my build which I am using for generating high greater rift keys.
I will explain the build, the equip and the playstyle. In addition I have uploaded a video with all information mentioned in this thread. Basically it is important to deal a lot of aoe damage in a given time window and of course staying alive :D (continues...)
Once you are in the trial you call your ancients and wait for the first wave. You will not be able to do a lot of things due to the lack of fury at the start. As soon as the level raises your ancients will generate some fury. You should always keep overpower on cooldown and try to use it when you are standing in the middle of some mobs to generate additional fury.
Between level 30 - 40 you will be able to activate Battle Rage. Once you are above level 40 you should active Wrath of the Berserker and start to use Rend. Of course you constantly whirlwinding to deal damage and to activate the damage reduction of the Wrath of the Wastes set. Regarding Rend and Convention of Elements you should always try to use Rend when the physical buff of the ring is active to boost the damage of Rend. You should also spam overpower. It should be ready really fast due to lots of critical hits. In addition you have to use Rend to reset the cooldown of WotB. WotB needs to be up all the time - keep an eye on it!
Try to use your potion (Potion of Amplification) to avoid that nerves of steel get procced. If nerves of steel proccs you should use your potion if ready or collect some healthbubbles. (continues...)
As a WD farming t6 and speed running greater rift 40 with 2 barb friends i think this patch is garbage.
When i am halfways through the map. They are on the next level. The only thing i am able to do is run and loot. And its boring as hell.
They need to balance classes more. WD cant run and kill shit like barbs can. As a wd you kinda need to stop and attack and then to the next group. While the barbs just keep a button pressed and kill the entire map without stopping. And ontop of that. Sick movemenst speed.
Blizzard need to make all classes viable to run with eachother. Its not right that i have to reroll my class to be able to play with my friends
Blizz has actually explicitly said in the past they won't change class balance in this regard. They want different classes to have different levels of maneuverability.
Just indulge me, in what way would you change WD to be able to run along side one of the single most mobile classes in the game? Simply put, there is no easy answer. And then, if they buffed WD movement, but not Wizard, or Crusader, or any other class, you're just causing more class imbalance.
I looked for, but couldn't find, the blue post in which they talked about this fact. Their answer was basically just "use a faster build."
Love patch 2.2, the changes have been great. However, there's a couple things that are really starting to bother me;
1: Numbers.
Vanilla had me feeling like 1 million crits were huge and I got excited when I saw them, and I used to see ~5m crits with a full party buff. Now, that's already turned into 1 billion crits being the norm, and the 5-10B crits being the exciting ones. I think even one more expansion of this number inflation is too much. Should we be expecting Trillion crits to be regular? Because that's ludicrous, and I think even the current numbers need to be addressed, let alone the potential ones.
2: Sets bonuses.
While I understand Blizzard's idea to make them the end game, end-all-be-all items, I don't like it. I realize it's probably a huge pain in the ass for balance reasons, but why on earth to sets need to do 300%, 500%, 750% more damage with skills? It creates a TON of problems; with Rolands set my shield bash and sweep attack hit for the hundreds of millions at least, which is fun. What isn't fun? My generator hitting for 7 million, any of my damage cooldowns hitting for 10-15 million, or put another way, everything else I have hitting for ~.01% of the two buffed skills. There's absolutely no reason to have these insanely high modifiers for skills with the set bonuses, and even the stand alone legendaries. It completely trivializes everything else.
3. Set slots.
I might be the only one, but it bothers me to no end that a set takes up HALF of our slots, and with un-interesting items by themselves. A quick example would be Rolands set again. Alrighty, 6p bonus! Now what do I have to play with and move around to make the build of my liking? My weapon / off hand, bracers, belt and jewelry. You can forget any legendary helms, shoulders, chests, gloves, pants, and boots, since you can only pick one of those slots (and give up a jewelry slot). Want to wear RoRG and magefists? Well that's pretty dumb, since cindercoat beats out magefist every time. Want to wear RoRG and any other piece for your crusader? Sorry, not going to beat FnR.
TLDR; The numbers have already gotten astronomical, and need to be addressed. Instead of balancing sets and unique legendaries, we have sets that you absolutely NEED, even if it's just to play some higher greater rifts than the T6 equivalent. Oh and while wearing those sets? Say goodbye to being able to mix and match all those cool, unique legendaries we all wanted back in Vanilla, since they were all plain and didn't do anything.
This was the blue post before the Raekors nerf (pre 2.1.2?). This changed how Raekors worked -- changing it from charging and dragging minions with them to Barbs just charging and having no collision.
Honestly, I have no idea what they're brainstorming process is like. I've wondered what methods they use to come up with ideas for the game. I swear the developers don't use a Pros and Cons list on their whiteboard for any new ideas they come up with. A lot of things they put in the game also seem like ideas that are good on paper, but are actually terrible in-game (rift keys, GR keys, Trials) but they implement them without taking a second look.
Don't get me wrong, I thought 2.2 was a great patch. The amount of build diversity has broadened and some of the builds are very entertaining. I'm having fun with it, but there is so much potential with the game that I can see that it feels underwhelming with how slow they fix/release new/old content. Anyone still have server lag issues? Occasional frame rate drops? Die to invulnerable (1 hp) leaping winged assassins/lacuni prowlers. Confused as to why you can't hit the snake guys from act 2 when they're invisible (been like that since vanilla). Frustrated that your stash space is so limited, even though they keep adding new and more worthy gear to hoard (ancients, revamped sets). Angry that you just died to unavoidable damage (frozen, thunderstorm, jailer, ghosts) in Higher GRs; especially if it one shots you (and yes toughness will not save you from infinite scaling GRs). Perplexed by the ridiculously high numbers from your scrolling combat text, stat sheets, monster hp. Pissed off at the barb/monk who is going 150mph in the T6 rift, killing everything, and leaving you in the dust, but also reducing your mf/xp gain from lack of stacks of Strength in Numbers buff (outdated). Baffled at how you just two shot 'Ubers' bosses (except for Maghda).
These are just a few of the issues that I and I'm sure many of you have with the game. I still play Diablo and enjoy it, but I'm just frustrated by the lack activity by the Dev Team. Feedback is incredibly slow and/or very minimal ('soon').
Sets are basically a way to make builds and spells work in end game, and this makes me quite angry, because it means some underused skills won't be viable until Blizzard decides to make bonus for them, which they already said it will be the case; they rather make items to empower those abilities than make them good from the start. Basically, Blizzard decides when it's the time you will have more viable builds in end-game while keeping a bunch of useless legendaries with bad affixes that won't synergize with a set or between other oranges to make something workable.
At least i'm having fun with different sets to play with, variety, even if limited, makes this game better; i was so sick of running M6 all day, every day, even to farm keys, bounties and normal rifts.
How have people not been demanding a proper PVP system, possibly with MMR, matchmaking, ladders and rewards to increase the "value" of farming this insane gear
D3 at launch was by far my favorite version of D3. I played a DH back then.
The game now is definitely better than it was a few months back, but far from being my favorite version of D3.