the recent "identify 1000 rares video" also shows how lousy the idemisation and how stupidly random the rolls were.. a THOUSAND items and barely a handful are good.. gosh..
again, before ppl say:"farm faster, kill faster, be more efficient", its back to the AH again, aint it? how many of us here can "farm effectively" for items w/o anything bought from the AH? my barb can do act 3, but takes slightly over an hour just to clear half of the act.. and no, i have no items that arent self found...
6 yrs of D1, 12 yrs of D2 n LoD, and many more hours in games like borderlands, Titan quest and even dungeon siege 1, 2 n 3... none of them have such a bad loot system/drop rate...
and i am loosing faith after 4 months of d3..
to quote something from the blizz forums: "You are meant to be a hero, I feel in D3 that my character is a homeless bum sifting through trash cans of discarded loot looking for the least worse items to keep or try and flog for two bits."
heck even the bum from Batman begins had wayne give him a nice coat. we dun even have a carrot to eat.
It is not the drops are bad. What is bad is the design of the game. If you have the whole game base base of 3 things: DPS, life, and Resist, then most items will be bad.
Any weapon without high DPS will be useless or trash.
Any armor without high main stat, life/vita and resist will be trash.
It is not the drops are bad. What is bad is the design of the game. If you have the whole game base base of 3 things: DPS, life, and Resist, then most items will be bad.
Any weapon without high DPS will be useless or trash.
Any armor without high main stat, life/vita and resist will be trash.
Ya, i agree, then why would they make so much trash stats, like thorn damage, is absolutely trash, so is health globe +xxx, then why would want tri stat on some armor, like, 80 int, 80 dex, 80 str, all together, all mediocre, thats garbage
anything that could have crit chance but doesn't have it, are trash, gloves, ring, amulet, helm
weapon that doesnt have open socket is trash, and u need 2 -3 other useful stats on the weapon along with the socket for it to be good, ie loh, crit dmg, core stat, etc
o well, i m done with this game for now, at least until 1.05 hits
everyday there're tons are threads on the bnet forums discussing about the lack of loot.. and they arent just whine threads,but constructive threads, some with research and some with solid thoughts put into them.. is it that hard for blizz to see where the problem is?
If they make the good items more common they are not any more expensive in the AH soon. Soon it will be common gear and finding upgrades will be even more difficult. Soon you would need to roll the desired stats with close to perfect rolls on the stats. Now you need to roll most of the desired stats with quite high values to earn some money or get yourself an upgrade.
If they make the good items more common they are not any more expensive in the AH soon. Soon it will be common gear and finding upgrades will be even more difficult. Soon you would need to roll the desired stats with close to perfect rolls on the stats. Now you need to roll most of the desired stats with quite high values to earn some money or get yourself an upgrade.
meh... e AH again.. i cldnt care less how much things cost on the AH.. I havent bought anything from the AH and finding upgrades is already super difficult.. dont we already need to roll the desired stats already?
i found thousands of set n unique items in d2.. did that make me want to stop finding items after I had those items? no, because i knew that with those items i could
1) farm faster to give me a higher chance of getting better stuff
2) find more items by MYSELF or with friends from DROPS
Just last night I finally got my Barb (alt, main is a DH) to Inferno. I went through Act I like it was made of wet tissue paper - using only gear I got while leveling. I found an i63 2h with 1k dps in late Hell, and I can kill champ packs in one whirlwind with WOTB up. Fresh level 60, through to Act II with no farming required at all. Sure it's only Act I so far but... Jesus. I don't know what you guys are talking about, I may not have legendaries and sets and perfectly rolled rares but I've found plenty of gear to get the job done all on my own without even starting to farm.
I sometimes wonder if there would be a lot less of this QQ if Blizzard just divided the rate of ANY item drops by say, 10. The problem isn't the drop rate, it's players' ridiculous expectations. Perfect gear is supposed to be rare! And you don't NEED it, you can beat the game just fine in less-than-BiS gear that you farm yourself. But people see the BiS items and get fixated on them, assume they absolutely MUST have those particular items and get frustrated when they can't easily or reliably obtain them.
One thing he doesn't quite touch on that I believe is a problem is that level 63 gear shouldn't roll with 30 of a primary stat. What the op said about legendaries is spot on, and I believe the same of rares, the important stats have too much variability.
Getting the right stats on a piece of gear is already pretty rare, but then you wind up with one of more of the stats being around 50 out of 200-300 and it just ruins the piece.
The trouble here is that you're looking at that ilvl as if it's a guarantee of item quality. It isn't. There are no guarantees in Diablo.
In D2 people absolutely sought after items that had that perfect stat roll, and the stats didn't have to vary by 400% to make people want to pay big for them. The same would likely happen in D3 if they could make the game feel fun or rewarding. Currently they're worried that if they make good items actually drop that people would get bored of the game because they'd have good gear, however I'm not the only person who has quit the game because it's just not even entertaining to a large portion of people at the current loot drops. (I'm still here because I sincerely want this to be an awesome game)
In D2 for the most part, you got geared for the content relatively quickly and you farmed for fun, you were allowed to feel like you were awesome with broken mechanics, like actually working life steal, that's just kind of missing in D3. There was power variation in D2 as well, and it's probably somewhat okay that dps in D3 can range from 10k early inferno to 200k in BiS gear (according to that green post) but it does feel a bit much from the average gear levels to the high end ones.
1) People sought "perfect" rolls on items even if the stat variation had literally no impact on gameplay whatsoever. Presumably out of mindless perfectionism, which I think really says something about the mentality of players and how Blizzard can pretty much never please them.
2) By "working" life steal I take it you mean "retardedly OP life steal that makes everything without it junk and you're immortal if you have enough". They very deliberately avoided bringing that back.
3) You didn't gear "quickly" in D2, you didn't need to gear at all. The game was so easy you could beat it in absolutely anything, so farming was never required. I never farmed for items on a single character and killed Hell Baal on all of them. Also never traded any items, just used what dropped.
i found thousands of set n unique items in d2.. did that make me want to stop finding items after I had those items? no, because i knew that with those items i could
Thousands of set and uniques? In Hell? Over how long? LOL is all I can say to that.
If they make the good items more common they are not any more expensive in the AH soon. Soon it will be common gear and finding upgrades will be even more difficult. Soon you would need to roll the desired stats with close to perfect rolls on the stats. Now you need to roll most of the desired stats with quite high values to earn some money or get yourself an upgrade.
...but the AH has no bearing on drop rates, right?
i found thousands of set n unique items in d2.. did that make me want to stop finding items after I had those items? no, because i knew that with those items i could
Thousands of set and uniques? In Hell? Over how long? LOL is all I can say to that.
I don't find his statement hard to believe at all.
I played D2 for about 7 years, and doing meph/pindle runs nonstop would net you a unique/set item on average every 3 runs, sometimes more, sometimes less. Considering you could do a run in 30 seconds, someone playing for 5+ hours a day could easily farm up 100 uniques, per day.
They dropped FAR more often than they do in D3.
i found thousands of set n unique items in d2.. did that make me want to stop finding items after I had those items? no, because i knew that with those items i could
Thousands of set and uniques? In Hell? Over how long? LOL is all I can say to that.
I don't find his statement hard to believe at all.
I played D2 for about 7 years, and doing meph/pindle runs nonstop would net you a unique/set item on average every 3 runs, sometimes more, sometimes less. Considering you could do a run in 30 seconds, someone playing for 5+ hours a day could easily farm up 100 uniques, per day.
They dropped FAR more often than they do in D3.
thanks for the backing up.. even if i wasnt doing baal/meph/pindy runs all e time.. even spending 15 mins to clear hell cows on /p8 on my amazon netted me at least 1 unique, if not 3-4 per run..yes most of them were not as good as what i had already found, but at least i knew i had a chance at getting something better..
in d3, i know i hardly have a chance of getting 'something better', and when a 'possible something better" drops, it usually rolls bad.. its like playing roulette where if you bet on a number, say 0, and the wheel stops at 0, the casino then asks you to bet again on another number for the next spin before you win. ridiculous odds if you tell me
Saw this on the official forums that I though was a great summary of the itemisation atm:
Lots of people playing hardcore realized something months ago, which softies still doesn't seem to understand.
Please, make a new char, go to 60 and play without the use of AH at all.
You will see a huge difference, a very huge one. It will often drop gear improvements.
The reason you dont find them, is because you have currently reached the point where gear upgrades are so rare, they cost millions on the AH. Obviously, its going to be rare to find them while farming too, if not they would have cost far less.
So, see the real problem and stop blaming blizz for buying good gear on AH and then not finding better drops yourself.
"But I don't find any items that can sell for millions!! /QQ"
Well, if you would find 100 of those every hour then they wouldn't sell for millions, once again you have failed to see the problem...
Lots of people playing hardcore realized something months ago, which softies still doesn't seem to understand.
Please, make a new char, go to 60 and play without the use of AH at all.
You will see a huge difference, a very huge one. It will often drop gear improvements.
The reason you dont find them, is because you have currently reached the point where gear upgrades are so rare, they cost millions on the AH. Obviously, its going to be rare to find them while farming too, if not they would have cost far less.
So, see the real problem and stop blaming blizz for buying good gear on AH and then not finding better drops yourself.
"But I don't find any items that can sell for millions!! /QQ"
Well, if you would find 100 of those every hour then they wouldn't sell for millions, once again you have failed to see the problem...
I may be playing softcore, but I haven't used the AH at all to buy anything.
If they make the good items more common they are not any more expensive in the AH soon. Soon it will be common gear and finding upgrades will be even more difficult. Soon you would need to roll the desired stats with close to perfect rolls on the stats. Now you need to roll most of the desired stats with quite high values to earn some money or get yourself an upgrade.
...but the AH has no bearing on drop rates, right?
Even though he mentioned the AH the general point is that things have to be balanced around how fast people are killing, not much else. Therefore, relative rarity of items "good" "better" "best" will always be based on that tuning point.
Did you watch Alkaizer's stream? The guy killed so fast that he had a bag full of legendaries/sets. He'd get more legendaries/sets in one farming session than I'd get in 3 weeks. That's the result of having almost 300% MF from pLvls and farming at an insane rate. His stream is proof that if you farm faster with more MF you *will* be swimming in loot. The idea that good stuff doesn't drop is simply so overblown it's not funny. Everything has to be throttled to some extent, AH, no AH, self-found only or not.
i found thousands of set n unique items in d2.. did that make me want to stop finding items after I had those items? no, because i knew that with those items i could
Thousands of set and uniques? In Hell? Over how long? LOL is all I can say to that.
I don't find his statement hard to believe at all.
I played D2 for about 7 years, and doing meph/pindle runs nonstop would net you a unique/set item on average every 3 runs, sometimes more, sometimes less. Considering you could do a run in 30 seconds, someone playing for 5+ hours a day could easily farm up 100 uniques, per day.
They dropped FAR more often than they do in D3.
I find your statement INCREDIBLY wrong.
You may have found a unique/set every 3 runs (which is a dubious number to begin with), however, the chances of it being one you'd even want to pick up were very low. Did you pick up that 37,893th Isenheart's Breastplate? No, you didn't. Even if you were botting, which oh so many people did in D2, you were really only generating approximately 1-2 quality items every 8 hours. Citing 100 uniques per day is simply retarded. I could present to you a list of set/unique items and at least 2/3rds of them you'd leave sitting on the ground and, oddly enough, most of the ones that people didn't want were the more-common ones to get.
This is just another example of someone who is remembering D2 far too fondly and losing track of the reality of the loot in that game.
Seriously, I dare you people to go fire up D2 and start botting some Pindle runs. I can guarantee that all this ridiculous hyperbole is just that. But, hey, these forums really are turning to shit when we're being completely trolled by people with 13 posts whose memories of D2 are clearly incorrect, but hey, why not state it as fact? Because, you know, everything is a fact until the fact-checkers come by.
To answer the previous poster, reality is playing Diablo 3 for hours on end without being rewarded, without finding anything ; thus making the game unfun.
I'm quitting this thread, already got banned twice and have gotten 4 infractions. I can't discuss this subject without getting angry. Thank you to all those sharing my point of view, we know what's what guys.
I love America because everyone is entitled to their opinion, so let me give mine. I believe someone is clearly lying. Either the people claiming to "average" one legendary a run or those claiming 100+ hours with no legendaries are lying. Killing faster will not make you average one legendary per run, it will however increase your chances of a one per day average. The speed of killing does not help your average on a single run, just the chances of more per time spent because of the increase of kills. Now, I average about 1 legendary/set item per week which is about 14 hours of gameplay. Of the ones I do find, approximately 1 out of 4 is good enough to sell and make some loot. I will not spend real money on a virtual item, that is ridiculous nor will I buy gold. I will however capitalize on those who do want to spend $ on said items. I will agree with the OP on this thread though, loot is still breaking this game.
I dont see how a low posts count makes me wrong in my memory of D2, or my opinion of D3. That's to the point of being insulting. Anyway, to be more objective, I get the point about it being the 30,000th Isenhart's on the floor, but hey guess what? At least it's a set item. Do I even get a 3rd say, Asheara's set item in d3 after 400over hrs? heck i dont even have one.
I didnt bot in d2, and i didnt trade, and it sure didnt take me 400 hrs to gear up 2-3 characters. Again, ask yourself, where would you be without the AH in D3? would you be on the same "power curve" as what I would have been in d2?
As for Alkaizer, how much did he spend on the AH again? Remind me please.
I dont see how a low posts count makes me wrong in my memory of D2, or my opinion of D3. That's to the point of being insulting. Anyway, to be more objective, I get the point about it being the 30,000th Isenhart's on the floor, but hey guess what? At least it's a set item. Do I even get a 3rd say, Asheara's set item in d3 after 400over hrs? heck i dont even have one.
You and I will simply have to disagree that leaving an Isenheart's Breastplate on the ground is a better carrot-on-a-stick than having a slim chance of IDing an awesome rare. I don't see either one as inherently better than the other, I simply favor the latter because I'd rather a slim chance of a rare being awesome than continuing with a system where we're just leaving crap on the floor because we know it's bad without ever looking at it (this applies to D3 because of iLvl too). I think that leaving shit all over the floor is hard on the player no matter how it occurs and that's my point.
However, with a D3 rare at least you have a 1-in-10,000 chance (or whatever the actual lottery numbers are). With the Isenheart's Breastplate example once you rolled that item type and that quality it was done. There was no chance. With the rare there is still the stats which ultimately determine if it's good or bad. My point is that we don't usually leave appropriate iLevel rares on the ground and that is a step forward from just leaving shit on the ground because <set/unique item> could never be good in D2. It's a small step, but it lays the groundwork for future things which can further improve on it.
And to draw a very direct parallel, I have found two pairs of Frostburn Gauntlets since 1.0.4. Both I have been thoroughly unable to sell. Why? Because there are no specs in the game currently which would benefit from them. They're the new Isenheart's Breastplate. They are, currently, a failure of the legendary revamp and need to be re-revamped because they are 100% dead loot. We should strive to not have legendaries/set items which are completely invalidated because no one in their right mind would equip them. Had those two been useful, I'd have two more items of value to my name, as it stands they're Fiery Brimstones hoping to be used which is not enjoyable.
As for Alkaizer, how much did he spend on the AH again? Remind me please.
I realize that someone who doesn't want to use the AH doesn't want to hear this, but when it comes to farming, if you want to truly maximize the loot you get then you're going to maximize your ability to kill. I sure as hell haven't "maximized" my ability to kill, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the revenue I got from selling items to others isn't a valid point for me to upgrade my gear. There are plenty of people on these forums who have argued that people who have purchased items on the AH are cheaters, have illegitemately obtained their gear, aren't real fans, etc. and that has no place here.
You have to identify your goals and work towards them. I'm not a gear purist. My gold pile represents what I have earned and if I use that to purchase an item it's just a form of items swapping hands and a way to cut into inflation. But, even if you were a gear purist in D2, people who traded were farming faster and better than you were. There is no difference there. It's just a matter of perception. You were at a disadvantage in D2, you're at a disadvantage in D3. But let's not act as if trying to find your own gear was not a disadvantage in D2, or as if people who don't want to engage in trading, buying, or selling should be playing the game at the same pace as people who will use every resource to their advantage to accomplish a goal.
We cannot have our cake and eat it too. In any game where trading is possible (manual or automated, doesn't matter), people who do not trade will be at a "gear disadvantage." Trying to tiptoe around that and sugar coat it and make people who use the AH out to be the bad guy is childish and naive. It's a matter of realizing what your goals are and achieving them and not caring what the other guy is doing.
My goal in this game wasn't to get the first Hardcore Inferno Diablo kill so if I sit around comparing myself to Kripparian and denigrating how he chose to play the game there's nothing that will come of that other than me being a bitter, angry, person who blames everyone else for his/her unhappiness.
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again, before ppl say:"farm faster, kill faster, be more efficient", its back to the AH again, aint it? how many of us here can "farm effectively" for items w/o anything bought from the AH? my barb can do act 3, but takes slightly over an hour just to clear half of the act.. and no, i have no items that arent self found...
6 yrs of D1, 12 yrs of D2 n LoD, and many more hours in games like borderlands, Titan quest and even dungeon siege 1, 2 n 3... none of them have such a bad loot system/drop rate...
and i am loosing faith after 4 months of d3..
to quote something from the blizz forums: "You are meant to be a hero, I feel in D3 that my character is a homeless bum sifting through trash cans of discarded loot looking for the least worse items to keep or try and flog for two bits."
heck even the bum from Batman begins had wayne give him a nice coat. we dun even have a carrot to eat.
where's my carrot?
Any weapon without high DPS will be useless or trash.
Any armor without high main stat, life/vita and resist will be trash.
Ya, i agree, then why would they make so much trash stats, like thorn damage, is absolutely trash, so is health globe +xxx, then why would want tri stat on some armor, like, 80 int, 80 dex, 80 str, all together, all mediocre, thats garbage
anything that could have crit chance but doesn't have it, are trash, gloves, ring, amulet, helm
weapon that doesnt have open socket is trash, and u need 2 -3 other useful stats on the weapon along with the socket for it to be good, ie loh, crit dmg, core stat, etc
o well, i m done with this game for now, at least until 1.05 hits
RIP: Demon Hunter: lvl 50 | Barb: lvl 60 (plvl 5) | Monk: lvl12 & lvl70 (plvl 200)
meh... e AH again.. i cldnt care less how much things cost on the AH.. I havent bought anything from the AH and finding upgrades is already super difficult.. dont we already need to roll the desired stats already?
i found thousands of set n unique items in d2.. did that make me want to stop finding items after I had those items? no, because i knew that with those items i could
1) farm faster to give me a higher chance of getting better stuff
2) find more items by MYSELF or with friends from DROPS
I sometimes wonder if there would be a lot less of this QQ if Blizzard just divided the rate of ANY item drops by say, 10. The problem isn't the drop rate, it's players' ridiculous expectations. Perfect gear is supposed to be rare! And you don't NEED it, you can beat the game just fine in less-than-BiS gear that you farm yourself. But people see the BiS items and get fixated on them, assume they absolutely MUST have those particular items and get frustrated when they can't easily or reliably obtain them.
The trouble here is that you're looking at that ilvl as if it's a guarantee of item quality. It isn't. There are no guarantees in Diablo.
1) People sought "perfect" rolls on items even if the stat variation had literally no impact on gameplay whatsoever. Presumably out of mindless perfectionism, which I think really says something about the mentality of players and how Blizzard can pretty much never please them.
2) By "working" life steal I take it you mean "retardedly OP life steal that makes everything without it junk and you're immortal if you have enough". They very deliberately avoided bringing that back.
3) You didn't gear "quickly" in D2, you didn't need to gear at all. The game was so easy you could beat it in absolutely anything, so farming was never required. I never farmed for items on a single character and killed Hell Baal on all of them. Also never traded any items, just used what dropped.
Thousands of set and uniques? In Hell? Over how long? LOL is all I can say to that.
...but the AH has no bearing on drop rates, right?
I don't find his statement hard to believe at all.
I played D2 for about 7 years, and doing meph/pindle runs nonstop would net you a unique/set item on average every 3 runs, sometimes more, sometimes less. Considering you could do a run in 30 seconds, someone playing for 5+ hours a day could easily farm up 100 uniques, per day.
They dropped FAR more often than they do in D3.
thanks for the backing up.. even if i wasnt doing baal/meph/pindy runs all e time.. even spending 15 mins to clear hell cows on /p8 on my amazon netted me at least 1 unique, if not 3-4 per run..yes most of them were not as good as what i had already found, but at least i knew i had a chance at getting something better..
in d3, i know i hardly have a chance of getting 'something better', and when a 'possible something better" drops, it usually rolls bad.. its like playing roulette where if you bet on a number, say 0, and the wheel stops at 0, the casino then asks you to bet again on another number for the next spin before you win. ridiculous odds if you tell me
Saw this on the official forums that I though was a great summary of the itemisation atm:
http://imageshack.us/a/img689/8853/infographic.jpg
Please, make a new char, go to 60 and play without the use of AH at all.
You will see a huge difference, a very huge one. It will often drop gear improvements.
The reason you dont find them, is because you have currently reached the point where gear upgrades are so rare, they cost millions on the AH. Obviously, its going to be rare to find them while farming too, if not they would have cost far less.
So, see the real problem and stop blaming blizz for buying good gear on AH and then not finding better drops yourself.
"But I don't find any items that can sell for millions!! /QQ"
Well, if you would find 100 of those every hour then they wouldn't sell for millions, once again you have failed to see the problem...
I may be playing softcore, but I haven't used the AH at all to buy anything.
That pretty much summed it up.
Even though he mentioned the AH the general point is that things have to be balanced around how fast people are killing, not much else. Therefore, relative rarity of items "good" "better" "best" will always be based on that tuning point.
Did you watch Alkaizer's stream? The guy killed so fast that he had a bag full of legendaries/sets. He'd get more legendaries/sets in one farming session than I'd get in 3 weeks. That's the result of having almost 300% MF from pLvls and farming at an insane rate. His stream is proof that if you farm faster with more MF you *will* be swimming in loot. The idea that good stuff doesn't drop is simply so overblown it's not funny. Everything has to be throttled to some extent, AH, no AH, self-found only or not.
I find your statement INCREDIBLY wrong.
You may have found a unique/set every 3 runs (which is a dubious number to begin with), however, the chances of it being one you'd even want to pick up were very low. Did you pick up that 37,893th Isenheart's Breastplate? No, you didn't. Even if you were botting, which oh so many people did in D2, you were really only generating approximately 1-2 quality items every 8 hours. Citing 100 uniques per day is simply retarded. I could present to you a list of set/unique items and at least 2/3rds of them you'd leave sitting on the ground and, oddly enough, most of the ones that people didn't want were the more-common ones to get.
This is just another example of someone who is remembering D2 far too fondly and losing track of the reality of the loot in that game.
Seriously, I dare you people to go fire up D2 and start botting some Pindle runs. I can guarantee that all this ridiculous hyperbole is just that. But, hey, these forums really are turning to shit when we're being completely trolled by people with 13 posts whose memories of D2 are clearly incorrect, but hey, why not state it as fact? Because, you know, everything is a fact until the fact-checkers come by.
that image is so win.
1398 skorn and the witching belt last two days 4hours play.
My only tip is 'efficiency'.
I didnt bot in d2, and i didnt trade, and it sure didnt take me 400 hrs to gear up 2-3 characters. Again, ask yourself, where would you be without the AH in D3? would you be on the same "power curve" as what I would have been in d2?
As for Alkaizer, how much did he spend on the AH again? Remind me please.
You and I will simply have to disagree that leaving an Isenheart's Breastplate on the ground is a better carrot-on-a-stick than having a slim chance of IDing an awesome rare. I don't see either one as inherently better than the other, I simply favor the latter because I'd rather a slim chance of a rare being awesome than continuing with a system where we're just leaving crap on the floor because we know it's bad without ever looking at it (this applies to D3 because of iLvl too). I think that leaving shit all over the floor is hard on the player no matter how it occurs and that's my point.
However, with a D3 rare at least you have a 1-in-10,000 chance (or whatever the actual lottery numbers are). With the Isenheart's Breastplate example once you rolled that item type and that quality it was done. There was no chance. With the rare there is still the stats which ultimately determine if it's good or bad. My point is that we don't usually leave appropriate iLevel rares on the ground and that is a step forward from just leaving shit on the ground because <set/unique item> could never be good in D2. It's a small step, but it lays the groundwork for future things which can further improve on it.
And to draw a very direct parallel, I have found two pairs of Frostburn Gauntlets since 1.0.4. Both I have been thoroughly unable to sell. Why? Because there are no specs in the game currently which would benefit from them. They're the new Isenheart's Breastplate. They are, currently, a failure of the legendary revamp and need to be re-revamped because they are 100% dead loot. We should strive to not have legendaries/set items which are completely invalidated because no one in their right mind would equip them. Had those two been useful, I'd have two more items of value to my name, as it stands they're Fiery Brimstones hoping to be used which is not enjoyable.
I realize that someone who doesn't want to use the AH doesn't want to hear this, but when it comes to farming, if you want to truly maximize the loot you get then you're going to maximize your ability to kill. I sure as hell haven't "maximized" my ability to kill, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the revenue I got from selling items to others isn't a valid point for me to upgrade my gear. There are plenty of people on these forums who have argued that people who have purchased items on the AH are cheaters, have illegitemately obtained their gear, aren't real fans, etc. and that has no place here.
You have to identify your goals and work towards them. I'm not a gear purist. My gold pile represents what I have earned and if I use that to purchase an item it's just a form of items swapping hands and a way to cut into inflation. But, even if you were a gear purist in D2, people who traded were farming faster and better than you were. There is no difference there. It's just a matter of perception. You were at a disadvantage in D2, you're at a disadvantage in D3. But let's not act as if trying to find your own gear was not a disadvantage in D2, or as if people who don't want to engage in trading, buying, or selling should be playing the game at the same pace as people who will use every resource to their advantage to accomplish a goal.
We cannot have our cake and eat it too. In any game where trading is possible (manual or automated, doesn't matter), people who do not trade will be at a "gear disadvantage." Trying to tiptoe around that and sugar coat it and make people who use the AH out to be the bad guy is childish and naive. It's a matter of realizing what your goals are and achieving them and not caring what the other guy is doing.
My goal in this game wasn't to get the first Hardcore Inferno Diablo kill so if I sit around comparing myself to Kripparian and denigrating how he chose to play the game there's nothing that will come of that other than me being a bitter, angry, person who blames everyone else for his/her unhappiness.