What is the next patch implementing that would make it worthwhile to wait on rerolling?
I think maybe because it is difficult to decide what to reroll and because when the patch comes out he may end up using the bow with LoN rather than unhallowed which could impact what to reroll.
For example, rolling disc from 10 to 12 may not be the right choice if using it with LoN as discipline only buffs your damage if you are running Unhallowed.
actually disc from 10 to 12 may not be the right choice even with unhallowed. for 2.4 Preparation/Invigoration bonus is going from +15 to 20 disc. Since this is all additive with itself, the more you have, the less (relative) increase you get in damage% per point of discipline added.
XP change is great in my opinion because now everyone, including supports, can focus on gear optimization instead of xp and simply try to do higher GRs more efficiently to compensate for the measly few % a xp build will give. Now an xp build of 200% bonus exp will result in 20% which will be divided 4 ways so 5% only per player instead of 50% previously. A ruby in a helm will result in only 1% bonus exp per player now; it's just not worth it anymore. Simply doing one GR higher due to more optimized gear will more than compensate for this change due to the changes in the system.
4 dps seems unlikely except for speed GRs where survivability doesn't matter. Maybe we'll see more hybrid balanced characters pop up. Maybe a standard 1 support / 3 dps or 1 support + 1 balanced + 2 dps or something...
its all relative. it doesnt matter if the xp Gear was nerfed by a factor of a million. As long as it exists and it provides a bonus relative to gear that has 0 of the bonuses, those % become even more poweful. Thats all the botters and nerds do is farm GR so yes XP gear will still be present so they can chase para 4,000-5,000
not sure I agree with your logic. the XP focused gear most likely will mean the effective GR level you can push goes down (either for reasons of surviveability or dps) so that the net result is you earn less xp with the xp gear. In my opinion it has become a pointless, and therefore wasted stat. Maybe they should have dumped it altogether and created a new secondary to replace it. I'm thinking Life Per Second with a red gem in helmet would be a whole lot more meaningful than 4% xp, especially since the healer monk has also been nerfed into the ground.
sounds like you don't have any experience endgame or realize that they are already clearing GR 90s pre 2.4 which is when there will be even more damage done in groups and allow for even more XP gear to be used. Atm the game is only 1 dps and 3 XP supp....LOL and it will stay that way FOREVER AS LONG AS XP GEAR EXISTS....xp is the most powerful stat in the game > all else easily
Sounds to me like you have trouble with basic logic. When the xp gear bonus is nerfed to the level that is being detailed for patch 2.4 it is the GR level you can push effectively, not the xp bonus on your gear that is going to dictate how much xp you get per time spent getting it. A stat with +Xp on it is therefore not as valuable as a stat that offres more toughness or dps. If you can't understand the ratiionale in that, I guess you may as well just join the flat earth society.
XP change is great in my opinion because now everyone, including supports, can focus on gear optimization instead of xp and simply try to do higher GRs more efficiently to compensate for the measly few % a xp build will give. Now an xp build of 200% bonus exp will result in 20% which will be divided 4 ways so 5% only per player instead of 50% previously. A ruby in a helm will result in only 1% bonus exp per player now; it's just not worth it anymore. Simply doing one GR higher due to more optimized gear will more than compensate for this change due to the changes in the system.
4 dps seems unlikely except for speed GRs where survivability doesn't matter. Maybe we'll see more hybrid balanced characters pop up. Maybe a standard 1 support / 3 dps or 1 support + 1 balanced + 2 dps or something...
its all relative. it doesnt matter if the xp Gear was nerfed by a factor of a million. As long as it exists and it provides a bonus relative to gear that has 0 of the bonuses, those % become even more poweful. Thats all the botters and nerds do is farm GR so yes XP gear will still be present so they can chase para 4,000-5,000
not sure I agree with your logic. the XP focused gear most likely will mean the effective GR level you can push goes down (either for reasons of surviveability or dps) so that the net result is you earn less xp with the xp gear. In my opinion it has become a pointless, and therefore wasted stat. Maybe they should have dumped it altogether and created a new secondary to replace it. I'm thinking Life Per Second with a red gem in helmet would be a whole lot more meaningful than 4% xp, especially since the healer monk has also been nerfed into the ground.
+1 Thrill of the Hunt- procs Bane of Trapped from the other side of the screen and slows everything by 80%? Yes, plz..
and also Cull the Weak passive, which I believe is also its own multiplier. I guess that means these 2 passives kind of go together as a package deal..
It is extremely beneficial, almost mandatory for high end.
Marauder set could do without it while you have pets and polar station..
Shadow set seems to benefit this most since you are more prone to being overrun by trash due to lack of a solid AoE source and have to stand in a bit closer range than with other sets to maintain frequent area damage procs.
With UE you gain time to melt mobs by keeping them at bay.
Natalya should welcome it as well since you are dancing in and around packs.
Have no idea about LoN build yet, trying to collect the ideal ancient gear combination. It can take time even in PTR drop rates and farming yellow items is painful
Thanks for the feedback, I'm very happy to hear it is a useful passive, and can't wait to use my amulet as it has sat there for such a long time just waiting for its day to shine ps. a bit unrelated but I am aware there is a new cube recipe as well to convert legendary gems to mainstat. I'm not 100% clear on the details and I have a burning question about it. If you have (for example) an amulet that has elemental damage rather than mainstat, can you add mainstat to it as an additional attribute or does it have to have mainstat on it to start with?
Hi. As a console player I am very curious about whether this passive is now regarded as one of the "useful" ones so am keen to get any feedback about it from those on the PTR.
ages ago I rolled an OP ancient Hellfire with this passive which I decided not to trash because the stats were so good (970 mainstat 100/10 and rolled a socket). I'm thinking it will go great with my Unhallowed Build as multishot hits so much so quickly (so great synergy with cull the weak and bane of the trapped). My only doubt is that the reducing returns on cc may render this passive less useful than it appears on paper.
Any real world thoughts on how it actually performs?!?
I'm just using this as an example. I was lucky enough to roll an insanely good Yangs Recurve right at the beginning of the patch, which at the time, made the game feel like the best thing ever. But even if I had not rolled such a great one, the only other competing weapon for the Unhallowed build is a better rolled Yangs and I had already rolled about as good as you can get. So the point is that if that was the build you favoured (unhallowed) You had exactly one weapon choice and the option to cube it was not viable either due to the rcr bonus, further locking it in.
So I don't necessarily think that creating a weapon that has synergy with a specific set is a bad thing, but unlike Natalyas Slayer, Yangs is not a part of the set, and that to me is the real flaw.
In summary, if Blizzard wants to create non set items that are very obviously designed to work with a specific set (regardless of whether they offer some utility in other builds) then they should be made a part of that set. To my mind, this frees up another slot that would otherwise be used for the set, thus build diversity in terms of item choice is maintained.
For the record I think D3 does have a fundamental design flaw which means there will always be one build, or combination of builds in group play that will be demonstrably superior to all others, but that same flaw is also what makes the game fun, and makes it D3. If they addressed that flaw at the root cause, it would be a different game.
I've never personally played a game that has given me more milage than D3, so for all its failings, I have to give the dev team kudos for their continued efforts to upgrade it and keep it interesting to play. Patch after patch, and I've not paid a single cent apart from my initial purchase.
Just to add my own 2 cents. I don't think any game I've played before has kept me playing it for as long as Diablo 3, and the reason is the combination of (1) the constant grind to gain main stat and to continue to improve my already near perfect gear, even by small amounts and (2) The regular patches that constantly move the goal-posts and in doing so momentarily breathe new life into the game.
So I have to give Kudos to Blizzard for creating a game that has an end game like almost no other.
Having said all that, eventually it does start to get old, and the limitations of what you can do at end game (paragon advancement and ever decreasing gear improvements) gets boring. More than that, I've decided the end-game mechanics specifically reward endless hours of grinding, and in hindsight, it has been pretty unhealthy for me to have sunk so much time into what is supposed to be a leisure activity, not the main focus of my life.
I think I'll go back and play this game occasionally, but for now I've switched to fallout, which in my view does not provoke or reward the sort of obsessive grinding that Dialo 3 does.
In terms of how D3 could have a better end game, it became pretty obvious to me that after several patches, class and set balance is impossible to achieve by virtue of the way sets are designed. They have very specific and finite attributes associated with them. It appears that even with a PTR, Blizzard does not fully know how powerful or weak certain sets are going to end up being, especially when players come up with alternative approaches that were not considered by the game designers. When each new patch comes out, they typically make your old favorite set (or in some cases the whole class) redundant. I find this as ironic as it is annoying. Their tag line is play your way, but without question they set the goal posts and demand you to play their way. Rhyker argues the idea of the "meta" which he suggests is something players themselves define, and which everyone else follows but that is only part of the truth. The "meta" becomes the meta because these are the builds that prove themselves to be the most powerful and effective. That is on Blizzard, not the players.
What I'd like to see is set bonuses that scale up. It is not going to solve the grind, which is inherent in the game, all I'm saying is that I think it would have been great that if I'd wanted to keep playing the Marauders set (ie play my way) then if I continued to invest time to scale that set up, then it could continue to hold its own compared to other sets which would make for much more variety both in sets and classes actively being played when going online. It appears that patch 2.4 will attempt to offer a serious rebalancing of sets in an effort to promote more balance and more variety of classes being played, but I have serious doubts about how successful this will be because the issue of one set/class being better than another is inherent in the game design.
In the end, I'm not trying to seriously criticize this game with this post. It has stolen a huge amount of my life that I'll never get back, so for all its perceived issues and flaws, they sure must have got something right.
So many people arguing that THUD should be a part of this Open Letter. To me it is like one group saying the window is a square, while the OP was arguing that the door is a rectangle. A meaningless, pointless strawman debate because neither side is wrong.
Botting *is* an issue. The fact that THUD is also an issue is not at debate, of course it is. Pointing that out does not invalidate the case for arguing against Botting. People complaining so much about why THUD is not a part of this particular campaign (regardless of how right or wrong they are about which issue is bigger) should divert the energy they are putting into this thread into creating their own open letter about THUD, if they feel that strongly about it. no one is stopping you. Heck, probably some of the people involved in the Botting Open Letter would be happy to be apart of that protest too.
ps. for what it is worth, I dislike the idea of botting worse than THUD simply because I find something perverse about the idea of buying a computer game then getting a computer program to play it for you. That seems really whack to me and at that point I think it ceases to be a game.
I run ES/JiS, DML in Cube, HPS is my quiver (have a great one with +20% Fire/20 AS/10 CC Dex/Vit 12 Disc.
My rationale for ES/JiS that it will proc CtW and BotT which seems petty important to me since they are both separate multipliers to your damage, and I don't see Iceblink as viable (not for pushing anyway) since BotS is an absolute necessity for the RG.
Other aspects of my build vary based on mood. I have a GG Star of Az (840 Dex/10/100) and when I run that I also run the cookie cutter Cindercoat. However if I'm in a mood for all out DPS I run a hellfire with Steady Aim on it, I wear WH, I cube HW, wear shoulders with rcr (as versus AD) and select the Night Stalker passive. My sheet damage for fire is around 4.5 million at this point.
I also flip between two other skills, either Caltrops/BtT or Shadow Power/Gloom. Sometimes I cube an immunity amulet instead of CoE which means I'm running double immunity if I also have my Star equipped. Sadly,, even though I have very good gear, none of this has made my Hunter competitive with my Uliana Monk build, which frankly, I am almost forced to use when I'm in a group that is really pushing. It's not that the damage is that much better, but it is just so much more tanky and flexible (if you play it right). It sure works much better if there is an OP Barb and a Healing Monk in the group as well. I'm hopeful the next patch will offer a DH build that can be run in groups that are pushing, I remain convinced that Blizzard did not buff the new items enough in 2.3. My thoughts are for HW the generator speed increase should have matched the speed increase of mutishot and the generator damage range should have been 60-100 (not 45-60). Wraps of Clarity should have been 40-55% damage reduction. With these changes I think the UE set may have been a more viable option for group pushing.
ps another thing I sometimes do is swap out CoE for RRoG and wear some gg Magefists. I can get my sheet damage for fire to over 5 million with this setup. I acknowledge CoE is better for pushing, but for speed Grifting or Farming keys I find the consistent damage is better.
Fantastic information. I feel like I finally have a definitive answer to my question.
Much appreciated.
ps it is probably worth remembering that +skill damage is additive to the generic additive multiplier, so it may still be worth going for a different (defensive) stat on at least one of the items that you can get +EP on, especially if you need the toughness.
really fantastic and you have crazy talent. just a minor comment and it is a personal thing, but I've never felt entirely comfortable with the way Kadala is so commonly characterised as a whore. I don't think you need to do that in order to promote your fantastic work, and in fact something like that could cause Blizzard to keep your amazing work at arms length, and not acknowledge or feature it in one of their public streams etc.
I saw this on the official forums and thought I'd link to it here as it has helped my understanding tremendously and has answered some nagging questions I had about my own setup and what damage modifiers I should be opting for on my gear; skills and passives.
One thing I will expand on is the followup comments discuss using Holy Point Shot and cubing Deadmans, as this nets 20% Fire (a Multiplicitive category with limited options to stack) vs Calamity, which falls into the additive category.
In my case I run with a Star of Azkaranth so I can't even get +Fire on my Ammy (not possible to roll +Elemental/10/100 on the Star as +cooldown always rolls on it) which means the case for cubing Deadmans is even stronger. Having said that, no one in the comments section has acknowledged that the Calamity bonus is a shared debuff so by dropping it you are not just removing it from your damage stats but also everyone else in the party. Seems to me, that for group play, the case may still be made for Calamity in the cube.
Anyway, this is an outstanding read and pretty much fully covers the subject, leaving almost no stone unturned.
my silly math only takes DML affix and time into account to have a rough idea about its affect, that is why I called it simplified. Let's not go crazy
Yeah, I appreciated the approximation you did as it helped bring some context into how much I was losing by giving me a basic ballpark. I have not been able to feel the or observe the 5% loss in gameplay, and I'm not surprised.
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I think maybe because it is difficult to decide what to reroll and because when the patch comes out he may end up using the bow with LoN rather than unhallowed which could impact what to reroll.
For example, rolling disc from 10 to 12 may not be the right choice if using it with LoN as discipline only buffs your damage if you are running Unhallowed.
actually disc from 10 to 12 may not be the right choice even with unhallowed. for 2.4 Preparation/Invigoration bonus is going from +15 to 20 disc. Since this is all additive with itself, the more you have, the less (relative) increase you get in damage% per point of discipline added.
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0
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Hi. As a console player I am very curious about whether this passive is now regarded as one of the "useful" ones so am keen to get any feedback about it from those on the PTR.
ages ago I rolled an OP ancient Hellfire with this passive which I decided not to trash because the stats were so good (970 mainstat 100/10 and rolled a socket). I'm thinking it will go great with my Unhallowed Build as multishot hits so much so quickly (so great synergy with cull the weak and bane of the trapped). My only doubt is that the reducing returns on cc may render this passive less useful than it appears on paper.
Any real world thoughts on how it actually performs?!?
cheers
2
I'm just using this as an example. I was lucky enough to roll an insanely good Yangs Recurve right at the beginning of the patch, which at the time, made the game feel like the best thing ever. But even if I had not rolled such a great one, the only other competing weapon for the Unhallowed build is a better rolled Yangs and I had already rolled about as good as you can get. So the point is that if that was the build you favoured (unhallowed) You had exactly one weapon choice and the option to cube it was not viable either due to the rcr bonus, further locking it in.
So I don't necessarily think that creating a weapon that has synergy with a specific set is a bad thing, but unlike Natalyas Slayer, Yangs is not a part of the set, and that to me is the real flaw.
In summary, if Blizzard wants to create non set items that are very obviously designed to work with a specific set (regardless of whether they offer some utility in other builds) then they should be made a part of that set. To my mind, this frees up another slot that would otherwise be used for the set, thus build diversity in terms of item choice is maintained.
For the record I think D3 does have a fundamental design flaw which means there will always be one build, or combination of builds in group play that will be demonstrably superior to all others, but that same flaw is also what makes the game fun, and makes it D3. If they addressed that flaw at the root cause, it would be a different game.
I've never personally played a game that has given me more milage than D3, so for all its failings, I have to give the dev team kudos for their continued efforts to upgrade it and keep it interesting to play. Patch after patch, and I've not paid a single cent apart from my initial purchase.
0
Just to add my own 2 cents. I don't think any game I've played before has kept me playing it for as long as Diablo 3, and the reason is the combination of (1) the constant grind to gain main stat and to continue to improve my already near perfect gear, even by small amounts and (2) The regular patches that constantly move the goal-posts and in doing so momentarily breathe new life into the game.
So I have to give Kudos to Blizzard for creating a game that has an end game like almost no other.
Having said all that, eventually it does start to get old, and the limitations of what you can do at end game (paragon advancement and ever decreasing gear improvements) gets boring. More than that, I've decided the end-game mechanics specifically reward endless hours of grinding, and in hindsight, it has been pretty unhealthy for me to have sunk so much time into what is supposed to be a leisure activity, not the main focus of my life.
I think I'll go back and play this game occasionally, but for now I've switched to fallout, which in my view does not provoke or reward the sort of obsessive grinding that Dialo 3 does.
In terms of how D3 could have a better end game, it became pretty obvious to me that after several patches, class and set balance is impossible to achieve by virtue of the way sets are designed. They have very specific and finite attributes associated with them. It appears that even with a PTR, Blizzard does not fully know how powerful or weak certain sets are going to end up being, especially when players come up with alternative approaches that were not considered by the game designers. When each new patch comes out, they typically make your old favorite set (or in some cases the whole class) redundant. I find this as ironic as it is annoying. Their tag line is play your way, but without question they set the goal posts and demand you to play their way. Rhyker argues the idea of the "meta" which he suggests is something players themselves define, and which everyone else follows but that is only part of the truth. The "meta" becomes the meta because these are the builds that prove themselves to be the most powerful and effective. That is on Blizzard, not the players.
What I'd like to see is set bonuses that scale up. It is not going to solve the grind, which is inherent in the game, all I'm saying is that I think it would have been great that if I'd wanted to keep playing the Marauders set (ie play my way) then if I continued to invest time to scale that set up, then it could continue to hold its own compared to other sets which would make for much more variety both in sets and classes actively being played when going online. It appears that patch 2.4 will attempt to offer a serious rebalancing of sets in an effort to promote more balance and more variety of classes being played, but I have serious doubts about how successful this will be because the issue of one set/class being better than another is inherent in the game design.
In the end, I'm not trying to seriously criticize this game with this post. It has stolen a huge amount of my life that I'll never get back, so for all its perceived issues and flaws, they sure must have got something right.
0
So many people arguing that THUD should be a part of this Open Letter. To me it is like one group saying the window is a square, while the OP was arguing that the door is a rectangle. A meaningless, pointless strawman debate because neither side is wrong.
Botting *is* an issue. The fact that THUD is also an issue is not at debate, of course it is. Pointing that out does not invalidate the case for arguing against Botting. People complaining so much about why THUD is not a part of this particular campaign (regardless of how right or wrong they are about which issue is bigger) should divert the energy they are putting into this thread into creating their own open letter about THUD, if they feel that strongly about it. no one is stopping you. Heck, probably some of the people involved in the Botting Open Letter would be happy to be apart of that protest too.
ps. for what it is worth, I dislike the idea of botting worse than THUD simply because I find something perverse about the idea of buying a computer game then getting a computer program to play it for you. That seems really whack to me and at that point I think it ceases to be a game.
0
I run ES/JiS, DML in Cube, HPS is my quiver (have a great one with +20% Fire/20 AS/10 CC Dex/Vit 12 Disc.
My rationale for ES/JiS that it will proc CtW and BotT which seems petty important to me since they are both separate multipliers to your damage, and I don't see Iceblink as viable (not for pushing anyway) since BotS is an absolute necessity for the RG.
Other aspects of my build vary based on mood. I have a GG Star of Az (840 Dex/10/100) and when I run that I also run the cookie cutter Cindercoat. However if I'm in a mood for all out DPS I run a hellfire with Steady Aim on it, I wear WH, I cube HW, wear shoulders with rcr (as versus AD) and select the Night Stalker passive. My sheet damage for fire is around 4.5 million at this point.
I also flip between two other skills, either Caltrops/BtT or Shadow Power/Gloom. Sometimes I cube an immunity amulet instead of CoE which means I'm running double immunity if I also have my Star equipped. Sadly,, even though I have very good gear, none of this has made my Hunter competitive with my Uliana Monk build, which frankly, I am almost forced to use when I'm in a group that is really pushing. It's not that the damage is that much better, but it is just so much more tanky and flexible (if you play it right). It sure works much better if there is an OP Barb and a Healing Monk in the group as well. I'm hopeful the next patch will offer a DH build that can be run in groups that are pushing, I remain convinced that Blizzard did not buff the new items enough in 2.3. My thoughts are for HW the generator speed increase should have matched the speed increase of mutishot and the generator damage range should have been 60-100 (not 45-60). Wraps of Clarity should have been 40-55% damage reduction. With these changes I think the UE set may have been a more viable option for group pushing.
ps another thing I sometimes do is swap out CoE for RRoG and wear some gg Magefists. I can get my sheet damage for fire to over 5 million with this setup. I acknowledge CoE is better for pushing, but for speed Grifting or Farming keys I find the consistent damage is better.
0
Fantastic information. I feel like I finally have a definitive answer to my question.
Much appreciated.
ps it is probably worth remembering that +skill damage is additive to the generic additive multiplier, so it may still be worth going for a different (defensive) stat on at least one of the items that you can get +EP on, especially if you need the toughness.
1
really fantastic and you have crazy talent. just a minor comment and it is a personal thing, but I've never felt entirely comfortable with the way Kadala is so commonly characterised as a whore. I don't think you need to do that in order to promote your fantastic work, and in fact something like that could cause Blizzard to keep your amazing work at arms length, and not acknowledge or feature it in one of their public streams etc.
0
There is a thread on the official forums that appears to touch on my question.
With EP there are two types of damage, the DOT and the Explosion.
From the comments made in this link (specifically see Moe and Shamayas reply) it appears the +EP% does not increase the explosion damage.
eg:
Tested and recorded the following, confirming that they all, as of this patch, increase the explosion damage of Exploding Palm:
The following damage bonuses also increased the explosion damage:
And because of this, I would be led to believe that most other damage modifiers in the game also increase exploding palm explosion damage.
The following did not increase Exploding Palm explosion damage:
0
Hi all
I saw this on the official forums and thought I'd link to it here as it has helped my understanding tremendously and has answered some nagging questions I had about my own setup and what damage modifiers I should be opting for on my gear; skills and passives.
Damage Types
One thing I will expand on is the followup comments discuss using Holy Point Shot and cubing Deadmans, as this nets 20% Fire (a Multiplicitive category with limited options to stack) vs Calamity, which falls into the additive category.
In my case I run with a Star of Azkaranth so I can't even get +Fire on my Ammy (not possible to roll +Elemental/10/100 on the Star as +cooldown always rolls on it) which means the case for cubing Deadmans is even stronger. Having said that, no one in the comments section has acknowledged that the Calamity bonus is a shared debuff so by dropping it you are not just removing it from your damage stats but also everyone else in the party. Seems to me, that for group play, the case may still be made for Calamity in the cube.
Anyway, this is an outstanding read and pretty much fully covers the subject, leaving almost no stone unturned.
cheers
0