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Don't you think those numbers are a little off? Judging from the leaderboards, a vast majority of players are not Paragon Level 1000 and we are over a month into the season. The hardcore gamers are - so perhaps you were referencing that it would be boring for them?

I do not have ancient in every slot. I do not have ancient weapons and I've dedicated all of my materials exclusively to my Monk and trying to get them and haven't. I'm not bitter by the way - RNG is RNG for the most part. However, I would think it is fair to say that the vast majority of players do not have all ancient gear in a week. Some do - not the majority.

So yes, your statement is true - for the lucky and the hardcore.

And besides, you think adding five points to your main stat is that significant of a reward to justify no paragon caps? Five points. That's the ONLY reason that caps shouldn't be put in place, because you want that massive reward for your continued game play: five points.

I'm not sure I can agree with you.

Quote from TryHardEnmity»

I'm top 50 on the leaderboards, I was 20 at the highest a week ago, haven't been able to log on since. Saying that I'm Paragon level 650, everybody surrounding me is about 800-900+. I only play 2-3 hours a day, I haven't been able to play AT ALL for a week straight.

You can get onto the leaderboards without playing 8 hours a day, as any class

It's more towards the end of the seasons you will be punished by the Paragon levels for not playing all day every day. I agree fully that it takes the fun out of the game, the fact that time played is actually a bigger decider than any amount of skill that goes into the game, the ultimate combo of the players in the top 5 ranks are they have both.

I really feel they should just add a Paragon level cap to seasons, it sounds harsh, people shouldn't be punished more for playing more. But overall it will make the leaderboards MORE competitive, boiling it down to more skill than time played. I know the game has a huge luck factor with loot / GR composition but it feels like it's way too aimed at whoever plays the most wins at the moment.

Like I said before, I hit 20 being severely under-played to my fellow Demon Hunters, so there is a factor of skill involved. But overall, time wins the race

Sorry for lack of response - busy week.

To the suggestions that I play the way I want to and not concern myself with the streamers - my desire to compete on a Leader board has nothing to do with "this is what the streamers do, so I must do it to" mentality. The Leader board is something that helps me find a purpose with my one character, after a certain amount of gear has been attained.

Ask yourself - how long do you stay satisfied, playing one character, constantly looking for a slightly better ancient weapon or better roll on one piece of gear? Well some would say if you don't enjoy that one character, make a different class character and start the process of gearing all over again. It's the same problem. What else do you enjoy doing? Achievements. I like those and now that there are some form of rewards for attaining them, aside from bragging rights, I'm considering doing more of them. What's the other big glaring thing that you can do, with your one character to test it, and push it toward stronger, better horizons? Leader boards.

Imagine if the Season capped at 50 points in each category. Imagine for Monks if the snapshot gimmick was removed. You would have to rely upon skill, decision making and RNG to grace you with a slightly better gear than the other players. Quin can rush to the top, but the key is that other people may beat him out of the coveted top, by getting lucky with gear or just making better decisions. Right now if you wanted to try to get to the top 100, you couldn't because of his Paragon level lead everyone has.

Yes. I know - "well that's your fault for not playing 14 hours a day, every day, farming experience."

I say, respectfully - that isn't an answer. It's an excuse for a why a vital system to the game hasn't been changed.

I guess I'm saying that after I grind out a good character, I want to take a shot at a Leader board where if I get lucky with finding the right gear, I can make it to the top, just like everyone else. And I don't have to use a gimmick or dedicate unrealistic amounts of time to farming experience. Farming for gear I get - not experience.

I just watched Quin69's video guide on Monk's U6 gameplay to "push" Greater Rift progression for the season. The sad word that I heard early on that made me sorta, mentally, give up on the Season is the fun word of "snapshot."

If you haven't watched the video, a brief description; Monks are being encouraged now to fish for a GR with a Power Pylon somewhere near to the beginning of the first level of the GR. So that when you use the Pylon, the Exploding Palm skill of the Monk takes a snapshot of the damage and then you continue to piggy back the EP to new mobs throughout the GR. Even though the Pylon has worn off, your EP on existing mobs is still reflective of the increased DPS and you continue to spread that EP for the rest of the clear.

Snapshotting was a thing in vanilla with Sweeping Wind and it made the game play feel as though you were only being effective if you could maximize a gimmick, or fault of the design, to progress.

Between this and knowing that to come anywhere near the top 200, 100 or even 50 on the Leader boards of any given Season, you have to play at least 8 hours a day, just farming Paragon points to get the damage increase from your main stat...it makes me sort of not want to continue playing in the Season.

There are a lot of fun things to do, build you character, get the gear, improve the gear to Ancient, etc. Build a different type of character, repeat the gear process. But what is the end result? Even with its faults, the AH/RMAH gave you another purpose to play, because you never knew when you would find that hot item to sell. The Leader boards give you another reason to play, except after a week, if you haven't played 10 hours a day - what's the point? So you make a build that maximizes experience gain and you drearily farm experience. So that when you are ready, you farm the perfect GR to use a gimmick to try and progress.

Not rewarding game play for me. I'm curious if it is for others? Clearly the streamers and many others enjoy trying to beat out some sort of rank on the Leader boards, but is it really that rewarding? Does it make you awesome that you spend 70 hours or more a week playing this game, so you can say "I got to rank 1 because I have thousands of Paragon levels and spent days looking for the perfect GR to gimmick my way to the top!"

I hope that Blizzard runs the risk of pissing off their popular streamers, by putting a cap on Paragon levels for Seasons and for removing the snapshot gimmick from all classes and skills. Snap shot the dps and simply code so the dps increase ends across all instances of where it appears after the appropriate amount of time has passed.

So if you make it to rank 1 in a season, it's because you found great gear and used your skill and gear to make it to the top.

Sorry for the late response on this - was out of town at Dragon Con over the holiday weekend.

Thank you all for the advice on improvements to gear! As I continue to look for those elusive ancient weapons, I will also start to focus on finding gear with more CDR and CHD, as the Area Damage issue seems to still be around.

I'm seeing folks (Monks specifically) high on the leader boards using the standard Uliana's six piece SSS build - which includes Broken Promises in the Cube.

I'm doing the same and thus far can't seem to get the DPS to get past GR52. Now I don't have an ancient Fist or Lions, so that's a big part of it. but I feel the other half of the issue is the lack of Crit and the lack of proc on Broken Promises.

For giggles, I did a T10 rift with the character screen open and sat in a group of mobs, just using WothF generator attack. I waited to see the sheet dps jump from 300k to 1.5M. I punched and punched and punched and no jump really in dps. I then hit SSS and immediately the DPS jumped, at the end of the SSS attack and by the time SSS was off of cooldown, the sheet dps was back to around 300K.

I know the ring procs at different times during fights, but it seems so spotty at best that you can't really time your SSS attacks around it. And I feel that has to be an integral part of being able to progress. I have no crit anywhere else and it appears that you start with a base of 5%.

So there was a monk, rank 2 for the monk solo leader boards and they didn't use Broken Promises, but Covention of Elements in its place and they had crit in all the usual places.

So any suggestions on how to play around the proc, to time it, expect it, etc? Anyone else having trouble with this?

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Polrayne-1173/hero/22253075

Change the drop down menu on the Blacksmith to All - you will then get access to the higher level weapons (assuming you trained him up.)

First off - fantastic guide! I like the hybrid strategy the best. I did a lot of PTR play and going straight Rift leveling felt a little slow given the propensity of crappy mob type/density. I think it ultimately feels faster to look for chests and bosses.

Speaking of bosses - for giggles - assuming the "easy" bosses are Butcher, The Power Ranger Moth Chick and Cydea? Can't see Azz, D or Malthy being considered easy?

Would like to come back to the Clan - was in it from the beginning of d3 up through Reaper. Left the Clan and joined one with friends for a little while and then took a break from the Clan and just played on my own solo for a long while (fluctuating schedule and figured it was better to give up the spot to another.) Been playing the PTR quite a bit and looking forward to S4.

So in essence, I wanna COME HOME!!!

Quote from Shinna1989»

Selling all the new Items/reworked Sets at a Vendor wouldnt help. Its even easier to get all the items imo. Wont be any difference in regards of Q Times. The Problem is just the limited amount of players/open games on PTR. Since all 3 Regions loggin on the same PTR Servers on US thats even more the bottleneck.

Setup PTR Servers on all 3 Regions. You can only connect to the PTR where you BNET Account is registered. Should be much better in Terms of Q Times. Blizzard just needs to take care of 3 different PTR Installs which is just a question of menpower aka money.

I have to respectfully disagree with you.

If the legos were sold by vendors, I think people would lose interest real fast. Just my opinion, but I think the vast majority of folks that are flooding the PTR for the drop buff, just want to run around seeing all those beams and hearing clang after clang. If you remove that element, I strongly feel that folks lagging the PTR will get bored MUCH faster and leave.

Do your seasonal characters on live, copy over to the PTR? Or do you have to make a new seasonal character on the PTR and level?

Quote from shaggy

The worthless ones (the ones that have no special property) are exactly the ones they dropped the ball on and we're upset about. You know, for the 3rd or 4th time. That's why it's getting a bit of a tiresome subject. Someone at Blizzard *had* to know that going live with dubious legendaries wouldn't sit well with us after all the hype that Loot 2.0 got. But they rubber-stamped it anyway.