DiabloFans

Quote from wishedhehadbeta

pet scaling is horrible to say the least. hell/inferno the dogs just insta die in 1 hit from regular mobs even when taking the passives to help and even getting the healing rune on zombie dogs. its a huge let down and im really mad that they suck so bad when they are needed the most but even with stacking vit/shield they still insta-died.

That is either an overstatement or an ignorant statement that's being parroted from someone else's overstatement.
Pets don't get one shot, take zombie handler, jungle fortitude and bad medicine. Then take the rabid dog rune and the big stinker rune. They'll survive fairly well, even in multiplayer games.

Quote from Fomorian

Usually the people who complain about the servers are people who don't have knowledge about what it takes to keep them maintained.

I know how to build, run and maintain low and high cap servers. I had a job in which I did so for a year. I also know how to program.
I whine and complain over D3's launch BECAUSE I KNOW that Blizzard did a piss poor job. With all of the time and data collection they had to launch this game, they cut corners while prepping for launch day and as a result the customers suffered. They had terrible communication about problems and issues, and they have been brash at times towards people with legitimate concerns.
The complaints D3's gained are merited, in several ways D3 has failed to meet many of the claims and expectations that Blizzard themselves set up towards the game. Problems and concerns people said were going to pop up, and Blizzard claimed were not going to be an issue in the slightest, did come up, and Blizzard has been extremely ungraceful at eating their own words.

Another reason I loathe forced online play!

Quote from Ayr

The craft items should have at least 1 guaranteed affixe.

Something like:
Axe
+10 to 50 strength
+2 Random

This would really fix the issues I have with it, it would still be pretty hard to make a perfect roll BUT it would increase the chances of it to be useful. Right now the AH is just so much better. As for it being fare, the AH is really just the same as trading items; just easier.

One of my complaint is that the AH makes low level stuff a bit too easy, especially normal and nightmare. But come inferno, you gotta use the AH to sell your stuff and buy things more suited to your needs.

If I recall correctly there was a point in the beta where some crafted items were like that. They had one stat for certain and then a randomized secondary stat. Blizzard apparently decided that tossing rng on top of rng and then raising the costs across the board was more "fun" than filling in pieces of gear you need to progress. That's ok though, because if they make the blacksmith unattractive then people will just use the AH more. Then when they run out of gold, they'll be more incline to use the RMAH, which is all they really want us to do anyways.

Quote from Seamountain

Stacking Vitality and Arcane resistance.
Only way to kill 'em is to outlast their damage.

You can also join up with a team wich will make it a bit easier.

^ This
Make a WD friend who uses a build that supports pets. Dogs and garg help keep distance and fear can help keep them from casting beams, as can a good hex. Although all the distance in the world isn't going to matter if it's a small cave that is filled with arcane beams that you can't dodge.

I find it kind of like a big troll. So many people were whining about wanting the Necromancer back in D3, but Blizzard was adamant about keeping the Witch Doctor as the pet/summoner/black magic class that they just put him in the game and then made players watch him die, that way if anyone asked if the Necro was coming back they could say, "Nope, sorry he died last time."

You ran into the Necromancer in Act 2, when you're hunting down Mahgda. He went off hunting for some ghost and was mortally wounded in the process. You watch him die as the ghost comes out and then you get to kill it.
The barbarian in D3 is the same barbarian from D2.
The Sorceress from D2 was the first teacher of the Wizard in D3. You learn that she ends up getting killed by mage assassins or whatever in the short story firefly.
That's all I know about what happened to the D2 heroes after D2.

edit: I think I remember one of the devs implying during a Blizzcon or interview that the druid was killed after the events of D2. Like he died in the crater with the shattering of the worldstone.

Level 36 or 37, I forget which, but I'm using a variation of a poison master/summoner build.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aiPYXT!Zdc!aaaaaa
I ended up switching leaping spiders for splinters just so I had better uptime on bad medicine.
So far I've only run into two problems with the build:
First - Treasure Goblins, if I don't have fetishes off cooldown, treasure goblins get away with a fraction of their health, it's rather annoying and discouraging.
Second - Disease/Vampiric rares, I ran into a pack of these in Act 1, and I had to dismiss everything I had, and just spent 15 minutes kiting the pack of four around in a circle.
These situations flesh out the general underlying issue of the build, that being somewhat low single target damage without fetishes up. It can clear aoe packs and is extremely solid and durable besides that though.
I was actually surprised on how much uptime I could keep with acid rain, because of its steep mana costs and demo videos showing it previously consuming a good chunk of mana. At the moment it feels like acid rain doesn't consume that much more mana than haunt. I know numerically that's not the case, but yeah.

edit: always helps if I actually remember to put the link in before I post.

Rolling restarts that have broken the servers again =/

By level 15 you should have vault, use it and play smart.
The DH has lots of kiting potential and tricks to keep the gap wide, use them.

Well, servers aren't going to be up until 11:45pm PDT at the earliest. First day of D3, big bust, due to negligence on Blizzard's part. Poor techies have to stay up all night and suffer for upper management mistakes of trying to minimize costs to extremes and expecting things to go smoothly.

I've gotten four rares/yellows, or maybe five, and I'm not even out of act 1 yet! Sadly, most of them have been fairly useless to my WD.

Well they've just updated their CS twitter account saying that they're aware of American servers booting and locking people out, and they're just starting to investigate, fuuuuuun...

I took advantage of the opportunity to make a pair of delicious carne asada burritos, thus saving more pizza for later ^.^

Healthiest expectation for today is that the servers will not be up until tomorrow. If this expectation proves to be wrong, then at least we'll have a nice surprise instead of a big disappointment.