DiabloFans

Quote from Okakeri»

Imo, while the difference shouldn't be no 10-15x faster in MP, it should be at, the VERY least, 5x faster to do MP then to do SP, for all things.
So much stupid self-entitlement in this thread that has absolutely no basis or explanations. Theres a few wise posters, but most people are coming across as self-entitled pricks, of the same vein of people who live on welfare.

Wow. Such self-ownage

Quote from Shiroiro»

Current monk meta (static charge) will be ridiculously good with this set. It is only eng game non 6pc build at this moment, so obviously it will go through the roof with green rings.

Not sure, they'd lose the Shenlong buffs. Or did you mean the support builds?

I'll eventually play 2.4, but I don't know when and how intense.

Quote from JollyTheOctopuss»

Let's say we remove paragons. Then what? You get your BiS gear...........then what? No paragons to farm, if you kept grifts you'd essentially reach a brickwall eventually where you'd never be able to progress any further and if you throw grifts out too, then what?

And after how many playtime hours during a 3 month season do you reach that point? Nobody said anything about capping non-season. So, the super serious sibling gamers might reach that plvl and (almost) BiS equipment in a week. What's the matter? Others will reach that point too and then it's up to practice and creativity.

I can turn your Yankees analogy around by pointing out that they get that good via practice. It's not like they're getting bigger bats if they have their little brother run extra laps around the stadium during offtime hours.

Quote from chadwx»

Quote from Solmyr77»

Vanilla D2 technically did have a lvl cap at 99, but only a very, very small amount of players put in the dedication, when all they got was redundant skill points and +5 to any stat. That was a good system because you could (almost) always improve a tiny little bit, but the difference between a lvl85 and a lvl99 was basically non-existent given that the 99 took like what, 20x(?) more play time.

I agree on your points except for this one. Some builds needed 85+ to work, those skill points were huge.

In Vanilla? Which class? 20 Whirlwind and 20 Spear Mastery, done

My only ever 99 char was a hybrid-pvp-pala in LoD who could use every single point and more, but again, vanilla?

History recap:

Vanilla D2 technically did have a lvl cap at 99, but only a very, very small amount of players put in the dedication, when all they got was redundant skill points and +5 to any stat. That was a good system because you could (almost) always improve a tiny little bit, but the difference between a lvl85 and a lvl99 was basically non-existent given that the 99 took like what, 20x(?) more play time.

In D2 LoD exp progression was faster and many players reached the lvl cap of 99 and thus the point to complain about no more progress for sessions without an item upgrad.

WoW was in between and introduced an easy to reach and mandatory lvl cap.

Then D3V had its similar lvl cap and even more people complained about no progress for spending hours of gameplay, thus we got paragons. But even they were capped, so again yadda yadda..

Fast forward to today, seasonal leaderboards are lacking because of the massive power difference that a plvl gap brings with it. Blizz technically has no choice but to either give it a hard cap (maybe restricted to GRs) or massively reduce the stat gains to get into a D2V situation, like giving 1 strength per 20 plvls past 800. Which would be a mix between a middle finger and avoiding complaints about "being done".

Won't fix anything with a different xp distribution, sane people will always be hundreds of plvl behind the top.

Quote from Metatronxxx»

about that set, will it be ancient with good rolls ( i know it will not ) ? will it be random rolls? do i get to choose set for my class that i'm playing or also random ? it's not that hard to get sets for classes at all , so that is not that special reward in my opinion

I'd say better complete any required hc-step second to last ;D

Well, stash space > exclusive items, so I suppose season will be the way to go, again. Don't know when I'll play 2.4 though, won't see much free time after christmas.

Well, most guides are only relevant when you have the respective class set. So for now you would play with a very basic build. Multishot-Arsenal is the spender of choice since you already have the DML-quiver. Sentry is ok for additional damage, which is boosted by the very good Ballistics passive (just like Arsenal). You need that passive obviously (ditch BV). I don't see a point in yet another spender with RF and I would never play without Vault.

You'll change the build when you aquire your first class set bonuses (to the skills that are boosted by it).

Guide to quoting:

1. Hit quote

2. Hit [BB] to the upper right of the text box. This avoids the unintuitive, rather impossible to handle default editor.

3. Make liberal use of the delete-key to shorten the quote to the points that you refer to.

Thanks.

Quote from Jamoose»

So let's make the letter about "cheating" so that whatever slim chance there was of Blizzard actually addressing it will be completely gone or replaced with stupid examples of actions taken by blizz against exploits and other irrelevant stuff. I think people need to get over their ego and i'm not talking about streamers only...

I don't think, Blizzard is stupid. Ignorant to an extent yes, but not stupid. They are aware that the leaderboards are being won by people who go the extra mile, inside and outside of the game. And they know they won't fix the competitiveness with just the extraction of one evil. The question is, if they care. They see that only a tiny fraction of players actively tries to rank, to push their limits, which is visible through the behavior of opening and closing one gr after another fishing for that doable grift. Now this letter tries to pretend that a vast amount of players needs botting gone to enjoy D3 again, when in fact, it only speaks for an even smaller fraction of the aforementioned fraction. And Blizzard sees that as well. Plus they very much realize the hypocrites

So, they might care for the players who engage in the leaderboards and enforce some law against botters. Maybe you even luck out and they purge thudders as well, while they're at it. But don't assume they act based upon the number of people "liking" this letter. I'd rather have them read the discussion about it.

Quote from Bagstone»

I'm not going to share my personal opinion on THUD in this thread because I did not open this thread to discuss THUD, but to raise awareness for the crazy amount of botting.

Ok, I rest this case. Like I said, I'd want many features of it in the actual game client. And I'd rather have Blizz invest into that than into a witch hunt.

And I think the same about botting. Granted, there is nothing positive at all about it, which somehow separates it from THUD, but I doubt Blizzard can effectively combat that. I just remembered how they tried to and utterly failed in D2, when legitimate players got IP-bans (me among them) all the time for doing pindle runs like a machine.

So I'd personally settle for the cheap solution of just setting a seasonal plvl cap starting in s5. Let's say plvl 1000. All of you serious players will have no problem attaining that long before the end of the season, while also farming keys, mats etc during your awake hours.

Seriously? Where is that vocal minority that disagrees about botting being negative? I only see a vocal majority wondering how you strive to prosecute one "crime", yet turn a blind eye on another, which equally destroys that what you claim to seek.

Why don't you openly discuss THUD and your position about it instead of hushing that up and calling people trolls?

Quote from Jamoose»

Quote from Solmyr77

edit:
And btw, both issues could be adressed with changes to the game:
1) Bots would be a lesser factor, if there was a plvl cap
2) The non-cheating aspects of THUD could be incorporated into the actual game, the magic words are "combat log".

1) Botting is not about paragon levels. Maybe to some extent it is, but it's mostly about not having to farm GR keys and materials. Basically, if you run a simple bot on T6-10 every night when you sleep, you will basically have infinite GR keys and materials. Paragon farming through botting is extremely inefficient. I'm not saying people aren't doing that, i'm just saying that it's not the main incentive for botting. At least from what i've seen and experienced.

2) Adding a combat log won't solve all of the issues that THUD helps to solve. Sure if they implement all of the "good" THUD features in the game then there won't be any need for it but untill then, people will use THUD no matter what because it's simply fucking amazing if you are playing the game and want to have some more details about what's going on and not be limited to retarded chat messages.

THUD is not the issue here. If Blizzard adds mod support they will solve the THUD issue but that's a different story. Fact of the matter is that in this thread, people want to pressure Blizzard into addressing the botting problem because they know that there might still be a chance that Blizz would give a damn and actually ban some or all of the botters. There's no use in trying to pressure them to ban THUD users because that simply won't happen for multiple reasons, the main one being the fact that they can't tell for 100% that you are using THUD if you carry out a few simple safety measures.

Personally, i don't think Blizzard will change their stance because of this letter. Sure, they might ban some botters now but in the long run, it won't suddenly make them make a big shift in their policies and start investing more into the anti-cheats division that is supposed to specifically work on D3... A division that seems to be non-existent from what we've seen so far.

1) I get that and I mostly agree, but if there was a plvl cap, you wouldn't lose out on valuable exp-time when you farm other stuff. Botters would have an advantage still, but not one that resulted in +500 plvl.

2) Sure, it's not the only thing, but the required catalyst for everything else. With a combat log and the permission to write simple WoW-like addons, the game could be much better. I'd enjoy it more if it had my WoW interface, like a weakaura for the CoE buff etc. But such info is not available without spoiling the game for me with too many "wrongs".

Though, on a side note, while I would very much appreciate the latter part, I'm with those players who'd rather see resources spent on content than on cleaning up the leaderboards, if those are in any way related.

Quote from Bagstone»

1) "What about TurboHUD".

TurboHUD and bots are two different issues, and they're treated differently by Blizzard. This includes about how they respond to those issues on the forums, and the history of account actions taken. Our letter and this thread is about botting. I don't think there are two different opinions about bots (unless you're a botter), something you cannot say about other issues. Therefore, please keep TurboHUD and other things out of this message, as it makes the issue more blurry and might result in a vague response. If we put the spotlight on one very specific issue and the community speaks as a whole, chances are significantly higher to get a strong response (i.e., hopefully *action* and not just *words*).

Well, I agree that botting is bad and botters should be banned. And I also think that removing one offender is better than no action at all.

However, please don't pretend that the competition would be clean if only there were no botters. And please don't try to shut up the people, who claim the opposite.

I haven't used THUD, but as a long time WoW-player, I agree that many of its functions should be in the legit game client. But as of now it is plain and simple a cheat, mostly due to its map hack function. About this, there should also be no two opinions.

So, how about you start an open letter against that, too? Two separate letters for two separate cheats that each deny leaderboard access to the legitimate players? (for the record: I have no ambitions at all to rank outside of my f-list)

Otherwise you won't get rid of the smell of lobbying.

edit:
And btw, both issues could be adressed with changes to the game:
1) Bots would be a lesser factor, if there was a plvl cap
2) The non-cheating aspects of THUD could be incorporated into the actual game, the magic words are "combat log".

I agree with Monk being the best atm. It's also the most fun for me so far. He currently has the highest solo potential + can fill 3 roles in the fotm meta setup:

Only he can be the Healing-Monk (well, obv. )

He can not be the Support-Barb

Only he can be the SWK-Monk

And he can be the lone dps, competing with Barbs, WDs and DHs.

I think, this "reign" results from the defensive op-ness and the number of viable (and fun) specs.