Quote from tenkataihei

Quote from Aranoch

To a point I agree, I don't think people should be forced into that play style but it would add so much longevity into the game.
Grinding to get to torment 1. Finding torment 1 gear that rolls slightly higher, than the lower difficulties, but enough to move on. Upgrading enough to move to Torment 2 and repeating until you're in full Torment 6 gear. The people who wanted to play casually and don't want challenges or a real gear progression system could stick with torment 1 or whatever they find fun that suits their "play styles"

A linear progression sounds boring to me too. With the system being suggested as I understand it (gear gets better per torment level) I as a player will have to live with the knowledge that I'll only ever find items that are slightly better than what I have. I will never have the chance to hit upon a jack-pot item that boosts me significantly. In other words there is really no excitement with a linear progression. Unless you propose there is a wide range, say you can find up to torment 3 level gear on torment 1 or master difficulty. But then you're still not really fixing the supposed problem.

Plus people who play casually and do want to find good stuff will be screwed over because with linear progression their progress will be even slower than it is now.

No, you would just up the difficulty and find upgrades by grinding. Taking the same system there is now just increasing the difficulty more with each torment tick, along with the rolls on gear. Anyone can do it. The more dedicated or antsy players make try to skip a torment level. 24 hours after the game was out I can call it quits on my wizard. 1 day of farming on my monk and crusader I can also fly through torment 1 with no risks. The only upgrades I can find are rares pushing the boundaries of perfect or legendaries that roll decent stats to start and allow me to reroll better than my current ones. If you had full T1 gear and knew your character then jump to T3 and skip a tier of upgrades if your own skill and character build allows so. It would add so much more depth and a much bigger sense of progression. Right now you can break 1M dps without ever leaving normal.
EDIT: And it has only been a week

I do want to clarify I'm very happy with diablo, more so now than before loot 2.0. The game is great, I have several hundred hours into it. I just feel like the grinding for gear should have more depth. More upgrades over time. Upping the difficulty, maybe skipping one for a challenge, climbing your way up to the top until you're fully geared in Torment 6 legendaries and set pieces. That, personally to me, would be worlds more satisfying and easily add twice the play time I have in now.

Between my follower and the topaz in my helm, I would say I have above average. Farming Torment 1, with and without it, I honestly notice no differences. In a single rift I did get 3 legendaries from the boss on Torment 2, after equipping the MF, several hours later. But honestly don't think It would have changed a thing without it. I did several more, maybe 4 or 5 rifts and got nothing also on Torment 2. My thoughts so far is, unless you play 4 people in a group stacked with a high topaz and nagel ring then differences are so little that it isn't really noticeable.

To a point I agree, I don't think people should be forced into that play style but it would add so much longevity into the game.
Grinding to get to torment 1. Finding torment 1 gear that rolls slightly higher, than the lower difficulties, but enough to move on. Upgrading enough to move to Torment 2 and repeating until you're in full Torment 6 gear. The people who wanted to play casually and don't want challenges or a real gear progression system could stick with torment 1 or whatever they find fun that suits their "play styles"

I've given and gotten a few transmogs from giving a friend a legendary after I've ID'd it and it worked. I also can't transmog to the firebird source from my tals one and still have both of mine. I also can't transmog to my account bound, crafted helm of command from other helmets. Some of them may be buggy I guess.

Just want to clarify this was the 48 hours after RoS came out. Now I sit at 1.1m %100 up time DPS no problems, upwards of 3M burst, also not using glass cannon and not using archon with around 7M toughness. Still a little room for upgrades on rares and since legendaries can roll higher stats than rares, plenty more there. I see hitting 2M dps %100 up time in full legendaries possible.

Just feel like showing off a bit

Just want to clarify this was the 48 hours after RoS came out. Now I sit at 1.1m %100 up time DPS no problems, upwards of 3M burst, also not using glass cannon and not using archon with around 7M toughness. Still a little room for upgrades on rares and since legendaries can roll higher stats than rares, plenty more there. I see hitting 2M dps %100 up time in full legendaries possible. Still having a very hard time finding replacements for my ammy and witching hour.

The Angry ChickenWitch Doctor Build

Hello everyone, with Reaper of Souls right around the corner and loot 2.0 being released recently many of us have been playing diablo quite a bit a again. The game has changed significantly and there is plenty of room for new builds and interesting new concepts. Having each character to 60 already and breaking 100 paragon level I decided to play Hard Core for the first time ever, no AH, no gold, not even stash space. Having started from scratch I've been playing around with a bunch of the witch doctors skills and came across a really fun build that is also Hard Core viable. This build focuses on very fast clear speed, huge bursts of damage, very sustainable with good utility and also works well in a group. I find this build extremely fun.

Skills

- Locust Swarm PestilenceGreat AoE, high damage and with this rune spreads extremely fast, pulling monsters (that live) towards you. This skill, I feel is essential because of the cast and forget aspect, being able to kill other creatures, soul walk and soul harvest while getting kills and reducing your cool downs (grave injustice passive) making Hex easily spammable.

- Zombie ChargerZombie BearsVery powerful AoE channel and does wonderful single target damage too. It's hard to find a replacement for this skill. The next best contenders would probably be poison bats. I much prefer zombie bears though.

- Summon Zombie DogsHere you have a few choices for runes use whichever you feel is most beneficial to you. Zombie dogs tank and aggro enemies, pulling them to you or distracting them if you get in a sticky situation. Very useful and hard to replace.

- HexAngry ChickenThis is the key of this build. Hex has a 15 second cool down and with this rune lasts 2 seconds. The Angry Chicken rune allows you to transform yourself into a chicken, gaining %50 movement speed and explode after 2 seconds (you can blow up at any time before that) for %1350 weapon damage to enemies within 12 yards. With the grave injustice passive it's very easy to make this spammable every 3-5 seconds in group situations. Can also be used as an escape or in combination with Spirit Walk (cast spirit walk first) to pass through enemies, not take damage while in chicken form and gain a total bonus of %100 movement speed moving to what you want to explode very quickly and easily.

- Soul HarvestSwallow Your SoulHuge DPS bonuses, %2 intel per enemy (up to 5 stacks) with this rune you also gain %5 max mana per stack making zombie bears and locust swarm even easier to spam.

- Spirit WalkHonored Guest Pass almost a guarantee in a witch doctor build, pass through enemies, escape, move closer faster, great utility spell and when you spirit walk with this rune you gain %20 of your max mana back to cast more zombie bears and locust swarms.

Passives

- Grave InjusticeThis is the key behind the build. For every enemy killed within 20 yards you gain %1 of your max life and mana while also reducing the cool down of all skills by 1 second. This makes Hex easily spammable.
- Blood Ritual Blood ritual helps with mana costs, paying %10 of them with while, while also gaining %1 life per second. The life paid isn't an issue especially in combination with grave injustice.

- For the third pass you have a few options, more or less preference. My top choices would be Spirit Vessel for the reduced cool down on spirit walk and soul harvest with the saving you from death perk, Gruesome Feast for the up to %50 max mana and inteligence by picking up health globes, Rush of Essence or Spiritual Attunement if you're having a hard time keeping your zombie bears up for mana.

To see the build visually -http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#hfYidU!Tce!acbbaZ

Play Style

With this build it's meant for very fast clear speed, insane damage bursts and mobility. An example is in CoTA experience farming, this build can easily keep up with frozen orb wizards or barbarians. You run in, spirit walk in the center of pack, soul harvest for the intel boosts and max mana gains, cast hex, explode hex, killing 5-10 enemies and reducing your cool down on spirit walk, soul harvest and hex by the number killed while also returning %1 max and mana life for each enemy killed. Throw out a locust swarm to the next groups chaining across screen infecting everything, draining health slowly. Maybe you zombie bears a few if your cool downs aren't up yet then cast hex, explode, rinse and repeat. This has insane amounts of damage out put.

Gear Preferences

Nothing is required for this which makes it a very easy, fun build to use. Beneficial gear stats would be reduced cooldowns, % skill damage increase on locust swarm and zombie charger (unsure if there's anything for hex), poison damage increase for stronger bears and locust swarm or physical for stronger angry chicken explosions. Max mana and mana regen. Stacking life is beneficial since you'll be gaining %1 per second, more life = more gained every second, life on hit if you're using leeching bests for zombie dogs, or even health globe radius if you're using gruesome feast. With this build you should use a higher damage weapon preferably 2H (they're bugged right now so more likely a slow hard hitting 1H with a high damage offhand will be better especially since the off hand will give you boosts like mana, mana regen, more int etc etc), the more damage the weapon does, not DPS, the harder Angry Chicken explosions will hit. Attack speed is nearly useless with this build and using a fast weapon will hinder it a lot.

A link to my hardcore character that uses this build using nothing but post loot 2.0 gear and started from complete scratchhttp://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Aranoch-1167/hero/42730522

I'm really glad somebody has taken the time to gather this information in place. Would be nice to see it stickied, or on the wiki somewhere. Good work to everyone involved

I called this lol. Had a slight argument with somebody in general chat that this could be done but I never got around to trying it myself (Reset my quests) but good job and good to know it is possible. This is something definitely doable by the people who don't want to take advantage of doing quests over and over or farming cursed chest. Get 10 stacks and just play through the game.

I just wanted to let everyone that has been waiting for this maintenance to end, the servers are up and the wait is over

Screen shot says it all.


EDIT: Realized I put 200 instead of 300. But there's enough mats here to make 300 hell fire rings.
If a mod could change the title I'd appreciate it.

The guy who posted this has 1700 hours played and 2 level ~80 paragons.

When I heard the whole "bring your usb to a friends" thing, instantly I thought borderlands. Whether it's shortly after when the game comes out or a few months along, there will be a way to modify items and eventually there may be some sort of extensive program like certain mods for D2 or willow tree from borderlands to manipulate items, skills or various other things for example making a character level 500 or even making "legit" items that would dilute the actual items that have been found.

In the end It will happen and it will be your choice to do it or not and right off the bat I know there will be people copying their character trading off items or gold, then reloading their character duping it, rinse repeat and in an hour you go from 10k to 10b making any sort of D2JSP or trading for gold almost worthless if enough people do it then the second that 1 godly item is found. It will most likely be duped and traded off.

EDIT: In reply to competitiveness, I wish every game had a leaderboards, detailed statistics a ladder or something along those lines. Even a non-competitive game with leaderboards instantly equals more fun for me. Prolonged gameplay and something else to strive for when I'm bored of farming and doesn't add any downside to other players. There will always be cheaters, booster, bots, hackers and scammers. I just wish it wasn't as easy as it is now. I log in and always have several requests from bots advertising websites and if that is being done as often as it is imagine what the people 1 or 2 steps ahead of patches are doing?

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