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[RoS FAQ] Reaper of Souls: Frequently Asked Questions

1) What is that orange diamond in front of some affixes?
2) How useful are items increasing damage of an element/skill?
3) Which skill bonuses can roll on which slot?
4) How does cooldown reduction work?
5) Is there a cooldown reduction cap?
6) How do multiple items with cooldown reduction and skill/bonus damage add up?
7) I've heard something about a guaranteed legendary item from bosses, how do I get those?
8) Any changes on Keywarden, Ubers, Hellfire Ring in RoS?
9) I'm new to class X, what is the current cookie cutter build?
10) What is the best way to farm XP/caches/legendaries/...?
11) What are the drop rates for specific legendaries?
12) What exactly do I need to do to get a design unlocked for transmogrification?
13) What's the state of life steal in RoS?
14) What happened to magic find?
15) How does the difficulty level affect the legendary drop rate?
16) What do the new paragon portraits look like?
17) How does +elemental damage bonus work, in particular with regard to "black weapons"?
18) Is there a list of all the primary stats and secondary stats?
19) How is bonus XP calculated?
20) How are the contents of caches determined? Should I open them on Torment 6?
21) I've heard there are certain cache-specific legendaries, such as the Ring of Royal Grandeur?
22) What to do with Blood Shards?
23) What are the drop rates for legendaries, crafting materials and so on?
24) Is there a list of all Torment-only legendaries?
25) What are the level 70 ubers and drop rates?
26) Can already I farm materials for the Hellfire amulet that will be added in 2.1? _______________________________________________________________________________________________


1) What is that orange diamond in front of some affixes?
Those are affixes that are not included in the item comparison (i.e., damage, toughness, and healing). One such example is the "+% elemental damage" affix: it will not be included in the damage overview as it only affects one element, not necessarily your overall damage. The orange diamond has nothing to do with enchanting - those stats can be enchanted unless they are "special legendary" stats (i.e., affixes that don't roll on rare items of the same slot).

2) How useful are items increasing damage of an element/skill?
The affixes "(Elemental type) skills deal x% more damage" and "Increases (skill name) damage by x%" do exactly what they say - they increase all damage dealt of a certain skill or a certain elemental damage type by the given amount. Usually, this affix comes at the sacrifice of another damage-increasing affix, and therefore the item seems to decrease your overall damage. This is because the elemental/skill bonus damage is not included in the sheet damage calculation. We have to do the calculation ourselves.

For example, let's assume we have an item that adds 15% damage to all our fire spells (and we are exclusively using fire spells), but reduces our overall damage by 12% according to the comparison tooltip. If an average spell will do 1000 damage, the DPS lost would reduce the damage to 880. However, the elemental bonus affix increases the spell's damage by 15%, resulting in 1012 damage. Overall, you gained 1.2% damage from that switch. As another example, if an item gives you 30% spell damage for a 25% loss, it would not be worth it: 1000 * 0.75 = 750, 750 * 1.30 = 975, so a 2.5% overall loss. The general formula to calculate the effectiveness is (((1-DPS loss) * (1+elemental/skill bonus gain))-1)*100; in the aforementioned examples it would be (((1-0.12)*(1+0.15))-1)*100 = 1.2 and (((1-0.25)*(1+0.3))-1)*100 = -2.5.

The damage type of the weapon makes no difference in this calculation; it can be a black weapon (i.e., no elemental damage) or any elemental type damage weapon. If you combine multiple items with elemental skills damage bonus they will be added together: bracers with 12% cold damage and a necklace with 13% cold damage result in 25% cold damage. The same accounts for skill damage bonus. If you combine skill damage and elemental type damage bonus it gets calculated multiplicatively. For example, if you have +10% lightning spells damage on bracers and +15% Electrocute damage, the overall increase for casting electrocute will be 1.10 * 1.15 = 1.265, i.e., an increased 26.5% damage.

daisychopper found a very informative website that offers detailed information about how elemental damage works (with pictures!):
http://bannedofgamers.com/index.php?threads/guide-2-0-1-elemental-damage-explained.1104/

There's also an excellent, very detailed explanation by Jaetch in one of his videos, where he not only discusses elemental/skill damage bonuses vs. DPS, but also "sheet DPS" vs. "real DPS". Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Dk8xiG1ic0

Note that as of 2.0.6, you can see the elemental DPS in-game as well - just click on "details" in the character pane and you'll see the percentage of elemental damage on your gear, and if you hover over that number it will tell you your elemental DPS.

3) Which skill bonuses can roll on which slot?
Entropy datamined this information and put it into a nice format, I'm just gonna redirect you to his post, be sure to give him a +1 for that:
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-general-forums/diablo-iii-general-discussion/82397-list-of-skill-affixes

4) How does cooldown reduction work?
The formula is quite simple: New cooldown = (original cooldown) * (cooldown reduction 1) * (cooldown reduction 2) * (cooldown reduction 3), and so on. For example, Slow Time with a 60% Orhpeus Gesture, 10% cooldown reduction from paragon, and 20% cooldown reduction from Evocation will result in 3.456 seconds (instead of 12 seconds) cooldown. As you can see, you can reduce cooldowns significantly, but never get to zero cooldown.

5) Is there a cooldown reduction cap?
The hard cap for cooldown reduction is 90%. However, there is a "soft cap" as to how far items and skills allow you to reduce the cooldown so far. It depends on class/choice of items/skills; you can see the maximum amount of cooldown reduction (CDR) for every class and skill here:

http://bannedofgamers.com/index.php?cdr/

6) How do multiple items with cooldown reduction and skill/bonus damage add up?
Cooldown reduction suffers from diminishing returns, the formula is like this: 1-(1-cdr1)*(1-cdr2)*(1-cdr3) and so on. If you have 8% cooldown reduction from paragon, 20% cooldown reduction from skills, and 6% cooldown reduction from an item, your entire cooldown reduction is not 34% but 1-(1-0.08)*(1-0.2)*(1-0.06) = 1-0.69184 = 0.30816 (or 30.816%). However, it doesn't mean that stacking high cooldown reduction can't be worthwhile; sometimes it's even worth going from 65% to 70% or higher (monk with Epiphany, for example), although it takes a lot of additional cooldown reduction to get there.

Bonus damage for skills or elements works differently; if you have an amulet with 11% increased fire damage skills and bracers with 13% increased fire damage skills, your fire skills will deal 24% more damage. Nevertheless, if you are already at 100% increased fire damage and add 20% the relative increase of DPS is not actually 20% (a spell that did 1 million without fire gear will deal 2 million with 100% increased fire damage, and 2.2 million with an additional 20% item; so the relative increase is only 10% because your elemental bonus is already quite high).

7) I've heard something about a guaranteed legendary item from bosses, how do I get those?
There are two ways to get guaranteed legendaries: 1) If you are below level 60 and kill an act boss for the first time, you will definitely get a legendary item. 2) After you did a full reset of all quests (or if you haven't completed the last quest yet), Malthael will always drop a legendary item. Here's the catch: in order to get this drop, you need to hit the "Reset Quests" button, and you can only reset the quests if you finished every single quest in the game. Yes, no easy way to exploit this! Just play through the entire game. You can run through it in Normal though - of course, you won't get any Torment-level legendaries then, and no Imperial gems.

If you can't hit the "Reset Quests" button it means you didn't finish every single quest yet. To see which quests you haven't done yet check this amazing website: http://xinair.net/diablo3/ (credit to creator Bleedus from Reddit). Note that some people have reported that the quests reported by this tool were not the right ones; another solution, if this doesn't work, is the one proposed on Reddit in this discussion.

8) Any changes on Keywardens, Ubers, Hellfire Ring in Reaper of Souls?
There is a completely new Hellfire Ring on level 70, with new keys, a new Infernal Machine crafting recipe, updated stats to level 70 (including 45% instead of 35% bonus XP), and an additional fourth portal you need to open. Give it a try! You cannot wear both the level 60 and level 70 Hellfire Ring, so you probably want the level 70 ring in the end.

The Keywardens gained some nasty new abilities in 2.0.1; Xah'Rith (act 3) gained the ability to multiply himself, Sokahr (act 2) occasionally reflects your spells, and Odeg (act 1) became a coward and will occasionally run away through the entire Fields of Misery, happy chasing. The ubers' mechanics haven't changed though. The new drop rates (for keys and organs) range from 25% (Torment 1) to 50% (Torment 6) - yes, significantly lower, but also realize that there is not Nephalem Valor anymore. The exact drop rates from T1 to T6 are 25%, 28%, 33%, 38%, 43%, 50% (no drops on difficulties lower than Torment).

9) I'm new to class X, what is the current cookie cutter build?
About 3 months into RoS it's safe to say that there are a few (1-3 builds) per class that stand out in end-game ("efficient" T6 rifting). However, if you're new to class X, those builds are probably not available to you as they all rely on very specific gear that takes some time to acquire (specific weapons, gloves, or helmets; complete class sets; a RoRG for that class, a suitable SoJ and amulet. For a compilation of some builds check out the build section on our website or the class forum of the class you started playing.

That being said, for all other cases (pre-endgame, just starting a class, not having all gear available, or not being interested in efficiency) "cookie cutter builds" are not as important as in Diablo 3 Vanilla - in other words: while there are a few builds that shine for each class on T6, there are countless builds that work at least on lower Torments (up to T3-4 you can run almost every "sub-optimal" build). That's the beauty of Reaper of Souls! Also keep in mind that new items are being added and new builds are being discovered constantly, so never stop thinking about new potential builds in case you ever get bored with your "cookie cutter build".

If you start with a class, your best bet is to try out all skills to see which playstyle you prefer and which spells you like, and as you find legendary items just try out builds that the special effects on those legendary items unlock. In case your new class is a wizard, Blizzard MVP and Diablofans Mod Jaetch created a very nice guide on "how to create a build" (the basics apply to other classes as well).

10) What is the best way to farm XP/caches/legendaries/...?
There are many different things to do, and certain things are better suited for a specific goal than others. That being said, almost every one of those choices comes with a downside, so in the end it's mainly "do what you like". For example...

• Rifts are probably the best overall way to get a good mix of legendaries, XP, blood shards, and gold. In terms of efficiency, choose a Torment level high enough that you can clear in reasonable time (i.e., elite packs die within less than 10 seconds and a rift clear takes between 5-10 minutes on average until spawning and killing the rift guardian). Works best in groups or solo with Unity and a follower with Unity.
• XP is probably gained fastest by killing Malthael or other bosses. The problem is that you either need to find your way through Pandaemonium Fortress to his chamber (takes too much time) or leave the game before the quest completes (you get NO LOOT) or re-open the game with another character (lots of time/effort with character switching and new game creation). This "method" is boring as hell, does not yield and blood shards, and probably not as many legendaries as rifts. A well-coordinated high Torment rift group can get a lot of XP as well, is less boring, and will overall net more "other" stuff than just XP.
• Blood shards can be acquired fastest by doing "Rift it Forward". Join one of the "Rift it Forward" communities, hang out in chat, and join games to grab the rift guardian kill and lots of blood shards. However, you might spend lots of time just looking at the menu if you don't get any invites; you might run out of rift key fragments soon; and overall you will not get as many legendaries as doing rifts.
• Caches/rift key fragments can only be obtained by bounties, and there are different ways to go about this as well: Many prefer "split farming", which means that 4 people do bounties in a group, but never play together; everyone finishes a different bounty. It's the fastest way to get as many caches as possible. The drawbacks are that you get less rift key fragments (you only get them for the bounties you were present at), and you might miss out on legendaries (all chest and destructibles are "world drops", i.e., while you are killing Izual someone might open a chest in an act I bounty and it might drop a Wand of Woh for you).

In the end, play what you enjoy most, because that's what the game is about. What's the point in playing a game in a mode you don't like, wearing it out quickly such that you stop playing after a while?

If you want a second opinion on this, here's a well-known Dfans community member, streamer, official Blizzard MVP and ultimate game knowledge resource stating his opinion about "farming routes": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRMpLbkBGJo#t=307

11) What are the drop rates for specific legendaries?
We don't know if this information is 100% accurate, but it seems to be generally in line with what people experience:

Legendary roll percentage sub-torment
Legendary roll percentage torment
Legendary roll weight (determining probability for a specific item category to drop)
Find the item in your Torment/sub-Torment table, then check in the third link how high the drop chance of that item category is. It'll give you the drop chance of any legendary item being your desired item. Note that 1) for Kadala you need to look at the Torment table (link #2) and dismiss the "non-smart loot" column because Kadala will always give you smart loot legendaries. Also note that as of 2.0.6 some of these charts have become obsolete (class set items are now as common as all other set items, such as Blackthorne's).

12) What exactly do I need to do to get a design unlocked for transmogrification?
Legendary/set items are unlocked for transmogrification as soon as they enter your inventory. That means, you will get the design as soon as you identify it (because at that point the item is in your inventory), or if one of your group members finds it, drops it, and you pick it up, you will get the transmog as well. Of course - this requires a lot of trust as there is no way to demand the item back!

For crafting recipes the same principle applies: the item needs to be in your inventory, which means only every item of a crafting recipe that you actually craft unlocks for transmogrification. Learning the recipe is not enough. Note that this currently does not seem to work for legacy crafting recipes, i.e., you need to craft the level 70 version of a crafting recipe to get the transmog design. Some people said that they didn't get the design until they actually *equipped* the crafted item, so if you don't get the design from crafting, make sure to equip it as well.

13) What's the state of life steal in RoS?
Life steal used to return 20% life (on Inferno) before 2.0.1 and has been reduced to 10% since. Up until level 69, life steal is still 10%... and as soon as you hit level 70, it will be useless (returns 0%, technically speaking).

14) What happened to magic find?
Magic find was too powerful and became a requirement to find any loot in Diablo 3, which is why it was heavily nerfed: 100% magic find will increase the chance to find blue items by 100%, but only increase the chance for finding rare (yellow) items by 30% and for legendary/set items it is only 10%. That means that if you equip your character with 300% magic find, you will only get a 30% higher chance of finding a legendary. In addition to that, magic find has been removed entirely from paragon and from future rare gear (it still exists on pre-2.0.1 items, the so-called legacy gear). There are items in Reaper of Souls that have magic find as a stat (e.g., Nagelring or Cain's Set), but it is not worth it to sacrifice a lot of damage for a small amount of magic find.

15) How does the difficulty level affect legendaries?
Higher difficult levels yield a higher legendary drop rate. The exact blue post reads as follows: "Playing in Torment difficulty does not provide a bonus to the Magic Find stat. It does however confer a bonus to legendary drop chance, but this bonus is not visible anywhere on the character details pane." (source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11914882166)

There is no increase/decrease in the quality of legendaries based on difficulty though; you will not get higher affix rolls if you play Torment 6, the affix range remains the same. Here's a bluepost to make this pretty clear:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12091349617?page=5#89

There are certain legendaries, mostly sets, that you can find on Torment only; here is a list of all those items.

16) Will there be new paragon portraits?
The new paragon portraits went live with 2.0.4, take a look at them here (for level 200 to 800):

http://www.diablofans.com/news/48021-undocumented-patch-notes-several-legendary-items

17) How does (legacy) +elemental damage bonus work, in particular with regard to "black weapons"?
Elemental damage bonus does not spawn on loot 2.0 anymore; items that used to roll it before 2.0.1 now roll the "new" elemental damage bonus that it just tied to the skills you are using. See Stone of Jordan for an example of such an item (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/stone-of-jordan) and more infos about the "new" elemental skill damage in this FAQ. If you are using legacy items such as the old Stone of Jordan, the "black weapon" bug is still present. For those of you who don't know what black weapons are or what he issue is, here's an explanation: http://old.diablofans.com/topic/84199-guide-wizard-gear-guide/#blackweapon

18) Is there a list of all the primary stats and secondary stats?
Those are all primary stats:
Splash Damage, Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, +% damage to Physical damage skills, specific Class Skill Bonuses, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Vitality, Critical Hit Damage, Critical Hit Chance, Attack Speed, Life per Second, Armor, +% Life, Bonus Damage to Elites, Bleed Damage, All Resistance, Sockets.

And all secondary stats:
Gold Find, Thorns, Bonus Experience per Monster Kill, Chance for (Fear, Stun, Blind, Freeze, Chill, Slow, Immobilize and Knockback), Ignore Durability Loss, Bonus Healing to Health Globes and Potions, Bonus Pickup Radius, Single Resist, Life After Kill, and Level Requirement Reduction

Source: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/12671560##Items (thanks to sKingX for pointing this out)

19) How is bonus XP calculated?
There's an app for that! Go to this website: D3resource.com/xpcalc/ (thread over here, if you have any comments or spotted a mistake). There's also the formula for bonus XP - as of now derived from testing because there's no official word on the formula, yet.

20) How are the contents of caches determined? Should I open them on Torment 6?
The cache's contents are rolled as soon as you receive them, so that you can't cheat the system: if you complete the bounty on any difficulty lower than Torment, no Torment-only legendaries will drop from the cache, even if you open it on Torment 6. However, the rolls on the items (smart loot, main stats) are determined when you open them. This means you can farm caches on your barbarian, open them with your wizard, and get lots of intelligence items!

21) I've heard there are certain cache-specific legendaries, such as the Ring of Royal Grandeur?
Yes: certain legendaries can only drop from bounty caches; the difficulty level doesn't matter, but they only drop from caches from two acts each (act 4 and one other act). Those are all currently known bounty cache legendaries:

• Avarice Band - Act 3 and Act 4
• Boots of Disregard - Act 3 and Act 4
• Burst of Wrath - Act 3 and Act 4
• Cloak of Deception - Act 2 and Act 4
• Coven's Criterion - Act 2 and Act 4
• Death's Bargain - Act 4 and Act 5
• Envious Blade - Act 3 and Act 4
• Gloves of Worship - Act 2 and Act 4
• Golden Gorget of Leoric - Act 1 and Act 4
• Helltrapper - Act 4 and Act 5
• Ilusory Boots - Act 2 and Act 4
• Insatiable Belt - Act 3 and Act 4
• Mad Monarch's Scepter - Act 1 and Act 4
• Overwhelming Desire - Act 3 and Act 4
• Pandemonium Loop - Act 4 and Act 5
• Pauldrons of the Skeleton King - Act 1 and Act 4
• Pride's Fall - Act 3 and Act 4
• Ring of Royal Grandeur - Act 1 and Act 4
• Salvation - Act 4 and Act 5
• Sanguinary Vambraces - Act 1 and Act 4
• Soulsmasher - Act 4 and Act 5

(Sources: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12249795001 and http://www.diablohub.com/database/sorting/bounty-bags)

22) What to do with Blood Shards?
Blood Shards currently can only be used for gambling items at Kadala, so feel free to spend them all. There is a cap of 500 Blood Shards, so don't save up too many. Also note that you cannot obtain any legendaries that only drop from Horadric Caches, as well as no follower items or bottomless potions. All other items (including Torment-only legendaries such as sets) can be acquired from Kadala. If you didn't get it yet it just means you're unlucky.

23) What are the drop rates for legendaries according to each difficulty?
Increased drop rates for legendaries:

• Torment I: 115% (campaign mode/bounties), 230% (rifts)
• Torment II: 132% (campaign mode/bounties), 265% (rifts)
• Torment III: 152% (campaign mode/bounties), 304% (rifts)
• Torment IV: 175% (campaign mode/bounties), 350% (rifts)
• Torment V: 201% (campaign mode/bounties), 402% (rifts)
• Torment VI: 231% (campaign mode/bounties), 463% (rifts)

(Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/diablo3/comments/26a358/new_legendary_drop_rate_chart/)

24) Is there a list of all Torment-only legendaries?
Yes, there is:

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10189299133

25) What are the level 70 ubers and drop rates?
Unlike on level 60, the level 70 portals are not random, but there are four specific portals, each leading to a specific realm that drops a specific organ. The machines and respective realms, ubers, and organs are as follows:

Infernal Machine	Realm	Ubers	Drop
Infernal Machine of Bones	Realm of Discord	Leoric and Maghda	Leoric's Regret
Infernal Machine of War	Realm of Turmoil	Siegebreaker and Zoltan Kulle	Idol of Terror
Infernal Machine of Gluttony	Realm of Chaos	Rakanoth and Ghom	Vial of Putridness
Infernal Machine of Evil	Realm of Fright	Diablo + summons random Ubers	Heart of Evil

Each machine needs all four (not three!) different keys to be crafted - those keys drop from the same keywardens we know already from level 60:

Key	Keywarden	Act	Level
Key of Bones	Odeg the Keywarden	Act I	Fields of Misery
Key of Gluttony	Sokahr the Keywarden	Act II	Dahlgur Oasis
Key of War	Xah'Rith the Keywarden	Act III	Stonefort
Key of Evil	Nekarat the Keywarden	Act IV	Silver Spire Level 1

Keys and organs only drop in Torment level games, and range from 25% to 50% - so there will always be RNG involved! The drop rates are as follows:

• Torment I: 25%
• Torment II: 28%
• Torment III: 33%
• Torment IV: 38%
• Torment V: 43%
• Torment VI: 50%

26) Can already I farm materials for the Hellfire amulet that will be added in 2.1?
Yes! This was confirmed by Lylirra (here). For more information about the Hellfire amulet and other news about 2.1, check the official blog post.