QFT, also scoundrel better than enchantress, wtf does the armor matter if you are kiting anyways... i would rather have a free snare.
I can make six mistakes, and it takes three windups to kill me. How many can you?
lets see, force armor pretty much negates the need for any sort of defensive stats with around 38khp.... and as for mistakes, i usually don't make them... six in one go would require a kid unplugging my mouse or something...
I stopped using Force Armor when I realized Prismatic actually makes me take less damage. You don't get the protection from the big wind-up attacks, but that is more than made up for by the protection from reflect/electrified/molten/etc that would slowly whittle my health away without taking 35% chunks. This is with ~40k hp, and half the time I don't even get the Illusionist procs when I get trapped by wallers. And I only have 600 res all with the buff up. In this case, the Enchantress armor buff makes me take even less damage, and the Templar's heal is just a drop in the bucket.
I got killed today in Act 2 because I got hit for less than 15% of my life and it didn't reset my Teleport before I got surrounded and killed.
From limited testing, both with my monk friend and solo, it seems like act 2 got significantly easier, but act 3 is still hard. They did what they said they would, and now act 2 is a smaller step up from act 1. Personally I think they overdid it, and made act 2 too easy even with all the annoying ranged units and disappearing snake people.
@AudioCG: you are either completly biased or blinded. Either way lay off the hate please (not only you though), I understand the open letter hurts, but still..
OK then;
Open challenge.
Go ahead and show me some brilliant storytelling from ANY Blizzard game.
I'll wait. No seriously, show me a SINGLE Blizzard game that does not have campy dialog, you should be able to produce this right? Just one.
I own every Blizzard game ever made, if I was "Biased" you would think I would be on the side of the "old" right?
All Blizzard games have campy dialog, there is just MORE of it in D3/SC2, because they have more voice in game, thats it.
d2 was brilliant. Following in the footsteps of the Marius and the darkwanderer, only to witness the evil and demonic results of their recent passing, and reveilling more and more with each acts to finally reach 'present time' of the story line by arriving at the pandemonium (citadel?) before stepping through hell. Every bit of how this story unveilled was a work of art, perfectly calculated and engineered. None of this simple brilliance and genius was in d3. Sorry for my poor eglish but i can't do anything more for you to see it, its more your problem than mine in a way.
bwhahahahaha
"Perfectly balanced and engineered"
And this quote (my second time posting it in this thread) pretty much DESTROYS what you just said;
"I will admit that in previous incarnations of Diablo the story was completely tacked on after the game was complete, and it felt that way."
Thats DIRECTLY from the mouth of the LEAD DESIGNER of Diablo 2, please, tell me more about how Diablo 2 had a "Perfectly calculated" story.
roflol.
But this also begs the question, why can't we demand a good story from D3? They had X more years and money-power to make it a good experience, say like Half-Life 2's story (obviously a different game though).
Though some here have said they liked it which is a bit shocking to me I guess :/ I love Blizzard but I have to say it like it is.
I hated the story in Half-Life 2. I hated the way it was delivered. If I wasn't careful I could trigger dialogue while still having enemies raining fire down on me. Machine gun fire is not conductive to understanding a plot. And yes I finished the game, and even though I know what happened I still don't care one bit about any of the characters or that world. With Diablo 3, I actually had an emotional response to the death of Leah (supposed death).
That is just one example, and as been stated by a previous poster, the way a story is delivered in a video game MUST be different than the way it would be in a book. It has to fit with the game play. A hack and slash game like Diablo can't require you to search every room for a single item hanging on the wall that will then give you foreshadowing to a perfectly timed plot twist three acts later.
My issue with video game story telling (in general) is not about plot holes. My issue is with deus ex machina and characters not acting the way they should, or not having good motivations. Diablo 3 does a good job of avoiding those issues. Act 3 is a perfect example of game storytelling done right. You arrive at a besieged keep, and you are already the mighty Hero that is going to save the world. But just because you are there doesn't mean that all the other humans can go back and sit around the fire and maybe sell you stuff. Quite the opposite, the defenders have already been fighting and dying for days trying to keep the demonic hordes from not only killing themselves and their families, but the rest of the world. You have to use your super-human might to beat back the enemy long enough for the human defenders to reinforce the walls so they can hold them off while you go fight the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy). If you listen to the npcs talking to each other, they go from total despair to hope as you progress through the act. It just makes so much more sense than a game like Half-Life 2 where there is a single guy doing EVERYTHING and the only point for there to be any npcs at all is so they can open a few doors for you.
Plot holes are going to happen in a video game. Maybe Adria managed to pull the souls back into this world from the Abyss. Maybe she enlisted the help of another Nephalem, which we haven't heard from. The lore already supports mortals being more powerful than either Angels or Demons, and this feat would totally make sense to me. If we never get an explanation for how she did it, I'm not going to sweat. Doesn't bother me. My hero has more important things to do than worry about a few demonic souls.
I have a feeling that Blizzard expects all classes to eventually get to a high enough EH level for them to take 3 hits without dying, as the OP and others have suggested is required. This is supposed to happen naturally, as you get better gear with a higher ilevel that has higher base armor.
The thing is, right now there isn't a huge amount of gear that could be considered the "best". That leads you to have to choose between offensive or defensive stats. Eventually I want the majority of my gear to have 3 dps stats, vit, and resist all. Then, I don't have to choose.
If things shake out the way I expect (and I could be wrong) at a certain gear level you simply drop Force Armor for Prismatic. This leads to you being able to take 3-5 hits before dying, allowing you to stand and take damage while still dishing it out. After all, if you lose 15% dps by gearing more defensively, but it allows you to move half as much, you end up with a dps gain. Similar to how movespeed becomes a direct dps increase.
You can do what I did and get a 2h Crossbow. That way, when you are out of AP you can fire a few bolts and stay out of melee range.
And a Signature spell is not an option, if the OP is using a build similar to mine. With all the kiting in deep Inferno, there isn't much time to stand and cast, but there are a few rare occasions you are safe enough to pump out some extra damage, and that is where a wand or crossbow comes in. Treasure goblins especially I throw down hydra, blizzard, then stand there and spam out of AP so I fire the crossbow at my displayed dps of 23k.
I'm using a very similar build, but instead of orb I have Teleport - Fracture. Combined with Illusionist it lets me get out of a lot of nasty situations. I still have a lot of trouble on Act 2, but instead of it being impossible its just frustrating.
It is important to point out that Disintegrate itself cannot crit, but Chaos Nexus rune can. This is important because a lot of abilities and some items have stuff that works "on crit" so the main beam of Disintegrate won't ever proc those.
If you don't have a signature spell in your build, simply spam until you are out of AP and use your regular attack. You are going to do 37k dps with your regular attack, after all.
Not sure why you don't just corner it, drop a hydra, and spam away with your signature spell. Wave of Force will knock them away from the portal the first time, but then they start to ignore it.
There is some good advice here, but you need to figure out how to make your own decisions based on your current gear, spells, and weapon choice.
Let's start with the "dps" stat displayed in the character sheet. This is your AVERAGE damage per second for a regular weapon attack.
Any crit chance increases this dps stat, even if the ability you are using cannot crit (thus doing less damage than displayed).
Your damage stat modifier (intelligence in our case) is multiplied to the weapon damage you currently have, both from your weapon, any offhand, and any +damage gear you might have on. This means that if you stack one stat, the other one becomes more valuable. An amulet with +100 int might be a better upgrade than an amulet with +5-10 damage, but only if your weapon damage is already high enough. At lvl 60, int is USUALLY stronger, assuming you have a decent weapon. That doesn't mean you can stack int and ignore weapon damage; you must keep the two relatively even.
Similar to how int affects weapon damage, attack speed is a direct multiplier on your damage stat. Increasing your speed by 10% is going to have a 10% increase on your displayed damage. Just remember that it is based on the weapon you are holding, and +10% speed on a 2.0 weapon isn't as good as +10% speed on a 1.0 weapon. NOTE: increasing your weapon speed, which translates into casting speed for wizards, means that spells drain your AP faster and might leave you with nothing, reducing your effective dps to 0. This means that speed is extremely powerful for signature spells or builds that rely on +AP on crit, but if you don't pay attention casting speed can actually lower your overall dps.
How about weapons? Well, there are basically two schools of thought:
Two-Handed weapons (crossbows tend to be the 2h weapon of choice for a ranged class like wizard) pack a big punch but are really slow. They give you the best damage:AP ratio, depending on the spell. They are great for any channeled spell like Disintegrate or Ray of Frost. They are also better for Blizzard, since it isn't affected by weapon speed. Basically, choose a 2h weapon if you want each spell to pack the maximum punch.
One-Handed weapon + Offhand tend to be much faster, but don't hit as hard for each attack. You get less damage per AP spent, but you get to cast a lot more a lot faster which can be important when you are running from a pack of mobs. This faster cast speed gives you more chances to get any procs you might have from abilities or equipment, including +AP on crit, Critical Mass, Paralysis, Prodigy, etc etc. Most wizards choose this if they cast a lot of signature spells, which don't cost AP.
I'm not going to get into a shield offhand. It is pretty much just for when you need to survive at the cost of damage.
Now, what about some common spells and their quirks?
One common build focuses on using venom hydra and blizzard. Blizzard is NOT affected by weapon speed at all. A fast weapon will not make blizzard do any more damage than a slow weapon. Therefore, ignore anything with speed on it and focus on int and damage. You can't crit either, so ignore that as well.
Now, Venom hydra is currently considered to use your displayed dps for all its damage, since it doesn't attack faster with more attack speed but its damage does go up. This means that attack speed can boost your damage, but you still don't get any benefit to Blizzard, so it is less effective.
Disintegrate and Ray of Frost cannot crit. Since they are channeled, having higher attack speed makes their damage "tick" faster. This also drains AP faster, and since AP is a fixed regen of 10/second (12/sec with Astral Presence) the slower your weapons the longer you can channel. This can be important if you are using RoF-Snow Blast, or Disintegrate with Temporal Flux. Of course, you can't stand still and channel on much in Inferno.
So what does that all mean? Don't explicitly trust the displayed damage in the character sheet. You have to figure out what is an upgrade depending on what spell you want to boost. Personally, I try to have a healthy amount of int even if +damage is a "better" upgrade since I also get a little bit of resistance.
First you have to pick which weapon type is best for you. Then you have to decide if attack speed is worth it. Speed is usually going to be your biggest upgrade, up to about a 2.0 speed. It also tends to be expensive to get on items that also have decent int, vit, or +damage.
Speaking of vit, you need a lot. Wizards can't take very many hits, and we need to give Force Armor as much of a chance to work as we can. If you aren't using Force Armor for whatever reason, you need even MORE vit. Of course everyone else needs vit too, and those items with healthy (pun intended) amounts of vit can get expensive.
Keep an eye out for resistances. While your massive amounts of int already give you a bonus to resist, most of the stuff that hits a skilled wizard is elemental (molten, plagued, electrified, mortar, etc) and you need to be able to survive the unavoidable hits. A lot of wizards run around with Illusionist because they know they are going to get hit eventually, and you can't let it kill you.
Move Speed is paramount. Boots with +12% movespeed is required. Hell, I'm using lvl 41 boots because they have int, vit, and movespeed and I don't want to spend 500k on an upgrade yet. But what you SHOULD spend 500k on is Hammer Jammers, legendary legs that come with +7% movespeed. Let me tell you, running around with +19% move speed feels like I'm cheating.
I'm sure there's more, but I'm tired of this post already. Basically, don't trust what the game tells you. Some stats are better than what the green or red +/- might say, and others are completely useless.
P.S. I'm waiting along with the rest of you for some AH improvements. It is extremely frustrating trying to find what I want atm.
Yeah, Kulle was chatting with you the entire time he was in your pack, giving you advice and information. He was a bit arrogant, but then so am I. Hell, your character is pretty arrogant in your final conversation with Tyrael before killing Diablo.
And I was really excited to kill Imperius, although the Angiris Council was already down two members and didn't need to lose a third. Plus he was already wounded, and that is no fun.
Your post was a little scattered, but I'll respond to a few points.
Well, remember that Force Armor was changed a few weeks ago to only absorb an amount equal to 100% of your health. So if you have 40k health, an 80k hit will one-shot you. I still use Force Armor in Inferno, but you still have to be careful about taking huge hits to the face.
Archon is amazing if you want to put out huge amounts of damage as fast as possible. The problem is that you can't kill Inferno mobs fast enough before they kill you. This leaves you with using abilities like Mirror Image or Teleport (especially Fracture) and most wizards also use a slowing spell like Blizzard or arcane with Temporal Flux. Fun? Maybe. Personally I loved Archon in nightmare and hell, but it just isn't viable solo.
Inferno is extremely hard right now. That was intended. Most people aren't going to have a lot of fun in it. I'm almost done with Act 2 but I unlocked Inferno two weeks ago. My alt is already past nightmare just because I got frustrated with Inferno. There is no point complaining right now, Inferno will get tweaked in the next patch or two.
Are we sure we aren't over thinking it? I haven't done much testing like everyone else, but my interpretation of the patch notes is a bit different.
The amount absorbed cannot exceed 100% of the player's maximum life.
You have 10k life. You get hit for 40k.
10,000 * .35 = 3500 is what you used to take, with 36500 absorbed by Force Armor.
Now, the maximum amount absorbed by Force Armor is 10,000. So 36500 - 10000 = 26500 that still damages you (plus the original 3500). Hence, it looks like you still get one-shot.
Another example. You have 20k life, and get hit for 30k.
20,000 * .35 = 7000 that gets through Force Armor, with 23000 left over. Since 23k-20k=3k, you take an additional 3k damage, raising the total damage taken to 10k.
I'm lvl 54, 4500 dps, 13k hp, and the first half of act 2 hell was a cakewalk. I don't even use force armor.
Some mobs you have to kite, but most of them you just have to learn how to move and avoid their attacks. Diamond Skin is for when you want to sustain a few second of casting or have to run through something dangerous. Before Hell it was basically 6 seconds of immunity, but now it just lets you take a couple more hits. The key is being able to anticipate and utilize those hits effectively.
Venom Hydra does most of the dps, while Disintegrate is for burning up minions and "punching through" to the main guy i want to kill. Magic Missile - Seeker is amazing because you can hit stuff off screen.
This game has so much variety, you have to find a build and playstyle that fits whatever you are trying to kill. For instance, I added Teleport for NM Diablo and just sort of kept it into Hell. I didn't even realize how much I would have been using this skill, and I didn't miss the frost nova I had previously loved. I've played with a few wizards sporting the Force Armor, but that spell is not nearly as overpowered if you don't know how to use it properly. You still can't stand in the fire. Getting trapped by an arcane enchanted, jailer is still going to kill you. My solution to those situations was Teleport, but you need to find what fits with your reflexes and style.
Ray of Frost and Disintegrate do not crit (although Chaos Nexus can). I'm not sure about blizzard, but I wouldn't be surprised if it can't crit. Basically anything that is either channeled, or does damage over time, cannot crit.
I would think that Meteor could crit, although the fire couldn't. I haven't tested it much myself (since I run with all damage numbers on, not just crits). Right now Meteor is sorely underpowered for many parts of the game, and if it can't crit on impact that really needs to change.
Slow Time. Loved it in act 2 Normal, but then got me killed constantly in act 2 Nightmare. It is surprisingly deadly to let all the missiles "stack up" in one area for a few seconds, then get released all at once when the bubble expires.
Right now I only use Teleport on Diablo (with Illusionist) and it is overpowered for that fight. Other than that, I haven't found a spot where I really wished I had teleport on my bar.
0
I stopped using Force Armor when I realized Prismatic actually makes me take less damage. You don't get the protection from the big wind-up attacks, but that is more than made up for by the protection from reflect/electrified/molten/etc that would slowly whittle my health away without taking 35% chunks. This is with ~40k hp, and half the time I don't even get the Illusionist procs when I get trapped by wallers. And I only have 600 res all with the buff up. In this case, the Enchantress armor buff makes me take even less damage, and the Templar's heal is just a drop in the bucket.
0
From limited testing, both with my monk friend and solo, it seems like act 2 got significantly easier, but act 3 is still hard. They did what they said they would, and now act 2 is a smaller step up from act 1. Personally I think they overdid it, and made act 2 too easy even with all the annoying ranged units and disappearing snake people.
0
I hated the story in Half-Life 2. I hated the way it was delivered. If I wasn't careful I could trigger dialogue while still having enemies raining fire down on me. Machine gun fire is not conductive to understanding a plot. And yes I finished the game, and even though I know what happened I still don't care one bit about any of the characters or that world. With Diablo 3, I actually had an emotional response to the death of Leah (supposed death).
That is just one example, and as been stated by a previous poster, the way a story is delivered in a video game MUST be different than the way it would be in a book. It has to fit with the game play. A hack and slash game like Diablo can't require you to search every room for a single item hanging on the wall that will then give you foreshadowing to a perfectly timed plot twist three acts later.
My issue with video game story telling (in general) is not about plot holes. My issue is with deus ex machina and characters not acting the way they should, or not having good motivations. Diablo 3 does a good job of avoiding those issues. Act 3 is a perfect example of game storytelling done right. You arrive at a besieged keep, and you are already the mighty Hero that is going to save the world. But just because you are there doesn't mean that all the other humans can go back and sit around the fire and maybe sell you stuff. Quite the opposite, the defenders have already been fighting and dying for days trying to keep the demonic hordes from not only killing themselves and their families, but the rest of the world. You have to use your super-human might to beat back the enemy long enough for the human defenders to reinforce the walls so they can hold them off while you go fight the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy). If you listen to the npcs talking to each other, they go from total despair to hope as you progress through the act. It just makes so much more sense than a game like Half-Life 2 where there is a single guy doing EVERYTHING and the only point for there to be any npcs at all is so they can open a few doors for you.
Plot holes are going to happen in a video game. Maybe Adria managed to pull the souls back into this world from the Abyss. Maybe she enlisted the help of another Nephalem, which we haven't heard from. The lore already supports mortals being more powerful than either Angels or Demons, and this feat would totally make sense to me. If we never get an explanation for how she did it, I'm not going to sweat. Doesn't bother me. My hero has more important things to do than worry about a few demonic souls.
0
The thing is, right now there isn't a huge amount of gear that could be considered the "best". That leads you to have to choose between offensive or defensive stats. Eventually I want the majority of my gear to have 3 dps stats, vit, and resist all. Then, I don't have to choose.
If things shake out the way I expect (and I could be wrong) at a certain gear level you simply drop Force Armor for Prismatic. This leads to you being able to take 3-5 hits before dying, allowing you to stand and take damage while still dishing it out. After all, if you lose 15% dps by gearing more defensively, but it allows you to move half as much, you end up with a dps gain. Similar to how movespeed becomes a direct dps increase.
0
And a Signature spell is not an option, if the OP is using a build similar to mine. With all the kiting in deep Inferno, there isn't much time to stand and cast, but there are a few rare occasions you are safe enough to pump out some extra damage, and that is where a wand or crossbow comes in. Treasure goblins especially I throw down hydra, blizzard, then stand there and spam out of AP so I fire the crossbow at my displayed dps of 23k.
0
0
0
Not sure why you don't just corner it, drop a hydra, and spam away with your signature spell. Wave of Force will knock them away from the portal the first time, but then they start to ignore it.
0
Let's start with the "dps" stat displayed in the character sheet. This is your AVERAGE damage per second for a regular weapon attack.
How about weapons? Well, there are basically two schools of thought:
Now, what about some common spells and their quirks?
So what does that all mean? Don't explicitly trust the displayed damage in the character sheet. You have to figure out what is an upgrade depending on what spell you want to boost. Personally, I try to have a healthy amount of int even if +damage is a "better" upgrade since I also get a little bit of resistance.
First you have to pick which weapon type is best for you. Then you have to decide if attack speed is worth it. Speed is usually going to be your biggest upgrade, up to about a 2.0 speed. It also tends to be expensive to get on items that also have decent int, vit, or +damage.
Speaking of vit, you need a lot. Wizards can't take very many hits, and we need to give Force Armor as much of a chance to work as we can. If you aren't using Force Armor for whatever reason, you need even MORE vit. Of course everyone else needs vit too, and those items with healthy (pun intended) amounts of vit can get expensive.
Keep an eye out for resistances. While your massive amounts of int already give you a bonus to resist, most of the stuff that hits a skilled wizard is elemental (molten, plagued, electrified, mortar, etc) and you need to be able to survive the unavoidable hits. A lot of wizards run around with Illusionist because they know they are going to get hit eventually, and you can't let it kill you.
Move Speed is paramount. Boots with +12% movespeed is required. Hell, I'm using lvl 41 boots because they have int, vit, and movespeed and I don't want to spend 500k on an upgrade yet. But what you SHOULD spend 500k on is Hammer Jammers, legendary legs that come with +7% movespeed. Let me tell you, running around with +19% move speed feels like I'm cheating.
I'm sure there's more, but I'm tired of this post already. Basically, don't trust what the game tells you. Some stats are better than what the green or red +/- might say, and others are completely useless.
P.S. I'm waiting along with the rest of you for some AH improvements. It is extremely frustrating trying to find what I want atm.
0
And I was really excited to kill Imperius, although the Angiris Council was already down two members and didn't need to lose a third. Plus he was already wounded, and that is no fun.
Here's hoping for an expansion!
0
Well, remember that Force Armor was changed a few weeks ago to only absorb an amount equal to 100% of your health. So if you have 40k health, an 80k hit will one-shot you. I still use Force Armor in Inferno, but you still have to be careful about taking huge hits to the face.
Archon is amazing if you want to put out huge amounts of damage as fast as possible. The problem is that you can't kill Inferno mobs fast enough before they kill you. This leaves you with using abilities like Mirror Image or Teleport (especially Fracture) and most wizards also use a slowing spell like Blizzard or arcane with Temporal Flux. Fun? Maybe. Personally I loved Archon in nightmare and hell, but it just isn't viable solo.
Inferno is extremely hard right now. That was intended. Most people aren't going to have a lot of fun in it. I'm almost done with Act 2 but I unlocked Inferno two weeks ago. My alt is already past nightmare just because I got frustrated with Inferno. There is no point complaining right now, Inferno will get tweaked in the next patch or two.
0
The amount absorbed cannot exceed 100% of the player's maximum life.
You have 10k life. You get hit for 40k.
10,000 * .35 = 3500 is what you used to take, with 36500 absorbed by Force Armor.
Now, the maximum amount absorbed by Force Armor is 10,000. So 36500 - 10000 = 26500 that still damages you (plus the original 3500). Hence, it looks like you still get one-shot.
Another example. You have 20k life, and get hit for 30k.
20,000 * .35 = 7000 that gets through Force Armor, with 23000 left over. Since 23k-20k=3k, you take an additional 3k damage, raising the total damage taken to 10k.
0
Some mobs you have to kite, but most of them you just have to learn how to move and avoid their attacks. Diamond Skin is for when you want to sustain a few second of casting or have to run through something dangerous. Before Hell it was basically 6 seconds of immunity, but now it just lets you take a couple more hits. The key is being able to anticipate and utilize those hits effectively.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#aiQSXR!XUb!cZYZab
is my build
Venom Hydra does most of the dps, while Disintegrate is for burning up minions and "punching through" to the main guy i want to kill. Magic Missile - Seeker is amazing because you can hit stuff off screen.
This game has so much variety, you have to find a build and playstyle that fits whatever you are trying to kill. For instance, I added Teleport for NM Diablo and just sort of kept it into Hell. I didn't even realize how much I would have been using this skill, and I didn't miss the frost nova I had previously loved. I've played with a few wizards sporting the Force Armor, but that spell is not nearly as overpowered if you don't know how to use it properly. You still can't stand in the fire. Getting trapped by an arcane enchanted, jailer is still going to kill you. My solution to those situations was Teleport, but you need to find what fits with your reflexes and style.
0
I would think that Meteor could crit, although the fire couldn't. I haven't tested it much myself (since I run with all damage numbers on, not just crits). Right now Meteor is sorely underpowered for many parts of the game, and if it can't crit on impact that really needs to change.
0
Right now I only use Teleport on Diablo (with Illusionist) and it is overpowered for that fight. Other than that, I haven't found a spot where I really wished I had teleport on my bar.