I came upon a new shrine last night, throughout my PTR testing! As I was not paying much attention to the shrines in general, I was very surprised to see over a dozen goblins (of all different types) spawn as I activated it!
Lightning/Meticulous Bolts build was a little overpowered, let's be honest here... It was. It was also extremely heavy for the servers and was creating many lag/desync issues... Now, that build has been nerfed heavily but, it's far from being a nerf to DH's...... In it's current state, I would say that DH have been boosted by a very, VERY HUGE margin... Expect more nerfs coming, cause right now, it's retarded. Let me explain...
I have a zDPS monk and my DH partner (my cousin) wanted to try out the PTR. On live servers, we almost completed a GRift 44, missing the mark by roughly 10-12 seconds (and that's the highest we've ever reached). We loaded the PTR and went straight to the trials. My monk still had the same build but my cousin went back to the Fire build that was the previous FOTM (flavor of the moment) with the updated Marauder 6pc and a sub-par Kridershot and Bomb sack for 5 Sentries. His build was essentially the following:
Actives
Elemental Arrow - Immolation
Sentry - Spitfire
Cluster Arrow - Loaded for Bear
Smioke Screen - Lingering Fog
Marked for Death - Contagion
and the obvious Companions...
Passives
Steady Aim
Cull of the Weak
Custom Engineering
Awareness
With this build (and the help of my zDPS monk), Elemental Arrows were landing for 90-115 millions, Cluster Arrows for as high as 700 millions... He was 1 shotting (literally... 1 cluster arrow) some elite packs in T6 rifts... On our first try, we were easily able to clear a Greater Rift 50. Yup.
OP AS F***
Try it on the PTR, while it lasts... I highly doubt this goes live as is!
Once you get your gear itemized properly, you will be doing a lot more damage with Blizzard (Apocalypse) and Hydra (Mammoth)... Usualy, in T6, I cast 1 blizzard on top of a pack of white mobs and they die before they reach the border of my screen
Elite packs, 1 Blizzard + 1 Black Hole (Blazar) and they're done for.... add Teleport (Whormhole) + Illusionist passive and it makes your bounties go really fast!
You don't want to use a channeling spell post Grift 30-ish... Movement is the key to success and that's why most (if not all) of high-end wizards use Blizzard Apocalypse + Hydra builds, both of which makes Taeguk completely obsolete.
Zei + Toxin + Trapped/Powerful is the way to go if you want to push higher.
You also need to stop using Taeguk and use Toxin and Bane of the Trapped/Powerful. While soloing, I tend to use Powerful while soloing, but when grouping it's Bane of the Trapped that I use!
The DoT from Toxin is a nice addition and ticks with your Firebird, post rank 25, it's also a 10% dmg increase from every source + everyone in your group. It's a must have.
get closer to 500 dex instead. it also affects your toughness! Plus you can change the main stats after if you want to use it on another char (reroll STR for Barb!)
My main problem with these changes is the damn net loss of veiled crystals. WTF are they talking about more mats from grift guardiands and so on? Yeah reusables and arcane dust and all that shit but only like 5 veiled crystals per boss? Makes rerolling a pair of pants or chest a once a day kind of thing. They don't need to shower us with mats but my only source before this patch was Kadala and now she's no good.
My guess is that the main reason for this change is just that they want to limit the rerolling (unless the mat drop is bugged).
The mechanic behind "limit rerolling" is the exponentially incrementing cost in gold. Now we all know that it's completely irrelevant with the introduction of The Vault and/or Boon of the Hoarder. They needed a new way of limiting rerolls and that's what Mister Travis came up with... That or... One of the leads went like: "cry cry cry, I'm a lead artist and I hate walking between Kadala and the Blacksmith all the time and I have not a single clue about System design or game balance but I will force this change down the design department's throat to prove that I have powers on this project"... Happens way too often in the gaming industry
A high Shard limit would be yet another tangential opportunity for the 3rd party trade to carve a niche.
Use your imagination. Let's say the limit was 20,000.
You could enter a game with a 3rd party trade representative in search of a Furnace weapon. He has 3 botted chars with max Shards, a total of 60,000. Given that Kadala is even more likely now than ever to hand out a specific desired item, the odds of a furnace being spawned via Kadala becomes tangible.
The 3rd party rep spawns the desired weapon, and agreement is made and you can then purchase the item with real money and receive the item in-game.
Even after saying all this, I cannot fathom why a 1k limit would be any more detrimental than 500. As well, I have considered that there may be some Kadala mechanic that we aren't fully aware of, that may become heavily exploitable if the milit was too high.
This makes no sense at all... Since when can you trade items from obtained from Kadala???
Shrines and Pylons should have never been there to begin with. Greater Rifts (and its ranking system) should NOT be based on luck (this also includes mob type and density variation in my opinion).
To continue in that line of thought, Blizzard should've created an entire new monster that would have only appeared in Greater Rifts. They should've never used mob types from the current game as their difficulty range is so wide, it makes the ranking system completely depend on RNG. Different layout is fine, but there should always be of the same density (fixed number of mobs per square feet throughout every possible layouts).
Then, and only then, would the ranking system be representative of the player's skill.
0
No idea, I was playing solo when I stumbled upon the shrine and I have only seen it once
0
I came upon a new shrine last night, throughout my PTR testing! As I was not paying much attention to the shrines in general, I was very surprised to see over a dozen goblins (of all different types) spawn as I activated it!
Nice addition
0
*SIGHS*
How many Gesture of Orpheus have I disenchanted... Silly, silly me...
0
Hello, I'm a veteran diablo player with a newfound interest for the game in Seasonal Hardcore mode.
I currently play a Monk and I'm comfortable with both support and DPS roles.
Here's my profile: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Drildgen-1755/hero/58290299
I'm currently struggling to leap ahead since I'm the only one in my current clan that plays hardcore and I end up being alone all the time.
0
I have a zDPS monk and my DH partner (my cousin) wanted to try out the PTR. On live servers, we almost completed a GRift 44, missing the mark by roughly 10-12 seconds (and that's the highest we've ever reached). We loaded the PTR and went straight to the trials. My monk still had the same build but my cousin went back to the Fire build that was the previous FOTM (flavor of the moment) with the updated Marauder 6pc and a sub-par Kridershot and Bomb sack for 5 Sentries. His build was essentially the following:
Actives
Elemental Arrow - Immolation
Sentry - Spitfire
Cluster Arrow - Loaded for Bear
Smioke Screen - Lingering Fog
Marked for Death - Contagion
and the obvious Companions...
Passives
Steady Aim
Cull of the Weak
Custom Engineering
Awareness
With this build (and the help of my zDPS monk), Elemental Arrows were landing for 90-115 millions, Cluster Arrows for as high as 700 millions... He was 1 shotting (literally... 1 cluster arrow) some elite packs in T6 rifts... On our first try, we were easily able to clear a Greater Rift 50. Yup.
OP AS F***
Try it on the PTR, while it lasts... I highly doubt this goes live as is!
1
Elite packs, 1 Blizzard + 1 Black Hole (Blazar) and they're done for.... add Teleport (Whormhole) + Illusionist passive and it makes your bounties go really fast!
0
Zei + Toxin + Trapped/Powerful is the way to go if you want to push higher.
0
The DoT from Toxin is a nice addition and ticks with your Firebird, post rank 25, it's also a 10% dmg increase from every source + everyone in your group. It's a must have.
0
The guy prolly had this draft cached since late 2013 and decided to post it now!
0
0
0
0
I am a very unhappy camper with this change
0
To continue in that line of thought, Blizzard should've created an entire new monster that would have only appeared in Greater Rifts. They should've never used mob types from the current game as their difficulty range is so wide, it makes the ranking system completely depend on RNG. Different layout is fine, but there should always be of the same density (fixed number of mobs per square feet throughout every possible layouts).
Then, and only then, would the ranking system be representative of the player's skill.
It's my humble game designer opinion!
0