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I can't say I care much for the "nerf" to inferno elites (they're already very very easy anyway, wont' make any difference just faster farming), but I can completely understand why they changed the way monster health scales in multi player.

Right now, with a 110% buff to a monster health for each additional player, there is absolutely no incentive for me to play with someone who does less damage than me. Hell, I'll only be willing to group up with people who do more than 110% of my damage. This means that, if eveyrone was strictly playing for efficiency, there will be 0 multi player groups.

The change to 75% means that I will be willing to group with people that do more than 75% of my damage without jeopardising my efficiency.

After reading through the upcoming changes (which I'm very pleased with), one of the most important ones that struck me was the rebalance of 2 handers, especially the new Barbarian buffs will make a lot of barbs switch to these. Looking at the sample legendaries, it appears they are doubling the stat values (at least, for crit damage) on them to bring them in line with dual wielding.

This begs the question wether they will change the stats on existing 2 handers.

If they don't, they risk obsoleting all 2 handers dropped prior to 1.0.4 and the prices of decent 2 handers will be astronomically high compared due to relative rarity and high demand.

If they do, then they risk people "hoarding" decent 2 handers prior to patch and making large arbitrary profits. This can be avoided though, if they simply buff existing 2 handers without telling anyone.

What do you think?

This build definitely works but just one question, how can you justify leaving out WOTB? Triple damage + CC immunity makes most elite packs trivial, without it you will definitely struggle unnecessarily.

IMO the 30% damage from battle rage is better off replaced by WOTB. For trash, you don't realy need the damage boost, it's the elites that matter.

Blizzard has stated two things about the IAS nerf:

- Their goal is to diversify build choice, and pre-nerf IAS made some builds feel mandatory for efficiency.
- They don't care about a character being geared out of this world. This game is not an MMO, and so game-breaking thresholds are intended (stuff like Reduced Level Requirement for twinks, lifesteal to the piont of invulnerability, etc).

Therefore, I think crit chance/crit damage won't be touched as they do not pigeonhole build diversity (in fact they help make certain builds viable).

The stat they may tweak is Magic Find - to me, this stat is non-sensical as you progress further. Once your character reaches a threshold where it can completely stomp through everything, you will start looking for items with Magic Find. Does this mean that, eventually, items with no MF will have no value? Of course, this is only in theory but will not happen in practice. I sincerely hope they put a cap on MF to alleviate the gear swapping as well as preventing items with no MF from devaluaing.

Quote from Vuron

It used to be a simple matter of calculating how many rares/hour you could get in Act 1 vs. the number of rares/hour in Act 3 and using the drop % to see how many 63's, 62's, etc. you would find.

Since we recently learned that MF also effects the chance for greater # of affixes, this calculation is out the window.

I think that most people have come to the conclusion that racing through Act 1 with max MF is the way to go.

This is very interesting. I never realized rares were categorized according to their number of affixes.

I run with 0 MF personally facerolling Act 3 - I find this to be way more fun than doing Act 1 in MF gear. Sure I might be missing out on some gear but I'm sure I would quit if I force myself to backtrack to Butcher runs...

Quote from SlySyZ

Eh, I just died to pretty much everything in A2. Walk into an elite pack with both buffs up, pop Wrath, try to sprint and WW around and I run out of fury and have to auto attack and just die because I have so little life, defense, and no revenge

You shouldn't be struggling so much with the stats you have. I suggest try a more orthodox cookie-cutter build (frenzy/revenge/leap/IP with lifesteal/WOTB/warcry). Leap in -> pop WOTB as soon as you can -> pop Ignore Pain if you dip below 50% HP, elites should be dead within 15 seconds. Of course some elites will still give you some trouble (fleeing mobs/shielding) but you can run around and wait for your IP before engaging again.

40 mil - I'll be home in 6 hours.

You have way too much defensive stats. Barb skills (especially the ones you're using) scales much much better with damage as opposed to survivability, and therefore you need to aim to build your character around mowing down elites within a certain timeframe. This is what makes efficient farming.

I suggest you start stacking crit and forego some of your HP/resists. I spent around 50M and is sitting at 47K damage, 67K HP, 700 physical/fire resist, and 500 other resists. To avoid dying, NEVER engage elites without WOTB/Ignore Pain up.

Dual wield is hands down better than 2 handers, given you get double the benefits of weapon stats.

In my experience life on hit is grossly overrated, at least for revenge-centric builds. In situations where you are in danger of dying, the life gained will not save you. Instead mitigation is your friend, along with smart use of skill combinations to take down elites within certain frames of window.

Crit stats are you key source of damage. As such, you should be using a mace/axe, along with weapon master/ruthlessness as two passive + a defensive or offensive passive depending on your gear setup.

If you are on a budget I suggest you look for items with physical resist or fire resist instead of resist all. People normally dont add premiums to items with these affixes. Reason for this is that only physical/fire damage are unavoidable.

America spent hundreds of billions of dollars since September 11 to prevent "terrorist" attacks from apparent foreign "terroriest organisations". Perhaps they should start from internal control.

The way RMAH is set up now, there will be no market for Gold.

Right now, the minimum is $0.25 per trade.
Gold is said to be traded in units of 100K.
This means the minimum value of gold on the RMAH is $2.50/million.

The market value currently is roughly $1.5 per million gold. Even if you tack on a 15% tax, the "street value" is no more than $2/million.

This means that it would always be more profitable to use your gold to buy radiant stars, then sell the radiant star on the RMAH.

It is seriously broken.

You're probably right, although there is absolutely no data to back this up. I also feel gems are dropping a lot less frequently as they used to.

Given the lack of "gem sinks", you would imagine Blizzard has to decrease its drop rate over time to maintain their market value. You would expect flawless squares to all eventually reach vendor price (price of better gems will depend solely on the crafting costs).

In my opinion the gem system is a complete failure in D3 compared to D2.

Thanks for sharing this, but it's nowhere near as informative/useful as I expected it to be. It may help the very newest players who have no idea on how to use the AH.

I was expecting an in-depth analysis on how to take full advantage of the 3 filters in both buying and selling at the best prices (one analysis for each slot including which numerical value, if any, to input), and how to effectively search for a particular legendary with the stats you want.

I'm on 52K unbuffed using sword and board. 52% crit, 266 crit hit chance, 2080 strength, using a 1010 DPS weapon.

Your key damage boosters:

- High DPS weapon with a socket is essential
- Sacred shield with 8% + crit, and strength.
- Amulets/rings/gloves with the highest crit/crit damage multiplier that you can afford.

If your survivability is still way above-average, then you can look for crit on helm (helm of command with socket + crit is still affordable) and bracers.

Right now, 1% crit is almost 1K damage for me which makes choosing gear very easy.

Pick up Revenge with provocation. It is your bread-and-butter skill as a melee barbarian. The other 5 slots are completely up to your preference in act 1, but a nice synergy is: Earthquake/WOTB, Frenzy/Battle Rage, and any of the three defensive skills (leap, ignore pain with lifesteal, or Furious charge with dreadnaught).

Gear-wise, all you really need is a high dps 1 hander with a high block value/block % shield. You can pick up a 900+ DPS and a decent Sacred shield with 3 primary properties on them for less than 1 mil; if you're really broke, then spend a few dollars on the RMAH on a weapon and shield and you should be sweet.