DiabloFans

Just a heads-up, people: if a new user account bumps an old topic, it's 99.9% of the time a bot. After a week or so they'll edit the response to include some shady links. The post looks sort of on point and Diablo-esque, but has some weird language in it.

I've deleted the post (to be clear, Kallizk was *not* the one I was talking about - the spam post who bumped this is gone!) but I'm gonna lock this. Please if you see a necro just report it and let it go, the mods will take care of it; especially if the necro comes from a brand new account.

It's not about numbers. Sure, getting the right rolls on items (like all resist or armor, vitality, and so on) are important as well, but GR tiers aren't about those numbers at all. It's more about your gear, gems, gem levels, paragon, your build, ... so many things. It also varies extremely by class/build - many builds are just extremely squishy, and at a certain GR tier *all* builds are squishy. For speed rifting, people go full glass canon and just try to kill stuff before it even reaches you (e.g., multishot DH is the best example here).

I saw this yesterday and was gonna say "it's weekend now, we'll have to wait til Monday" but if what you say is true, huertgenwald, I'll yield that comment ;-) I've brought it up, let's hope it can be fixed.

If there's other issues that have been there for a looooooooooooooooooong time please bring them up, they might not be on the radar of the dev team since obviously there have been some changes this year

Quote from Emmo»

Remember that ancients give 3 forgotten souls and are about 10% drop. So for every 100 legendaries - 90 will give 1 and 10 will give 30 - so you'll get 120 forgotten souls. So you've gotten less than you think.

But yes you're probably unlucky. I got 5 primals before I'd hit 750 paragon.

Good point. What also adds to it is the Forgotten Souls drop from rift guardians, and all the Forgotten Souls you get from goblins and caches and so on. It's really not 1 FS = 1 legendary looted, it's much less.

Also, the question is when you cleared GR70 to unlock primals, so a chunk of those legendaries are from before that. All those things combine reduce the number. You're still unlucky, but not unreasonably unlucky. That being said, there's tons of people who are higher paragon and are not wearing a single primal. It's so rare to find a usable, well-rolled primal.

You're either exaggerating your numbers and/or extremely unlucky.

The chance for primals is roughly 0.25% (on average, one in 400 legendaries is a primal).

I actually like it. Oculus+Triune power ring make all monsters explode, it's essentially a Power Pylon. I've also seen a lot of complaints about melee classes not being able to benefit from it, but I disagree: since the circles always appear next to the monster you hit, it's often too close to danger for my UE DH, but on Shadow I can use it quite often. It changes the game's pace a bit here and there and keeps it interesting.

Maybe some of you fellow HC players have noticed that the servers have been acting up lately, as also reported by others. Combined with the mixed reception of the seasonal theme (some people saying they don't like it; some clearly enjoying it), I was wondering how popular this season is. Of course we don't know any player numbers, as Blizzard isn't sharing them. So I thought: why not use the stats from a D3-related website that has been up and running for several seasons with no major changes nor announcements to compare the different seasons? I went ahead and did some very basic plotting of D3Resource.com. Here's what it looks like, annotated (click here or on the pic for higher resolution):

I thought it provided some interesting insights (obviously this is just me guessing based on crude, superficial data analysis):

• The Triune season is indeed a bit less popular than LoN. Which is surprising to me, as I felt 2.6.6 has more in store than 2.6.5 (some set revamps, new legendary powers, an actually newly implemented mechanic as season theme). My guess is that the summer release timing and the upcoming WoW Classic release had some people skip this season.
• I was very surprised that 2.6.1 saw more traffic than 2.6.0. I believe this is, again, due to the Necro DLC hitting in summer; also, the release of 2.6.1 fell together with Blizzcon, which has always brought people back (I always see a few spikes in traffic around Blizzcon).
• Looking at the graph, it looks as if balance changes are almost as successful in bringing people back to D3 as large content patches (compare S10 and S16 to S11) - especially after a long drought.
• A similarly interesting insight is that the introduction of season themes alone was not interesting enough to bring people back (S14) - but a set revamp was (S16). This sort of makes me question Blizzard's statement about the introduction of seasonal themes being highly successful. By what measure? Are my numbers so off here?
• The last, really interesting insight I want to make is that of player retention. It seems as if two seasons in particular were able to keep players engaged for a bit longer than the rest - S11 (Necro DLC) and S17 (LoN theme). Which brings me to a point I made countless times: Diablo is a loot-based game. A new class gives you more new loot to hunt. A push for LoN builds prolongs the loot hunt, because it takes longer to get a full ancient set. Want players to play more than just the weekend? Give us something exciting to loot on day 2.

Ending on the obvious caveat - this graph represents visitors on my personal website. It's from the entire domain of D3Resource, but the bulk by far (>80%) comes from the Season Journey Tracker, and the graph looks the same if I sample only for that. Also, I did not account for anomalies (e.g., a sudden increase from some random website that shared any of my links prominently).

TL;DR: I looked at some graphs and determined that if Blizzard gives us a reason for a prolonged/new loot hunt, or shakes up some set damage numbers, more people play Diablo 3. #shocking!

Quote from petegmi»

You're right. I was mistaken. The new Sage's set is what I was recalling. I just checked my own character's blacksmith, and I have the pattern for Captain Crimson's. I have done exactly ONE set of bounties so far this season, too. You may need to put in a ticket to have Blizzard investigate why it hasn't dropped for you yet.

Please don't put in a ticket for not getting loot, unless you didn't mean it to be taken seriously

Sometimes some recipes/plans drop a bit later, it has always been that way. Many people do not experience this, or it is a recipe/plan that is rather useless so they don't care (like all the craftable legendaries from Haedrig). But I've had seasons where the Sage's set wouldn't drop for multiple bounties, so I'm happy that one is now automatically learned by Haedrig at level 12. I've also had seasons where I was waiting longer than necessary for one of the jewelcrafter recipes. The Captain Crimson set is the same - some people get it as their first drop from a bounty/goblin; some people do multiple bounties. Leviathan farmed it for hours on non-season on stream before it finally dropped.

May the RNG be in your favor!

Thanks for the report! I've been told this was probably a cache issue and should be fixed now. Works for me at least - let us know if the problem still persists!

During the update of the build tool, some items disappeared from the selection. We've gone through the list (and everyone's reports - thank you!) and added them in, but due to technical complications it might happen that we overlooked something that is still missing.

If you find an item that is missing in the build tool, or can't be selected, reply here, and the devs will take care of it as soon as possible!

Thank you very much for your cooperation, and we're looking forward to seeing all your cool new builds for this season! Good luck!

Quote from Altreg01»

Dont think a clan membership is required.

Correct, sorry if I didn't make that clear - I've added a note to my post to indicate that it's purely optional. It's just for those who want to join the clan to promote what they're doing and chat with fellow SSFers.

Edit - we've merged the two EU clans, the EU clan is now: SSFEU (SSFFTW was disbanded)!

Quote from Mob Dylan»

I'm NA but I joined SSF FTW because the others I searched only had 2 people in them. FTW has at 47. Am I missing something?

The clan leaders just reported back in yesterday, I didn't know it was still alive. I've added it! Also, it's purely optional and more for your information - there's a bigger clan in EU as well but it seems to be inactive, so we made a new one. And since it's SSF, the clan is purely optional, people may also stay in their own clan or stay clanless if they prefer

Awesome, nice to have you on board Mob Dylan!

In case anyone wants to join our clans, these are the active clans right now (note that joining a clan is purely optional!):

NA - | Solo Self Found | and Solo Self Found FTW

EU - SSFEU

Request invite at any time!

Enjoy playing solo? Looking for a challenge? Bored of meta and rat runs? Or just looking for something "a bit different" this season?

Join the Season 18 Solo Self-Found League!

The SSF League is a community-organized effort to shake things up a bit and give those who prefer playing solo new goals to strive for. Participating is very simple, as there is no sign-up or registration. All you have to do is submit your highest GR clears - and of course to play solo. The SSF League ends after 30 days, so once the "meta is settled" and the S18 alternative to rat runs has been found, you can join groups for the last two months of the season and push for that GR150 clear!

For more details, main organizer Garfm has put together a comprehensive Google Doc with rules and frequently asked questions. He also said up SSF channels on his Discord!

This season we are lucky to have some well-known community members joining us in the SSF (in addition to aforementioned organizer and accomplished speed runner Garfm who will be streaming as well):

• Lord Fluffy
• Bluddshed
• sVr

More to come! Planning to join as well? While there is no registration requirement, it is fun to know who you'll be racing against - so post a reply if you're up for it and want to join the fray! You can also join our clans (purely optional, not at all required) - | Solo Self Found | and SSFTW on NA, and SSFEU on EU!

Survivability after some tiers just becomes an issue - you can improve it by equipping some more defensive choices in cube or in open slots, like Aquila Cuirass or Ancient Parthan Defenders and so on - but later on in the game you will eventually be squishy, on any class, especially once you go above GR 100+.

I haven't played barb myself in a while, but if you play on PC you can link your profile by going to diablo3.com and logging in. I don't think such an option exists on console.