DiabloFans

Quote from ghonasyph

honestly cardinalmdm, you're an obnoxious single minded moron when you say things like that.... multiboxers are gold businesses? they flood the market? i think you're confusing botters and chinese who use a program to play the game for them to make money, with multiboxers who use multiple toons to play the game together.... each and every input during a session of play is controlled push for push by the multiboxing player... and no we dont flood the market... we just play and enjoy the game differently than you do.... we play like someone would if 3 of their friends always played with them every time every day and shared all the loot.... its still 4 characters its still 4 accounts its just one person orchestrating it all. you're bitter cardinal... its a hobby, its a game... Y U SO MAD BRO

on topic, =) i've grown accustom to using this route on my characters for act 2 key farming as well as general farming on mp5 for my cmww wiz... much more efficient and relaxed than act 3 turbo runs.... /yawn lol

First of all, I'm not a single-minded moron. You wanna know why "I'm so mad," bro? Honestly, I'm not mad at you...I'm mad FOR you.

The Diablo franchise has become what it is because it provides fairly simple game mechanics that offer a single player literally THOUSANDS of hours of play time, because the item hunt is supposed to be satisfying. Even if people trade and meet friends and compare loot, hell, even if they buy items off the Auction House (which I also highly discourage because of how it undermines that very item hunt), it's a game that's difficult because ONE person has only so much access to so many channels worth of items.

You say "each and every input during a session of play is controlled push for push by the multiboxing player." I'm well aware of that.

You say, "we play like someone would if 3 of their friends always played with them every time every day and shared all the loot." Right...but every multiboxer gets all that different loot for themselves. You don't NEED friends or acquaintances or anybody to multibox, and yet, you can reap all the benefits. You say you aren't a gold factory? How so? You get a steady stream of legendaries and set items, obviously you don't keep them ALL. Some you might brimstone, but I guarantee, the ones you don't want anymore, you post up for Auction. Thus...yes...you do flood the market with items.

So like I told Inigo....you continue to use your money to give you the tools to make Diablo entirely un-fun for yourself. Get all the best items in the game because you have the cash to spare. Do everything you can to do as little as possible. And by all means...do NOT actually earn the great items you acquire. If this were Diablo 2, you wouldn't be able to pull this nonsense. Bare minimum, you'd have to be power-leveled by a friend, and even then, you'd still have to fight and struggle to get to the endgame content.

Anyway, I mostly play solo, so fine...you guys knock yourselves out. Hopefully, some self-found geared toon doesn't ace you and every botter and AH addict in PvP and make all your haaaaaaaaaaaard work seem pointless, ;-)

"If you think multiboxing is an"instant shot to the end" you are very, very wrong. This takes alot of time, and effort learning how to multibox effeciently, and gearing up each of your characters, let alone the money needed for the 4 accounts, ISboxer subscribtion, multiple monitors, and a CPU that can run all of the above. "

And so...why would I want to spend ALL THAT money for 4 accounts, a subscription to a program, multiple monitors, and a CPU that can handle all that, just so I can spend the majority of my time fishing through the best gear in the game that I farmed with an "efficiency" program, instead of just playing from the beginning and enjoying the whole way? Honestly, there are people who study the economy, flip the right rares for the right prices of gold, who can have perfectly rolled gear without any of that, ;-)

"I self found most of the gear worn..."

You cut down time by multiplying how much you play. The people in charge of the game may not deem it "illegal," since you're paying for all your accounts, but it's still a crummy way to play.

"If anything I help the economy."

That's about the last straw. No, you don't help the economy. What you do is flood the economy with items so that average players, who want to make a bit more gold on stuff they sell, can't sell anything without lowballing. Believe me, I have no problem with just vending all the stuff I don't want, I lowball stuff constantly and I'm happy with it. But multiboxers are basically "gold businesses." You and other multiboxers end up creating a monopoly on the source of items, so that only multiboxers have the chance to acquire the best items, and an average player, that comes across a great find, won't have any chance to make a sale.

Additionally, what pride or joy do you get manipulating the system this way? You find piles and piles of legendaries. Great! Honestly, you could've taken much of that money cited above and just hit the RMAH and bought gear. Truthfully, THAT'S more legit than this. At least ONE player with a character that bought gear on the RMAH at least plays with one character at a time. You use your money to manipulate this game and make all the sales yourself...

Ya know what? I actually take this back. You do help the game in some aspect. If YOU'RE taking on the role of the person selling all the items, and YOU'RE ruining the enjoyment of playing the game for yourself, people won't feel as compelled to use the AH anymore. People won't be so frustrated at not being able to sell anything, because they won't bother. Sales will go down for everyone except you, botters and dupers, and most actual PLAYERS, who want a challenge game to enjoy, will just vend and farm their gold, and go back to playing the game the hard way, the way it was meant to be played.

You'll end up turning into the most high end vendor in the game. So...yeah, please continue. Already, the AH is unnecessary to get to the end. Every major patch that's released does more and more to make it less and less needed to complete the game. Eventually, less and less people will use it. At which point, you'll only be multiboxing to gear your own characters, which hopefully, will look more and more like a cheap way to play by a majority of players.

Keep it up.

Very cool that there's an Act 2 alternative to Act 3 Alkaizer runs. I really haven't gotten bored of Alkaizer runs particularly, but it's still nice to know there's a way to get better amounts of elite packs to kill in Act 2 as well.

Though, I have to say, I'm really not a fan of this whole "maximizing efficiency" thing. Maximizing efficiency just gets you to the end faster, and even if you maximize every bit of your efficiency, it still takes a long time, so...I don't know, why bother maximizing anything?

And seriously, multiboxing is lame. Really lame. I'm not even saying that because I'm a legit, organic, self-found gear player that only has ONE account, I'm saying that because multiboxing actually makes flipping items for gold on the Auction House and buying all one's gear look more legit by comparison. This is a loot hunt game, the whole purpose is to preen about about a piece of gear you worked hard to find. Using a program to run multiple accounts, just because it gets you "more lootz," is like taking a "male enhancement" pill and thinking you're the bomb in the sack. It's like running a one-man pyramid scheme.

I don't know...every patch that comes out just seems to make the Auction House worth less and less. It may take baby steps, but Blizzard is definitely in the process of offering more options to people that DON'T want to take the easy ways out. You know, making this a "game" again, and diminishing the need for "instant shot to the end" methods.

Quote from Jaetch

Not quite sure you understood that I was simply making a statement about the amusing animation, but that's fine.

And also, maybe you're not familiar with hybrid Archon builds on MP10. Archon rarely lasts 1-2 minutes and CM does a great job reducing the CD. However, Evocation also automatically reduces Archon's CD by 18 seconds, which is a lot.

Wasn't aware of that, no. Your response came off very sarcastic. Could just be a problem with my interpretation, though...most peoples' responses seem pretty matter of fact when it comes to this game...

As for hybrid Archon builds, I've used Archon plenty, and even used Evocation plenty as well, before I made mine specifically multiplayer only with AH gear, both were handy skills. Though, I could never see myself using CM and Evocation just to reduce the cooldown between Archon transformations. Seems like a really awkward way to play, but maybe that's just me.

Quote from Jaetch

Well, considering I use a mace for my wizard and I constantly run out of AP when I'm not in Archon form...

It always looks like my wizard is bashing melee mobs with a hammer.

Oh, I went melee DH once. That was when I found Bashiok and I had to grab my Rakanishu's Blade so I could get the achievement.

Only that one time.

You use Echoing Fury for the extra crit damage, and you have on Critical Mass...which is funny, because you also have on Evocation. I'm sorry...you're using a passive to reduce cooldowns by 1 second per successful critical hit (which you should pretty much be doing constantly with that amount of crit chance), yet you're using another passive to also reduce cooldowns by 15%? Your CM Wizard has more critical chance than mine, exactly why do you need Evocation?

And by the way, playing a Critical Mass Wizard that wields a melee weapon (thousands of other people carry, by the way) is exactly what I'm NOT talking about. I made my CM Wizard to play multiplayer, and the only reason mine has on a dagger is for extra attack speed. Not saying it's done better, it's not. I followed a YouTube guide because my friends are AH addicts.

I mean, sacrificing a skill for long periods so a ranged/magic user can go straight melee. That's some hard stuff to do, so...I don't blame most people for not trying it for more than a couple seconds, ;-)

Quote from m4st0d0n

You can use Impale, Spike Trap, Fan of Knives and Chakram too if you want to experiment with melee weapons. You can reduce the cost of Chakram to 0 with cloak, Jordan or Mara's, so you don't even need Grenades to generate hatred.

I've done some experimenting/fun with these skills, but to be honest, it sucks to loose the stats on the quiver, and Shadow Power-Gloom makes the shield obsolete

As to your question about default builds, well, this game is about efficiency. Everything that reduces it is unpopular. High MPs put build optimization in laser sharp focus, as there is no build widely available for MP10 farming. That doesn't mean that there is no creativity in character building. In fact, everyone without infinite budget will have to be creative to build from whatever items they can snipe cheap.

Exactly, I'm sure there are lots of interesting ways to play the DH melee, I was just saying what I did at the time. Even not using the ranged skills much and just using the standard attack, though, it was still pretty fun to do, :-)

The reason I switched my Shadow Power rune from Gloom (the popular choice) to Blood Moon is that while 35% seems nice, it doesn't typically offer enough of a damage reduction for me to ever save me, even/especially when I'm using ranged weapons and I get overwhelmed, that 35% doesn't seem to do much. Meanwhile, if I increase the Life Steal % with Blood Moon, by the time I have enemies all around me, I'm keeping my Life at a healthy enough place that I have time to Vault away. I also typically use Nether Tentacles instead of Ball Lightning for the extra Life Steal, so between those two, even when my Life dips low, when I hit Shadow Power, it tends to jump back up pretty fast.

As for "efficiency," I know...that seems to be most peoples' mantra, my guess being that the activity of "power leveling," like in Diablo 2 is pretty much impossible. Though, creativity involving Auction snipes isn't the way I wanted to play this game. Not at all. And in fact, since I started building most of my characters from the ground up, without any help from the AH whatsoever, it's caused me to really see all the "itemization problems" this game has in an entirely new light.

Gearing up on one's own is challenging, but it's absolutely not impossible. Will it take a long time for me to get the gear necessary to make it to higher MPs than 2 or 3? Sure it will. But once I get there, I'll know I did it on my own and without needing to buy perfectly rolled stuff from people. I don't want to be proud that I swooped in on some deal, I want to be proud that I conquered the mountain without anyone to help me.

Maybe throwing melee weapons on my DH won't get him to MP10, but it's a fun thing to try out, to see the farthest aloing he can survive with a setup like that.

Hey everyone. Been checking this site out for a while, happy to finally be signed up with it finally. And maybe it's my imagination, but the community here seems to be a bit quieter and not quite as "enraged" or loud as D3.com's forums...

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else has had any interest, or tried out, any unorthodox builds.

There's been so much heat on this game for allegedly forcing everyone to be the same that, when my Demon Hunter hit level 60 in Hell difficulty, I couldn't take it anymore and had to try out my Demon Hunter as a melee-ish character. So, I threw on a Burning Axe of Sankis and a high block chance Shield (I think with some Dex), I took away his left click skill so he could wield the axe, had a pretty cool animation, actually...and put Grenades on right click to occasionally generate Hatred without needing to shoot a bow/crossbow. I didn't have to change my other four skills (Shadow Power - Gloom [though, recently changed to Blood Moon], Vault - Trail of Cinders, Sentry - Spitfire Turret, and Spike Traps - Echoing Blast) though I definitely want to look through and see if there's a more "melee/close quarters" centric build than that...also, I'd forgotten to switch out my passives, so I had on stuff like Cull the Weak and Thrill of the Hunt, which is really only good for ranged shots, though Custom Engineering helped me throw out more Sentries.

Then I started up a Nightmare MP10 Diablo run...and I gotta tell ya...I had an absolute ball! I was chopping down Oppressors any chance I could get, Shadow Power was still giving me back a decent amount of life, it was really fun! I would definitely do it again, and once I have even better armor than he has on now, I can't wait to try it out in Inferno.

I say...if a build like that can survive in Inferno MP0, it should be considered "viable."

So seeing some of the threads and posts today, it's really got me thinking about other quirky ways to go against the grain. Maybe D3 doesn't offer quite as many weird options as D2 does, however just adding a minor non-primary to certain classes can change up how they work. Witch Doctors can carry crossbows, why not go for it? I have a Pus Spitter in my stash that I'm pretty sure has Intelligence rolled on it...I let her shoot it on left click, I have one more attack to use that requires no resource. What about a Strength Wizard melee version? Extra Armor and a Shield, combined with Diamond Skin, maybe Ice Armor and attacks to slow enemies down? They'd still need Intelligence to raise damage output, and Crit and APOC would still be a big help to keep resource stocked, but if used differently it could be pretty fun.

In Diablo 2, people went against the grain with builds because they wanted additional challenge, and because even the amount of freedom in that game to make a unique character wasn't enough. People wanted the glory of doing something amazing with a different style of character, with gear that purposely gimped them in various ways, but allowed them to make a special character they could be proud of. Diablo 3 may only be out less than a year, but trying to find people who go this way in this game is pretty rough.

TLDR: If some people are so bored with the same old builds, especially with so many people streaming on twitch and YouTube, why is it not more common to see people with funky variations, doing strange and unorthodox builds to show what these classes are really made of? Why are the same default builds seen sooooooooooooooo often?

Have to say, OP, I agree with your list, for the most part. You make some terrific points, that I'd only like to add to.......

For one thing, I don't believe the Auction House is necessarily a bad idea or concept. Though, I think featuring it in a game where getting far and having your numbers and stats be really high is mostly an epeen stroke, was an unfortunate choice. "Day 1 veterans" who made it through Inferno at launch PREEN about their success, and think that's a badge of courage, though the part they tend to leave out is that they likely used the Auction House to circumvent the game's initial difficulty. Blizzard even said, before launch, that their concept for Inferno was that it was supposed to be the game's main endgame...that once you finished Hell, you entered a new difficulty that would trump all others before it. Sure enough, it did, making many players feel discouraged...which isn't a bad thing, but when they want as instant gratification as they can get, their next stop was the AH to gear up heavily, and what do ya know? They made it through Inferno in little to no time.

Since then, Blizzard has taken a lot of steps. They've nerfed Inferno monsters on the whole, but added Monster Power on top. Which means, casual gamers can get through Inferno much easier, but harder-core players have far more to work toward. Also, in the new patch, they're adding new crafting recipes, increasing the drop rates of existing recipes (so those exceptionally rare gem plan drops should be dropping more often, too, which is nice), as well as increasing the XP reward on higher MPs...which means more people can grind to Paragon level 100 easier, which means more legendary and set drops, which to me, says pretty much one thing...

The Auction House is officially, 100% UNNECESSARY! It may have once been to beat this game, but not anymore. A person can use only self-found gear (and gear found BY self-found geared characters to acquire hand-me-downs to others, kinda why the shared stash is so big) and make it through Inferno perfectly safely. My Barb is pushing close to 40k DPS, all via gear I've found, not bought. I'm pretty happy about that.

So I don't hate the Auction House myself, but I do agree that it kills much of the interest people could have in finding gear themselves. I still really dig the work it takes to build my characters from the ground up and put all the necessary work into making them better. I like the prospect of someday, being able to compare my character with another self-found geared character and commiserate on how lucky we got with some of our drops.

While two people who geared up via the AH, while following the instructions of some YouTube "pro" that makes a "buying guide" is going to look pretty much identical as the next person who did the same thing. Me and the other self-founder? Our gear sets are going to be 100% different. That's how it should be. I've made certain choices with drops and pickups, that show through in my characters' gearsets. Someone who just buys BiS gear because some internet celebrity told them what to buy? That's sad.

And what aggravates me most is one of your points...that people buy all their gear from the AH, then complain that drops aren't matching up. Well of course they aren't matching up! PLAYERS are selling all the stuff on the AH, which means you're getting things that players themselves are deeming worthy to sell. Naturally, they're going to be items with good affixes, high rolls, etc. Since most of my characters (aside from my Wizard) are wearing self-found gear, I can find at least two or three potential upgrades every time I sit down to play, and MANY pieces that may not be formal upgrades but pieces that COULD be upgrades if I were to switch around the right other pieces that I find.

I mean, people say this game is "gear-dependent." Well, when this much gear drops, I kinda think it should be. It's not wrong to make an action game like this dependent on gear, when so much of it appears when killing monsters. Maybe a formal RPG, with deep character customization elements (down to facial expressions and sometimes even VOICE), should have deeper customization options to build them, but Diablo is so much more about action, killing and loot. Yes, it has a great story to it, wonderful lore and a great universe, but for all the 2000+ hour D2 vets who say D3's story sucks, I'd be willing to bet most of them skipped through D2's story at least 3000 times while power leveling new toons.

TLDR: I definitely don't think the AH ruined this game. Players overuse it and ruin it for themselves. Everyone wants to feel godly, but wanting that so much that one sacrifices their integrity and buys their gear? Not the way to get the most enjoyment out of this game. Items like the Manticore, Skorn, Echoing Fury, Dead Man's Legacy, Mempo of Twilight, Vile Ward, ALL SET ITEMS, those items are still out there for me to find, when I find them, I'll make good use of them. For people who have put in half the time I've played for, AND already have them? They have no right to blame Blizzard for bad drop rates and crummy "itemization." They killed any enjoyment they could've gotten out of itemization they moment they turned into an AH hound and got addicted to buying endgame level gear.