I have a 55 Witch Doctor and a baby monk still in Normal.
[Gaming] Diablo 3 : Ser Farm-A-Lot
- Thread starter Jay
- Start date
Hey, Dave . I'll be happy to join you once I pick up a copy for myself...I wanted to beat Diablo myself before playing coop but now that I have nobody is ever on.
...in a year or two.
--Patrick
The Butcher was interesting all right...
Cleared Hell and hit 60 on the Barb, managed to do most of A3 with a 2-hander solo, did Arreat to Diablo with a DH friend. Popped into Inferno after buying some new gear and wow, what a difference from Hell A4. Gonna need to take it slow or farm some gold to beef myself up a little more.
Also, I'd love to put the Barb Set together, but Goddamn, people are charging 3mil+ gold for any piece, even if it's got shit rolls on it. :/
Also, I'd love to put the Barb Set together, but Goddamn, people are charging 3mil+ gold for any piece, even if it's got shit rolls on it. :/
Inferno has enrage timers. NM Diablo is rough if you don't run away a lot. Don't forget he's got two health fountains on either side of the map, too.
Once you hit phase 3, jails, the fire nova and the breath will wear you to nothing in no time at all. I forget what class you're playing (Barb?) but I did NM Diablo with a sword/shield and a set up like this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WeRkTP!Zed!YZbbbZ
The stun helps quite a bit more than I'd expected, and combining Berserker/Earthquake/Ignore Pain (with the lifeleech glyph) makes you basically invulnerable for the 5 second IP duration. As far as passives you could also try out Tough as Nails, which will get you a little more armor if you want to stick to 2h. Bloodthirst ends up kind of shitty too, so maybe swap that for Weapon Master if you have and axe/mace/sword. The passive might be better spent if you have a spear/polearm/Mighty.
The stun helps quite a bit more than I'd expected, and combining Berserker/Earthquake/Ignore Pain (with the lifeleech glyph) makes you basically invulnerable for the 5 second IP duration. As far as passives you could also try out Tough as Nails, which will get you a little more armor if you want to stick to 2h. Bloodthirst ends up kind of shitty too, so maybe swap that for Weapon Master if you have and axe/mace/sword. The passive might be better spent if you have a spear/polearm/Mighty.
When do the set pieces start dropping?
I did some upgrades and I'm finding Act 2 Hell a lot more manageable. I'm not sure how much health/damage is enough for later Acts though.
I did some upgrades and I'm finding Act 2 Hell a lot more manageable. I'm not sure how much health/damage is enough for later Acts though.
All sets are ilevel 60 or higher, so inferno only - maybe late hell if you get lucky.
I think the game is trying to tell me something. Almost all the amazing rares I get are crossbows.
It took me about 2 hours of repetitive trying to get him...er...her down. I basically had to research my best DPS skills and then take my time slowly eating him down in Phase 2 where I tended to die the most. Once she hit Phase 3, it was a lot of run and gun from outside her screen radius to kill her.
Yet another way us single player players get shafted. Chance of ever completing a set in SP = 0. Chance of ever getting a useful unique in SP = 0.001. Chance of finishing Inferno untwinked...Well, don't think anybody's really done it SP so far.
What's the point of having all kinds of cool things in your game if 50%+ of your user base isn't going to see it? The whoel game's been geared towards end game raiding for content. I don't get it, I really don't. D2 had an 80% off line player base! I mean, yes, they probably all bought this game too, but it's still just plain sucky to cater ONLY to the other 20%. And yes, some of those will come on line too, now that they're forced, and they will buy, etc....Blegh. Game's nice, except for where every other aspect has been changed or adjusted to push you towards other people and to grinding.
What's the point of having all kinds of cool things in your game if 50%+ of your user base isn't going to see it? The whoel game's been geared towards end game raiding for content. I don't get it, I really don't. D2 had an 80% off line player base! I mean, yes, they probably all bought this game too, but it's still just plain sucky to cater ONLY to the other 20%. And yes, some of those will come on line too, now that they're forced, and they will buy, etc....Blegh. Game's nice, except for where every other aspect has been changed or adjusted to push you towards other people and to grinding.
The same thing that caused me to play through each and every character in D2 untwinked.
Edit: to clarifiy: I've twinked characters to hell and back; I mean I've played through with each class untwinked.
Also, "use the auction house" isn't a magical good thing. It's quite literally "we're giving everybody crap, so everyone will have to trade. Go farm some gold. Or, once possible, please cosnider spending some Real Money (tm) on your shit".
I'm not saying I should be all-powerful. On the contrary - I think players shouldn't be as comfortable as they are in Inferno right now. The game's been out for weeks and is supposed to last for years. However, I do think there should be more "interesting" drops. D2 had uniques and sets starting at level, what, 3? Sure, the chance of finding them was small - but I think I've seen, at one point or another, every unique there is under ilvl 20 or so, and a good batch of those above (far from all. I'm not that much of a nut. Never had a Zod drop on me, either).
I'm not saying there shouldn't be items for which you have to grind hard and/or only available in special places and maxed out level and whatever - but for all of Normal and Nightmare, you've got pretty much nothing to look forward to but "oh, this mace has 0.3 DPS more than my old mace. How nice." Which is shit.
Edit: to clarifiy: I've twinked characters to hell and back; I mean I've played through with each class untwinked.
Also, "use the auction house" isn't a magical good thing. It's quite literally "we're giving everybody crap, so everyone will have to trade. Go farm some gold. Or, once possible, please cosnider spending some Real Money (tm) on your shit".
I'm not saying I should be all-powerful. On the contrary - I think players shouldn't be as comfortable as they are in Inferno right now. The game's been out for weeks and is supposed to last for years. However, I do think there should be more "interesting" drops. D2 had uniques and sets starting at level, what, 3? Sure, the chance of finding them was small - but I think I've seen, at one point or another, every unique there is under ilvl 20 or so, and a good batch of those above (far from all. I'm not that much of a nut. Never had a Zod drop on me, either).
I'm not saying there shouldn't be items for which you have to grind hard and/or only available in special places and maxed out level and whatever - but for all of Normal and Nightmare, you've got pretty much nothing to look forward to but "oh, this mace has 0.3 DPS more than my old mace. How nice." Which is shit.
I'd just like to say... I hate the concept of the auction house. I realize it's usefulness but it completely overshadows practically every piece of equipment that you find in the game on your own. I can't even recall the last useful item that dropped for me. I wish the game would drop more useful stuff for your character at more regular intervals instead of totally useless crap all the time.
Necronic
Staff member
You guys need to appreciate that in Inferno, everything changes, even your ideas about drops.
One of the standard A1 farming runs is the Warden/Butcher run. When you're well geared it takes maybe 30 minutes (or less depending on how fast you find the 5 champs you need). You can add a couple of other quick stops to get some easy to access Resp chests and/or treasure goblins. Let's say overall it takes 45 minutes.
I routinely get 10-20 rares on one of those runs.
If the drops were like how you guys want it then I would have gotten all of the highest end gear already, and would be done with the game. The fact that I haven't (even after having done a LOT of butcher runs) makes the end game more playable for me. I AM getting closer to where I need to be gear wise though. To progress through A2 I just need to upgrade my shield and maybe my boots. Or maybe my bracers....or maybe also my rings, although I JUST bought those....
I can't see this game working well without the AH, and I'm happy they have it. For Inferno every one of your stats needs to be carefully thought out and min/maxed for your build, and there ARE multiple builds. It takes a lot of thought and patience to figure out exactly what kind of gear you want and then slowly build it up by hunting the AH like a crack addict.
If the game didn't require this kind of min/maxing and I could just slap together any set of garbage I wanted , or if the game started dropping the highest end gear all the time then I would already have Inferno Ponies on farm, which would be a REALLY bad thing.
There's nothing wrong with admitting that Inferno may be too much for you, and I think this is what has so many people up in arms. Everyone wants to be like Mike, and they get mad when they step up to the line and get stuffed. I'm close to admitting the same thing myself. The amount of dedication required for that is astounding. It reminds of of Ninja Gaiden on the hardest difficulty levels. It's not for everyone, nor should it be.
One of the standard A1 farming runs is the Warden/Butcher run. When you're well geared it takes maybe 30 minutes (or less depending on how fast you find the 5 champs you need). You can add a couple of other quick stops to get some easy to access Resp chests and/or treasure goblins. Let's say overall it takes 45 minutes.
I routinely get 10-20 rares on one of those runs.
If the drops were like how you guys want it then I would have gotten all of the highest end gear already, and would be done with the game. The fact that I haven't (even after having done a LOT of butcher runs) makes the end game more playable for me. I AM getting closer to where I need to be gear wise though. To progress through A2 I just need to upgrade my shield and maybe my boots. Or maybe my bracers....or maybe also my rings, although I JUST bought those....
I can't see this game working well without the AH, and I'm happy they have it. For Inferno every one of your stats needs to be carefully thought out and min/maxed for your build, and there ARE multiple builds. It takes a lot of thought and patience to figure out exactly what kind of gear you want and then slowly build it up by hunting the AH like a crack addict.
If the game didn't require this kind of min/maxing and I could just slap together any set of garbage I wanted , or if the game started dropping the highest end gear all the time then I would already have Inferno Ponies on farm, which would be a REALLY bad thing.
There's nothing wrong with admitting that Inferno may be too much for you, and I think this is what has so many people up in arms. Everyone wants to be like Mike, and they get mad when they step up to the line and get stuffed. I'm close to admitting the same thing myself. The amount of dedication required for that is astounding. It reminds of of Ninja Gaiden on the hardest difficulty levels. It's not for everyone, nor should it be.
You typing on a phone, or does twink mean something vastly different over there?
-edit-
Never mind, Ravenpoe explained it for me. Curse my noobishness!
You know what this bullshit is reminding me of? Grinding for gear in WoW (which is one of the reasons I quit that game years ago).
I guess I was going too much off of fun memories of D2 and hoping against all odds that the single player of D3 wouldn't be the steaming pile of donkey crap that we got. I'll probably finish nightmare but I doubt I'll go much further than that. I have better things to do with my time.
I guess I was going too much off of fun memories of D2 and hoping against all odds that the single player of D3 wouldn't be the steaming pile of donkey crap that we got. I'll probably finish nightmare but I doubt I'll go much further than that. I have better things to do with my time.
Heh, no... Not that meaning.
In online games, a character is "twinked" when he is outfitted with high end gear that is supplied by a higher character, using items that would be otherwise hard to get or impossible for the lower char to acquire.
But if the game had more drops, it would completely undermine Blizzard's formula for how quickly characters can gear up at various levels. After all, if they adjust drop rates according to how quickly someone can gear, but completely leave out an entire gearing option, i.e. the AH, that would be "rather poorly thought out."
And you need to appreciate I'm not talking about Inferno. I'm talking about Normal and possibly Nightmare. I'm not even saying those items should be STRONGER, but MORE INTERESTING. Or do you disagree that thematical uniques which offer otherwise-nonexistent-cool-but-not-necessary items would be fun to find?
No, you wouldn't. You'd have a few uniques, probably - but a) in D2 superrares were better than uniques and b) it's not my fault they made practically all of Inferno ilvl 61 to ilvl 63.
Yes, you're the target demographic - the ones who want to play the AH like a crack addict (in your own words). More power to you! But it's not because they cater to your preference that you ought to be blind to the fact they're pretty much deliberately undercutting other ways of enjoying the game.
With less trading options and less availability on the AH, you'd be grinding to find uniques/rarfes YOURSELF, which would be a heck of a lot more fun than grinding for money to buy uniques/rares from another. More fun, less spreadsheets.
I don't care about Inferno. I don't. I'll probably dabble in A1 a while for shit and giggles, but I don't play for the challenge, I play for, once again, fun. I don't find fun in overcoming difficulty in a game. Could I play Inferno? Well, I've played a fair bit of D2, but even so: no. It IS beyond my skill level. Heck, the übers in D2 were out of my league, too. I didn't feel the need to try them.
See, you seem as blind as Blizzard in this. I'm not saying D3 is a bad game, I'm just saying it caters to a very specific niche - mostly coinciding with the max-level players in WoW who keep raiding for the very best content; the people who like Ninja Gaiden, the people who keep striving for the title of "Best", and who really center their time/interest around this one game (temporarily) as their hobby/focus. Fair enough. I just think that Blizzard will find that this is only 10% of the people playing Diablo...And that they'll be forced to keep introducing ever-more-expensive, ever-more-rare, ever-more-punishing items/monsters to keep these interested. Powerplayers WILL grow bored if it goes too fast; more casual/normal players WILL get bored if it goes too slow. At the same time, powerplayers WILL whine and moan if they can't be succesfull fast enough*.In a way, D3 is balancing between MMO and single player, and I think the balance is off.
*Not the REAL ones. A REAL powerplayer will come through in the end and be prouder of the achievement the harder it is. The people we see whining all over now are the ones who WANT to be tough and cool, but also want their "superhard" achievement handed to them on a plate. Those are just wusses.
I don't think anyone here expects to have Inferno handed to us. In fact, as the game's been out less than a month, I'm frankly a little disappointed that I'm even as close to getting to Inferno as I am - I expected the game to be easy on Normal, hard on Nightmare, really hard on Hell, and damn near impossible on Inferno; what I got was easy on Normal, pretty easy on Nightmare, Hard on Hell, and I haven't bothered playing in a week or more so I have no idea how hard Inferno actually is. All we're saying is that we don't like the idea that Blizzard built into the calculations of how much gear should drop the idea that all of their audience will just use the AH to get good gear, and therefor the individual drop rates have to be scaled waaaaaaaay back, or there'd be too much good gear available. What if I don't want to use the AH, why should the availability of items on a construct that I have no intention of using affect the drop rate of items (whether useful for my class or not) in any way? And so what if gear is too easy to get for people on the AH? The economy was so skewed last time I logged on that I couldn't get a decent upgrade to a blue ring that I'd had since Act 4 Normal without dropping $40k+.
Gear in D2 was hard to get for your class. A lot of magical items and socketed items and socketed magical items dropped, but they weren't necessarily useful for your class/build; but it was possible to get good gear, and set pieces really did drop before max level (I recently restarted a playthrough and had a set piece drop before I even managed to get the hammer for the blacksmith), and we didn't have to rely on some out of game construct in order to get good gear. We could play our game and still have just as much fun and just as much chance of getting good gear as anyone else, without having to spend time grinding for gold and buying gear from other people. In D3, so far as most people have seen, we don't have that chance. All of the arguments that "gear drops get better in Inferno," are meaningless, because most people will never get to Inferno, we'll be so pissed off that we never see any good drops in our own games that we'll just chalk this up to Actifail not understanding what the vast majority of the audience wants and we'll wander off a little bit less likely to buy another Blizzard title again.
Gear in D2 was hard to get for your class. A lot of magical items and socketed items and socketed magical items dropped, but they weren't necessarily useful for your class/build; but it was possible to get good gear, and set pieces really did drop before max level (I recently restarted a playthrough and had a set piece drop before I even managed to get the hammer for the blacksmith), and we didn't have to rely on some out of game construct in order to get good gear. We could play our game and still have just as much fun and just as much chance of getting good gear as anyone else, without having to spend time grinding for gold and buying gear from other people. In D3, so far as most people have seen, we don't have that chance. All of the arguments that "gear drops get better in Inferno," are meaningless, because most people will never get to Inferno, we'll be so pissed off that we never see any good drops in our own games that we'll just chalk this up to Actifail not understanding what the vast majority of the audience wants and we'll wander off a little bit less likely to buy another Blizzard title again.
Necronic
Staff member
Perhaps I am blind, because I simply don't see the large differences in enjoyability between D2 and D3. From what I've seen they are almost identical except:
1) Damage output of a character is related to gear in D3, meaning no MF Sorcs or other grindbreaking builds
2) Builds are better balanced and useable, meaning that there is more than one real build for each class, and for the most part every class is playable.
3) AH has increased access to better gear, meaning that you don't have to farm your own drops all the time. You still can, of course, but you don't have to. This adds a layer of complexity. They also have made gold a significant item (no hyperinflation like in D2) due to the inclusion of high level crafting.
4) Highest difficulty level is massively more difficult than before. Hell difficulty is playable by pretty much anyone without ever going to the AH.
5) Uniques/legendaries are pretty bad in D3. Although iirc they were pretty bad in D2 until they added more.
6) Other mechanics changes like pot timers and rune skills.
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The itemization may seem a little weak, but tbh I've come to appreciate that there isn't a single stat on an item that has no value to me. This makes item choices *very* interesting for builds.
1) Damage output of a character is related to gear in D3, meaning no MF Sorcs or other grindbreaking builds
2) Builds are better balanced and useable, meaning that there is more than one real build for each class, and for the most part every class is playable.
3) AH has increased access to better gear, meaning that you don't have to farm your own drops all the time. You still can, of course, but you don't have to. This adds a layer of complexity. They also have made gold a significant item (no hyperinflation like in D2) due to the inclusion of high level crafting.
4) Highest difficulty level is massively more difficult than before. Hell difficulty is playable by pretty much anyone without ever going to the AH.
5) Uniques/legendaries are pretty bad in D3. Although iirc they were pretty bad in D2 until they added more.
6) Other mechanics changes like pot timers and rune skills.
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The itemization may seem a little weak, but tbh I've come to appreciate that there isn't a single stat on an item that has no value to me. This makes item choices *very* interesting for builds.
Also, in rereading my post, I may have been a bit aggressive. This is partly due to a bad day at work, and my apologies. On the other hand, it's also partly incited by the, quite condescending, "it's okay if Inferno's too hard for you, poor little baby. I know that's why you're upset, here have a lolly" bit.
Anyway, what Gared said.
And not to sound like a broken record, but an off line single player mode where, like in D2 with the ladder-only items, some items simply can't drop, and the drop rate for others has been rebalanced, would've solved this issue.
Also²: the uniques in D3 are useful for a stupidly small time. None of them is Inferno-worthy gear, really. And none of them drops before Nightmare. There ARE no ilvl10 uniques/sets. And the ilvl60 uniques/sets aren't good enough to compete with ilvl 62/63 rares.
Anyway, what Gared said.
And not to sound like a broken record, but an off line single player mode where, like in D2 with the ladder-only items, some items simply can't drop, and the drop rate for others has been rebalanced, would've solved this issue.
Also²: the uniques in D3 are useful for a stupidly small time. None of them is Inferno-worthy gear, really. And none of them drops before Nightmare. There ARE no ilvl10 uniques/sets. And the ilvl60 uniques/sets aren't good enough to compete with ilvl 62/63 rares.
No, but through sheer ignorance I apparently hoped that Diablo 3 would provide a satisfying single player experience... which it did not. I really do have better things to do with my time than spending hours slogging through yet another farming run to get slightly better gear than I currently have. Seriously... I would have kept playing WoW if that's what I wanted to do.
I paid $60 for a continuation of the story from Diablo 2 and more fun in the Diablo universe. Instead I got an abomination of a story that held no compelling moments and a grindfest for better gear so I can be 733t and beat the game on some supreme difficulty.
Grinding is a symptom of poor game design, created by the Japanese in the 80's as a means to prevent players from completing a game during a single rental period (Before they successfully lobbied their government to make renting games illegal). It's used to artificially inflate game length, no matter the means it uses to accomplish this. The very fact that it has lasted this long as a concept is abominable, because it gives devs a "way out" of adding meaningful content to all areas of a game.
Grinding for gear is pointless. It doesn't test your skill or reward you for becoming better at the game. It only serves to eat up time, to keep you playing, and to fuel an economy where Blizzard profits no matter what you do. There are better ways to gate off end-game content than to trap it behind grinding.
I actually really like the auction house. I would lIke to be able to list more items but I can understand the need for there to be a cap. I get a lot of crossbows etc, so it's great to be able to go shopping for what I need.
I'm just tossing this out there, but there are 3+ rares on my barb I used from 43 until I hit 60 at the end of Hell. Not all rares are shit, and I actually found two of those in Nightmare A3. I used a Legendary 2h sword from 55 to 59, which for a weapon is a pretty good lifetime. Replaced it with an 800-ish dps 2h for 59 and now I'm using a 930-ish dps 2h axe at 60. The only downside I'm finding now is I'll have to farm gold as well as gear if I want to progress through Inferno.
I have 3 RL friends and my brother to co-op farm with, though, so it's not as tedious for me. Honestly I'm having more fun with D3 so far thanks to the people I'm playing with than I ever did solo in D2 or on Battle.net games.
I have 3 RL friends and my brother to co-op farm with, though, so it's not as tedious for me. Honestly I'm having more fun with D3 so far thanks to the people I'm playing with than I ever did solo in D2 or on Battle.net games.
I don't know, I find it very pleasing to look at new gear that I find on my character - in this game, anyway. Makes me feel like a badass.
But I guess I am easily pleased.
Would you have rather gotten that gear for spending 2 hours trying to kill a boss until you finally succeeded or would you have rather spent those 2 hours killing trash mobs until it randomly dropped? That's what I mean by meaningful game play.