[Gaming] Diablo 3 : Ser Farm-A-Lot

[Vrii]

It's not the AH you're depending on, it's gear. Gear is luck. If you're lucky, everything goes smooth without touching the AH. If you're unlucky, the game is - no pun intended - hell. The AH is a tool to smooth out that gap, and give everyone the chance to be successful.

That's what I don't get from the "the AH is ruining my Diablo" camp. You're not forced to use it, none of it comes into your bags without you earning something in game, and it's no different from trading in D2, albeit with an interface instead of having to catch someone in game who wants to trade with you. If you don't like it, don't use it - but you also have to accept that you're going to have to grind more to get all the gear you want.

I do like the changes they're talking about with the loot systems, though. Making it easier to gear up in Inferno should help quite a bit, and should lower the prices on the AH a bit besides.

 

[Adam]

So, just to clarify - this isn`t a game, it`s a lotto.

 

[Wahad]

AMA with Wyatt Cheng, Andrew Chambers and Jay Wilson

Relevant to the discussion:

You've been quoted as saying that Diablo III loot is balanced around the existence of the Auction House. Could you clarify what you mean by that? Many people seem to assume that means there is "less" or "poorer" loot being dropped on an individual basis because we're expected to get our actual upgrades from the Auction House. I read it more as the existence of the Auction House allows a much wider variety of loot affixes. If a person had to rely on only their own drops or ad hoc trading, the game would have to roll most items with +Primary Stat and +Vitality/Resist. With the Auction House in play, the game can roll literally millions of crazy stat combinations, because even if you only get "crazy" drops, you can still use the Auction House for the hard-to-upgrade slots. Thoughts?

(Jay's answer)
I'm sorry, I don't remember saying that and if I did then I was drunk and/or wrong. We tuned and balanced the game without the auction house, as there weren't enough people internally using it to test it against gameplay, so we didn't design anything for it.

 

[Vrii]

So, just to clarify - this isn`t a game, it`s a lotto.

Again, it's a Diablo game. What were you expecting?

And actually, I think a lotto is the wrong example here - it's a carnival game. You pay your $3 or whatever and you're guaranteed a prize. 99% of the time it's a shitty, useless prize, but if you don't like it, you play a couple more times and you can trade it up for the next one. Keep going, you can keep trading up as far as you want, because you're always guaranteed something. Eventually, if you play enough, you get the big stuffed bear it was you really wanted in the first place.

That's almost exactly how this works. You kill a boss, he drops shit. Maybe it's good shit, maybe it's bad, maybe it's just something for a different class. Whatever it is, you sell it - whether it's to a vendor or on the AH, it has a value. Eventually, after enough bosses, you either a) get a drop you want, or b) make enough gold to buy the thing you wanted on the AH. You can skip option b if you want, and eventually enough shots at the random loot table will give you what you want, but it's going to be inefficient and everyone else is going to look at you like you're kind of slow. Either way though, if you put the time in you get the gear you need. Welcome to the Diablo series.

 

[Bubble181]

Two things....
A) I hadn't heard about

Spoiler

Development Hell

yet. Funny that. i've heard about

Spoiler

Whimsyshire

or whatever it's called again all over, but this one must've escaped my notice. Nice.

B) I'm wondering - I'm now in Act II Normal (oh yeah!), and due to Diablo 2-refelxes I've been stacking +XP all the while. I'm still sitting on +64XP per kill (which is about +45%, comparing to how much I get for most trash mobs - down from, say, +120% back in Act 1). As a result, I'm level 23 about to hit 24 and I've got 3 more quests to go 'till the Act Boss. Mind you, I'm not having any trouble at all, quite the opposite, but I'm just wondering: should I drop all that +XP gear for other/more interesting things, or is it useful? I mean, I thought you were supposed to end normal around level 30-35, but it seems like I'll be there quite a bit earlier...and no point in overleveling this early

 

[Wahad]

Two things....
A) I hadn't heard about

Spoiler

Development Hell

yet. Funny that. i've heard about

Spoiler

Whimsyshire

or whatever it's called again all over, but this one must've escaped my notice. Nice.

B) I'm wondering - I'm now in Act II Normal (oh yeah!), and due to Diablo 2-refelxes I've been stacking +XP all the while. I'm still sitting on +64XP per kill (which is about +45%, comparing to how much I get for most trash mobs - down from, say, +120% back in Act 1). As a result, I'm level 23 about to hit 24 and I've got 3 more quests to go 'till the Act Boss. Mind you, I'm not having any trouble at all, quite the opposite, but I'm just wondering: should I drop all that +XP gear for other/more interesting things, or is it useful? I mean, I thought you were supposed to end normal around level 30-35, but it seems like I'll be there quite a bit earlier...and no point in overleveling this early

You can keep it for normal if you want, but it's more useful to start stacking Mainstat/Vit for Nightmare/Hell. And then Resist All for Inferno. Or at least, that's the path most people seem to take to keep up with the increased damage and health of enemies.

 

[LordRendar]

Sigh.Caved and bought the game.

Battletag is: LordRendar#2725

 

[AshburnerX]

You can keep it for normal if you want, but it's more useful to start stacking Mainstat/Vit for Nightmare/Hell. And then Resist All for Inferno. Or at least, that's the path most people seem to take to keep up with the increased damage and health of enemies.

How much Resist All would I need to stack? Witch Doctors already GET massive resists thanks to Int being their main stat.

 

[SeraRelm]

Sigh.Caved and bought the game.

Battletag is: LordRendar#2725

 

[Squidleybits]

Squidleybits#1946

 

[ScytheRexx]

Perfect for certain female Barbarians and Monks.

 

[Bubble181]

Is that an actual item name? Heh

 

[SeraRelm]

Hmmm...

 

[Wahad]

How much Resist All would I need to stack? Witch Doctors already GET massive resists thanks to Int being their main stat.

As much as possible. Vit and Armor alone won't cut it in inferno. You want to get your Physical Resistance (not sure if this falls under resist all or if it's determined by armor/block) and your elemental resistances as high as possible to not get one shotted. Wizards and Witch Doctors do get a leg up, but consider that, for example, 20 Resist All equals 200 intelligence, if I remember the math right. So if you get six armor pieces with 20 Resist All, that would equal the same boost as 1200 Intelligence. But given that some people are already at like, 500 resist all, Intelligence alone won't cut it.

 

[Dave]

By the way, I updated the first post in this thread with a couple of battletags that were missing. But the thread is 25 pages long, so if I missed you let me know and I'll add you.

 

[Necronic]

How much Resist All would I need to stack? Witch Doctors already GET massive resists thanks to Int being their main stat.

The resists you're getting from Int actually aren't that significant in Inferno. Right now my wizard has 1.5k Int, which comes out to 150 Resist All (210 after Prismatic Armor). My overall resists? 900. Int supplies maybe 25% of the resists I feel I need for my build.

So, basically every non-ring/amulet item you buy should have ~50+ resist all on it. AND it should also be high armor, people forget that Armor has the exact same damage mitigation as Resist, and that BOTH of them should be high.

 

[Bowielee]

The resists you're getting from Int actually aren't that significant in Inferno. Right now my wizard has 1.5k Int, which comes out to 150 Resist All (210 after Prismatic Armor). My overall resists? 900. Int supplies maybe 25% of the resists I feel I need for my build.

So, basically every non-ring/amulet item you buy should have ~50+ resist all on it. AND it should also be high armor, people forget that Armor has the exact same damage mitigation as Resist, and that BOTH of them should be high.

Doesn't armor only mitigate physical damage?

 

[Necronic]

Not to my knowledge, no. Armor mitigates all damage.

Both armor and resists TOGETHER are what is important. I've seen a lot of people mention that they have 800+ Resists and then complaining that they are still getting one shot, while not mentioning that they have really bad armor.

In my case I have ~70% armor and 70% resists (actually higher in both cases but this makes the math easier). Taken together that gives me an overall damage mitigation of 91% (or 9% dmg). Now, lets say I reduce the armor by 10%, taking me down to 60% armor and 70% resists. That has an overall damage mitigation of 85% (or 15% dmg). That 10% change actually increased the dmg I will take by 33%!

Now, going in the other direction, consider "Reduced Damage from Melee" of 20%. That gives me 70% armor, 70% resist, and 20% melee dmg mitigation. That gives me an overall dmg mitigation of 92.8% (or 7.2% dmg). Doesn't seem like that much, but that 1.8% change is actually a 20% reduction (makes sense.) Now, here's where it gets fun.

Let's say I have 70/70/20, and I am looking at an item that adds 20% more to the melee dmg reduction (String of Ears). That takes my dmg recieved from 7.2% to 5.4%. Now that 20% change ends up actually being a 25% overall reduction. OH MY.

Now, the reason this is important is when you are comparing stats on things. Effective Hit Points (EHP) is the single most important stat you have in this game alongside your dps, perhaps more important. Say I have 30k health, and I am deciding between an item that adds 2k life or one that adds 5% damage reduction (say through resists). Understandign your EHP will help you figure out how to balance that stuff.

That 25% change I am getting from the String of Ears can also be understood as an effective 25% increase to my life (assuming I am starting with a 70/70/20 initial rating....actually only the 20 matters), or iirc roughly 140 resist all. So I need to appreciate that when I am considering my gear changes. If I have 30k health and roughly 400k EHP (70/70/20) a 5% change to MDR will increase my EHP by almost 28k, and that flat 2k health increase would also bring up my EHP by 28k. So they are equivalent more or less.

 

[Dave]

SO what you're saying is...to play Inferno you have to spreadsheet it and if you are even remotely casual you'll never make it.

 

[Azurephoenix]

SO what you're saying is...to play Inferno you have to spreadsheet it and if you are even remotely casual you'll never make it.

Inferno is only for the truly awesome and not for the likes of puny mortals such as myself.

 

[Wahad]

SO what you're saying is...to play Inferno you have to spreadsheet it and if you are even remotely casual you'll never make it.

Nah - I consider myself casual and I intend to at least attempt Inferno. Basically the simplified version of what Necronic says is ''wear gear with lots of armor, vitality, mainstat and resist all''.

 

[Necronic]

SO what you're saying is...to play Inferno you have to spreadsheet it and if you are even remotely casual you'll never make it.

Nah, it's not a spreadsheet game, although you can make it one if you want (I enjoy that). You can definitely play Inferno without going all Aspie on it. But your stats matter a LOT more in Inferno than they did in other places. After the 1.03 patch you won't even need to worry about that too much since they are making inferno so much easier

Honestly I find it a bit funny that there are only a hanful of questions in here about the actual gameplay and how to do better in the game, and when someone goes through the effort of explaining how the game plays you get responses like this:

Inferno is only for the truly awesome and not for the likes of puny mortals such as myself.

You guys would enjoy the game more if you actually played it, instead of whatever weird game this is.

 

[Necronic]

Just as a bit of a followup on my last point about nobody even discussing the actual game, like their builds etc, I thought I would explain the build I am using for my wizard because it's pretty amazing and works very well:

Spectral Blades - Deep Cuts
Meteor - Star Pact
Venom Hydra
Diamond Skin
Frost Nova - Cold Snap
Energy Armor - Prismatic Ward

Passives
Evocation - All CDs reduced by 25%
Critical Mass - Crits can reduce cooldowns by 1s
Blur - 20% Melee dmg reduction

Stats
Armor - 73%
Resists - 72%
Life - 38k
DPS - 20k
Attack spd - 1.6/s
Crit - 27%
Life on Hit - 700
Max AP - 120 (after EA)
AP on Crit - 7

This is a pretty cookie cutter "Melee Wizard" build, and its crazy fun. Its based around Critical Mass, a skill which before the 1.02 patch was wayyyy overpowered as ANY crit would cause a 1s cooldown which meant you could cooldown all of your skills constantly.

They hotfixed CM to work differently for different skills. Like, for Electrocute CM barely procs at all anymore, but for Meteor or spectral blades it procs pretty regularly. The proc rates are also linked to the LOH rates. Not every hit will earn me a full 700 health, it depends on the spell.

So, what I do, is walk straight into the enemies (with my venom hydra up) and blast a frost nova + diamond skin, then spam meteors down on them. It takes a second for the meteors to hit so I go to town on them with the blades. The blades + the meteors will usually hit fast enough to proc the CM, which would then allow me to pop the Frost Nova and Diamond Skin again, and since I am getting AP on crit it gives me enough AP to fire more meteors. Since I am not moving the Venom Hydra is doing massive dmg to them as well. And all this time the blades and the meteors are healing me from my Life on Hit.

This is an incredibly fast paced build to play, very exciting and very hard to do correctly (timing for meteors is tricky since they are delayed), but it is becoming considered one of the best Wizard builds right now. It doesn't need that much DPS to use, I've seen/heard of people beating Bellial with it with only 10k dps. You HAVE to use a shield to do this well as your armor/resists are super important. Crit% is a big deal too since you need the crits for your AP regen and cooldowns require it.

 

[Raemon777]

Speaking as a casual player, I am baffled by people who are upset that they can't beat the hardest difficulty level because it's "not for casuals." Well, no shit. The hardest difficulty level is there for the people who want the challenge of the hardest difficulty level.

You get to beat the game 3 times. It is not built into your $60 contract that you get to beat it 4 times. The only thing you're missing out on is the prestige that comes being skilled enough to beat it on the hardest level. If they made it easier, there wouldn't be as much prestige anyway.

 

[Gared]

Ya know, I'm gonna go home tonight and I'm going to give the game one more shot. I'm going to play a different class than my main (probably Monk or DH), and I'm going to go into it with a much lower expectation, that the game isn't about farming content for new and exciting gear, but rather that it's about farming content for gold in order to buy new and exciting gear; and that the mind-numbing repetition of such short and linear acts is to be expected and praised. But this is its last chance, and if I still don't have any fun, it's coming off the damn computer.

 

[Ravenpoe]

Ya know, I'm gonna go home tonight and I'm going to give the game one more shot. I'm going to play a different class than my main (probably Monk or DH), and I'm going to go into it with a much lower expectation, that the game isn't about farming content for new and exciting gear, but rather that it's about farming content for gold in order to buy new and exciting gear; and that the mind-numbing repetition of such short and linear acts is to be expected and praised. But this is its last chance, and if I still don't have any fun, it's coming off the damn computer.

If you don't like it, I don't think anyone's going to be upset if you don't play it. I mean, it's a game man, play what you like.

Although, I am giggling as I picture your avatar being your face as you try so hard to make yourself like it.

 

[Gared]

I just hoped for more. I tried a couple times last night to get back into D3 and they failed miserably. You know what I did have fun playing for several hours last night though? D2. So at least I'll have something fun to play if D3 fails me again tonight.

 

[Ravenpoe]

Pfft, you kids and your D2's. Diablo 1 is still the superior, I even have an old computer I keep around just to play D1 on.

I'm not even being hipster here. Hellfire: The Dark (a mod for Diablo: Hellfire) is my go to dungeon crawler.

But I like D3 too, just not as obsessively as I was expecting.

 

[Gusto]

Click ALL the monsters!

 

[Gared]

I don't think I ever actually got to play D1. I wish Blizz sold it online like they do SC1, I'd totally go for a copy of that once I get my paycheck and figure out how I'm going to get it deposited into my CU account.

 

[Raemon777]

Diablo II never compelled me to play past normal difficulty so I don't have much frame of comparison. (At the time, I played things solely for the story and didn't care much about beating something harder or continuously grinding for the sake of it. Experience with WoW changed things for me somewhat)

Now, Diablo III *still* doesn't compel me to play much past Normal. (I sort of want to beat Nightmare, but that's only because it was very clear that Normal was "easy". Nowadays I like to feel like there was SOME challenge). So I don't know how useful my opinion of the game is. But my sense was that Diablo II was... a whole lot of repetitive clicking. Diablo III is definitely shorter, and the storyline is less compelling. But I think the storyline is less compelling because it is badly written, not because it's shorter, and the gameplay wouldn't be improved by giving us *more* near-identical things to kill and places to kill them.

 

[Azurephoenix]

You know what? All this bullshit aside I really just feel let down and don't feel that $60 was worth what I'm going to be able to accomplish in this game without sinking massive amounts of time into repetitive grinding.

 

[Vrii]

Real money AH seems to be scheduled for later this month if you want to play Diablo without having to actually, y'know, play Diablo to do it.

 

[Bowielee]

I have a feeling that they're just pilot testing the D3 real money auction house for implementation in WoW.

 

[Necronic]

Nah, the thing is that D3 is a sign of the beginning of the end for WoW. There's a strange iterative/incestuous process going on between those two. WoW was designed cribbing heavily from Diablo2, with some differences. D3 is more the successor to WoW than D2 in a lot of ways (like the level of Min/Maxing involved and the difficulty of end game material/the amount of commitment required.) And honestly WoW has just gotten really old and its showing. Don't get me wrong, it still has many years to go and its not going to be replaced for a LONG time.

The RMAH may make an appearance in WoW, but I don't think it's going to be a big money maker for them due to the nature of Soulbinding. I'm actually quite impressed that they haven't launched it in D3 yet. They know the AH has some significant issues, and they know the game balance has some significant issues (like IAS), so (my guess) is that they are holding off on the RMAH to avoid having people spend cash for items that then loose value in a significant patch to follow. Which shows a bit of integrity since it's definitely an oppurtunity cost for them to wait.

As frothy-mouthed as the most "vocal" (ignoring s/n) of the D3 community is can you imagine what would happen if someone spent 100$ on an item and then the upcoming patch reduced its value?

This is still going to happen mind you, and its going to get ugly fast. That's the one thing Blizzard seems to have forgotten with their RMAH: that gamers believe that "The Customer is ALWAYS RIGHT" more than any other consumer group (and Blizzard gamers may be particularly bad). The fact that some people are threatening Class Actions based on the OPENING WEEKs of the game only serves as an indication of what will happen when there is real money involved.

One thing I'm pretty happy about with the whole RMAH thing though is that Korea can't use it. I have nothing against Koreans, and honestly it could be any other country and I would be happy. What it means is that the RMAH won't be the only way to play, the regular gold AH will still be significant in the game.