f13.net

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/8414560/

Looks good to me, even though I'm probably the only guy still playing. I think the changes to MP xp is probably the best thing in there, since it offered little risk/reward (people weren't using it to level their paragon at all). I'm concerned how BoA crafted items will affect an already shakey market for regular items. We'll see.

I like the looks of it. I'm not actively playing it, but I never hated the game in the first place and have just been doing other things - I'll be back to check this out for sure.

EDIT: The damage reflect change with pets is really, really nice.

Not sure why they're changing reflect damage. Yeah it was challenging, but it was pretty much the last challenging thing left in this game.

With pets it isn't so much a question of 'challenge' as you have no real control over them and it just screws you.

It wasn't really challenging though.  It was just an attribute that would with basically instagib you if you were a glass cannon build or not be an issue if you weren't.  I guess something that can kill you is "challenging" but it certainly wasn't adding a lot of gameplay depth. 

But then, this genre has never been popular because it is challenging, aside from perhaps the hardcore community.

With Monster Power, it's all about tuning the affixes for the health/damage boosts. They are turning plagued and molten for that reason.

New word coming out is that 1.0.7 will institute a "report bot" function.

Interesting...

And nobody cared.

Also I seem to remember saying about 6 months ago that the only way to fix Auction House dominating everything was with bind-on-pickup style items. I must be a genius.

Thanks for reminding me. I just uninstalled D3 and got back like 6-7 gigs of space on my SSD!

I look at the changes and wish I could care. But I don't

It's a case of it being too late as the horse has bolted.

I was about to pre-order the SC2 expansion and started thinking about getting the digital deluxe version. Then I realised that the WoW and D3 devs had switched off to me the player and that there was no point in the extra goodies.

That makes me sad, but the space I got back from D3 and WoW gives me more drive space for publishers that don't try to jam their erroneous vision of "fun" down my throat.

At least we're not paying a sub for it.

I still get an itch every now and then and as much as I wanted to like TL2, I simply prefer the combat in D3.

That said, there's nothing in this patch that could bring me back.

Maybe an expansion with a new character class or two.

Torchlight 2 combat feels like total shit, so I'm with you on that one.

So in the new issue of "not getting it" Blizzard decided to give everyone a new class of gems called the Marquise gem, where you have to put in 3 of the highest quality gem currently available to make one. The current highest level gem sells for about 25-30M gold.

Then, they inform everyone that those gems will be Bind on Account. Community overwhelming says, no, that's not what we want in gems. They are a sellable commodity up to a point, and then they aren't? That makes no sense.

Blizzard's reponse: Oh well the plans that drop to make the gems aren't BoA, you can still trade those. :facepalm:

Example thread:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7708952131?page=2

Well, they've got pressure from some people saying they don't like the AH and want more emphasis on self-found stuff.  BoA is them trying to do that (they did it with Hellfire Rings).   


Although frankly, this is way out of the price range of most people to begin with.  They are desperately trying to add carrots for their highest end players, when the reason Diablo games were so strong in the past is that they didn't really segregate the highest end and just normal "end game" people.

People believe the game is itemized for the AH, and not regular drop rates. The BoA thing won't solve that.

That's not really the case. The bigger issue is that because of the game design, most of the affixes to items are absolutely useless, and it would not have any effect on the game if it was single player at all.

All resistences other than AllResist, Extra health globes, life after kill, life per spirit, life regen, CC reduction, thorns, AP on crit, +xp points, reduced lvl, chance to chill-freeze-fear-immobilize-knock-slow-stun, plus 55 other class specific things that are pointless.

Add into the fact that two of the three main stats are completely useless to your class, and the fact that weapons are about DPS over everything else, and you get a ridiculously small sample of possible affixes that work.

Hey, I totally use thorns.  :awesome_for_real:

Sadly my stat priority on my monk was Agi/health/all resists + cold resist (cheapest of the second resists to buy when I played this travesty of a game). For weapons it was damage + life on hit followed by anything else that was good.

The fact that I was locked into this plus locked into using One With All is nuts. The need for primary stats should never have gone ahead as these items never drop for me and it's nuts that monks can double dip with OWA where other classes can't. It's crazy, but the Path of Exile devs seem to know this as playing both closed and open beta I was never short of gear that I couldn't use and getting the next piece of gear is an awesome feeling.

I went and had a mess around with my other 4 D3 60s in inferno - the cost of gearing is crazy and the drops aren't happening on them either - I did get a nice wand with strength and agility on it though :D

Actually, I noticed that PoE seems to look at the class you are playing and drop the gems for that class more readily than other classes. There's still some randomisation across the colours but you can actually use 80% of them. Gear stats seem good too - maybe it's because the drops are greater than in D3.

I wonder if Blizz could fix a lot of the gearing issues by localising the primary stats on gear to the class it drops for? At least it would give the player a feeling that the drop was somewhat useful not totally worthless.

Do you have a source for this? Because this sounds like someone reading too much into the RNG, and doesn't mirror my experience at all. I find tons of green gems, and play a Witch.

I would hate to see that actually. Tailoring drops means less 'hey I found this thing I could use to make some other different character' which is one of the best parts of ARPGs, IMO.

No source other than what I've seen on my Ranger. 25 greens, six reds and 3 blues. If you're getting greens too than there may be an RNG issue

Edit: Just checked my level 5 witch and she has 5 blue, 1 green and no red. 2 quest rewards so that's 3 blue drops. She had more drop early than the ranger.

I'd agree - except ther seems nothing in D3 to sustain this. Most stuff that drops for me gets vendored as the primary stats are counter-productive - WH/WD seem the worst for this.

Taking out quest rewards and not counting what I've traded, I have 8 Blues, 6 Reds, and 18 greens on my 44 Witch. My level 7 hc Mara has found exactly 2 gems, both green; his 3 reds are all quest rewards.

Yea, this is indeed the issue.  Basically no matter what class you play you want to stack your Main State + enough vitality to not get one shot, + some life on hit or life leach + all resist + as much crit chance and crit damage as you can muster.  Then in your weapon slot you want a socketed high dps weapon with a green gem.

There are SOME other possible builds, like life regen/thorns on a minion based Witch Doctor, but even at their best these sorts of builds pale in comparison to the standard ones.  Critical Mass Wizards use a bit of AP on crit.  Chance to freeze/stun on hit is only useful for outfitting your scoundrel if you use him as your sidekick.

I actually still play Diablo 3 quite a bit so I can't complain too much to be honest, but I agree that the issues of itemization have everything to do with game design and almost nothing to do with the AH.  Diablo 2 was similar in that almost all the loot you got was pretty useless, but at least there were a variety of viable builds that geared differently.

Pretty sure they are attempting to suck some of the gold out of the econ.  When the mp10 folks are done crafting their 30 items of each type trying to get uber rolls and combos blizz will come in and tune things.

I am having fun and looking forward to next patch.  The new loot design has absolutely increased my fun factor!

1.0.7 is now officially out.  As a sucker for crafting, I like additions.  They aren't the sort of thing that are going to drastically change the game, but I think it makes end game crafting worthwhile again.  Also, got an amulet on intelligence recipe of my very first monster killed in my first game I loaded up after the patch.  Huzzah!

I played it for 45m last night on a MP5 quick key run on Act 1.

A legendary drops right off the bat in the Jar of Souls event, so that was pretty awesome. Also I got the key and 2 Demonic essences from less than an hour playing. The XP gain is much improved at the higher levels now. It makes playing for those paragon bonuses much more well-rounded than just smoking monsters over and over again at MP1.

Got 2 recipes within like 30 minutes!

Love this patch, having a blast.

I have to admit that despite not expecting anything super, I'm having fun.  I think it is largely due to feeling like a real badass now, as compared to last time that I played, plus the increase in interesting drops.
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/kormac.png)
How are game designers treated in your lands?

Tonight I also got my first pattern in the span of about 30m. I can play in chunks now and not see useless shit over and over. Things can be broken, sold, and there's an actual market for the materials.

I've been doing Act 3: The Second Heart, kill Cydea, go through the end of Act III, kill Azmodan, start act 4, and kill the first 2 minibosses of Act 4.  The run doesn't take long, has good numbers of elites, and gives your 3 bosses which have extra drop chances for the new patterns.

Has anyone tried dueling yet?

I played for half an hour, got a questionable upgrade for my amulet.  The rest was the usual vendor bait.

I was less than impressed.

Random is random.  I'm doing OK.

Patched, played.

Seeing no difference. 

I agree that random is random.  I'm just saying my experience hasn't improved, and I'm not feeling very charitable towards the game right now.  My time is pretty damn precious, and to log in (bullshit) to run around gathering Nephalim Valor (double bullshit) so I have a better shot at maybe getting loot (never happens) or perhaps something to put the AH (fucking hate that interface, why haven't they reworked the selling interface to make it easy to find items similar to the one you want to sell), is not something I'm inclined to do.  Particularly when there's other games that do loot better (torchlight 2, borderlands 2, still have yet to play PoE.)

Using MP?

EDIT: Not giving up PoE or championing DIII.  Just wanted to establish that.

Go to the second AH tab, right-click the item in question, "search for similar".

I'm on MP 1, I don't have the gear to go higher than that.  I think.  In Act I.  Yes, I am terrible, and I feel shame.

I'll have to check out that AH thing, thanks.

Also, it'd be awesome if they'd show if an item were an upgrade in the AH with the green tooltip text.

I'm like paragon 21 on MP5, holding like 21M for an upgrade at some point. So far, it's more enjoyable knowing I'm moving my character along at higher MP levels than forced to button mash kills at MP1.

Also, Soulflame, what are you running? Linky character?

Have to wait until I get home to link.  I can't log into bnet at work, as my authenticator is on my iPad.

Once you have MP1 on all of Inferno has the same difficulty level (excluding the particular monsters you happen to fight in each act).  So if you can do Act 1 Mp1, you can do all of it.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/soulflame-1181/hero/11543917

Finding that was no goddamn fun at all.

I don't know how to find that organically.  I finally just put my info into the URL.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Yegolev-1821/

Sad. :oh_i_see:

Finding the right profile is about as unintuitive as you could possibly imagine.

I swear, I'm not sure I'd actually want to try to guide someone through it without screenshots.

Essentially:
Log into bnet
Upper right, your name shows.  If you're on World of Warcraft, click the tag with the downward pointing caret.
If your Diablo 3 tag isn't in the list, click Manage Characters at the bottom of the list.
Click your Diablo 3 gamer tag.
You may need to click View Profile.

Awesomely easy and straightforward!

 :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr:

Well Soul, for starters I think your gear is not bad. You probably want to consider going over 350 on All resist so you don't get gibbed by some of the ground effects.

My first step would be getting new gloves, because the market has dropped a lot with the new crafting. So you can probably find some nice Dex gloves with over 8% crit chance. That'll bump up your damage a lot.

Second would be to get an amulet with some life on hit +400 and that crit damage over 50%. With prices what they are, that's probably not complicated either.

Also upgrading the crit change on your quiver should be dirt cheap on the AH. Those things never sell well, and should be an easy upgrade.

Overall, I think putting in some more LOH, crit hit/chance, and you should be murdering stuff. I can also probably shoot you some stuff I find on MP5 if you want to friend me. Paelos #1244.

Slamming it up to MP10 made a difference to the gear, but turned the combat into a snooze fest.

I'm just never going to be won over, am I ? 

If it makes anyone feel better, I'd LIKE to be.

MPs seem mostly about where your dps says you should be, rather than where you can survive. Which is fine with me, as a barb because I just whirlwind around everywhere.

Soul I found some rings you can probably use as upgrades, send me a message next time I'm online and I'll give them to you.

That would be awesome.

Had a bit better luck today.  Two gem designs, two or three blacksmith designs, a couple of legendaries.  One is a 2H hammer, about 1200 DPS, and the other a pair of boots that set the ground on fire.  Supposedly.

Of course, neither is particularly useful to my demon hunter.   :awesome_for_real:

You have a Terrible Crown. 

Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

The BOA stuff has made some of the legendaries a lot more approachable on the AH. I was able to get a decent Mempo and Vile Ward for around 3m gold total.

Granted they aren't ZOMG perfectly rolled items, but they were nice upgrades.

A few weeks back I did all of Act 1 on MP0 and found one minor upgrade, a rare 2H mace with 980 DPS (~30 more than what I was using) and decent secondary stats. I decided to give the new patch a try and also see how the drops were with MP set to higher than 0.  I set MP to 3 and started Act 2. Here is how the night went for me:

-Begin Act 2, walk up to first enemies (hornets/monkeys), die almost instantly.

-Switch out leap for stun (Barb), walk up to first enemies, die almost instantly.

-Restart on MP2, walk up to first enemies, die almost instantly.

-Switch back to my shield and lower DPS sword that I had been using, manage to survive for ~20 minutes but the fights are tough and I'm drinking potions on cooldown. This is how Act 2 Inferno felt for this character before they added Monster Power and nerfed most of the enemies.

At this point, I'm faced with two possibilities. I could either switch to a lower MP and farm Act 1 until I got some upgrades, or I could buy upgrades on the AH. The former didn't work out especially well last time. I may have found some items that were worth something, but only one minor upgrade for my class. I vendored or DE'd everything else because I wanted to see whether you really could play the game without the AH.

Instead, I chose the later. I spent ~280k gold to buy an upgrade for almost every slot. By the time I was done my DPS had gone up by 50%, I had substantially more health, all resist, armor, and life on hit than I had previously, and I even got an extra 50% magic find. I went back to Act 2 on MP3 and proceeded to roll through everything without any problems. I still didn't find any legendaries or personal upgrades after playing up to Maghda.

Overall, not much has changed. You will still use the AH unless you want to spend substantially more time farming easy content to find upgrades that are good for your class. You will still search for items with an extremely small amount of viable stats. The only real change I can see is that prices have dropped far enough that, if you are willing to use the AH to buy upgrades, the cost to gear a character is now significantly lower.

They have managed to sand off some of the rough-edges in Diablo 3 (drop rates, difficulty, boring legendaries), but a polished turd is still turd.

I find that I enjoy Mp3 through Mp5 Farming with this build:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Longshot-1489/hero/1624432 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Longshot-1489/hero/1624432)

Its a nice sweet spot between survivability and magic find and dps. I have gear i can swap out for a couple higher levels of MP, but I lose all of my magic find and gold find. Unfortunately to solo MP10 I have to purchase some major upgrades, which are very costly still.

Thanks Rokal for typing so I don't have to.

I gave Inferno a couple hours on MP3 tonight and ended up absolutely rolling in stuff - legendaries, plans, etc. Best of all my pets now survive through most stuff, so I don't have to kite around casting them on cooldown the way it used to be.

I don't get the Act 1/2 difficulty difference complaint myself, they seem pretty much exactly the same once MP is turned on. Certain mob types are annoying, but that applies in both acts. Act 2 does have them right at the start instead of later on, I guess.

I don't think people complain about Act 1/2 for difficulty much do they?  The complaint I hear is that monster density is a lot lower and so farming is less efficient.  Probably the only exception being Vault of the Assassin in Act 2, which has the best elite density in the game.

Well, Rokal just did.

Act 2 has those damned wasps, and the leaping mobs are pretty tough too.  Run into a nasty champion pack of either, and if you don't have the DPS to gun them down, you're likely to die.

Yep. I believe the difficulty is supposed to be equal between acts with Monster Power, but that doesn't stop specific enemies types that only appear in some acts from being tougher to handle.

Which, of course, also varies by class. I find the wasps pretty trivial on my Witch Doctor. Oddly what really eats my lunch sometimes is mobs of spiderlings.

Turned MP off to actually advance myself past Act 2 in Inferno for the sake of variety and discovered that I've apparently at some point gotten completely ridiculously overpowered for the base difficulty. I had a lot of trouble with Kulle on MP3, and then ran into trouble with Belial as well - turned MP off and Belial died in like a minute total for the whole encounter.  :why_so_serious:

I think I may just push all the way through to the end on MP0 now just so everything is open to me.

Definitely worth it.  Act 3 is the best end game act in my opinion.  Also, there is an act 3-4 run that is good for getting the new crafting recipes.   You can probably finish the game without problem, but poke me if you want some help finishing act 4, the Diablo encounter is still kind of annoying.

Behold the special snowflake:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Thorgrim-1313/hero/589774

I'll probably finish Act 3 tonight, probably not Act 4 despite the shortness as I have kendo til 8:30.

I am also happy to help anyone do some runs, I can go up to mp5, so just shoot me a PM here with a time.

I think I had somewhere around 50kdps and maybe 30k health when I bothered to finally kill him, and it was a snooze-fest.  You should be fine.  Used mostly poison darts, with a lttle grasp of the dead.

Currently I'm back to using bears, working MP6 with http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Flaffy-1442/hero/15156068 (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Flaffy-1442/hero/15156068)

Could use a tad more dps to speed up the elite packs, but it's workable.

The one thing I waffle about changing is Pierce the Veil vs. Fierce Loyalty - the thorns part of FL turns out to be pretty lame, you just can't stack enough thorns to make a difference really, but the life regen part combined with the new pet rules basically makes even the dogs immortal vs. all but a few enemy types. My mana use is almost nil, too, other than corpse bombs, and I don't always need those, so PtV is a pretty huge damage upgrade. I should probably switch it and see if the pets go back to dying all the time.

I used dart/grasp with Pierce with a dps of anywhere from 50-70k in MP5, and it worked fine.  Dogs and Garg survived fine; by the time any of them died cooldown was good to go anyway (with rare exceptions, like the hell circles on Azmodan.)

Edit to add: some of Diablo's abilities will still melt your dogs regardless, but it won't matter because your dps on MP0 should toast him without them anyways.

Don't know if anyone else is still playing but I recently came back after being away a while and I'm finding 1.0.7 to be a lot of fun. Really enjoy the improved legendaries and drop rates as well as paragon levels and infernal machine. If anyone wants to add me I'd love to run with some of you guys. My char is a CM wiz and I have been playing mostly on MP6 or 7 and I've gotten to paragon 26. I can do 8 but elites give me some trouble and it's not worth the lost time for the slightly better drop rates.

Anyways, my battletag is Collision#1192

What build are you using for your wizard to do that? Everything I ever find is either Archon or Critical Mass, neither of which seems well suited for higher MP.

CM builds are still the best builds for higher mp. The official class forum has some amazing guides