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Diablo III Thread 2.0

43K views 763 replies 29 participants last post by  Iron1 
#1 ·
Don't know if any of you guys that used to play this had heard about this, but Blizz made some pretty big changes ahead of the upcoming expansion.

Basically they:

1) Totally redid the difficulty system. Normal/Nightmare/Hell/Inferno are gone. Instead we've got a bunch of new difficulty settings culminating in Torment, which then has a slider from 1-6, functioning kind of like Monster Power did previously. Essentially, the higher you go, the harder it gets but the more loot/gold/xp you get. Also, you don't have to run characters through the story 3 fucking times to get to 60 anymore. If you want, you can start a fresh character and run through on Expert or Master and level up way faster. You can also lower difficulty on the fly if you get stuck somewhere, and you can raise it by just jumping out to the main menu and then get right back into the game.

2) Redid loot (again). Drop rate are way buffed, legendaries actually drop kinda regularly now, and the game takes your class into account when rolling the stats on some loot, so you'll see more actually useful shit and less +Strength +Dexterity boots. They also redid a ton of the legendaries so they actually have cool and unique effects instead of just bigger stats. My friend found a legendary which on hit, summons a treasure goblin that follows him around collecting white items. After it collects a certain number, it drops a rare or legendary item. There are others that summon shit to fight for you or give you some kind of AoE. You know, actual fun shit.

3) Changed paragon levels. Instead of getting a bonus to magic find or whatever it was they did before, each paragon level gives you a point you can spend in one of four categories of buffs - stuff like pumping your main stat, movement speed, crit chance, max mana, etc by a small amount. On top of that, your paragon level is account wide, but the actual points are per character. So if you get to paragon 20 on your wizard, when you start a brand new demon hunter, he'll have his own 20 points to spend on whatever.

4) Closed the auction house and real money auction house! This one actually doesn't take effect for a couple of weeks, but yup. No more auction house since it's actually possible to find good gear in game now.

5) Overhauled a ton of skills for all the classes. They completely replaced some abilities altogether, and a lot of skills had their runes reworked entirely. There's a lot more freedom in how you build your character now - you don't need to use the one true build just to make it through the game, and a lot of the new/changed skills are ridiculously fun.

6) Crafting actually produces useful gear now, and they unified all the crafting mats. No more having half your stash filled up with all the different level crafting mats. They actually did the same with potions too: There's just one type of health potion now and it restores 60% of your health, period.

Here's a video explaining it:

I gotta say, I had given up on this game a few months after launch because once you hit 60 it was horribly unfun. Inferno was a fucking grind, you never got any decent loot, and anything worthwhile on the auction house cost 50 million + gold. My friend had good things to say about the patch so I decided to give it a shot and...damn. Kudos to Blizzard for listening to the community and putting in the effort to do such a major overhaul of this game this long after release, and for removing the RMAH cash cow.

Within the first two hours I had replaced pretty much all my level 60 wizard's gear with better stuff from drops, including a couple of pretty rad legendaries. This is how the game should have launched, but better late than never. I'm actually considering picking up the expansion now, where before that was about as likely as getting a legendary drop prior to this patch. :rofl: Definitely check it out if you enjoyed the vanilla game but got burnt out on the utter bullshittery of the endgame.
 
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#749 ·
They're an interesting idea but they're frustrating bullshit in practice, at least the ones I've tried.

"Oh, sorry. You got all the challenges but there's 10 seconds left and apparently you missed one Fallen asshole hiding in a corner of the map somewhere. Better luck next time!" :lol:

To be fair, I vaguely remember reading something about them fixing that by having the enemies not spawn in random dead ends on the map or marking them all on the minimap or something.
 
#750 ·
:lol: Fair. I liked the concept, though, that you had to clear the dungeon in a particular manner that relied on the special attributes of your set. I've tried one of the Barbarian ones and the Firebird Wizard one, and enjoyed it but didn't work too hard at it - almost cleared the Barbarian one I tried, forget which, in 2-3 tries but didn't stick with it since I was just curious to check it out.
 
#751 ·
So on a rare free night a week ago I booted this back up and started a Necromancer character for Season 11. I haven't spent much time on it yet, basically just did a bounty and a rift on Torment I, but that was enough to get me up to level 20. The class is kinda fun - right now I have an army of skeletons and a golem, am using the bone cage thing from Diablo's attacks as my primary resource generator (it's not as strong as his, of course), and am having a lot of fun with whatever the exploding corpse special ability is. It feels a little underpowered so far, but I'm early into the build and still running pretty ho-hum equiptment.

I've got plans at 9:30 tonight with some friends in town for a wedding from San Fran this weekend, so I'll probably be on doing rifts or bounties later tonight. :yesway:
 
#752 ·
So, clearly no one cares, but an update on this, a month later.

I've been running a modified version of this (and by "modified" I mean "I haven't found all of the cool shit it requires, but I've got the Rathma and Jesseth set bonuses going"), and as things stand, this is hilariously overpowered.

https://www.icy-veins.com/d3/necrom...h-rathma-and-jesseth-sets-patch-2-6-season-11

Skeletal Mage - Singularity, with around 260 essence at your disposal, does around 1,100% weapon damage, base. The Rathma 6-piece bonus gives you a further 250% boost to your minions for every skeletal mage active (they dissipate after 6 seconds, 8 with the Extended Servitude bonus), and the Jesseth set bonus gives your minions an additional 400% bonus when your skeletons are commanded to attack a target, and automatically make them jump to the next available when the first dies. All in, with one skeletal mage active (and with Land of the Dead active to replenish my essence I've gotten that up to 10 in short bursts) that translates into about 1,100,000% weapons damage, before you account for your Intelligence bonus (god, something like another 2,500% or so?) and any crit damage. I'm crit hitting for several hundred million at a time, and while I haven't tried beyond Torment VII, rift boss fights are a matter of seconds.

The downside of this build is it's very on/off, and if you don't have an active skeletal mage or target for your skeletons then damage drops substantially. And, at higher torment levels, survivability is going to be a problem (it doesn't matter - almost, anyway - how quickly you can do damage if, say, uber Diablo can one-hit you) with my current build, but a lot of the missing pieces for the one linked above are designed to make it better withstand damage. But, even with one or two skeletal mages active, it's pretty ludicrous just how much damage you can do, and how even boss fights are often over in literally just a couple blinks of the eye. :lol:

So, naturally, they're bound to nerf this in the next patch. :lol: But in the meantime if anyone wants to level up a season character, I'd be happy to pull you along. :lol:
 
#756 ·
Ah, no shit. I keep seeing you're in Level 80 rifts and whatnot, Tom, your character must be a beast. :lol:

I've got a Crusader through the first three of the Seasonal goals, and while I'm not enjoying this build as much as my last seasonal build, it's been fun. Come to think of it that might have been a barbarian, not a crusader, but I think I can probably find a way to make the gameplay here feel a little more dynamic - the current Hardrig's Gift set is focused on Blessed Hammer which is awesome for area damage, but less so for hand-to-hand combat or targeting a single boss.
 
#760 ·
True story. Tom and Chris towed me for maybe an hour last night and I jumped like 250 paragon levels. :lol:

After you guys logged off I finished off the main seasonal quests and completed the set I was running, which now conveys a 2,000% boost to Blessed Hammer and 1,000% from Falling Sword, so while I'm still a tad glass cannon-y, I went from barely holding on at Torment II to one-shotting keywardens at Torment IV, and without really pushing it hit Level 30 on a solo Greater Rift before bed (I'm chipping away on some of the other season quests, I'd REALLY like to unlock an additional inventory tab, lol).
 
#761 ·
I might be just brushing up against beastlihood, but I've definitely spent a few days or so no-lifing it lately since I'm on furlough. :lol: I was about an hour from just giving up on this season, and then I found some better gear. Completing the season set is always a nice boost! Are you aiming for any particular build, or are you going to run with the season set for now?
 
#764 ·
Just bought the PS4 Diablo III bundle they have on sale yesterday. Haven't played Diablo in years, but looking forward to getting back into it.
 
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