Diablo III

[Izawwlgood]

Oh. Geez. Ok, that makes the build make more sense.

[mfb]

Or you could actually order by buyout price... as long as you set a max buyout (which can be silly-high, e.g. you can set a max buyout of 10mil just to weed out the no-buyout items), then sorting by buyout price twice will give you the lowest buyouts on the first page, guaranteed.

Hmm I didn't realize when you put a buyout max it got rid of all the non-buyout items. Did it always do that?

In the last few weeks, it did. It is the usual way I look for items - require good stats, set some max buyout, look for 1-2 pages of min buyout. If the item should have more than 3 stats, it is a bit tricky, and you have to search the 4th stat manually.

[Xeio]

Breezed through Act I inferno for the most part. Got to the butcher.

Ow.

Whole floor being on fire hurts my face.

Guess it's back to the beginning or something.

[Lostdreams]

On the upside, you can now farm act 1 indefinitely ad still receive roughly the same loot you would be getting in later acts.

[Nylonathatep]

So last night on the way to killing Diablo I found this strange plan for a legendary but really low dps staff dropped from a boss. After farming excessively for the parts, I arrived to this magical place where there are rainbows, smiling clouds, walking flowers, teddy bears, and magical ponies.

They swarmed around me and attacked me even as I tried to hug them. I died within seconds.

The next day I woke up and thought everything was just a dream.. but then I logged back onto D3 and found myself 200k Short.

[Microscopic cog]

Yeah that's the secret cowpony level. There are some vids on youtube and all. Apparently they're nightmare lvl mobs or something but you can acces them in normal. Or something like that, not sure.

[Izawwlgood]

Hopefully the woosh was on the previous posters part.

Whimseyshire is good for farming and transitioning to next difficulty.

[mike-l]

Breezed through Act I inferno for the most part. Got to the butcher.

Ow.

Whole floor being on fire hurts my face.

Guess it's back to the beginning or something.

That's the enrage timer (though it's possible to survive for quite some time during it, as it's not constantly burning, just always either burning or about to be burning). It happens after 3 minutes.

[Negated]

Breezed through Act I inferno for the most part. Got to the butcher.

Ow.

Whole floor being on fire hurts my face.

Guess it's back to the beginning or something.

That's the enrage timer (though it's possible to survive for quite some time during it, as it's not constantly burning, just always either burning or about to be burning). It happens after 3 minutes.

Well, I fell victim to the Butcher because of that. Once the enrage kicks in, you have just one panel not burning and it shifts very fast. I think sometimes the next non-burning panel is not adjacent to the previous one, forcing you to walk through fire. If your running speed is not high enough (or has skills to get you there), it is basically game over.

My splinter dart + locust swarm CC/kite build just could not finish the Butcher fast enough. I didn't want to lose the NV stack so I went to kill other champs and uniques instead.

[Diadem]

I had trouble with the Butcher too the first time I did inferno, for the same reason. That enrage timer is tough to beat early on.

Once you have a bit more gear you'll consistently drop him within 3 minutes, and he becomes very easy.

[mike-l]

At ~10k dps you should beat the enrage pretty easily (depending on skills of course)

[Avin]

I just picked up this Natalya's Soul:

http://i.imgur.com/zVdYh.png

It's tempting to try to collect the set myself - the bonuses are extremely good especially with the latest patch on the fourth tier increasing it from 0 to 2. However I could be persuaded to part with it for a few million gold; anyone interested?

Edit: sold for 6.5 million.

[Negated]

I finally beat the Butcher, after spending a small fortune in the AH to get a higher DPS weapon. In the process I also ditched Locust Swarm (Searing). It is a fine skill for kiting, but the damage is somewhat disappointing. I settled for Rain of Toads as my AOE attack. The poison damage appears to stack and Life on Hit works on a per enemy and per tick basis, the leech is significantly more effective than before.

Briefly tried Act 2 and got killed by Fallen champs. Then I figured that I should just farm Act 1 for now.

[Izawwlgood]

Can you post your build? I'm finding searing locust to be a great replacement for corpse bomb, so am curious to see what you're using.

[Negated]

I am at work and has no access to battlenet and other gaming sites. So this is off the top of my head:

Splinter Dart
Rain of Toads
Spirit Walk - Honored Guest
Wall of Zombies - Barricade
Hex - Hedge Magic
Horrify - plus armor rune

Passives:
Jungle Fortitude
Bad Medicine
Spirit Vessel

This works particularly well in Act 1 where enemies tend to clump together. Rain of Toads has a fairly average radius but it consistently hit 3 or 4 enemies and activates LoH frequently. If my mana regen were higher, I can potentially replace Bad Medicine with Pierce the Veil.

Searing Locust is a fine pseudo-AOE and fire and forget spell. It is perhaps the best kiting spell for WD. I used it throughout my first Inferno Act 1 run up until the Butcher and I suspect I will resort to it at some point in Act 2. But in act 1 I now have sufficient DPS, armor and resist, and my priority changes from survival to killing speed. Searing Locust's damage just isn't high enough for me. It also does not provide good Life on Hit effects because the leech happens only once per enemy. With Rain of Toads I can dish out higher damage while getting at least 6x more LoH.

[jules.LT]

Since I'm also a WD farming A1 because A2 is just too hard for now, here's my rain of toads build.
Since I'm still having survivability issues despite bumping my resistances to 400+, I might give searing locusts a try, and move back to bad medecine instead of pierce the veil... Gah, and I think I'll finally ditch soul harvest to get another CC instead. Experimenting takes so much time, now that I can't switch skills in the middle of a game!!

[Laserdan]

Hopefully the woosh was on the previous posters part.

Whimseyshire is good for farming and transitioning to next difficulty.

Tipp: slay every enemy in Whimsyshire, but don't open ANY cloud (the chests in the level) or similar things. After every enemy is dead (NV should be stacked too), put on your best MF gear and then open all of them.

Good thing they made the staff legendary. I made it when it was white, and heard about it disappearing, so I equipped it on my Enchantress to avoid a loss.

[Chen]

Anyone know that a good threshold for DPS is for Act 3 Inferno? It feels like I'm just tickling the elites there and it takes FOREVER to kill them assuming I even can. The big fallen champion guys have something like 1.6 million hit point when they're minions and actual elite/rare ones are closer to 3 million. As a Wizard I can take 3 hits (due to Force armor) but that's about it. I'm at around 36k health and 37k dps and kind of hit a wall going through the areas leading to Cydea and Azmodan. I'm also not really sure how to increase my DPS. I do have 2 lowish pieces of gear which I'm using to increase my movement speed (bracers only have 50ish int and 1.5 crit chance in addition to move speed). I'm also using a 2 hander which I guess I could replace by going back to a 1 hander+source but I haven't seen/found any that I can afford yet.

[jules.LT]

Tipp: slay every enemy in Whimsyshire, but don't open ANY cloud (the chests in the level) or similar things. After every enemy is dead (NV should be stacked too), put on your best MF gear and then open all of them.

Except that in 1.0.3 they made MF/GF not have any effect anymore on chests & other objects. They'll change that when they find another way to counter the bots that went around breaking everything that wasn't a monster.

[Lostdreams]

As a demon hunter, what do you do when Azmodan throws down the floor pools? I've tried just about everything I can think of but they spread so fast I haven't been able to avoid them without smoke screen. The problem with that is he lays so many I run out of discipline and die instantly.

[Diadem]

It takes some practice. For all ranged classes I think. The floor pool throwing stage goes on for quite a while, but the pools themselves don't last that long, so it may seem as if everything is covered, when in reality the first pools have already disappeared again. So the trick is to not get cornered, and to return to previously covered areas later in the stage. You can't always avoid all damage, but you should be able to survive.

[mosc]

As a demon hunter, what do you do when Azmodan throws down the floor pools? I've tried just about everything I can think of but they spread so fast I haven't been able to avoid them without smoke screen. The problem with that is he lays so many I run out of discipline and die instantly.

They only cover about half the map. If you get far enough away from him you'll be out of the range. Haul ass.

[Avin]

As a demon hunter, what do you do when Azmodan throws down the floor pools? I've tried just about everything I can think of but they spread so fast I haven't been able to avoid them without smoke screen. The problem with that is he lays so many I run out of discipline and die instantly.

You hardly need smokescreen in that fight at all. Use Vault (with Tactical Advantage).

Disclaimer: I haven't even gotten to Act 3 Inferno yet, I'm stuck on Belial. I've seen DHs post gear stats that are way worse than mine who have supposedly cleared inferno, yet I still can't handle Belial.

[Aaeriele]

Why bring Vault, when Smokescreen with tactical advantage gives you basically the same benefit, plus the ability to just ignore Azmodan's fireballs?

[Lostdreams]

As a demon hunter, what do you do when Azmodan throws down the floor pools? I've tried just about everything I can think of but they spread so fast I haven't been able to avoid them without smoke screen. The problem with that is he lays so many I run out of discipline and die instantly.

They only cover about half the map. If you get far enough away from him you'll be out of the range. Haul ass.

It's not the coverage that's the problem; I can find holes to stand in just fine. The problem is he drops the pools directly on top of me and the initial spreading effect is faster then my runspeed with 10% boots and, with all of the evasive moves costing discipline and him dropping many pools in quick succession, I run out of discipline and die.

edit: Has anyone here tried inferno ponies yet? They appear to be easier than act 3 and 4 mobs given they dont have all of the "special" attacks that cause people to die often but I'm not sure what their health pool is and if it would offset that lack.

[mfb]

With vault, you can "outtumble" the pools. The discipline costs should be low enough to have preparation ready once you need it.
I am not there yet in inferno, but this worked well in hell, and discipline costs are the same everywhere .

[BoomFrog]

My WD is only in nightmare, but I was wondering why people don't seem to like plague of toads? Explosive toads at near point blank range is 510% weapon damage and most of that hits, and it's slightly AoE even. It seems like the WD is best suited to fight from just outside melee range (within siphon soul range basically).

Also just started playing with wall of zombies and it can work as either 5 seconds of immobilisers against fast monsters or as an AoE bomb against slow monsters. Seems good, although I wish one of the runes extended the duration, I'm waffling between barricade and creepers, although I like creepers for helping dps single targets.

Lastly, is there any good way to use Angry Chicken Hex? I like the actual run in as a bomb part but I don't like the, can't cast spells for 5 seconds part, is there a way to blow up early? Also it seems like it increases run speed but that might be my imagination.

[Izawwlgood]

My WD is only in nightmare, but I was wondering why people don't seem to like plague of toads? Explosive toads at near point blank range is 510% weapon damage and most of that hits, and it's slightly AoE even. It seems like the WD is best suited to fight from just outside melee range (within siphon soul range basically).

A couple WD spells are as you put it, just outside of melee range, and they're risky. Locust are great, but getting close can be dicey. In Inferno, I can easily get one or two shotted by just tough normal mobs, let alone elites. Which is why I never really used Toads, except for dabbling with Toad of Hugeness for the CC. Which doesn't work on champs (or elites?).

Lastly, is there any good way to use Angry Chicken Hex? I like the actual run in as a bomb part but I don't like the, can't cast spells for 5 seconds part, is there a way to blow up early? Also it seems like it increases run speed but that might be my imagination.

Not that I can see. Maybe as another escape for the increase in speed. I think you can make it detonate early by pushing any of the abilities? I forget what it turns them too, but the mouse clicks become 'move', and the other four slotted abilities become 'blow up'.

[philsov]

I think you can make it detonate early by pushing any of the abilities? I forget what it turns them too, but the mouse clicks become 'move', and the other four slotted abilities become 'blow up'.

Yup! Assuming hex is a number you can tap it twice, basically (think there's a bit of waiting period?) and just blow everything up around you for 200-ish weapon damage with knockback. Even then calling it niche is a stretch.

Toads are similar -- too short range and too random for my tastes. Hugeness is laughable, but Rain of Toads is excellent, cheap AoE -- better than fireskull imo. The timing delay is horrid, but grasp of the dead helps on that front.

Also! They apparently did a "hotfix" patch today. Drop rates on ilevel 63 items doubled for inferno (1 - 5%, 2 - 9%, 3/4 - 16%), with 61 and 62 boosted by a decent margin as well. I was under the impression from the start that this game was supposed to be milked for a long time, but each patch seems to violate that idea.

[Chen]

So apparently they doubled the drop rate of ilvl 61-63 gear via hotfix this morning. I would have imagined they should have increased the Act 3 and 4 ones more and maybe not increased the lower act ones as much. For the vast majority of people killing things in Act 1 is still going to be 4x faster than killing things in Act 3-4. I also imagine things are going to be even harder to sell on the AH now unless they are really perfect. Already a lot of mediocre stuff is not selling at all. Still that's something I imagined would happen eventually anyway.

Also they're not nerfing the uber (and accidentally) buffed Natalya's set, which gives me a bit of hope that the Legendary changes in 1.10 are going to be pretty good.

[mosc]

They want more uber gear so people sell stuff for real money and they make their cut. They want real money auctions to be more successful. You don't do that by creating drops so difficult that the best players rarely get them. You do that by giving the best players lots of drops, paying them cold hard cash for being competent, and raking it in on impatient players who just want to buy the best stuff. Everyone's happier that way.

[Chen]

They want more uber gear so people sell stuff for real money and they make their cut. They want real money auctions to be more successful. You don't do that by creating drops so difficult that the best players rarely get them. You do that by giving the best players lots of drops, paying them cold hard cash for being competent, and raking it in on impatient players who just want to buy the best stuff. Everyone's happier that way.

I guess it makes sense. Blizzard takes a cut of $1 per item, regardless of that item's cost. So high prices are not as good than multiple low sales. Once you cash out they take 15% but all things being equal they can hit you more times with the $1 thing with multiple sales. Now that said, even doubling the drop rate, the uber rare/good items will still be absurdly expensive. I wonder when gold will be available on the RMAH. It'll be interesting to see if people will take that into account when selling. I suspect not since many cannot even do the math properly for selling gems on the GAH now...

[mosc]

Yeah, I was thinking about trying to make back my $60 through trading. Straight gold would seem to be always undervalued compared to items. Buying gold, using it to get items, selling the items, it might swing a few bucks. Might even be able to make decent money with a computer program dedicated to buying and selling items.

[mfb]

They want more uber gear so people sell stuff for real money and they make their cut. They want real money auctions to be more successful. You don't do that by creating drops so difficult that the best players rarely get them. You do that by giving the best players lots of drops, paying them cold hard cash for being competent, and raking it in on impatient players who just want to buy the best stuff. Everyone's happier that way.

If good 61-items are rare and 62-63 are extremely rare, players can buy 61-items and upgrade to 62-63 later (=>spend more money to get 63-gear). If 63-items are more frequent, players can skip the 61-items (=>spend less money).
Look, your argument works both ways .

Buying gold, using it to get items, selling the items, it might swing a few bucks.

That might work for 1-2 days (or if you prepare it now and convert gold->item->€ and wait), but I think that method is so obvious, too many will try to get money/gold with it.

[SecondTalon]

It's probably been discussed, but was there a consensus or Official Plan on what happens when Blizzard releases patches or expansions that modify item properties or add new items after the Real Money Auction House comes into effect?

Because... every time they nerf a weapon or add a new piece of armor, that's going to affect the market as a whole. And if I just spent $40 on a sword and a week later it's no better than a $20 sword.... I'm not going to be happy.

[mosc]

If good 61-items are rare and 62-63 are extremely rare, players can buy 61-items and upgrade to 62-63 later (=>spend more money to get 63-gear). If 63-items are more frequent, players can skip the 61-items (=>spend less money).
Look, your argument works both ways .

No, the guy will buy the best thing he can at a given price. Ilevel is meaningless in this conversation. ilevel 63 items are not inherently better than ilevel 61 items and the relative rarity of the two has only a minor effect on the prices. People are going to buy good items for real money because they don't want to farm for them. Better gear being available will mean they'll just buy the better gear. The money supply in or out of the game doesn't change.

It's probably been discussed, but was there a consensus or Official Plan on what happens when Blizzard releases patches or expansions that modify item properties or add new items after the Real Money Auction House comes into effect?

Because... every time they nerf a weapon or add a new piece of armor, that's going to affect the market as a whole. And if I just spent $40 on a sword and a week later it's no better than a $20 sword.... I'm not going to be happy.

I really doubt they'll do much modification to ingame items. The IAS nerf was nessisary as it was totally out of balance with all other mods in the game. Things are now much more even when it comes to pirmary attribute, crit chance, crit damage, and attack speed (which are the main damage raisers). Anything's possible I guess but I wouldn't worry about that. More likely your skills will change and your entire gear philosophy will go out the window.

In terms of sword value, I don't think we're near stable yet. Especially since they just jacked the higher ilevel drops up again. They want really good gear to be cheaper than it is now. More than that, people who are serious about the game are not farming in the optimal places yet. When they do, the market will be even more saturated.

You can already see major economic patterns in the auction house. Items after about level 45 or so are treated fairly independent from their level requirement. Gear beyond that has to be special even to a level 60 player for it to fetch gold. A lot of decent level 60 drops, for example, which are vastly superior to any gear someone playing through the game would have never touching the auction house and dinging 60 naturally, are only worth merchant price. The market is saturated with mediocre gear for high level characters.

A pro economic manipulation tip for all you power gamers frustrated at the game's difficulty curve ramp: set the search paramters for your class to look at all level weapons (not just your class with your name after it which restricts to your level or lower), put in "reduced level requirement" with a value of 60 minus your character level (note, the max is 18 or level 42 which cost a good bit), set a max buyout of say 100k, and sort your results by DPS. You should be pleasantly surprised at the DPS you can get for not much money. A 500-600 DPS two handed weapon should be less than 10k with a level 50 requirement, just for example. No gear dropped at level 50 is going to be more than half that DPS.

[philsov]

no official plan, no.

The RMAH is already live, and the only major item change announced to date include lowering the attack speed boosters and buffing up the legendary-quality items.

The attack speed booster change was announced about two weeks before it went live in-game, and notably announced before the RMAH went live. I'm sure there are some people who didn't get the memo and purchased AS gear like a madman and quite upset by that. The legendary buff will only affect newly dropped (not retroactive) items. There's an arguably OP item set that's real popular with the demon hunters (stronger than the item bonus text describes), but they've recently stated that they have no plans to alter it in any direction other than to update the set text.

I think item depreciation will be a common occurrence, just due to supply and demand (especially coupled with the new drop rates). I'm pretty sure Blizz is aware that nerfing items as a whole will make the people more leery of buying ANYTHING, and so it becomes a muck of balance versus profit.

[Avin]

Why bring Vault, when Smokescreen with tactical advantage gives you basically the same benefit, plus the ability to just ignore Azmodan's fireballs?

Vault/Tumble has a significantly lower discipline cost. If you can dodge all incoming damage by vaulting around, you can keep it up forever with preparation. I actually hardly end up using smoke screen because vault is usually sufficient to stay out of range of everything, but the smoke screen is around if I'm trapped or something.

However I'm still having trouble with Belial (in inferno). Here's my stats:

http://imgur.com/oymgG

I think my gear is significantly stronger than the gear I've seen posted on DHs that cleared inferno, even pre damage nerf, so I must be doing something wrong. My passives are Archery, Steady Aim, and Tactical Advantage; I've tried various combination of active skills though against Belial and the best I can do is get his final form down to around half health, and that requires me fortunately dodging tons of his attacks. Any suggestions? Any other DHs here past that point?

[Chen]

I think my gear is significantly stronger than the gear I've seen posted on DHs that cleared inferno, even pre damage nerf, so I must be doing something wrong. My passives are Archery, Steady Aim, and Tactical Advantage; I've tried various combination of active skills though against Belial and the best I can do is get his final form down to around half health, and that requires me fortunately dodging tons of his attacks. Any suggestions? Any other DHs here past that point?

If you consistently get to his final form then its just practice. Maybe melee classes can take some of those hits but the big explosion things (when he puts his arms into the ground) were one shotting my wizard through force armor AND diamond skin, so I just had to dodge them. Does smokescreen avoid those? If so save your discipline for that. Also sharpshooter seems ideal for that kind of fight where you're not attack often because you're running back and forth. Makes those attacks you do throw more likely to be crits.

[mfb]

No, the guy will buy the best thing he can at a given price.

And the given price depends on the drop rates.

Ilevel is meaningless in this conversation. ilevel 63 items are not inherently better than ilevel 61 items and the relative rarity of the two has only a minor effect on the prices.

Come on, it should be obvious that I just used them to refer to "good" and "better" items. In addition, a "good" 63-item is better than a "good" 61-item. The relative rarity of different item qualities has a big impact.