**OFFICIAL** Diablo 3 Thread

[Imp]

I disagree completely with everything you said. There's absolutely NO WAY you can run all of inferno with a couple million unless you spend HUNDREDS of hours farming inferno for gear. I'm on Act 4 and spent about 200 hours on the game and have bought nearly every piece of my gear, for way more than a "couple million".

Its obvious that the AH is there to make money for Blizzard. They spent a lot of time creating it, and you're a fool if you think they did it for free just for the sake of the consumers. I'm fine with it, just don't go telling everyone that you can beat inferno with a couple million and mediocre gear.

Depends on how you define "run all of inferno". Some might think that it's acceptable to die 100 times to kill a pack of elites, and spend a few hundred thousand repairing stuff.

When my 800+ res, 8k armor, 14k dps barb has to die three times to kite-kill a pack of elites in the first two maps outside Act II, something's up. Yes, his damage sucks... but that's what had to give so I could have enough resists and not spend a few million gold to buy shit with the best of the best.

On the flip side, my DH with 32k dps can't even survive more than two hits in Act II with 500 res, 3k armor, so she's useless. A load screen said that monks and barbs took 30% less damage as a class perk, so I don't even see the point of trying to up the armor/res that much for a DH.

As for blacksmith plans, those have been as rare to me as uniquesI've found 3 or 4 sets of plans and 3 uniques in about 200 hours played with two characters.

 

[waterjug]

Yes, my ideas are based on my personal opinions. Aren't yours?

That's the whole point. Some people will find what they need, but many won't simply because loot varies. The Auction House provides you an avenue to turn those good items into gold which you can then turn into items for yourself. Take away the AH, and everything becomes many many times worse.




They're not exceptionally rare, I've found 4-5 myself. Getting the right pattern is tough though, as it's hard to justify crafting anything other than the 6-property patterns ("Exalted Grand" items iirc). I think I only ever found one 5-property pattern and sold it.



Frenzy > Sidearm
Warcry > Impunity
Revenge > Provocation
Leap > Iron Jump
Wrath > Insanity
Battle Rage > Marauder's Rage

Superstition, Tough as Nails, and Nerves of Steel

Is my typical build. For certain bosses I'd make changes, most notably Rakanoth for me but probably also Ghom and Diablo. You might want to drop Battle Rage, my gear's good enough now that I can use it though.

I only suggested that as a starting point really; it's good all around gear that will not cost you an arm and a leg. You'd probably do best if you got a bit more AR than that in some slots though and just sacrifice some Str. Luckily you can find things like Vit/AR blues with really high values to help pad your stats, I used a pair of just magic pants with like 130 vit and 55 AR for a long time really early on and you can find much better than that, and finding a high AR shield isn't too tough either. By the time I cleared Inferno (pre-patch also, so by now with the nerf I'd guess you could do fine with even less) I think I probably had around 750-800 AR, which isn't all that high considering how many slots you can get it in and the fact you get a 50% bonus to it from Warcry.

Also when searching for shields/shoulders/chests you may want to consider looking for Life% instead of Vit, people don't search for it nearly as much so you can find some better deals. Also, you don't need Str/Vit/AR on every piece. Sometimes getting one piece with just Str/AR and one piece with just Vit/AR is just as good and almost always going to be cheaper.

As a barbarian, a guy named Zrave has posted some useful stuff regarding gearing up and being successful on the cheap. His "one million gold challenges" are generally pretty useful, and show what you can do with not a lot of gold.

I'm actually leaning towards the blue with high values strategy. I started a spreadsheet to track before & afters. I got a belt that was 200 str. 70 res all, for around 50k.

 

[DrunkenSano]

I disagree completely with everything you said. There's absolutely NO WAY you can run all of inferno with a couple million unless you spend HUNDREDS of hours farming inferno for gear. I'm on Act 4 and spent about 200 hours on the game and have bought nearly every piece of my gear, for way more than a "couple million".

Its obvious that the AH is there to make money for Blizzard. They spent a lot of time creating it, and you're a fool if you think they did it for free just for the sake of the consumers. I'm fine with it, just don't go telling everyone that you can beat inferno with a couple million and mediocre gear.

You've already been proven wrong by that, there has been live streams where people are capable of beating Inferno with budget items. The person with the world first Hardcore Inferno clearing was also able to do budget Inferno clears on normal.

 

[thespyder]

You've already been proven wrong by that, there has been live streams where people are capable of beating Inferno with budget items. The person with the world first Hardcore Inferno clearing was also able to do budget Inferno clears on normal.

There is a big difference between being able to and it being designed to make it nearly impossible. It is POSSIBLE to jump out of a plane at 10 thousand feet without a parachute (or any other device intended to help you land safely) and survive. Just about anything is possible. But I wouldn't try it. Would you?

While I don't believe in the absolutes that the other poster seemed set on, they are essentially correct in that the difficulty was designed with the AH in mind. It had to be. Because otherwise the AH stuff would horribly unbalance the game making it far easier than it should be.

 

[diesbudt]

There is a big difference between being able to and it being designed to make it nearly impossible. It is POSSIBLE to jump out of a plane at 10 thousand feet without a parachute (or any other device intended to help you land safely) and survive. Just about anything is possible. But I wouldn't try it. Would you?

While I don't believe in the absolutes that the other poster seemed set on, they are essentially correct in that the difficulty was designed with the AH in mind. It had to be. Because otherwise the AH stuff would horribly unbalance the game making it far easier than it should be.

Saying this would be like saying the same thing in that D2 shouldn't of succeeded because it Didn't have an AH, when it's loot driven end game is very similar, though not exact.

The Ah is not needed. It just adds in a small benefit to gain items through another medium. So if 5 big 1 hour runs didn't yield an item worthy of the player, he can sell what he has received, and probably buy 1 decent enough item to last most of Inferno.

And the number of people beating Inferno without spending more than 2 million gold (myself as an example and I have scaled back my playing and stopped using the Ah now as I only play to kill monsters)is increasing.

Also, the playing of inferno does take some skill involved too. The same geared barbarians will probably die/survive in different situations based on the skills they like or the way they like to play.

 

[DrunkenSano]

While I don't believe in the absolutes that the other poster seemed set on, they are essentially correct in that the difficulty was designed with the AH in mind. It had to be. Because otherwise the AH stuff would horribly unbalance the game making it far easier than it should be.

The AH is a convenience in Diablo 3, a much appreciated one. In Diablo 2, just because you found an awesome item you can't use doesn't make it useless even though there was no AH. Instead, people had to make it a game for trading or search for games to trade gear. AH skips that and streamlines the method, making it easier for everyone so people can spend more time killing than going game to game, wrangling out a deal, and hoping you aren't scammed. Also, AH uses one huge part of the game that was lackluster in Diablo 2. Gold.

 

[digiram]

Blizz taking 1.00 per item sold really is too much. I've only sold a few things at like 4-5 bucks. Some things at like 1.99. They take 1.00 - 15% to paypal, and I'm left with 89 cents.. lol. C'mon. It's free money from the game, but still.

 

[DrunkenSano]

But that's the thing, it's free money. Back in D2, you have to go through the trouble of selling it yourself on eBay and I doubt you'd go through that hassle for a $5 item. Now, it's easy as a couple of clicks. And I rather they take $1.00 on RMAH than make us pay a shitty monthly fee like all games have now.

 

[thespyder]

Saying this would be like saying the same thing in that D2 shouldn't of succeeded because it Didn't have an AH, when it's loot driven end game is very similar, though not exact.

The Ah is not needed. It just adds in a small benefit to gain items through another medium. So if 5 big 1 hour runs didn't yield an item worthy of the player, he can sell what he has received, and probably buy 1 decent enough item to last most of Inferno.

And the number of people beating Inferno without spending more than 2 million gold (myself as an example and I have scaled back my playing and stopped using the Ah now as I only play to kill monsters)is increasing.

Also, the playing of inferno does take some skill involved too. The same geared barbarians will probably die/survive in different situations based on the skills they like or the way they like to play.

Quite to the contrary. Diablo 2 buying and selling of items outside the game was not part of the core infrastructure of the game. It was not as heavily ingrained as it is in D3. Although I do take your point in that it probably made playing Diablo 2 easier than it was originally balanced for. But who knows, perhaps some of the post launch patches were designed to balance some of that.

Additionally, your own testimonial would have greater weight if you had never used the auction house.

In diablo 3, the auction house is ingrained in the very core design. If Blizzard didn't balance for it's inclusion, then they dropped the ball quite badly. I don't think they did. In fact, I am pretty sure that they balanced very specifically for the AH. And that explains why people complain about the insane difficulty unless you spend millions or billions or use the AH.

 

[DrunkenSano]

And that explains why people complain about the insane difficulty unless you spend millions or billions or use the AH.

And it's already been shown those complaints hold no merit, there have already been live streams of budget Inferno clears. Some people just don't know how to play their classes as well as others. You certainly don't need millions and you don't need more than a couple of million. Which can easily be earned from general farming either Act 3 Hell or Act 1 Inferno.

 

[diesbudt]

Quite to the contrary. Diablo 2 buying and selling of items outside the game was not part of the core infrastructure of the game. It was not as heavily ingrained as it is in D3. Although I do take your point in that it probably made playing Diablo 2 easier than it was originally balanced for. But who knows, perhaps some of the post launch patches were designed to balance some of that.

Additionally, your own testimonial would have greater weight if you had never used the auction house.

In diablo 3, the auction house is ingrained in the very core design. If Blizzard didn't balance for it's inclusion, then they dropped the ball quite badly. I don't think they did. In fact, I am pretty sure that they balanced very specifically for the AH. And that explains why people complain about the insane difficulty unless you spend millions or billions or use the AH.

Fair point on my testimonial, but realize you can still do it without the AH. The AH just makes it quicker. Same as in D2, if you never bought an item or traded items in D2, (lets say you were to play offline mode only) it would take as much time needed to get the items one was looking for and/or needed to feel secure in their playing. So it isn't as embedded into the D3 design as people think, it is a help, but not mandatory. My friend hates the Ah and refuses to use or sell it, all his gear comes from runs or trading items with myself/friends in multiplayer runs, and hes not doing bad at all.

I bet most the people complaining doin't have many friends on D3, or play with other people that share and mix/match gear as it drops. Playing with 4 people on Act 2 inferno = 4x the loot that drops. Sure we each can only see what drops for us, but this way we link what we each got and swap gear around. So really the Ah is more or less a method to bypass the multiplayer part of this game.

The expensive items of the "AH helping" items in D3 is more or less Top end gear, instead of passibale gear that will work well enough for inferno. But many plays don't see these items, because if they are going to spend gold or heaven forbid $$$ for items, they only will want the best.

hence why I have only spent around 1 million gold on the AH. Bargin buying items that are good enough to do what I need, but not the best that can be found. Actually I haven't earned more than 2 million gold yet in D3, this includes AH selling, and gold finding and vendoring. And am doing just fine.

 

[thespyder]

Fair point on my testimonial, but realize you can still do it without the AH. The AH just makes it quicker. Same as in D2, if you never bought an item or traded items in D2, (lets say you were to play offline mode only) it would take as much time needed to get the items one was looking for and/or needed to feel secure in their playing. So it isn't as embedded into the D3 design as people think, it is a help, but not mandatory. My friend hates the Ah and refuses to use or sell it, all his gear comes from runs or trading items with myself/friends in multiplayer runs, and hes not doing bad at all.

I bet most the people complaining doin't have many friends on D3, or play with other people that share and mix/match gear as it drops. Playing with 4 people on Act 2 inferno = 4x the loot that drops. Sure we each can only see what drops for us, but this way we link what we each got and swap gear around. So really the Ah is more or less a method to bypass the multiplayer part of this game.

The expensive items of the "AH helping" items in D3 is more or less Top end gear, instead of passibale gear that will work well enough for inferno. But many plays don't see these items, because if they are going to spend gold or heaven forbid $$$ for items, they only will want the best.

hence why I have only spent around 1 million gold on the AH. Bargin buying items that are good enough to do what I need, but not the best that can be found. Actually I haven't earned more than 2 million gold yet in D3, this includes AH selling, and gold finding and vendoring. And am doing just fine.

No one is saying you 'Can't do it without AH'. Merely that the developers clearly balanced the game with the AH in mind. Or at very minimum to take into account the AH. Otherwise, AH players would find the game far too easy.

As far as your view point that people who were complaining didn't have (m)any D3 friends with which to play. I find that uncharitable. But I do take your point that, assuming party friendly play (and trading amongst all players), you widen the pool of item drops and thus increase the possibility of finding something useful. But that takes in a lot of assumptions, and handicaps anyone who doesn't play in that specific model. And 'Increasing the chance' again is not 'Being able to find it at a glance on AH'. Again, the distinction is that AH was clearly designed to heavily facilitate game play. And back to the other posters point, the more AH usage, the more profits Blizzard rakes in. Can you blame them for slanting things to their financial benefit?

And it's already been shown those complaints hold no merit, there have already been live streams of budget Inferno clears. Some people just don't know how to play their classes as well as others. You certainly don't need millions and you don't need more than a couple of million. Which can easily be earned from general farming either Act 3 Hell or Act 1 Inferno.

Keep drinking the Kool-aid. The Reverend Jim Jones is about to make a toast.

 

[Imp]

I bet most the people complaining doin't have many friends on D3, or play with other people that share and mix/match gear as it drops. Playing with 4 people on Act 2 inferno = 4x the loot that drops. Sure we each can only see what drops for us, but this way we link what we each got and swap gear around. So really the Ah is more or less a method to bypass the multiplayer part of this game.

...Full party also means multiple times the risk of dying, multiple times the health monsters have, and multiple times the difficulty. If you had "friends" online, you may as well all run 4 separate games, then get together to trade stuff - or throw it all on the AH, which everyone else is doing.

And you be playing with real-life friends because I don't see internet "friends" giving up items worth about $50+ in real money. But since drops are not seen by others, nothing's stopping "friends" from withholding anything actually valuable.

 

[diesbudt]

Again, the distinction is that AH was clearly designed to heavily facilitate game play. And back to the other posters point, the more AH usage, the more profits Blizzard rakes in. Can you blame them for slanting things to their financial benefit?

Once again, everyone uses the excuse blizzard is making money off the AH. This is only true on the RMAH. Blizzard earns $0.00 for the Gold auction house. Sure they take a cut of gold, but that isn't money and is useless to them.

The AH is just another means to an end. Is it much more helpful then not or trading in D2?

Yes.

Is it needed for a player to succeed?

No, as has been proven by some players who refuse to use it and do just fine.

Also with budget (gold) buying gear you can still "complete" the game reaching the end of inferno just buying some pieces you don't happen to find (some get lucky and only need to buy a few, some are not and have to buy a lot. Again, same as trading players for items in D2, game was much harder without trading, and by yoru own arguments are saying trading was mandatory in D2 to get the best items. When again it wasn't just a much quicker way for a means to an End).

Again, it isn't mandatory or a game built around an AH, it just provides another, and usually quicker way to get the gear wanted.

 

[diesbudt]

...Full party also means multiple times the risk of dying, multiple times the health monsters have, and multiple times the difficulty. If you had "friends" online, you may as well all run 4 separate games, then get together to trade stuff - or throw it all on the AH, which everyone else is doing.

And you be playing with real-life friends because I don't see internet "friends" giving up items worth about $50+ in real money. But since drops are not seen by others, nothing's stopping "friends" from withholding anything actually valuable.

Sure the death rate could be higher, but it isn't when we all play well and use skype to talk to each other when we play.

You don't change my point to be honest, just re-phrase it another way. If we play seperate, or together and trade. Same out come. But we find gear much faster this way and don't deal with the Ah as much, I still use the AH, because I have gold still I have no use for BUT the AH, so may as well and use it to bargin hunt.

Actually, these friends I met on WoW 5 years ago and have played many online games with them since then. I don't know if you can call them real friends or internet friends. Take that as you will.

That is true people can withhold items. Doesn't mean they withhold everything. And also only good combinations on items sell well enough on the RMAH anymore, so unless it is a great item, they don't care to give it away to help one another out. There are times I find random people in general and give items away that would help them I know wont sell over 50k gold, because who cares its just a game.

 

[Anubis]

blizz isnt taking a CUT from the gold AH its simply a FEE, must like the listing/Cut in WoW its simply used as a check on the total gold economy, the gold just gets removed from the system

 

[thespyder]

Not going to get into it again. Most arguments against the theory are all predicated on arguing that competing is impossible without AH. It isn't. Which means that those arguments are useless.

Bottom line, and one that I have yet to see a conclusive argument defeating is that Diablo 3 is balanced based on the use of Auction house, and thus increasing the availability of (generally) more powerful and appropriate items. Therefore the inclusion of the AH altered the game play. Pure and simple.

Inclusion of the auction house leads to use of same. Blizzard takes a cut of the gold (and hence removes it from play) in AH transactions. Less money in game means more incentive to do RMHA. (Just because incentive, doesn't mean you HAVE to do it!). More people doing RMHA, the more money Blizzard makes. And they apparently are greasing the slope that direction.

 

[Adrenaline]

Part of the game is being able to identify what's worthwhile. I'd actually guess you've thrown away, sold, or salvaged items that would have been worth AHing. There are a lot of blue items worth selling even, but many people don't even look twice at them. Also you definitely do not need hundreds of millions of gold to clear inferno, just hundreds of thousands, maybe a couple million at most, if you know what to look for.

People just think they need so much gold because they do not know how to gear their character or use the AH effectively, so they just search for items with perfect stats and can't understand why it's so expensive.

You need, at best, mid range gear to beat and farm Inferno. No, midrange gear does not have 200 int and 200 vit and 75 resist all. It does not have 9% aspd and 30% crit damage and 10% crit and 500 life on hit. And no, mid range gear is not particularly expensive any more.

A couple weeks after release I started gearing up my barbarian for Inferno; I started looking for pieces of gear with 80 str, 80 vit, and 40 resist all, that was my starting point and some of the items I found doing that are the ones I'm still using to this day (long after clearing inferno and farming for quite a while, I know that's how I found my legs and my chestpiece at least). Perfectly acceptable stats for inferno, and back then those pieces ran me at least 300k+ each. There were only about 6-7 pages of them at any given time.

Now? There are 45+ pages of that same gear that's auction-only. There is so much of it available, you can't even see the buyouts available. When I searched for chestpieces only (a week or two ago), the lowest buyout was something like 100k. For a chest piece you could wear through almost all of Inferno, and I'd be willing to bet most other slots are even cheaper.

You say you can't sell anything because it's not worth anything. Turn that around and use it to your advantage.

And yes, random drops are random. For all the complaining about finding IL 50 stuff in Inferno, people seem to conveniently forget how you could find NM tier (and normal? I can't recall exactly) items all through Hell in D2. It's just how it works, either you castrate the drop rate or you broaden the spectrum of drops; you can't have good items dropping all the time, it just isn't sustainable.

They want Inferno to be end game they need to treat it as such and reduce the crap that drops in it. I do not mind seeing ilvl 50 items dropping in Hell, but with the gear needed for Inferno, they should reduce the junk.

Until they reduce the necessity for all resists I am not touching my melee whatsoever. It is a ridiculous necessity for that stat.

Yes, I have done all of Inferno with 600 resists to all, but I want to do ore than tank and actually kill things fast. Barbs were not put into this crap in Diablo 2 but they are in 3. You needed resists in 2, but not this amount.

 

[Adrenaline]

% wise with 5x Neph I'm at 175% MF. I go 5x neph then go: warden - butcher - festering woods (just the two dungeons) - cemetery of forsaken - leoric's manor & highlands.

I do not want to play Act 1 all the time. Act 1 is boring and I prefer 3 or 4. Play an act that requires better gear outside of Hell Act 3 to clear in a decent time.

 

[Adrenaline]

So do any of you guys craft your own weapons?

Can you go back to hell, run through everything with MF gear on to pick up a ton of crap items, salvage it all, and then take your chances crafting? Or is it a waste of time?

Hell is a waste of time for EVERYTHING. Even botters than gold find do it in NM.

 

[Adrenaline]

I found 4 pattern drops so far in Act 1 Inferno. That is with 100ish hours played on my character.

I found the 6 prop bracers pattern a while back. If anyone wants some made let me know.

Adrenaline#1529

 

[darkxshade]

woot, snagged a ~900dps sword w/ 17x dex, 9x vit, ias, & socket during bliz maintenance for 13m. Would normally have went for 20m or more had it been left to snipers for the final timer to count down.

 

[Adrenaline]

I disagree completely with everything you said. There's absolutely NO WAY you can run all of inferno with a couple million unless you spend HUNDREDS of hours farming inferno for gear. I'm on Act 4 and spent about 200 hours on the game and have bought nearly every piece of my gear, for way more than a "couple million".

Its obvious that the AH is there to make money for Blizzard. They spent a lot of time creating it, and you're a fool if you think they did it for free just for the sake of the consumers. I'm fine with it, just don't go telling everyone that you can beat inferno with a couple million and mediocre gear.

Actually there is a Barb spec that makes Inferno easy with average gear. Just bring a dps with you to make sure you do not hit enrage timers.

It is something like this build.

 

[Adrenaline]

Depends on how you define "run all of inferno". Some might think that it's acceptable to die 100 times to kill a pack of elites, and spend a few hundred thousand repairing stuff.

When my 800+ res, 8k armor, 14k dps barb has to die three times to kite-kill a pack of elites in the first two maps outside Act II, something's up. Yes, his damage sucks... but that's what had to give so I could have enough resists and not spend a few million gold to buy shit with the best of the best.

On the flip side, my DH with 32k dps can't even survive more than two hits in Act II with 500 res, 3k armor, so she's useless. A load screen said that monks and barbs took 30% less damage as a class perk, so I don't even see the point of trying to up the armor/res that much for a DH.

As for blacksmith plans, those have been as rare to me as uniquesI've found 3 or 4 sets of plans and 3 uniques in about 200 hours played with two characters.

DH are no resists, low health, high dps classes that use SS to survive.

 

[Adrenaline]

woot, snagged a ~900dps sword w/ 17x dex, 9x vit, ias, & socket during bliz maintenance for 13m. Would normally have went for 20m or more had it been left to snipers for the final timer to count down.

I saw where it said server downtime was supposed to be 6-10 PDT which I thought was 8 my time. I tried logging in at 7:55 but it was already down. I guess Diablofans.com did not have it right for me, or that may have just been the times they were patching.