**OFFICIAL** Diablo 3 Thread

[lupi]

How do you find your char to link. I can get my wow char fine but getting the diablo one isn't working.

 

[smackababy]

Go to the battle.net Diablo page while logged in, click on profile and click on your character. The link in the address bar should be good.

I believe you can also search by bnet tag.

 

[Aikouka]

Well yes, but going from 0% to 50% dmg reduction from AR is the same as going from 50% to 75%, and once you factor in life regen, going 50% to 75% is actually extremely valuable.

Yes and no. They are the same (50%), but you're compounding them multiplicatively, which makes the second inherently weaker. In other words, 100,000 elemental damage is reduced to 50,000 the first time, and 25,000 the second time. The first drop was definitely more significant and also took probably about the same amount of AR points to achieve!

My original thought was mostly in regard to effectiveness of each point of +resist all. At some amount of resistance, you can probably put those points elsewhere and gain more benefit from it. Although, that probably also depends heavily on your other stats as well!

And that waste of a pull took a forgotten soul that took me a few hours of gameplay to get in the first place. Poof!!!

I wonder if they could make a system where you spend more mats/money for the ability to choose which stat you really want. Now, you still aren't guaranteed to get it, but the stat has a significantly higher chance of being one of your choices. It's kind of like how Wildstar gives you a choice of which item you want from a challenge. You aren't guaranteed to get it, but their roulette "wheel" will hold on that item for an extra turn instead of going to the next one. So, you have a better chance of getting what you want.

AR functions on a diminishing returns scale, similar to how crit in WoW (or, at least used to). Every additional AR adds less damage resistance as the previous, and as such, it would be impossible to achieve 100% reduction through a resistance (not counting the legendaries that nullify damage of a certain element).

Every other stat is additive (getting 5% crit chance adds 5 to the total percentage of crit, not 5% of the base value of your weapon / character or whatever. It doesn't say "you have a base crit of 10% and an additional 50% crit chance, so you have 150% of the base 10%, POE does this).

Yeah, and it's kind of weird since no other stat seems to have the same sort of decay. I was doing some calculations on attack speed, and one factor that I wanted to know was how low you can go. Apparently, attack speed isn't limited by the mechanics of the game but rather the stats on the gear.

I almost want to try to write some sort of simulation tool for this. Not knowing what stat works better for me really bugs me!

Cindercoat is a wonderful example because it has the possibility to roll +fire dmg (at a very high range, too), which is incredibly for characters using fire based skills.

Just to note, the +fire damage and -fire skill cost are static attributes on the Cindercoat. The only variation is in how much bonus damage and how much skill cost reduction you get (up to +20% and -30% respectively).

However, some legendaries have things like APS (Tal Rasha's chest, IIRC). In very few situations would 8% APS be a bigger damage increase than 840 main stat (which you will eventually get from the 3 sockets). Even though APS doesn't have diminishing returns, at a point, it doesn't help. Doing 8% faster attacks isn't going to outweigh doing 840% harder attacks 8% slower.

Hmm that makes me want to figure it out. So, I wrote a rough equation to calculate how much attack speed it takes to make up for bonus damage. It's...

as = attack speed
cp = current primary
bp = bonus primary

as = ((-100 * cp) / (cp + bp)) + 100

So, based upon my wonderful napkin math, it would take 14.38% attack speed to make up for 840 of your primary stat if you're at 5000 primary to begin with!

For example, if you are playing a Demon Hunter wielding a Rare crossbow and a Legendary crossbow drops, we want your reaction to be "Holy crap, YES!" not "*sigh* another Hellrack."

Heh... right now, the problem is that we're saying, "*sigh* another poorly-allocated Hellrack!"

EDIT:

How do you find your char to link. I can get my wow char fine but getting the diablo one isn't working.

Under that link at the upper-right where you choose your character that you're currently logged in as (it will be used when you post on the forums), it should have your Battle.net code (e.g. username#number). That will bring you to your Diablo III page with your first hero chosen (I believe).

 

[trmiv]

I wonder if they could make a system where you spend more mats/money for the ability to choose which stat you really want. Now, you still aren't guaranteed to get it, but the stat has a significantly higher chance of being one of your choices. It's kind of like how Wildstar gives you a choice of which item you want from a challenge. You aren't guaranteed to get it, but their roulette "wheel" will hold on that item for an extra turn instead of going to the next one. So, you have a better chance of getting what you want.

I actually thought the same thing. Like double mats and you can reduce the number of things that can roll to 3 or something. Some of those slots have like 20 different things that can roll!

 

[darkewaffle]

Base attack speed is determined by the swing speed of the weapon you have equipped, that's the 'floor'. Dual wielding grants a passive +15% attack speed and attack speed for each weapon is calculated independently, not as a composite.

If you want a "simulation" just look for a D3 DPS calculator online. It effectively accomplishes the same thing, you just have to keep in mind that your 'paper' DPS only goes so far and in actuality some play styles and some skills with benefit more from some stats than others. For instance, wizards and witch doctors will often want to avoid being invested too heavily in IAS because it can cause resource generation to bottleneck.

 

[TallBill]

Yup. My dh has too much as which gives me an inflated dmg stat. Probably going back to my slow 2h crossbow, too bad the DMG roll isn't amazing.

 

[smackababy]

Yup. My dh has too much as which gives me an inflated dmg stat. Probably going back to my slow 2h crossbow, too bad the DMG roll isn't amazing.

It is not that APS is a bad thing, because in most cases there isn't anything better to replace it. If you don't need the toughness, APS is a good roll on gloves. And, if you want additional crit damage on belt, you have to get a Witching Hour with APS as well.

I really want an Andy's helm with +fire for my DH. I can reroll the APS for crit and get an additional DPS boost!

The only substitute I'd go for over APS on a DH is resource reduction. Otherwise, you will be spending longer gathering hatred to spam Cluster Shot, which is where the APS comes in handy. I don't know if that comes on gloves though. If it does, it is worth getting. I know you can get it on shoulders, and since you can't get a Cluster Arrow damage roll, that is what you'd likely want. Dex, Vit, AR, Resource Reduction.

 

[rockmyroad]

DIABLO 3 EXPANSION!! DOPE. but diablo 3 seriously failed after pushing the product in the market too early before they even finished fixing all the glitches and errors. ON TOP OF THAT, NO PVP?! forreal? complete fail.

 

[smackababy]

I almost want to try to write some sort of simulation tool for this. Not knowing what stat works better for me really bugs me!

Armor is the other stat that has diminishing returns I believe. I've also debated writing a program that can get my gear from bnet (similar to Diablo Progress) and allow me to manipulate stats and such to find out exact gear changes.

 

[silverpig]

Yes and no. They are the same (50%), but you're compounding them multiplicatively, which makes the second inherently weaker. In other words, 100,000 elemental damage is reduced to 50,000 the first time, and 25,000 the second time. The first drop was definitely more significant and also took probably about the same amount of AR points to achieve!

Yes, in absolute terms. But that 1/2 damage also DOUBLES your survivability if you ignore life regen. Adding in life regen, you will more than double your survivability, and you can have infinite survivability if you can get your damage reduction to a point where the monster DPS is less than your life regen per second.

 

[alcoholbob]

A reward would be something nice eventually for your time invested into the game. RNG for me has been awful this expansion. Fun goes out the window when you get crap after crap after crap.

How long am I supposed to play before I get anything valuable to better my character's advancement? I am over 150 hours and have not gotten one item truly endgame that is itemized correctly.

Level 60 IK chest is itemized better.
Level 70 Blackthorne's is itemized better.

After 150 hours and nothing to truly improve my character yet, since gear is improving your character in Diablo 3, how am I supposed to look at this?

The problem is the new 4/2 system is garbage, only a few legendaries (like magefist) have an extra primary affix which automatically makes it best in slot. The problem is there are at least 6 good primary affixes in each slot which means pointless choices and means some legacy level 60 gear will never be replaced.

In the first week of the beta (friends & family) they had 3500 dps 1 handers and main stat that rolled to 1000 but now with main stat nerfed to 500 in most slots and 1 hand melee weapons topping out at around 2500 dps it's a different story.

What's funny is a top-geared level 60 barb back in 1.0.8 with lifesteal and perma wotb would stomp through Torment 6 and out dps pretty much any currently geared character right now. Pretty sad if you think about it. Level 70 is really a net nerf compared to the power we had at level 60 back in vanilla. In fact that crazy level 60 strength quadfecta amulet that sold for hundreds of billions near the end of vanilla is still best in slot.

 

[pandemonium]

^ This is exactly what I've been saying.

 

[Harabec]

It seems the barb is one of those "I am as good as a cracked sash at low levels" that gets almost infinitely better as you get into the 40's.
I seriously disliked him at lower levels, but as I got some better gear (not just str but also utility stats) he really started to act as a proper barb.
The barb was my first class in D2 Classic and I was usually grinding A4 with a sorc mowing everything in our path...granted, without proper gear and life/mama steal the barb was pooh in D2 as well.

Anyway, I like him now. One thing though, he dual-wields and every high str shield I loot says its a DPS upgrade. Is there an inherent DW bonus or is it really better to equip the highest DPS weapon and whatever gives me the most stats in the off-hand?

 

[darkewaffle]

What's funny is a top-geared level 60 barb back in 1.0.8 with lifesteal and perma wotb would stomp through Torment 6 and out dps pretty much any currently geared character right now. Pretty sad if you think about it. Level 70 is really a net nerf compared to the power we had at level 60 back in vanilla. In fact that crazy level 60 strength quadfecta amulet that sold for hundreds of billions near the end of vanilla is still best in slot.

Not even close. If you mean that a highly geared character at 60 would be stronger relative to level 60 enemies than a highly geared character at 70 is relative to level 70 enemies, you could maybe make that argument as things stand now. But it's ignoring how much stronger players will become as they play more and their gear is 'perfected' which will inevitably happen with time - just like it did before the expansion. Just look at how much stronger players got from "before monster power" to "after monster power". I can clear T4 rifts without much trouble on my monk but I can still see huge gaps in my gear still that would result in major increases to my 'power', the ceiling is very high.

But absolute power at 60 vs 70? No contest, players are able to maintain pretty much the same CC/CD as 60 but generally with a slight drop in APS easily made up for by having 5000/6000/7000 more main stat as well as easily 30%-100% elemental damage bonuses applied to their skills and hundreds more base damage on weapons. Not to mention the crazy things you can do with the new sets and Ring of Royal Grandeur.


===============================


On another note I would say the Shard of Hate is still very usable - at least with certain skills. I ran some two minute trials on my monk with his spirit generators last night, at 2.29 APS FoT-Thunderclap (while only using the shard, no OH) procced about ~130 times. FoT-Bounding Light averaged closer to ~140. Dual wielding (shard MH + griswolds perfection OH at 2.3/2.3 aps respectively) seemed to slow the proc rate slightly as I noticed both Thunderclap and Bounding Light had ~5-10 fewer procs over two minutes but that could just be random deviation - I only ran the dual wield trials twice each to see if there were any substantial changes (which I would say there were not) - and I can only sit there counting lightning bolts in town for so long lol.

I did only one or two trials with some other skills, namely FoT-Quickening and Deadly Reach - Scattered Blows and FoT-Static Charge. Quickening (with it's higher coefficient) had a correspondingly higher proc rate, the one trial I ran with it was somewhere around ~170 procs in a two minute span. Scattered Blows I believe was around 150. Static Charge I think was around 90. I would say that the proc is scaling with skill coefficients, but what it's internal % chance to proc (the number that is then further modified by the coefficient) I haven't fussed with yet.

Also I couldn't detect an internal cooldown, at least not one that was observable. There were times where Shard would proc six swings in a row and sometimes not at all for 6-9 swings. It's possible that the internal cooldown is so small that you wouldn't notice it under normal circumstances (and exists only to 'gate' procs on skills like Whirlwind or Tempest rush) or it maybe is larger than expected exists only to gate long strings of high success rates (eg: if proc rate over last 20 swings >= 75% then proc rate for next 5 swings = 0%, something like that).

All in all I'm quite content with using it on my monk still with FoT-Thunderclap - I considered changing to Bounding Light because I had thought it's higher coefficient could result in substantially more procs - but personally the difference I observed is not great enough for me to want to change. I would suspect that as long as the skills you actively use have reasonably large coefficients it will still be pretty effective. Multi-hit skills that have a co-efficient balanced around it's AoE potential might not be though - since Shard is technically an "on swing" not an "on hit" effect so does not benefit from skills which create a lot of individual hits on a single swing (arcane orb - frozen orb for example). I'm not sure how it will feel with multi-swing skills yet as I did not get around to trying out Tempest Rush after the fix.

 

[Hopeless]

Been having fun with the Barb on xbox. Cleared Inferno (easy) a bit back and decided to try Inferno (M1). So far I've died a few times but not very often unless I get in too big of a hurry rushing forward. Although I have been testing some of the other skills to increase my survival.

My luck on drops has hit an all time low. I was averaging at least 1 sometimes more each time I played. Now I'm down to 1 leg in the last 3-4 rounds I've played. Before they hit the bad side of the curve I managed to get 2 pieces of the Kings set which helped, the chest even popped with 3 sockets. Down side is I can't get enough rubies to fill it with the highest level I can make yet.

I'm beginning to fill the itch to try one of the other classes, but trying to hold off until I get him at least to the end of Act I. I was thinking of trying the Wiz next.

 

[lupi]

What does that mean about class restricted set items? I've gotten 3 so far and they have some of the set piece abilities that are listed for a specific class, but the item itself doesn't mention any class restriction.

 

[smackababy]

What does that mean about class restricted set items? I've gotten 3 so far and they have some of the set piece abilities that are listed for a specific class, but the item itself doesn't mention any class restriction.

If you find one of the new set pieces, you can only use it on that specific class. Marauder's set for DH can't be worn on any other character. I have boots and head, both of which are not DH specific items, but I cannot equip them on my monk. Same with the Crusader shoulders I have. My barb cannot equip those.

The old set pieces, however, (Inna's, Nat's, Tal Rasha, Zuni, IK, etc) can still be equipped by anyone.

 

[darkewaffle]

I think every class has one new 6 piece set in which all the pieces are class restricted. I know the monk one is called the "Raiment of a Thousand Storms". There are also some four piece sets which give bonuses which tend to be class specific but the pieces themselves can be worn by anyone, one which grants monk bonuses but can be worn by anyone is Sunwuko's Blessing [something like that] and one which grant's wizard bonuses but can be worn by anyone is Vyr's something or other.

Basically for any given piece of equipment in the upper right corner of the item window it will show the name of the piece of equipment/slot - if it then has a class name below it, then only that class can wear it. If it just lists the slot, anyone can equip it.

 

[Aikouka]

So, I decided to try a rift on Master on my Monk last night. He has pretty good damage as he's around 500k without the +fire damage factored in. However, his toughness was kind of low at around 3 million. Now, I was fine in most situations, but I was rather unlucky early on in my rift. The game gave me one of my least favorite enemies to fight as a champion pack: the mallet lord. Honestly, mallet lords aren't that hard and they really only have one move, but it hurts if it hits you. Fighting a single, named mallet lord is easy because you only have to watch out for a single enemy, but when you have to fight five at once?

The funny part is... right after I killed the first mallet lord champion pack, I ran into another one! :'( Luckily, I got a gargoyle-type rift guardian who was an utter joke compared to anything else that I've ever run into.

So, I was working a bit afterward to try and tailor some newer yellow gear to raise my toughness a bit while trying to sacrifice as little damage as I could. Right now, I think I'm choosing between two different gloves and a potentially different off-hand weapon. I got that pig sticker dagger (or whatever it's called), and the only bad thing about it is that it suffers from the +%damage bug as it has +poison on it. So, it is a tiny bit weaker than my Exarian. Although, it does have the bonus of giving me more damage against beasts and humans; however, I would say that there aren't that many beasts and humans enemies in the game. I think they're mostly in Act I.

Base attack speed is determined by the swing speed of the weapon you have equipped, that's the 'floor'. Dual wielding grants a passive +15% attack speed and attack speed for each weapon is calculated independently, not as a composite.

Well, the one thing that makes Diablo III weird to me in regard to weapon-oriented stats is that we don't actually use our weapons for attacking. We're all like Huntards in WoW with our stat sticks. So, that makes me wonder... if I'm using Crippling Wave with a 1.3/s and a 1.4/s weapon... what happens? Does it alternate the attacks between the different speeds? What about other attacks like Lashing Tail Kick? ...or if I were to use something like Meteor on my Wizard, what happens there?

If you want a "simulation" just look for a D3 DPS calculator online. It effectively accomplishes the same thing, you just have to keep in mind that your 'paper' DPS only goes so far and in actuality some play styles and some skills with benefit more from some stats than others. For instance, wizards and witch doctors will often want to avoid being invested too heavily in IAS because it can cause resource generation to bottleneck.

The simulations that I'm used to from my WoW days (EnhSim) would actually report how long you spent OOM over the course of the simulation. The only thing is that WoW simulations were given a little flak in the beginning for being "too perfect". EnhSim ended up having a latency feature added (among other things) to help introduce aspects seen when actually gaming. I mention that because ARPGs are even more awkward when it comes to this because instead of just target-based casting, you have to target "an area", so other factors such as projectile speed may matter a lot more than just damage. I know I've had to do things such as predecting where those stupid wasps in Act II would fly to before I cast my spell at them (via holding Shift).

I really want an Andy's helm with +fire for my DH. I can reroll the APS for crit and get an additional DPS boost!

I looked up Andariel's Visage on Blizzard's database, and it looks like it also makes you take more fire damage. That could be an interesting combination with that necklace that makes you immune to fire.

Anyway, I like him now. One thing though, he dual-wields and every high str shield I loot says its a DPS upgrade. Is there an inherent DW bonus or is it really better to equip the highest DPS weapon and whatever gives me the most stats in the off-hand?

After I found a set glove at 70, I had that same problem with my monk. Of course, my shield was also pretty good (dex, vit, +9 crit), which didn't help! I eventually found a good legendary sword that was finally able to replace the shield while providing significantly more damage.

However, I would love to know what sort of calculations Diablo III does with multiple weapons like that. What causes it to factor the damage to a lower value? Is it some weird average between weapon damage ranges? I did notice that as the weapons got far closer in parity, the lesser the -damage was. I think the lowest that I saw prior to the legendary sword was a near-perfect yellow fist weapon that had +damage, +%damage, dex, etc.

From what I have read, the only downside to the shield is that you won't swing as much and you won't gain as much resource.

 

[smackababy]

What happens with skills is they alternate between attacks. So, something like whirlwind with dual wield will alternate between attack speeds, which have breakpoints. Sweeping winds uses a snapshot of whatever you current weapon + damage + modifies and such and continues to use damage based on that.

 

[TallBill]

Got my first hellfire ring piece today. Something new to do anyways. I'm sure I'll roll a vit, %life, armor, ar ring lol.

 

[pandemonium]

Don't forget +120 exp and bonus to health globes +14510!

 

[sweenish]

I hate my barbarian. But he's also my only lvl. 70. He should not be on expert. Even master proves to be too much for him. I'm sure some of it is on me for picking right skills, and some of it is on the game for his lousy gear, but man it just sucks playing him.

I'm hoping my wizard at least proves to be fun up to 70. They don't seem quite as gear dependent, but I could be wrong.

 

[Schfifty Five]

I hate my barbarian. But he's also my only lvl. 70. He should not be on expert. Even master proves to be too much for him. I'm sure some of it is on me for picking right skills, and some of it is on the game for his lousy gear, but man it just sucks playing him.

I'm hoping my wizard at least proves to be fun up to 70. They don't seem quite as gear dependent, but I could be wrong.

Are you playing solo or in pub games?

If you're stuck on expert solo, you might want to try and do a public game on Master or even T1. I'm not saying you should just leech off other well geared players, but in pubs, having slightly less DPS than required is a bit more forgiving than it is in solo.

Try joining a pub game on Master diff and run rifts with people. You will pick up a lot of gear and even if it's just rares (yellow items), you will have enough mats to start enchanting them with the proper affixes. Once you start doing that, your dps/toughness will be better and you will be able to handle Master and T1 soon.

 

[BudAshes]

Don't forget +120 exp and bonus to health globes +14510!

Why are those even stats? Couldn't they be replaced by something half way useful?