Diablo 3

[jjbrr]

I haven't touched the game since Philly. Didn't play D2. Really disliking the relentless gear grind - is that the only point? I liked it when the game first came out because it just looks so polished.

 

I play a wizard and without barb or monk help inferno acts 3/4 are still as impossible. And I think my character is reasonably well geared - already cleared inferno soon after the game came out (2 manning with a monk). Pony level was fun the first 5 times, and then subsequently I feel like it can give me a stroke.

 

Coming from playing WOW, the 6 abilities just doesn't cut it.

 

I hear roger lee is very very good at D3.

 

To be fair to D3, Diablo 2 wasn't nearly the game it is now before the expansion. I see you didn't play D2, but before the D2 expansion there weren't runes or runewords, fewer elite unique items, poor endgame (Act 4 was short in D2 as well). It took even longer to implement more runewords, skill synergies, annihilus diablo, then even longer for the uber tristrams.

 

Yes, D3 endgame is nothing but a grind (but hey, if you do it well you can make money). While D3 failed to meet most people's extremely lofty expectations and probably fell way short, I'm still optimistic with expansion, PvP in 1.04, buffed legendaries, fixed MF swap stuff, and hopefully more engaging endgame, D3 still has a lot of room to grow. Most of these things have already been announced or strongly hinted at by many sources, and I expect a fairly strong resurgence when blizzard patches them in.

 

There are a lot of gripes about D3 aside from the poor endgame (seriously, why are we playing 4 difficulties of the same content instead of 60 levels worth of new content?) but I still feel like I got my money's worth out of it (and I still enjoy grinding inferno with 5 stacks an hour or two a night, even though the 5 stacks thing is a broken gimmick. for those who don't know, MF doesn't affect the affixes on the guaranteed drop, so your guaranteed drop with 5NV is worse on average than just stacking MF and killing champs in high-density areas and restarting. kripp never figured this out, somehow.).

[billw55]

I played a PoE beta a few months ago over a weekend and enjoyed it. It's much clunkier than D3, but the skill tree and character customization is fascinating and the endgame is infinitely more robust.

 

Also recommend it, though at the time it still felt very, very much like a free game. I know they've made lots of changes in recent months, so they've likely mitigated that a good amount.

There are still issues that can be improved (clunky inventory management), but the devs listen to the community and are working all the time to make it better. For a closed beta, it is quite good. Act 3 is scheduled to roll out with the open beta, this will bring the content quantity up significantly. The endgame has changed since you left as well - maelstrom of chaos is gone, and replaced by a droppable secret map system.

[jjbrr]

I also really like the currency system on PoE, and trading is pretty well done.

 

I knew about the new endgame and skimmed some youtube vids about it a week or two ago. If anyone is interested:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97SskaQuijo

[Cyberyeti]

There are a lot of gripes about D3 aside from the poor endgame (seriously, why are we playing 4 difficulties of the same content instead of 60 levels worth of new content?) but I still feel like I got my money's worth out of it (and I still enjoy grinding inferno with 5 stacks an hour or two a night, even though the 5 stacks thing is a broken gimmick. for those who don't know, MF doesn't affect the affixes on the guaranteed drop, so your guaranteed drop with 5NV is worse on average than just stacking MF and killing champs in high-density areas and restarting. kripp never figured this out, somehow.).

I'm told that if you get very high MF (over 400, max is like 438) you drop so many rares at a time that the NV is worth having, but I'm nowhere close to that sort of gear level.

 

Still bumbling along dropping nothing useful, monk in act 3 inferno, barb in act 2 and a 60 WD.

[jjbrr]

I'm told that if you get very high MF (over 400, max is like 438) you drop so many rares at a time that the NV is worth having, but I'm nowhere close to that sort of gear level.

 

Still bumbling along dropping nothing useful, monk in act 3 inferno, barb in act 2 and a 60 WD.

 

I'm not familiar with any research done on MF with that high a number of MF (I assume they were swapping or had ultraelite gear) but my guess is with that much MF the extra 75% is less important (ie you're still dropping lots of ilvl 63 and 6-property rares). And like I said, the guaranteed rare you get from 5 stacks is NOT affected by MF at all, so getting 5 stacks and running long distances to more packs of champs/uniques/bosses is less efficient than stacking a lot of MF and quickly clearing high density areas, especially if that guaranteed rare is dropping in lieu of a rare that would otherwise drop (and is affected by MF).

 

None of this is my research, but it comes from a fairly reliable source and a good player who posts a lot on 2p2. He collects data about the number of attributes (4, 5, or 6) that his rares drop using the item name glitch. He counts guaranteed rares only as those that drop 1 rare with 5 stacks and non guaranteed rares as those that drop with <5 stacks (though I think the last item to drop is always the guaranteed rare. I assume this is verified but don't think he used it, for accuracy purposes). I'll quote his original hypothesis, his data, and then a cliffs of his conclusion and you can decide for yourself. He runs with like 180 base MF I think.

 

07-21-2012, 05:05 PM

I don't know if you read the farming thread, but the reason why I believe MF is vastly superior to non-MF is because guaranteed drop affixes are not affected by magic find. I'm sure you guys can understand that, but explaining it to regular gamers is horridly impossible. They respond with "magic find affects the number of affixes dude". But clearly we are talking about something different here. Rares are essentially items with 3 or more affixes. So we don't even need to classify items as rares/blues/whites/legendary. We can just classify them as legendary/6/5/4/3/2/1/0 affix. My thinking is that the guaranteed drops have only the BASE chance of being a 6/5/4/3 affix. Meaning the 75% magic find you get from those NV stacks actually does not affect the chances of that guaranteed rare having higher affixes, but only the other items that are non-guaranteed.

 

Obviously lots of data need to be collected in order to get a better picture of what is going on here but those are my suspicions so far farming with ~190 base MF vs 0 base MF. The reason why it's super hard to collect data is because only the first 5 champ packs that you kill in any game give you 100% non-guaranteed rares and only champ packs that you kill with 5 NV stacks that only drop 1 rare are 100% guaranteed. With 250% MF champ packs very frequently drop more than 1

 

I really need to continue to collect data before they fix that affix bug.

 

Someone else - 07-21-2012, 05:22 PM:

I would think the 75% from neph valor does make a difference unless there's a serious flaw in their app code.

 

We know for a fact that having 5 stacks guarantees 1 rare from a champ pack. This seems to be independent of 5 stacks giving MF or not. If neph valor did absolutely nothing other than increment your stack count, chances are you would still get that guaranteed 1 rare.

 

So now what happens? The article says you gain x% higher chance of obtaining a better rare and that chance increases by x%.

 

To make things simple (and definitely not close to a correct scale) maybe it's like this:

 

6 affixes: 10%

5 affixes: 20%

4 affixes: 40%

3 affixes: 60%

2 affixes: 80%

1 affix: 100%

 

After we attach 75% MF:

 

6 affixes: 17.5%

5 affixes: 35%

4 affixes: 70%

3 affixes: 105%

2 affixes: Irrelevant

1 affix: Irrelevant

 

With 75% MF in theory it would be impossible to get anything below 3 affixes because the odds of getting 3 is 105% (> 100%). This would also explain why we pretty much never see 2 or 1 affix rares because the real numbers probably make it so that getting 3 affixes is the lowest it goes.

 

Original guy - 07-21-2012, 05:28 PM:

Yup, totally understand that, but have you got a lot of 5/6 affix rares from guaranteed drops with 75%? For me it seems an absurd amount of them are 4 affixes rares. Where as compared to non-guaranteed rares I get a much much higher proportion of 5 and 6 affix rares compared to 4 affix rares.

 

I don't know how you would really determine if those guaranteed drop affixes are affected by magic find or not unless you collected thousands of guaranteed and non-guaranteed rares from the same person and compared the numbers.

 

My question is...should the proportions of 4/5/6 affix rares from non-guaranteed be equal to those of guaranteed rares? To me, it seems like they should, but from what I've seen so far it looks like they aren't. Thus I came to the conclusion that magic find does not affect those guaranteed rares and they only have the base chance of having 6 affixes.

 

I've watched Kripp farm for nearly 3 weeks now with 0% MF and he gets about 30 items per run that he ID's. On average about 26 of those probably have 4 affixes. Maybe one has 6 if he was lucky. The kicker is that the ones that have higher than 4 affixes might have been non-guaranteed rares too.

 

His conclusion, yes lolsmall sample size so we can't draw conclusions with a huge amount of confidence, but there is clearly a trend - 07-26-2012, 01:41 AM:

Day 5 final tallies. Got a friend to help me out with guaranteed rare data with 0 MF. Here is his data after a couple days as well.

 

 

 

Total non-guaranteed rares: 279 (+62)

6 affix - 32/11.5%

5 affix - 83/29.7%

4 affix - 164/58.9%

 

Total guaranteed rares: 136 (+32)

6 affix - 8/5.9%

5 affix - 15/14.7%

4 affix - 83/79.4%

 

Base MF = 186, 223.5 average MF for non-guaranteed rares

 

I don't think any number changed more than 1% with the new data.

 

Zero base MF data (collected from a friend):

 

Guaranteed rares: 87

6 affix - 5/5.7%

5 affix - 13/14.9%

4 affix - 69/79.3%

 

So the only way we can really tell if MF affects the guaranteed rare is to take thousands of data samples with 0 base MF and 186 base MF. I don't think either of us want to continue it anymore, but basically it's pretty clear how people should farm now. Hope this data helps you out in your D3 farming adventure. Obviously it's a small data set for both guaranteed rare data but I don't think its worth it to see the 1% difference that would be there if MF did affect the guaranteed rare.

 

Stack that MF and kill those champs! Screw 5 NV stacks. Watching Kripp do 4 full runs and get 95% four affix rares is just too funny to watch.

 

Conclusion - 07-21-2012, 05:11 PM

One more thing to easy compare the difference in killing speed with 0 MF and 200 MF is to collect all rares, number of champ packs kill and time it took to kill those champ packs. Doing that 100 or so times should give you a better idea of how much of a different magic find and kill speed work in relation to one another.

 

But a big difference here is that if magic find does not affect the number of affixes on the guaranteed rares, it is absolutely not worth farming without it. If the base chance of getting a rare to have 6 affixes is 5% you'll spend weeks farming before you get an ilvl 63 with 6 affixes that are decent. If magic find does affect the number of affixes on guaranteed rares, then that is a slightly different story.

 

Next time you do some farming and get 3 or more rares off siegebreaker, you'll see that 1 of those will likely have more than 4 affixes. Likewise with champ packs. If you get 2 rares off a champ pack with 5 NV stacks, chances are 1 of those will have more than 4 affixes. If you are only picking up the ilvl 61+ then it's harder to see, but if you pick up every single rare then you'll get see what I'm talking about. With higher levels of magic find it becomes even clearer.

 

Cliffs: If you have good MF gear and good gear in general and can farm Act 3, it is much better to do the high-density places quickly and efficiently, then restart and repeat. Running from pack to pack just wastes time, as the guaranteed rare from 5 stacks is WORSE on average than without 5 stacks. If you have 0% MF, you very likely are better off getting 5 stacks and clearing the whole act, because that guaranteed rare is more likely to be a 6-attribute rare than it would otherwise.

 

Obviously if you don't care how many attributes your rare has, the point is moot.

 

Source if you want to read relevant responses and see more discussion: link

[jjbrr]

Also to add: Blizzard has made a statement about wanting to fix MF gear swapping (either manually or through a macro). There will likely be changes to how swapping MF gear works and there's some info from I think Bashiok on the d3 forums about possible scenarios, but MF is almost certainly going to be MORE valuable after the changes. So if you roll good items with top end MF, hang on to it or at least get a premium for it now.

[Cyberyeti]

I'm not familiar with any research done on MF with that high a number of MF (I assume they were swapping or had ultraelite gear) but my guess is with that much MF the extra 75% is less important (ie you're still dropping lots of ilvl 63 and 6-property rares). And like I said, the guaranteed rare you get from 5 stacks is NOT affected by MF at all, so getting 5 stacks and running long distances to more packs of champs/uniques/bosses is less efficient than stacking a lot of MF and quickly clearing high density areas, especially if that guaranteed rare is dropping in lieu of a rare that would otherwise drop (and is affected by MF).

 

The guy posting said that his results apply at about +360 or more and every extra point is important, it's really difficult to get to that level without NV (requires absolutely top rolls and a particular set bonus). Apparently you drop truly ludicrous numbers of rares per group/boss.

 

MF gear swapping is an abuse and should have been fixed ages ago.

[jjbrr]

So we essentially reached the same conclusion: stacking lots of MF is much, much better than running with 0 MF (shocking, I know).

 

So further research would have to be done to determine 1) if the guaranteed rare can ever drop in the place of a non-guaranteed rare, 2) if getting 5 stacks+running to the next champ pack takes longer than clearing high density areas and restarting and 3) if 75% additional MF on top of 400 base MF exceeds any losses from 1) + 2).

 

Agree MF swapping is bad. I did it in D2 because it was as simple as hitting w, and I know people have written macros that blizzard apparently has deemed OK, but it's just a stupid part of the game that needs to be fixed.

[Cyberyeti]

Agree MF swapping is bad. I did it in D2 because it was as simple as hitting w, and I know people have written macros that blizzard apparently has deemed OK, but it's just a stupid part of the game that needs to be fixed.

In games like this, I think whether a PnP RPG GM would let me get away with something like this, and if the answer is no, I consider it an exploit.

[jjbrr]

anyone still playing?

 

they released some datamined patch notes about 1.04 today. looks pretty awesome if you ask me.

 

kinda wish they weren't nerfing monsters and buffing heroes at the same time, but i guess a higher % of people will be able to feel baller and farm A3.

 

some spoilers from the patch notes:

 

paragon experience with the following lines of code (may not appear in 1.04):

 

 

AltLevelUpRewards - {s1} Magic Find and {s2} Gold Find

AltLevelUnlocked - Paragon Portrait Unlocked

AltLevelUp - Paragon Level {s1}

AltLevelUnlockedTitle - You have gained

Levels string1: You are now earning Paragon XP!

Each Paragon Level you gain grants a Gold and Magic Find bonus.

 

buffed uniques, including a ring that has a chance to summon a treasure goblin when hit (lol at boss fights with goblins running around.

all character classes have been updated/balanced/modified/etc

lots more stuff. read more here http://www.diablofans.com/

 

[Cyberyeti]

anyone still playing?

 

they released some datamined patch notes about 1.04 today. looks pretty awesome if you ask me.

 

kinda wish they weren't nerfing monsters and buffing heroes at the same time, but i guess a higher % of people will be able to feel baller and farm A3.

 

Still playing, but less than I was.

 

1.0.4 is an improvement, but doesn't really fix the "no endgame" problem. I can't cope with farming A3, and after 500 hours in acts 1 and 2 have found 1 item worth more than 100K and that not by much. Hoping for better after the patch (or failing that some stuff I can use).

 

Also, finding a 500 DPS weapon with level requirement -18 levels makes NM/hell very silly (and they're dirt cheap on the gold AH), they might want to restrict that a bit with the buff to 2 handers, a lvl 42 barb with an 800 DPS 2H weapon is going to be really stupid after the patch.

[jjbrr]

paragon experience will keep my interest i think (hope its in 1.04!). i'd prefer blizzard just copy PoE's portal endgame stuff, but i doubt that'll happen. if i can build +MF and +GF just by killing elite packs, i admit i'm prepared for the grind.

 

Seriously about 100K? For a long time tomes of secret were my largest sale item (200k gold for like 350 tomes?) but since then i've upgraded several spots, invested in MF, and done reasonably ok for a casual gamer. I expect to have a few mill for my next upgrade soonish.

[Cyberyeti]

paragon experience will keep my interest i think (hope its in 1.04!). i'd prefer blizzard just copy PoE's portal endgame stuff, but i doubt that'll happen. if i can build +MF and +GF just by killing elite packs, i admit i'm prepared for the grind.

 

Seriously about 100K? For a long time tomes of secret were my largest sale item (200k gold for like 350 tomes?) but since then i've upgraded several spots, invested in MF, and done reasonably ok for a casual gamer. I expect to have a few mill for my next upgrade soonish.

I'm waiting for them to upgrade the crafted items, so have a couple of thousand ToS stored. My problem also is that atm I have 3 50s I'm trying to make playable and a 4th nearly there, but I'm not seeing any items that are an improvement on my main monk who can't solo farm act 3 yet although I do OK but not great with my barb buddy. I'm not survivable enough to use MF gear in inferno and refuse to swap gear. Am I really supposed to wear MF gear and go back to hell ? My largest sale items for a while were buying up 61+ legendaries/sets for 50K, breaking them and selling the essences for 95K.

 

If you want to see the sort of gear I have, try http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Minotaur-2857/ (not sure if linking like this works) Thelonius is my main

[rogerclee]

Didn't play for about 7 weeks, but decided to give HC a shot again, and I made level 60 pretty comfortably with a monk. If anyone wants to run US HC on inferno, send me a message.

[Cyberyeti]

So what's the opinion on 1.0.4 ?

 

I found act 3 up to Ghom was just about doable with my monk, the Ghom fight was very tough and great fun, I'd never have been able to do it pre patch.

 

Why we're still dropping level 52 items in inferno is still not clear to me (getting a dagger with <100 DPS is not cool), but I've had more decent (although not stellar) items in 3 days than I had in 3 months.

[hrothgar]

Lost my L59 hardcore WD a couple weeks back

 

Kind uninspired to play at the moment

The mega nerf doesn't make me any more inspired

[dwar0123]

I think I would have preferred that the paragon levels were staged a little more like normal leveling. Where the first segment goes by very fast and then it slows down a lot. I am ok with the total amount of exp required for 100, I just think they may have messed up not making the first 30 or so levels a lot cheaper.

 

Each level requires a little more exp then the last level, rather I think each level should have required a substantial more exp then the last level and start out much cheaper so in the end it is the same but its faster at the start.

 

I am only at paragon level 6 and it already feels like a horrendous grind.

[jonottawa]

You are all terrible people and should feel awful about playing this game instead of EVE.

 

EVE is by far the best MMO ever made. CCP is a rudderless development company that kinda wants to do the right thing if it doesn't require too much work. Unfortunately, given the overall mediocrity of the existing playerbase, figuring out what the right thing is is too much work. You could fix that!

[blackshoe]

Yeah, I need to get back into EVE. It's definitely a very cool game.

[Cyberyeti]

You are all terrible people and should feel awful about playing this game instead of EVE.

 

EVE is by far the best MMO ever made. CCP is a rudderless development company that kinda wants to do the right thing if it doesn't require too much work. Unfortunately, given the overall mediocrity of the existing playerbase, figuring out what the right thing is is too much work. You could fix that!

EVE feels a lot more like a second job/life than an MMO, I never played it but have friends who did and kept talking about it to those of us that didn't. I thought RIFT was a good MMO but they took it in a perfectly reasonable direction that I didn't like (basically I liked playing casually and often solo, and they made it raid or don't bother). I still play City of Heroes and enjoy it.

[jjbrr]

anyone still playing? made 60 on hc today for the first time so the game still holds my interest.

 

blizzard announced some 1.05 changes. highlights include nerfing the game even further (25% damage reduction), players X system from d2 to simulate full games while solo (presumably drops will scale with the increased difficulty?) and an uber endgame they havent provided details for yet.

 

i think they went way, way too far with their changes in 1.04. i like the paragon leveling, but the game is all about legendaries and sets now, which has completely and hopelessly broken the sc economy. its interesting learning the hc economy (and finding flawless square amethysts makes me really happy).

 

still no word about 1.1 (pvp arena) yet. several months past release.

 

pretty lucrative beta roll out, blizzard! meanwhile path of exile held their public stress test this weekend. interested to see results, but for a free game they're really doing it right.

[jjbrr]

Key points:

- The Players X type system is translated as “Monster Power” and players creating games with level 60 characters can set it from 0-10 at game creation. You can not tweak it during a game, such as by turning it up before a boss fight.

 

- At higher levels the game difficulty is increased, with correspondingly better experience gain and item rewards. Details are still unspecified on just how they’ll be increasing the difficulty, and on what “better” items means. More, higher quality (Sets/Legendaries) items, higher level items, or all of the above.

To unlock the Infernal Machine players will have to gather ingredients from all four acts, so it will presumably not be a short and easy assembly process. (Apparently even longer and more involved than Diablo 2′s Pandemonium Event.)

 

- The Infernal Machine level has “a completely new architecture” (tileset?), but no new bosses or monsters. (Presumably the “uber” bosses will be palette shifted and have some new abilities, but we’ll wait for D3X for entirely new monsters.)

 

- The Infernal Machine reward is a new Legendary ring only available from this quest. The biggest news is that it will DiabloWikiBind on Account. So no trading or selling or gifting, but you can use it with other characters on your account.

 

Other details remain vague, so it seems like we’ll have to wait for the actual patch to find out every last detail and start hunting those new uber rings. It seems pretty likely the ring will be something like the Hellfire Torch, with guaranteed great stats, but enough variability that you’ll probably want to find several of them while trying to get a better roll, and perhaps a roll better suited for each character class.

[Cyberyeti]

Key points:

- The Players X type system is translated as “Monster Power” and players creating games with level 60 characters can set it from 0-10 at game creation. You can not tweak it during a game, such as by turning it up before a boss fight.

 

- At higher levels the game difficulty is increased, with correspondingly better experience gain and item rewards. Details are still unspecified on just how they’ll be increasing the difficulty, and on what “better” items means. More, higher quality (Sets/Legendaries) items, higher level items, or all of the above.

To unlock the Infernal Machine players will have to gather ingredients from all four acts, so it will presumably not be a short and easy assembly process. (Apparently even longer and more involved than Diablo 2′s Pandemonium Event.)

 

- The Infernal Machine level has “a completely new architecture” (tileset?), but no new bosses or monsters. (Presumably the “uber” bosses will be palette shifted and have some new abilities, but we’ll wait for D3X for entirely new monsters.)

 

- The Infernal Machine reward is a new Legendary ring only available from this quest. The biggest news is that it will DiabloWikiBind on Account. So no trading or selling or gifting, but you can use it with other characters on your account.

 

Other details remain vague, so it seems like we’ll have to wait for the actual patch to find out every last detail and start hunting those new uber rings. It seems pretty likely the ring will be something like the Hellfire Torch, with guaranteed great stats, but enough variability that you’ll probably want to find several of them while trying to get a better roll, and perhaps a roll better suited for each character class.

Well the details are out and the patch is in.

 

I can only handle MP 1-3 atm solo depending on the act, I did manage to finish the game at MP0 which is now trivially easy.

 

MP details: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6187857/Monster_Power_More_Guts_More_Glory-11_10_2012

 

IM details: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6265182

 

I've found my first IM key, but not going to chase this seriously.

 

They have reduced a lot of armor/resist buffs but reduced monster damage more, I'm not clear what you have to up MP to in each act to get it back to the old difficulty, but I'm guessing about 2/3/4 in those acts, and between 0 and 1 for act 1.

 

Loot is better now as you're not getting the worthless lvl 51-57 items in inferno, but not seen any legendaries yet.