Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
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Vorph
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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I'm glad to see they're fixing the netcode, that desync problem and the excuses they made for not fixing it were just pathetic. The gameplay itself was really good, except for that one massive flaw in their design.
That said, PoE's real problem is that it has the stingiest, most fagged-up-with-RNG loot system of all time, and I've kept up with the game enough to know that very little has changed for the better there. D3's loot system is pretty retarded when it comes to things like rings, amulets, and ancient weapons, but PoE is a couple orders of magnitude worse than that.
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Back on topic, I'm debating leveling up a character in S3 as quickly as possible this weekend (just to get the last two transmogs, will probably never play season again afterwards). I checked those guides on leveling quickly, but one question was unanswered: do you need to do all of A1 to get the skeleton king to drop a Leoric?
Eidal
Molten Core Raider
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tldr; asked a friend who has clocked 1000s of hours in D3. Says D3 has a substantially worse grind for high-end items compared to someone in PoE willing to do a bit of trading (8 hours killing to 1 hour doing trade stuff). Said friend strongly prefers D3 but has quit in the last few months due to the direction they took the game.
I don't have any recent experience with D3 so its tough for me to compare the grindfest. I asked a D3 friend what type of grind he's looking at for a high-end legendary in D3 and he said 2 years for a solo player to get an ancient legendary SMK, 4-6 months for group. At 90 percent expectation. He mathed that out spreadsheet-style. He's a fan of zero-trading but thinks that with a 2 year drop rate and zero trading, Blizzard has effectively walled off particular builds to any soloer. So, using this as a baseline, PoE may be on par for how long it'd take to drop the rarest item in the game (unsure) but trading gives an alternate way to hit that goal. I really don't understand why Bliz went with ancient legendaries; they should have done the inverse... add a "mini-SMK" that's much easier to get that still enables the build without being as uber.
Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread, just figured I'd do one shout out.
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A non-ancient SMK *is* the "mini" SMK that you're referring to. An ancient weapon enables nothing unique except more gooder. Especially since it only boosts non-percent stats, there's no CC% or IAS or CDR thresholds that ancient gear would allow you to reach.
I wouldn't worry about derailing the thread, discussion of ancient gear is valid enough. Ancient weapons do have some problems in context of leaderboards. But in terms of trying out new builds, I think Blizzard has been pretty good at that recently.
I wouldn't worry about derailing the thread, discussion of ancient gear is valid enough. Ancient weapons do have some problems in context of leaderboards. But in terms of trying out new builds, I think Blizzard has been pretty good at that recently.
Eidal
Molten Core Raider
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I was about to take a stab at D3 again but when I saw how contingent anything high-end is on dual unity I noped right the fuck out. Plus, I think at the time the only strong soloing class was DH doing 1 build. Note: I only play hardcore; this may not be a relevant issue for softcore players. I don't mind uberrares if I can accumulate lesser things and barter for the high-end drop, but having my performance essentially tied directly to RNG bugs me a great deal. I want to feel skill-checked (or fear-checked), not ("Well, I need to farm X for 1-10k hours until Y drops then I can do something harder).
I'm not really concerned about RNG impact on leaderboards; I could see how the 16/hour a day poopsockers are but I'll never have that playtime so direct competition like that is futile.
I'll ask my friend again about math re: SMK but as I recall it was still pretty damn bad, and that's the only way to play a pet WD at a high level (according to him). The "Play Your Way Thursday" bullshit is just that, bullshit. That's Blizzard saying "you can do whatever you want as long as you want to do T1-T3". If you're saying that the classes now have a nice variety of different builds that are all reasonably balanced at high-level play, then that's a nice step forward from how it was when I quit (few months after ROS) and when my friend quit (6 months ago).
His statement: ("I quit when I realized I literally could not afford to lose my character; the estimated time to restore my gear exceeded the life expectancy of my character. I suspect these issues don't apply to SC players, but I'm not one, so it was time to leave.")
I'm not really concerned about RNG impact on leaderboards; I could see how the 16/hour a day poopsockers are but I'll never have that playtime so direct competition like that is futile.
I'll ask my friend again about math re: SMK but as I recall it was still pretty damn bad, and that's the only way to play a pet WD at a high level (according to him). The "Play Your Way Thursday" bullshit is just that, bullshit. That's Blizzard saying "you can do whatever you want as long as you want to do T1-T3". If you're saying that the classes now have a nice variety of different builds that are all reasonably balanced at high-level play, then that's a nice step forward from how it was when I quit (few months after ROS) and when my friend quit (6 months ago).
His statement: ("I quit when I realized I literally could not afford to lose my character; the estimated time to restore my gear exceeded the life expectancy of my character. I suspect these issues don't apply to SC players, but I'm not one, so it was time to leave.")
Mures
Blackwing Lair Raider
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It doesn't take too long to be able to farm t6, even in hardcore I imagine. T6 is pretty tame these days and there are so few hc players I saw some casual ppl in the clan on the leaderboard last season if thats your thing. I personally don't care about either. I'm sure m6 will still be the go to dh build, but they did get a few new toys this season so I'm looking forward to trying some new things out.
Eidal
Molten Core Raider
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Maybe my confusion about the current state of D3 is if T6 is considered high-end play, then what are high-end grifts? Wouldn't it be more accurate to call lvl 1 - T3 low end, T4-T6 mid-tier, and deep grifts high-end? My understanding, last time I talked about this in depth, is that yea, I could roll up a DH and get into T6 pretty quickly but without unity I can't break into deep grifts?
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You can do higher without dual unity, at least on SC. On HC it's a whole other issue, never gonna get super high on certain classes by design and yeah you're gonna need very specific gear. I mean dual unity is the hard part but you also need the legendary follower item to make your follower immortal, last season I got 2 unities before I saw a follower item(though was very lucky on unity drops obviously), so really you need all 3. And probably some anti rip necklace too. And then you need to farm a good RoRG and stuff, it's quite a grind to get actually good gear for high grift progression and there's no shortcut from trading(though playing in a 4class group will help a lot with that).
On the other hand if you just want to casually fuck around, D3 is a lot more fun than PoE I'd say, it's fast paced earlier, a lot of the skills are more flashy and more powerful and combat flows very well. Downside is how limited you are in build selection until you get specific items, while in general PoE offers more build diversity based on gem choices only, with uniques enabling more builds or reinforcing builds, rather than being the builds like legendary/set items are. Playing before you have 5pc of your main set(minus classes that have 4pc sets like monk) is pretty boring since there's not many options that are efficient, and then once you have the set, you can really only play the one build that set enables. This patch they added more sets so that's great since it means you can do more than one thing per class(well for the most part, but some classes already had more than one playstyle) but it's still pretty limiting.
Anyway very different games, people like or dislike them for different reasons and it's pretty much opinion I'd say, I think both games are good and fun and both games have major downsides to them too, and you juggle that as you please. Great thing is you're not forced to play one or the other all the time, you can alternate and shit. Seasons/Leagues are great for that.
Don't think I'll play this season though, we'll see, but I have some backlog of single player games and PoE beta/DFO beta are probably going to take all the rest of my time. And then this summer, FFXIV, so yeah not sure when I'll have time for D3 again. Hopefully they have another expansion coming, this will get me to play.
On the other hand if you just want to casually fuck around, D3 is a lot more fun than PoE I'd say, it's fast paced earlier, a lot of the skills are more flashy and more powerful and combat flows very well. Downside is how limited you are in build selection until you get specific items, while in general PoE offers more build diversity based on gem choices only, with uniques enabling more builds or reinforcing builds, rather than being the builds like legendary/set items are. Playing before you have 5pc of your main set(minus classes that have 4pc sets like monk) is pretty boring since there's not many options that are efficient, and then once you have the set, you can really only play the one build that set enables. This patch they added more sets so that's great since it means you can do more than one thing per class(well for the most part, but some classes already had more than one playstyle) but it's still pretty limiting.
Anyway very different games, people like or dislike them for different reasons and it's pretty much opinion I'd say, I think both games are good and fun and both games have major downsides to them too, and you juggle that as you please. Great thing is you're not forced to play one or the other all the time, you can alternate and shit. Seasons/Leagues are great for that.
Don't think I'll play this season though, we'll see, but I have some backlog of single player games and PoE beta/DFO beta are probably going to take all the rest of my time. And then this summer, FFXIV, so yeah not sure when I'll have time for D3 again. Hopefully they have another expansion coming, this will get me to play.
Amzin
Lord Nagafen Raider
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You mean the sets that are in the patch notes? The official patch notes, that have the set information? That data? Yea, pretty sure it's available somewhere
Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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This is simply not true, I do low 40s with no trouble (solo) on my ns DH, without using unity.
Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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Azrayne
Irenicus did nothing wrong
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I'm really hoping for an xpac set in the islands to the south that have that classical Greek/Roman feel (pretty sure that's where the D2 amazon came from?). Would be really cool to see another part of the Diablo universe - RoS was a disappointment in that regard, we really didn't need another entire act fighting skeletons in a medieval Europe setting.
My only question is what they would do for a new class - even the Crusader just feels like a mashup of the monk and the barbarian (and obviously just a straight port of the D2 paladin). It would have been 100x cooler if they'd gone for a Deathknight-type class, similar gameplay to the Crusader (heavy plate tank), but throw in some pets and corpse explosions and lifedrains and curses and what not and draw on the D2 necro aesthetic. I would play that class forever, and it would have fit perfectly into the lore and aesthetic of the expansion.