Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
For fun: Just play through the game, doing dungeons along the way. XP mostly comes from killing shit, so doing dungeons just adds more content at no penalty. You'll finish the game before 60 anyway.

For the quickest XP and fastest route to decent level 60 gear: Play Act 1 up until the quest step "Talk to Alaric" (I think it's on the "The Broken Sword" quest), which is just after you meet the Scoundrel. Go talk to Alaric, then run into the festering woods until you find the Crypt of the Ancients. Clear the crypt, portal out (doesn't matter if you pick up the quest item or not), leave the game, then resume. Take your portal and you'll be back in a fully popped crypt. The crypt has amazing mob density and a guaranteed rare pack. Rinse and repeat until you are level 58 (59 is marginally better, but you risk dinging 60 by accident on the next step).
Once you hit 58/59, ask someone to host a game on Normal and run to the Butcher, then set up a portal for you. Kill the Butcher for a guaranteed level 58 legendary. Do the same for Belial and Azmodan for another legendary off each. Then play though Act 4, dinging 60 in the process, and kill Diablo at level 60 for another guaranteed legendary. This gives you up to 4 decent legendaries right off the bat at 60. Level 58/59 legendary weapons are worthless compared to 60 weapons, but armor pieces are generally better than 60 rares.
Does this work even if you killed the Butcher already on that character?
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,872
12,262
I am disturbed by the fact AS at 70 can be 5% at all. Even more disturbed that flat +xp exists as well.
 

Ortega

Vyemm Raider
1,204
2,776
Dat 2-hander with 2,651 damage. So even a shitty lvl 70 manticore will be way better than my legacy one.
Yeah not surprised at all. Funny thing is some guys on Twitch were telling their viewers to go out and buy close to perfect, but not ideal legendries and shit so they could be reforged at 70. Also were telling them to buy good rares since you can't get shit like Crit, Attack Speed, Crit Damage, Vit/Resall, and Dex on a set of gloves anymore. Just made me laugh given how obvious it should've been to them that all existing items are going to be worthless outside of twinking.
 

Elerion

N00b
735
46
Does this work even if you killed the Butcher already on that character?
Yep, except you've already expended your free legendary off the Butcher. No biggie.

For clarity, these are the guaranteed legendary rules:
Butcher, Belial, Azmodan: Guaranteed legendary on first kill on each character, but only if character is not yet level 60.
Diablo: Guaranteed legendary on first kill on each character regardless of level. Every time you finish the game and reset your quests, you get one new guaranteed legendary.
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
<Silver Donator>
9,557
3,508
Interesting, I didn't know diablo was still guaranteed at 60. I ended up killing her at 59.5 because i thought i'd miss the free legendary
frown.png
 

Elerion

N00b
735
46
If I were to guess, hard is better XP even on softcore if you're untwinked. Sslightly more running around, but more XP per mob HP and less time wasted in death/near-deaths. Master might be more fun though.

For hardcore: Hard no doubt.
 

Juvarisx

Florida
4,267
4,756
So I wove Whismyshire into the Wretched mothers loot run on a whim and it ended up being a ton of xp and a lot more chances for loot. That place is just full of elites. 12-15 min runs nets around 115 mill xp on Torment 2 and it still includes the cellars etc so I dont mind that it doubled my time. XP is more valuable at this point anyways, and CoTA and Cath 4 make me very very bored in comparison.
 

Seventh

Golden Squire
892
15
Got sucked back into this timesink last night. I did some searching, but the b.net forums make me want to slash my wrists as usual.

What's the cookie cutter farming DH spec these days? My gear/build was good when I stopped playing over a year ago, (I beat Diablo on Inferno). Looks like it's shit now. Is hungering/nether tentacles still decent? I'm still able to plow most of the Torment stuff, but definitely not like I used to.
 

Mures

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,014
511
Nether tentacles is garbo since they originally nerfed it, lightning arrow does the same damage nether tentacles used to do, it just doesn't have the ls. Also, frost arrow is pretty good elemental arrow now.

I think most people are using some form of hatred generator, cluster arrow:loaded for bear, smoke screen:healing vapors, companion: wolf, mark for death:contagion, and some other non-hatred spending skill.

I'm personally using evasive fire for hatred generator, I was using hardened armor when I was a bit more squishy, and changed to the one which increases the damage to the two side bolts also. Not really sold on any hatred generator yet, someone suggested grenades, and I tried, but I personally can't stand them. I definitely want to try out some of the other hatred generators now that I don't need the armor from evasive fire. And for the 6th skill I was using fan of knives: battle armor for increased toughness, but recently changed it to rain of vengeance: anathema because again, I didn't need the toughness so much anymore and I was getting a ton of +fire damage.

Oh and for passives you'll want to use sharpshooter because wolf active + ca:lfb + ss is good, other good ones are blood vengeance, archery, steady aim.

Actually thinking about it now I'll probably stick with evasive fire: covering fire and swap archery with steady aim. The bonus from steady aim is up most the time and I like how they reworked evasive fire to having a short cooldown that doesn't use disclipine, evasive fire automatically backflips you away 15 yards if an enemy gets too close so steady aim will be up pretty much all the time.
 

Vorph

Silver Baronet of the Realm
11,702
5,527
I would farm on whatever difficulty allows you to use Vault/Tumble and Tactical Advantage instead of Smoke Screen/Healing Vapors and Perfectionist (or whatever you prefer). I can do T4 or T5 but I stick to T3 because it's so much faster when you can keep a travel ability loaded.

For hatred generators, I like Evasive Fire and Bolas (even without the quiver). They're just "ok" and the rest I think all suck ass. Kridershot has spoiled me, and it's going to be really damn hard to go back to using anything else until I get a new one at 70.

Sharpshooter is really only good at lower gear levels when you still lack crit% imo. Even if I couldn't take advantage of Cull the Weak, making it my obvious choice, I'd still use something besides Sharpshooter with gear approaching 50% crit. Worth noting that at the end of beta Archery was nerfed and Cull the Weak was buffed compared to what they are now. So if you're planning ahead, it's a good idea to have a way to slow shit.
 

Mures

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,014
511
50 crit is very hard to achieve through gear these days. You either have to lose out on survivability or an elemental bonus to get it in most cases. The skill doesn't reset to 0 it resets to 4, so its more of a permanent 4% cc increase with the bonus of another 4% crit every second you don't. Its synergy with mfd + wolf + lfb is invaluable imo, shit is so spread out in this game I probably have 100% crit for 75% of elite packs I come across which melt instantly with that combination, and if ss isn't fully charged and I didn't run head on into an elite pack it is well worth waiting a few seconds for 100 crit rather than engaging without and putting myself in danger for a few more seconds I didn't need to.

Plus I plan on using the new ambush passive in ros for increased burstiness.
 

Nola

Blackwing Lair Raider
3,016
1,447
Someone mentioned once that you can reroll affixes like level requirement on items with the mystic. If that's true does it mean you make a lower level item you own a higher level item? Example a level 65 weapon a level 70 one?
 

Elerion

N00b
735
46
what does OK- mean in your spreadsheet?
OK minus. As in it's a slightly less than average quality step up from the previous difficulty. All difficulties after Hard have the same HP and Damage increases over the previous tier, but the XP bonus varies dramatically. Expert is terrible, Master is good, the Torments are average with T4-6 being slightly better and T2 being slightly worse.