Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls

Dudebro_sl said:

Man the unhallowed set for demon hunter is ridiculous. I just tried switching and trying to make natalya's work and it's terrible in comparison. Twice the work paying attention to cooldowns and buffs for shit damage. I have stellar gear for natalya's as well so it was really disappointing.

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sakkath_sl said:

Opposite for me.. I have a decent suit of unhallowed, a really good roll ancient yang's and a near perfect non ancient DML and I still haven't bothered even equipping it yet because I'm having too much fun strafing everywhere and shadowbeasting everything for 3bill with natalyas. Maybe I should try unhallowed but I love the mobility of natalya.

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Yeah, I was a bit surprised to hear that because when I stopped playing in season 3 natalya's was taking over as the "best" set. Looking at the top few profiles on the leaderboards it looks like it is about 50/50 natalyas/ue.

I haven't played with natalya's yet, I believe I may have to do that. I made a couple of sage pieces to farm deaths breath and 4pc ue just doesn't cut it, I was killing way too slow even on only t6 so I need to see if I can farm at a reasonable rate w/ sage and natalya's.

Tenks_sl said:

I've said before RoS is far better than D3 vanilla so don't try and completely corner cut the argument by saying it could be worse. It could be far better as well.

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And to expand upon this. Why does Dust Devils need to do 2500%? Why not just give WW the Dust Devils rune and balance the game from that aspect? Why do the HP and damage numbers need to scale into the billions? It would be far easier to balance the game from a set of numbers that go into the 100k's instead of the 10b+. Sure there will still probably be the most efficient build but it wouldn't be how it is now where there are a few builds which are viable and every other one which is completely non-viable.

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I'll bite.

Yes the game could use a stat squish pretty badly at this point, however, doing that much damage isfun. Stomping difficulties you had problems with days ago isfun. D3 is right now the only hack n slash that makes you play entirely self-found and thus has to make it viable and make it feel like you are progressing. PoE's +10 resists/+10 stats upgrades are fine and dandy, but D3's systems don't give you the luxury and they unfucked enough design decisions from vanilla that I give them a pass for this one. It is also much more exciting to gear for offense than not getting splattered all over the wall by a boss coughing because you didn't max sneezing resist, which is why D3 relies on defense through movement or active use of abilities and the game is designed around you fucking up every once in a while. PoE emphasizes planning and preparation, with the gameplay itself taking almost a backseat for certain builds. I eagerly await a patch that nerfs the auras into the ground, since trading significant passive bonuses for active skills is terrible design in a game like that.

As far as set bonuses go, it is very much setablo. Originally, they were designed to allow you stomp through T6, so there was some kind of parity among classes, since the baseline is all over the place, with Crusaders sucking twice as much. Before seasons were introduced, some classes could barely even do T6 geared to the limit. Inferno has hopefully taught Blizzard that gating difficulty this way is terrible, since you also gate the most efficient way to acquire loot, unlike PoE. Sets mitigate that, or at least give you clear progression towards that gamechanging bonus. With their stated goal of D3 being a game you play for a week or two, the progression and the pacing is all that really matters. The end point is important to the poopsockers, but not to the general audience. They have to hand out enough sweets to make you crave more, but not too much to make your stomach hurt and quit in a day.

There will always be a BiS. They have decided to just continually ramp stuff up. At the end of the day, hitting for 100k or 100 billion doesn't make a shit bit of difference. Whether they make the BiS the sets or the legendaries, the carrot for this game will never change.

Blizzard keeps giving in to the lowest common denominator. Shit costs too much gold, here have free gold. Gems rarely drop and upgrading them takes too long, here, have gem goblins dropping 400 gems and have a 1 click combine. My shit always has one stat I don't care about, here, reroll one stat per item. My Vagina hurts, here's some sand remover.

What ever it is you want to change the game to, it will just make another aspect the worst aspect.

Arcaus_sl said:

There will always be a BiS. They have decided to just continually ramp stuff up. At the end of the day, hitting for 100k or 100 billion doesn't make a shit bit of difference. Whether they make the BiS the sets or the legendaries, the carrot for this game will never change.

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Not to try and romanticize D3 vanilla or anything but it actually did give you a reason to log in. You could hit the roulette wheel jackpot and get a near 1k DPS 1H mace/axe and that would be BiS. You could also turn that around and trade it for pretty much a full set of average items for your character. You were also always chasing that +0.25APS Echo Fury with a socket and a decent damage roll. Was it perfect? Far from it. But it gave a sense of progression because the game had an endgame. Even if that endgame was WW'ing your ass through Keeps2 it didn't have a concept of "Oh I got stronger. Time to notch up the Torment level and it is like playing the exact same game again until I get another upgrade." It gave you a sense of "I got stronger and now this is faceroll." Which, if you ask me, is more what an ARPG is about. But now the end-game of D3 is "Get stronger, get bigger numbers, fight monster with bigger numbers." It lacks a real feeling of individual progression because even though your numbers get bigger the monster numbers get comparatively bigger. And yeah you could say "Well just play on T1 the entire time then if that is your thing!" While that argument is semi-valid it would only work if they made it so there could be some form of progression. You can only do T1 so fast that upping it to T4 is spending equal time but doing the same content but with slightly higher drop rate.

I still feel like without any form of trading the game will and can never have a real end-game. You can't have rare rune words you expect someone to spend 400 hours getting a Zod. It isn't going to happen with this format. So without trading and ultra rarity there is no real purpose or reason to gate rarity behind timesinks which ultimately makes the experience last about a week then wear off.

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Come to think of it if they wanted to build ontop of D3 vanilla instead of RoS which took it in a completely different direction they probably could have salvaged it. PoE's currency system is genius. Something I would have never thought about but it makes logical sense and is a logical progression from D2 using SoJ's. If the D3 had some form of currency (think like Ramalambadingdong's Gifts) to trade you could put them up on the AH for the currency price. Remove RMAH transaction. The issue with D3's AH lied in the fact that gold was completely and utterly worthless and most of the good items went through the RMAH channel. Hell people use poe.trade basically like the D3 AH. So clearly people want a streamlined process like that but completely get rid of "I want to buy your item" and having to go into a game together. Obviously redo a ton of the legendaries since outside of a handful they were worthless in D3 vanilla. Some changes like that could have really done some wonders for D3 to make it last longer than the legs it currently has. I know many people are still riding high on the new season and probably didn't play all previous seasons but ever patch is like this with RoS. They add stuff, you consume it in less than a month and then you never have a reason to log in.

Tenks_sl said:

Not to try and romanticize D3 vanilla or anything but it actually did give you a reason to log in. You could hit the roulette wheel jackpot and get a near 1k DPS 1H mace/axe and that would be BiS. You could also turn that around and trade it for pretty much a full set of average items for your character. You were also always chasing that +0.25APS Echo Fury with a socket and a decent damage roll. Was it perfect? Far from it. But it gave a sense of progression because the game had an endgame. Even if that endgame was WW'ing your ass through Keeps2 it didn't have a concept of "Oh I got stronger. Time to notch up the Torment level and it is like playing the exact same game again until I get another upgrade." It gave you a sense of "I got stronger and now this is faceroll." Which, if you ask me, is more what an ARPG is about.

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No one is forcing you to up the torment level. Get your new item, faceroll normal a million times looking for a new item to faceroll it better. Like if that's what you enjoy then put a constraint on yourself. Self impose a limit. Or play a Fetish Witch Doctor. Zuni's is pretty easy to get but they rely on tons of legendaries and the dps difference is huge every time you get one of those legendaries.

Valderen_sl said:

I started a Witch Doctor, not seasonal...the first set I manage to complete was Zunimassa(sp?) and since I had The Carnevil, I made a poison dart fetish army build. I don't have ancient pieces yet, for any slot.

It's pretty simple to play and I made it to 44GR which is my best on any character ever.

I did manage to complete the Helltooth, Jade Harvester, and Arachyr sets.

I was wondering how those others are compared to the build I'm using? Is it worth trying to gear up for them...or should I just focus on getting better rolled and ancient pieces for the set I have. I enjoyed it, since it seems pretty good and well it's fun to see 23 Fetish destroying shit.

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Zuni/Carnevil and Helltooth/Grin Reaper are the current face raping builds for WD. Arachyr will suffice for t6 and such, but doesn't perform as well on higher torments and grifts. Jade is currently the weakest set, but like anything else if you have full ancients and good uniques to back it up you can still get shit done.

Arcaus_sl said:

No one is forcing you to up the torment level. Get your new item, faceroll normal a million times looking for a new item to faceroll it better. Like if that's what you enjoy then put a constraint on yourself. Self impose a limit. Or play a Fetish Witch Doctor. Zuni's is pretty easy to get but they rely on tons of legendaries and the dps difference is huge every time you get one of those legendaries.

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If the player has to impose things like that upon themselves that is a massive stink of bad game design. Players should be playing the game as the designers intend it to be played. This patch added some more fluff but it still didn't change enough to make it turn into a ghost town after a month after the season drops.

Games are played the way people want to play them. The designers put the framework out there and then people just do wtf ever they want. That's always been the case. The current state clearly doesn't cater to you but it sure as hell caters to me. None of the things you talk about wanting are appealing to me, and if the game actually was built that way I simply wouldn't play as it wouldn't allow me to play the game the way I want to. So... don't play if you don't want to play it "your way" within the existing framework of the game. Just play games the way you want to play them. If you can't, don't play that game. There's literally hundreds of amazing games you haven't played so you have options

Well I hope the game gives you legs that myself and millions of other players of D3 find absent. Like I've said before no one plays the game months after the season release. My friends list indicates the only person I ever actually see online is Deathwing on a consistent basis in the game. I know it is still shiny and I see upwards of 14+ on my friends list in game now in the evenings but I doubt that will last.

Yea. Because it doesn't HAVE that crazy MMO grind. You can actually "beat" the game after a few weeks and move on to something else. That's why people come back en masse when there's new stuff but leave once they've experienced it. It's fun, you win, you move on. PoE is terrible if you like doing that. MMOs are terrible if you like doing that. If Blizzard's goal is to have this kind of traffic on their lmitedly-monetized online-only game 100% of the time, then yes they are doing it wrong. If they just want to keep people interested periodically and let them have fun trying different crazy builds and occasionally boosting box sales, then they're doing alright so far.

For me, I enjoy just playing with the builds. I prefer doing it on higher torments because there's more shiny there but overall if the build is fun it hardly matters. As everyone always says, none of us are ever going to be competitive on the ladder so what else is there to do but have fun playing and setting your own goals?

I will be done with the game probably at the end of the month but that's fine. The days of grinding in EQ for weeks for one item are gone and I'm thankful for that. It was interesting when it was the thing to do but frankly this is better. When S4 ends I'll play around again briefly with the S4 builds I couldn't do in off-season and probably play S5. And so it goes.

Tenks_sl said:

If the player has to impose things like that upon themselves that is a massive stink of bad game design. Players should be playing the game as the designers intend it to be played. This patch added some more fluff but it still didn't change enough to make it turn into a ghost town after a month after the season drops.

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A person making a personal decision that they don't enjoy the same thing other people are enjoying is bad game design? That's a pretty retarded statement. I enjoy the way the game is designed. You have some serious mental block where you can't see how you want it to be and how it is are actually the same thing. So instead of calling you an idiot, I offered a solution. At the end of the day, playing games is about enjoyment. You want to increase your enjoyment. Putting a personal restriction on the game to make it like when you enjoyed it would help you enjoy it. Why not do it?

This is starting to sound like that stupid dating thread. I'm in to chunky chicks who are intelligent but some dude who hires tranny hookers told me to get my rocks off in the hot chick and leave the one I have a connection with by the way side. Sounds like I should do that because it's obviously a good idea.

Sooo. Over the weekend I got all my monk sets, and all my Crusader sets. Along with braces belts rings etc. 5 Furnaces dropped for me. Though none ancient.

Aaaand I'm done with Diablo 3.

Normally I hit d3 hard when the season starts, play nothing but, and burn out. This season I'm still playing other games so hopefully I make it past the first month.

Unless you really want to cap out one of everything in a season it's not supposed to last forever. Play it as long as you are having fun with it.