Diablo III launch

[Paracelsi]

Nope. It still has its uses though, like if you keep dying you'll have to wait longer (~30 seconds) before you can respawn, so it helps if someone just resurrected you instead.

[Marceror]

Originally Posted by The Great Snook

Barbarian all the way for him. He started playing D2 at age 5 (now 16) and the barbarian suited him then and still does.

I'm planning to buy a copy for my son when he turns 9 next month. Glad to hear I'm not the only father consenting to allow their youngins to play this game. I'm looking forward to grouping up with him when he gets it.

He's been playing D2 for almost a year, and has a level 70ish Druid as his main character. He's a well adjusted kid, and I don't see a problem with him doing D3... fighting for the forces of light to bring down the bad guys. I'll just have to really watch him on the online aspect of the game (would greatly prefer an offline play option), and set some good ground rules. I'll also be looking into restricting his account with the parental controls that are available.

[joacqin]

Man, the attack speed nerf screwed me over a lot more than I thought it would. Lost 10k damage and now it feels like fighting in syrup. I hadn't even invested heavily in haste but just used items I found. Need to find me some fast weapon so it at least feels reasonable again because now things are way too slow.

[Paracelsi]

As far as WDs are concerned our damage has always favored crit/crit damage, attack speed for us is more damage + versatility thanks to on-hit stats. I heard those solo build WDs trying to be demon hunters were hit pretty hard though. Multiplayer-wise, I'm currently having a blast farming the hell out of Inferno Act 2. Our favorite haunt is Kulle's sanctuary, where there are no wasps/lacuni.

[joacqin]

I absolutely loathe lacuni stalkers and harbour a deep resentment towards the wasps. Have not noticed them being less prone to run away since the patch.

Attack speed was the best offensive stat for all classes and honestly still is. 1% haste is 1% more damage. 1% crit is not even that, to get it to that you need lots of +crit damage as well. It needed a nerf but I understand how people feel cheated. My wizard feels much more sluggish now and I hadn't even invested heavily in it. I now need 3-4m or a bunch of lucky drops to be able to properly progress act 3.

[Paracelsi]

The character sheet shows that I have 15k damage and yet I can crit for 200k+ damage with Soul Harvest and if enough health orbs drop. My normal crit is 90k-120k, and I have a 30% crit chance. My weapon stacks crit damage (weapon enchantment + gem). I release three zombie bears per cast, so ideally one in each attack should crit. This is not including buff effects from skills like Big Bad Voodoo, and this only the damage from a single skill (Zombie Bears).
AFAIK with WDs crit/crit damage has always been the more desirable stat offense-wise, it's just damage takes a back seat once you consider the benefits of attack speed and on-hit effects like life steal and life on hit. The same also holds true for DPS monks. All barbs/wizards I know stack attack speed though, and DHs get so much of both it's almost unfair.

[The Great Snook]

Originally Posted by Marceror

I'm planning to buy a copy for my son when he turns 9 next month. Glad to hear I'm not the only father consenting to allow their youngins to play this game. I'm looking forward to grouping up with him when he gets it.

He's been playing D2 for almost a year, and has a level 70ish Druid as his main character. He's a well adjusted kid, and I don't see a problem with him doing D3... fighting for the forces of light to bring down the bad guys. I'll just have to really watch him on the online aspect of the game (would greatly prefer an offline play option), and set some good ground rules. I'll also be looking into restricting his account with the parental controls that are available.

That was one of the beauties of D2. He didn't even know there was an online option. He either played solo or we played over our home network. It was great Daddy/son time. There were a lot of parents who didn't agree, but we didn't care. I didn't and still don't think that animated violence (and scantily clad succubi) are a problem.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by The Great Snook

That was one of the beauties of D2. He didn't even know there was an online option. He either played solo or we played over our home network. It was great Daddy/son time. There were a lot of parents who didn't agree, but we didn't care. I didn't and still don't think that animated violence (and scantily clad succubi) are a problem.

Granted it's not an apples to apples comparison, because your son is a teenager, and mine is only 4, but it would appear that it is only fathers and sons that view gaming as quality father/son time. My wife hates that at the age of 4, Jack is already a gamer.

Jack loved D2 - although since the coordination isn't really there at such a young age, I would always level the characters he liked to play, and then let him play in Act I Normal difficulty so he could just own everything. He'd play while he sat on my lap, because he wasn't tall enough to sit on the chair, reach the mouse, and still see the screen. His favorite was the druid, specifically the werebear. He also made me make him a barbarian that was clad entirely in navy blue and black items so he could "play Batman in D2".

He also loves Skyrim, and laughs his head off whenever a power attack decapitates someone. Good times. But yeah, when it comes to gaming, boys will really get into it, if they have an advocate in the form of their father.

[Splunge]

Originally Posted by Aldeth the Foppish Idiot

laughs his head off whenever a power attack decapitates someone.

Maybe he just enjoys noggin extraction, whether by humour or force.

[The Great Snook]

Originally Posted by Splunge

Maybe he just enjoys noggin extraction, whether by humour or force.

I say his official board name is now "Vorpal Jack"

[The Great Snook]

After some marathon sessions this weekend we have beaten "normal" and are now moving on to Nightmare. This is a really good game and we are getting slightly addicted.

[joacqin]

I am farming farming farming slowly building up the bankroll that will allow me to progress through act3. I am not very interested in the rmah especially not since the prices are still ridiculously high. 20-30€ for items that are only decent. People need to get a grip.

[Barmy Army]

The game economy is allover the place at the moment.

In other news, I just got a new crossbow for my DH, which put my DPS from 9.5k up to 32.5k. At level 57. Nice jump.

[Sir Rechet]

The AH market is still fresh, it takes a while before farming bots (either manually or scripted, once those banes of mankind solve how to do it) manage to flood it. So yes, you normal mortals still have a realistic chance to get lucky and let someone else pay for the game for you, maybe even get some extra change. As apparently getting ahead one's buddies is a wallet opener to surprisingly many people.

[joacqin]

Kinda removes the point for me. I like the slow grind to progress. Where is the fun in spending 500€ and then blitz through inferno? Now I treasure every drop, every bit of gold and am constantly feeling a sense of progression. My brother put it nicely, it is like running around with a carrot on a stick and it is. For some reason I enjoy it. Just spent 2m out of my hard earned gold on a new helmet and a pair of gloves. It felt like they were decently prices but as Barmy said the market is very unstable. There is one thing going for the bots and that is that they tend to stabilize the market in games. I am certain though that there are bots trawling the AH for anything that is "underpriced" if you manage to get an item with really good value on a search it is sold before you can even attempt to buy it.

[Paracelsi]

From the American server side of things, the best gear (at 60) is still valued at around 600k gold. Ideally you should only be spending 1m gold or less on equipment unless it's an amulet, rings, or a weapon (unless it's a particular piece of gear with just the right bonuses that you need for your build). Most items being sold for 1m+ gold are grossly overpriced, very few of them are actually worth the gold.

If it helps, one way to determine the true value of an item (defense-wise) is to consider its "true resist" value. Since 100 armor = 10 all resist, the true resist value is the total all resist value a piece of equipment has. So an item with 400 armor and +20 all resist has a true resist value of 60, while an item with 200 armor and +40 all resist also has a true resist value of 60.
More info on that here (url to a post in the D3 official forums, the calculator link may not be so secure though - I'd avoid it) http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5813171749. As for offense, depending on your build a bonus to Int/Critical damage/Attack speed can be worth more than one hundred or so DPS. Thanks to the last patch, one way to test how much any of these stats can affect your build is to buy an item worth 10k or less (the AH here is full of them atm) and check.

Note that their are skills which raise your armor or resists. Adjust values accordingly.

I'm pretty sure I can take on act 2, but the recent bugs introduced by last week's patch has made it difficult for me to progress past Kulle's sanctuary solo. So for the moment I'm back to farming act 1.

[joacqin]

It is not like that in Europe. There doesn't seem to be many items in the 300-900k range. Items that helps you farm act1 and even progress act2 seems to be 0-200k while any item that could help you go beyond is 900k+ with an average price of 2m or so. If you want something really good you won't find it for below 5m.

[Paracelsi]

Sounds depressing. Even after the recent patch prices haven't gone down? Over here we're getting 50k 1.2k dps items atm (magical, rares are in the 1m range). It's not like these are particularly rare anymore, they can drop anywhere in act 1 now. You're guaranteed to find one or two after a while of killing elites nonstop.

End-game items are still being sold for 15m+, with some as pricey as 40m (a handful are worth even more) but those are the very best drops afaik. With these you should beat act 4 easy, with the right build.

It might be because we have more players stuck at act 1-2 inferno, so there's a huge surplus.

[Gnarfflinger]

Ironically, there's an ad for a site offering 1 million gold for $3. I wonder if that's why I don't see that many bots spamming general chat anymore.

But the problem is that very few people put a buyout price on the stuff they put on the AH. And the ones that do put it so high that you would have to buy gold just to buy the gear you need. It's rare anymore that I find any gear that would help one of my other characters, let alone the one I'm playing at that moment!

It gets to the point where you have to go to the AH or you can't progress because your gear sucks.

That said, I believe I've done something fundamentally wrong with my Barbarian. He's getting one-shotted by the Skeleton King on Nightmare. I've been looking for gear with physical resistance, and I'm trying to upgrade my armour hoping that helps. Perhaps I need to adjust my passive skills too.

[joacqin]

If you are getting one-shotted by anything pre-hell then yes you are doing something very very wrong. I bought stuff on the AH pre-inferno but it was mostly to be cooler, I didn't need it. Only helped me kill stuff slightly faster. All bosses have huge animations before they do their big bad attacks and it means it is time to run away. I would recommend looking over your skill selection. Nightmare is perfectly doable, I would even say very easy without a single item from the AH. That said I did almost die on the skeleton king normal on my barb, it was much more difficult than with my wizard.

The American AH must be very different from the European one, here very very few items have no buy out and most of the time there is little difference between bid and buy out.

[Paracelsi]

Yep, I just bought a ~100k set for my monk and he's rocking act 2 inferno with it. We have a considerable surplus of act 1-2 items, though from those ad sites it seems all our end-game items are priced similarly. Items like Skull grasp are still 15m+ for example.

If it helps, nightmare is more about pumping vitality than increasing your resistances. In hell you will -need- resistances though, one of the changes from last week's patch made fighting elites/champions in lower difficulties much more difficult (better AI, and they're spamming skills like never before). For example, "Frozen" monsters will now coordinate their abilities to keep you perma-chilled, and "Waller" monsters will now summon walls in a way that would either trap you, or prevent you from hitting them with projectile skills.

[joacqin]

I love wallers, they wall themselves in and bathe in the pools of venom my hydra spits out.

100k for the entire set or per piece? If it is per piece you can probably find that EU as well, it is when you want upgrades to those items it gets iffy. I am farming act1 really fast now and in my experience I get much more useful loot there than in act3 where every pack takes ten times longer and all too often kills me.

[Paracelsi]

I am farming act1 really fast now and in my experience I get much more useful loot there than in act3 where every pack takes ten times longer and all too often kills me.

Same here.

100k for a whole set, including a 1k dps crit damage/lifesteal/dex weapon for 5k. Monks get a passive called "One With Everything" though which makes all their resistances equal to their highest resistance, so I only had to stack one resist. Atm he looks exactly like a samurai wielding a katana, he even uses a special animation when attacking (slash/shoulder charge/kick instead of just poke/poke/poke).

I checked the EU AH earlier and prices seem similar, as far as high DPS (1.3k+) and some legendaries go. Maybe Sir Rechet was right and AH prices are just everywhere atm.

[joacqin]

Dude, I have been watching weapon prices like a hawk for the last week and a weapon like the one you describe does not cost 5000 gold on EU. I am looking for a 750+dps 175+int, critdmg weapon and you might be able to get some mace for 500k but if you want something decent it is well past the million. I need to take a peek on the US ah.

Looked at the US AH now and dex items must be real cheap. I am looking at the kind of items I would buy for my EU wizard prices look the same or even more expensive than EU. Weird, I put in the weapon stats you wrote and there are three weapons on the AH with those stats, the cheapest is 90m bid. You must have been really really lucky or we are talking about completely different things. Or are you talking about a two hander? Two handers are free, and **** even so I must say that after looking at the AH you must have been quite lucky to find one for 5k with those stats.

[Paracelsi]

Yep it was a two-hander. I just found a similar weapon (warhammer though) for 25k. Slight upgrade, skipped due to terrible attack speed. I prefer two-handed weapons since progression-wise I usually play in groups. This particular monk is a conviction mantra spammer with invincibility/cc - everyone just loves the +48% damage.

I just checked the AH and I must say I have never considered it from a one-hander user's point of view before. The prices on these things are ridiculous.