PSA: Diablo III Open Beta WeekendFollow

Sure, you'll run out of money if you try glass cannon death zerging everything. I see no issue with this. You can still clear Act 1 Inferno on gear gained from A4 Hell and A1 Inferno, and not die often if at all. I cleared A1 Inferno regularly on DH without dying before the current patch and I don't have a single piece of gear above item level 61. Is it really so terrible that they made dying actually have an almost significant penalty even on Softcore? There are some complaints I agree with in regards to the patch, but increased repair costs making death zerg farming less viable isn't one of them.

Whatever. I've been focusing on Hardcore more recently, anyway. Softcore is a huge pain in the ***. The item economy is pretty ****** right now, as there's no mechanic in place to take items out of the economy, and the high level item market is becoming more and more logjammed. I don't have fun farming Act 1 and 2 comfortably, finally getting a couple of good, usable items, and going to the AH to find that they just aren't worth it. At least in Hardcore, there's always a demand for leveling gear as well as higher level gear. Median items still sell on HC. People die and it creates a demand for items as they level new characters. That is good.

Anyway, I haven't really felt too affected by the nerfs, on DH or Barb. I never played my DH as a glass cannon, so my high-survivability gearset is still just fine. On Barb, I lose a bit of HP recovery per second due to the IAS nerf, but I can still facetank all of Act 1 and at least half of Act 2, in item level 61 gear.

Forums are usually going to be a disproportionate ********* anyhow, since the people who like the patch or who aren't very bothered by it at the least are not going on forums to say how awesome it is; they're playing the game and having fun. Personally, I've already gotten $60 worth of entertainment value out of Diablo III. I know people expected a game that they would be replaying for 10 years like they did with Diablo II, but I don't really see that happening with really any games in today's gaming market. There are certainly numerous issues with the game, and it really could have been quite better. It's perhaps most frustrating because you play the game and can see the ways they just missed the mark. I'm not being a Blizzard apologist, I'm just saying that I've gotten my money's worth out of it.

IIRC, the IAS nerf didn't touch quivers.

So Someone actually beat HC Inferno, with a barb no less.


BTW this probably wont be possible post-patch because of 3 min enrages on some bosses and new boss abilities.

Edited, Jun 20th 2012 7:27pm by BeanX

But it did affect all the other pieces of gear, so the point remains that DH were still significantly affected by the IAS nerfs. Perhaps not as much as other classes, but to say they only got a slight nerf compared to a hardcore nerf to other classes is a bit disingenuous, IMO.

I'm not complaining; my DH is built around survivability rather than as a glass cannon. I'll miss Nether Tentacles (the incidental life return was nice against Reflects Damage mobs), but overall I'm not feeling the pain from the nerf so much.

Edited to add: The Nether Tentacles nerf (or fix, however you want to look at it) is actually a big damage loss. On slow-moving or stationary mobs, particularly those with large hitboxes, Nether Tentacles would hit more than once, sometimes 3 or 4 times, for 155% weapon damage per hit. Now, you're obviously not supposed to be doing 450-600% weapon damage on a regular attack (particularly when Hatred regain is easy to come by), so I'll agree that it's a fix to what it should be, but it still remains a very large damage loss.

Edited, Jun 20th 2012 10:49pm by Spoonless

To be fair, Bashiok, I believe, recently posted that the general wear and tear of armor might be too steep of a repair cost with the new values. They'll be looking at it, and I expect a reduction.

I do play my melee character plenty. I can run through Act 1 and Act 2 on my Barbarian and have it be profitable just from gold drops and NPCing all my item drops. I mean, Bashiok said that wear and tear durability loss is a bit much and that they'll look into adjusting it, so it's obviously somewhat of an issue, but personally I haven't had any complaints about it. Also, I thought gear took durability loss from time spent in combat, not necessarily from being hit. Though of course that favors glass cannons as well since their kill speed is higher.

I'd be interested in knowing the normal dropoff in players playing a game a month after release. Obviously some portion of those players no longer playing are just a naturally occurring dropoff. I know I've ended up stopping playing many games because of factors unrelated to my game experience. I'm not saying that there isn't a large amount of people who are unhappy with the game. Public game numbers are a poor measure of overall population, though. There was a fairly large scare about Public games and session ID spoofing. Whether or not it was actually happening, it undoubtedly had an impact on the number of players in public games. Most HC players aren't playing public games. I very rarely do a public game on my SC characters, and when I check my Friend List, most of them are usually playing solo as well. Obviously anecdotal evidence does not a scientific study make, but my personal experience shows a high portion of players not participating in public games.

The nerf to inanimate object drops is really stupid. They are always going to build a better bot, and these types of nerfs affect regular players to a higher degree than it does botters. Now they'll just stack thorns/goldfinder gear and bot run through heavily populated Normal/Nightmare levels. Do we then eliminate gold drops from mobs in those difficulty levels?
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I think I might switch my SC Barb over to a dual wield build. If I can get my hands on another decent Life on Hit weapon, I should be able to make up for the loss of the shield. I'm certain I could run Act 1 with no problems without a shield, but might need a couple upgrades to run Act 2.

I lost my HC level 51 Barb to a champion pack that I didn't really prepare for. Vortexed into multiple arcane points while Leap and WotB were down. Almost made it, but couldn't get away fast enough. That's my second HC character loss, but I do have a 52 DH and a couple characters in high 20's/low 30's. Still enjoying HC way more than SC.

Actually, I am finding the EU servers to be more stable for me than the NA servers (I live on the east coast of the US). I have about the same latency, maybe slightly higher on EU but it's still usually 150ms even on the NA servers, and I anecdotally seem to experience rubberbanding much, much less frequently on the EU server.

Mt Barb was on the NA server, my DH on EU. My highest 2 HC characters are both on EU but I'll probably work on another NA Barb, possibly a Monk.

I really stopped playing public games because I'd join on Barb and get in full group, with all four of us being Monks or Barbs. Kill speed is way too slow with four tank-spec'd players. Maybe we'll see some more varied builds with the massive damage nerfs to Inferno.

I'm not sure that Warden>Butcher is necessarily the most efficient farm path for A1 anymore. With bosses no longer guaranteeing 2 rares, it might be better to start further back and just farm champion packs. I haven't really looked into it. I might end up doing Warden>Butcher anyway since I like how short and fast it is, and I like killing a boss to end the farm run.

That sounds... incredibly dumb.

Spammers would likely be acquiring boxed copies, no? Since they come with Friend codes?

Kind of pointless since if they anticipate an account being banned anyway, they'll just create a stable to sit on cooldown. Meanwhile, if they're so afraid of people demanding refunds, I'd just make it explicitly clear that digital editions can not be refunded. If someone goes on to initiate a chargeback, well ban 'em and be done with it.

In the end, you'll never be rid of the RMT cockroach. It's just a matter of designing your game so players turning to them isn't really needed. In D3's case, though, it's an RMT's wet dream, RMAH or not.

They fixed the monk fighting animations.

Oh of course, because they are using stolen credit cards. I should have thought of that.