Ah my name is Nik00117#1541
Currently in Act 3 with my lvl 27 Barb
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Ah my name is Nik00117#1541
Currently in Act 3 with my lvl 27 Barb
Can't set my build at work (firewall), but I like both my wizard and demon hunter. DH uses mainly Chakram (dual with rune) for killing and vault for fast-travel/escape. I like Bola with the rune for enlarged radius when I'm out of hatred, good damage. I use Calltrops whenever I have to retreat a little from a tough crowd - draw them into it and take them out with Chakram. I also have rapid-fire on a skill slot for taking down bosses quickly.
Loving the wizard so far. I have wide-beam incinerate on left-click and extra damage meteor on right-click. Wave of force and frost nova on skill bar for crowd control. Bar is rounded out with teleport and archon. I find that with her high DPS, archon is pretty overpowered. It takes out unique mobs in the blink of an eye. Not that I mind. :D
What do you guys think about class rankings damage-wise? I haven't played Monk yet, but after co-oping with all classes through to the beginning of hell and seeing their strengths and weaknesses develop, my power ranking is:
1. demon hunter
2. wizard
3. barbarian
4. witch doctor
5. monk
Demon hunter is far and away the most powerful - my wizard is badass (6k+ DPS, 20k HP), but she can't stack up to the damage output and ability to survive of the DH. Barbarians are great tanks, but it seems melee damage suffers far more than ranged/magic damage as the game progresses. The monk started out great, but his damage output seems to seriously taper off early to midway through nightmare.
Just one character right now, a Demon Hunter. At some point I'll probably make a Monk and Wizard, maybe after Nightmare.
I played through the first two Acts mostly solo, pretty slow. When I got to Act III I started grouping more.
I find that I use very different skills depending on whether I'm in a group or not. When solo I try to chain enemies in a row and destroy them with a hose of damage. When playing in a group it's mostly AOE spamfest.
I did most of Act IV in a group, except for the very end. The pacing steps up a notch in Act III and then goes wild in Act IV. The whole forth act plays more like a single drawn out boss battle to be honest.
I didn't plan on playing through the whole game, but once you start in Act IV it's pretty hard to stop.
I'm DEFINITELY not going to be making a Hardcore character until the server issues are sorted. Even then, I'm not sure I'd risk that kind of time investment unless I had a guarantee. The second your ping goes past like 150ms you need to be automatically ported back to town and the game paused, at the very least. Either that or they need to give you 10 lives, or not actually delete your character (just lose all your gear/gold, but keep your level). My ping has bounced over 2000ms a few times. I've died a few times from purely lag related issues.
The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am in the writing and VO. It could have been really good. Tyrael should have been played by Avery Brooks (Sisko from DS9). Last time I'll comment about how bad it is. I swear.
Tyrael sounds like the All-State guy.
I was soloing act 2 nightmare last nite with my wizard, Im not sure how anyone does hardcore, I die constantly against elite mobs. My gear is pretty decent and my dps is quite nice, but those damn things wall me in an there is no escape, dead in under a second.
The VO and writing is horse ****. It's pretty sad. So much of it is forced and drivel.
A perfect example of this is the constant chattering of the followers. So goddamn annoying. Really, evil wears no disguises here? Wow, I honestly wasn't sure what with the hunkering festering body of death dripping blood and feces. But hey, thanks buddy. I really needed to hear that for the 20th time this session to confirm it.
"I am overburdened. I can't carry any more."
That's pretty much the only voice I remember from Diablo II, because I am a packrat. Is it still in III?
Hardcore characters progress a lot slower because you are going to spend a lot more time getting gear and leveling up. A hardcore character would probably finish normal at like 45 and hit 60 halfway through Nightmare. There's a lot more grinding on easy mobs to get your level up.
I'm grouping with 3 friends and my wizard died far less than the barbarian or monk in nightmare. I've stacked insane hp though. I can run right into any mob (except certain uniques) in nightmare and start casting meteor, wave of force, etc.
Our demon hunter dies the least because of awesome evasive skills... and he doesn't rush headlong into groups like I do.
With DH you can just keep going invisible. The hardest boss is actually Belial because the AOE is big. Diablo is a cake walk. Just run around waiting for Discipline to to restore, then switch off between Smoke Screen and Preparation. Combine with the Passives Night Stalker and Perfectionist (which I don't have yet, 35), and you can basically stay invisible for like 40 seconds of a minute. Kind of ridiculous actually.
But if you do get hit, you die pretty fast. Anything that does big damage with a stun is likely to kill you really fast.
Shoot this might be sacrilege but I was given open beta for Torchlight II and I blasted away at that for past 3 hours!! >.< It closes tomorrow so I guess I will be back at the grind with D3 :p
Level 45 Demon Hunter. Still using chakrams, nothing else compares to them. I like the purple ones instead of the duels though they do a lot more damage. I basically have the same setup as I did 10 levels ago.
Preparation that fills up hatred so I can keep sending out the chakrams for a long time. Smoke screen to vanish for a few seconds and get out of harms way.
Playing around with rain of vengeance and other things, but those are just for fun.
A little pet peeve, but when the lore icon comes up and the VO is describing the back story about a new creature or reading someone's diary it bugs me that the VO can be cut off by random mob dialog. IMO an audio stream should never be cut off or some should take priority over others. Greg Kasavin spoke of this extensively and made sure that Bastion never used the same dialog twice and that nothing was ever cut off. I wish more games would take that into consideration.
Yeap. Really annoying.
Also, just FYI to everyone out there: Get an Authenticator and set it so that it's required for every login.
Apparently there's a trojan of sorts that spread months ago through a out-dated version of Flash, as best I can judge, that has been either farming passwords through us.battle.net (Forums), the game login or both. There are also rumors of a variant that opens up a proxy on your machine so that your stash can be wiped out but it looks like it was just you login in. Most likely multiple attacks from different people, all Chinese-based. Blizzard account hacking just gets more and more aggressive. Only going to get worse with RMAH.
Get Authenticator. Use Chrome.
Same basic issue, but it bothers me more when something else is going on and I pick up lore that cuts it off. I missed a big part of something Zoltun Kulle said because I picked up a satchel when he was still in his first sentence and the lore pre-empted the entire rest of the conversation.
Having dialog cut off sucks, for sure, but at least you can go back and read/listen to the lore. I missed that conversation forever.
lvl 13 monk here... i find that there is no ideal skill/rune setup, it really depends on the mob and weapon you are using (which makes me wish there was quickkeys to equip different loadouts-unless there already is and i am not aware of it)...
ie when i am dealing with a couple of hulking beasts, i go for a pure speed loadout: dual knuckles or blades with fists of thunder or crippling wave allows me to get 5-10 hits on an enemy before they can even react, and have the time,while the daze and slow effects keep them from even touching you once.
with large groups of weaker mobs, i like to use a 2-handed weapon with deadly reach and piercing trident, it gives me slow sweeping attacks that 1 or 2-hit KO the entire group in segments
i actually use dashing strike as a defensive move rather than offensive since it lets you "teleport" to safety when you are walled in. that move paried with lashing tail kick (360-degree knockback) pretty much prevents me from ever getting stuck in a corner.
i have never played d1/d2 so i have no prior experience with the series but i am enjoying the little bits of quirky humor they throw in. i was expecting d3 to be a horror themed game with a serious tone, but find the random bits of humor and even the bad VO to be charming similar to Baldurs Gate. (I especially like the dialogue between the Scoundrel and Templar since they are so different)
one question i have is if anyone is bothering to buy weapons from the merchants, i find the monster loot to be superior in most cases to anything i can buy and dont even see a need to forge anything yet (just have a bunch of salvage material that i saved in my stash box), perhaps its because i am on normal difficulty?
Anyone been in Whymsyshire yet?
It starts to ramp up in Nightmare. In normal pretty much all weapons are overpriced garbage. In harder difficulties they start to become decent, but still not that great.
I've been throwing all my cash into crafting. IMO, some of the best items are crafted in D3, and the ability to craft multiple times means you have a better chance of being able to get an item with multiple sockets. I dual wield crossbows that I made which each have a flawless ruby in them, far better DPS than anything I've seen that's dropped at my level.
Something that could ruin the fun of finding loot for new players is the AH. I got on the AH last night and found two rare (yellow I believe) weapons that were much better than anything I had ever seen in-game for only 300g each... It makes finding loot pointless. Just sell whites to the vendor and buy all your gear on the AH. Maybe it changes at higher levels, but I may make myself not use the AH at all. Also crafting seems pointless at lower levels. The items are pretty much only blue in quality.