Lol, pretty conclusive. It virtually wasn't until farming inferno act iv on my DH that i 'found' upgrades.

 

So Diablo 3 had a Massive Update recently. Patch 2.0.1 was made in preparation for Reaper of Souls on the 18th.

It comes with several new features. For instance Loot 2.0, new Item and Elite affixes, Class ability rebalancing/reworking, difficulty system rehaul, Paragon System Rehaul, and preparation for the complete removal of both the Auction Houses.

Also, if you've been dubious about playing the game before now, and never bought it, it's currently 50% off at 20 dollars through Blizzard's store/shop in preparation for the release of RoS.

I've been playing myself for the last few days, and the game feels better than ever, there are still some tweaks being made (and one fairly significant bug that didn't quite make it into the latest patch), but it's a lot better than before!

Loot 2.0 in specific is pretty awesome. It makes it so that you're more likely to find items your class can use (though you will still occasionally find off-class items), and those items will no longer roll stats that you don't want. So, for instance, if you're playing a Wizard the wand you just found won't roll Strength or Dexterity etc etc. Or if you're playing a barb that new legendary Chest won't roll Int and %Spell Damage.

It's pretty great.

The new Difficulty levels are great too. They make leveling a character to 60 much quicker, and make the grind at 60 a lot more dynamic and fun. I'm looking forward to it all!.

They've gone further, too. Pack sizes have been reduced, but the mobs have been made stronger, there are several new Elite Mob affixes, and a new sort of event. Cursed Shrines and Chests will spawn challenging events that if you succeed at beating grant massive rewards!

Give it a try!

 

I've been playing the new 2.0 patch for about 40 hours. It's an upgrade over vanilla D3, but... legendaries are account bound. Gold is account bound. AH is shutting down in 6 days, which is a good thing. Still, it means that you're essentially playing self-found. You have to use builds you get the item drops for.

There's also the usual Blizzard nerfing of everything that gets "too strong". Eh. I'll be buying RoS, but it's not quite perfect yet.

Definitely more fun that before, though.

 

I've also started playing again. It's a lot of fun.

I was a proponent of the auction house at first, but now concede that it was a mistake. It's just a lot more fun to find stuff yourself, rather than just farming gold and then buying good items.

I just sold a plan for Seven Sins for 150 million gold net. With Reaper of Souls there will be new high end items and I didn't want to have to worry about gold ever again.

My biggest problem with the current state of the game are the different difficulties. The health of the enemies rises too quickly and their damage too slowly with each difficulty level. I'm playing a wizard right now and it takes ages to take out any champion pack, but I'm not in any danger at all. It's infuriating.

@Clerith
In my opinion, you find enough loot to try out any build you like. You can always reduce the difficulty by one or two steps if you're still missing some good items.

 

Ayreon, sounds like you need to itemize for more dps and less toughness.

I've gotten about 80 legendaries, but I haven't gotten a single "build-changing" legendary like Moonlight Ward or Wand of Woh or Tal's 4 set. To play the most effective and often fun builds, you need a handful of rare legendaries like these. It's not a question of lowering the difficulty, it's about playing the build like it's meant to be played, with all the items and skills synergising together beautifully.

You just need to farm for a few months. And hope you get lucky.

 

I have been playing D3 since the new latch and I love it.

If anyone wants me to power leveled your char, just pm me. I'm bored of grinding arreat.

 

Eh, the AH mob will just go underground to certain sites -- they'll have an even bigger black-market base because of the sheer amount of people who used the "official" AH.

Either way, Blizzard's fucked.

Legendaries are now account bound, but it's said that gems, brimstones, and other items are going to be the "new currency": unless the legendary items they get are good, people will just salvage and black-market sell.

Sell a single brimstone at, I dunno, 10 cents? or 5 pence? For people who have stacks of hundreds from buying cheap legendaries on the AH and then salvaging, they could end up making hundreds of pounds/dollars.

Either way, Blizzard loses.

 

I don't know, man. That's what happened with D2 from the get go, there were always websites where you could buy items with real money. But D2 was still hugely popular. I think canning the AH will help Blizzard, simply because there will be more incentive to grind out items, which leads to people becoming addicted to getting the best items, which leads to countless hours playing, which leads to Blizzard winning.

 

As someone who absolutely loathed D3 when it came out, and didn't even finish nightmare on a character...

New d3 changes are pretty goddamn amazing.

I got to 60 in the middle of Act2 (though my last ten levels were powerleveled in torment 6), and I still haven't actually finished Diablo in my first run through.

The game scales very dynamically on difficulty/character level, and high difficulty levels, especially when ungeared, will bring lots of long tactical fights. Gearing isn't nearly as hard as it could be, because crafted rare gear is actually pretty good and rare items drop a LOT. I've also gotten a number of uniques, most actually useful (Wizardspike and magefists both bringin back the d2 glory).


I'm actually considering getting RoS now.

edit: for difficulty levels, the game can be set onto different difficulties at any time outside of actual play (i.e. leave the game youre character is in, change difficulty, and load back in). You can change it from normal to master under lvl 60, with master giving 200% increased xp and gold. After you hit 60, or someone who is 60 makes the game, there is an extra difficulty called torment.

Torment has its own slider that scales from T1 to T6. T1 is 300% inc gold and xp, T6 is 1600% increased xp and gold. There is also some increase to legendary item drop as you get higher into torment (and in RoS there will be torment exclusive legendaries), but the actual numbers are unknown.

My ~100k dps wizard has no trouble farming solo in t2, but in t6 i'm 1-3 shot by pretty much any rare/elite. I hate arcane sentries.

 

You need to learn to move. It's very moba in that regard, which i love.

Imagine how it is for bat doctors where moving makes you oom (dead).

I respecced rq out of that.

Being in Australia, I'm still furious at the lag i get all the time. I can't wait for ps4 version. I think I'll wizard or crusader on that.

 

Note: Waller Frozen Thunderstorm Frost-Pulse Arcane-Enchanted packs of elites are a goddamn bitch to fight and I hate hate hate hate them.

It's GLORIOUS. I have to be on the move and dodging almost constantly, choosing the right moments to attack and the right moments to reposition or blow my defensive cooldowns is really fun. Better even than the vanilla boss battles, which have become pretty easy, sadly. Hopefully RoS spruces them up a bit or the new boss battles are better.

For instance, my main character right now is a monk. For those who don't know the classes well, the Monk is described as a 'Hank', or 'Healer-Tank'. Because that's what they are. But, conversely, their damage output is pretty low, and what damage they have is really bursty. As difficulty goes up (Torment 1 - Torment 6), there is no way that my deficient damage output can keep up with the increased life pools and damage output of the various mobs I'm forced to face. So I can't just stand and trade even playing the character often described as 'thelegendneverdies.jpg'.

The battles with elites and named (or the terrifying elites + named packs. oh god) are much more tactical than they were previously. It's the same for the rest of my characters, too. My Wizard may be able to blow through slow packs or singles with ease, but he has to choose his positioning a hell of a lot more carefully than the monk does.

I love it.

Also my release-date on the initial reveal-post was off, it's the 25th for RoS.

Also, fuck Fire-Chains, fuck them with a rusty spork. Fire Chains are THE DEVIL.

 

Honestly, you need better weaps if you're not killing fast enough in T1. Anything less than 150k (unbuffed) won't do for T1. Hell, my wiz with 120k dps was getting his ass handed to him in T1...so I farmed Master like a maniac until I found a couple items that got my dps to 200k+. You should consider doing the same... you'll kill monsters faster, and you'll get legendaries faster too.

FWIW, the one monster suffix I really, really dislike?

Waller, Frozen, Arcane, Mortar, Minion. Insta-kill.

 

I'm doing T1 super easy with only 100k dps. I can also do T3 pretty decently too. T4 can't do though . I'm playing monk. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Pantrice-1488/hero/16321603

 

I can solo through T3 easily enough with around 125k dps as a wizard.

I haven't tried t4 but I'm pretty sure I could do it, outside of having absurdly long fights against named mobs. Diablo would also be a massive pain.

Conversely, I don't even have to move when I beat the A3 boss on T1. He just died in about 10-15 seconds.

 

I can do T4 no problem as a Witch Doctor with 110k paper DPS.

Paper stats don't matter any more. It's all about effective DPS.

 

Depends on build ofc, but no one is complaining about their dps if they're at 150k and +50% elemental dmg.

Ppl who give their paper dmg and are concerned obviously don't have even that.

 

And none of it will matter in a few days.

Yay RoS

 

100% extra exp for this weekend. Grab it while it's hot, guys!

Been using this time to power level a couple of my chars and other people chars too. It's faster now.

I can completely level up someone from 1-50 before SK....40 minutes. lol.

 

By the way, there is a benefit to pre-ordering d3. You get those cool glowing wings, and demon hunter in Heroes of the Storm.

 

Leaching off someone's t6 RA/CotA?