Wait, people play this game for the plot?

 

Yea arcane sucks so bad. I hate molten more though. If I don't have infinite room to kite them, they are such a pain. And I have died more times to their after-death explosions while looting than I have to actual fights.
I ran into some waller arcane jailer fast mobs that were also those lacuni things from act 2 who have that moment where they jump at you and become invulnerable. THOSE were a bitch.

 

Anarchy, if you're having trouble finding appropriate gear try the auction house. Search for what stats and stuff you want on your weapon, and then set a max buyout price. I usually set it around 4000 gold and find anything I want. The lag just sucks though.

 

My tag is LordAnarchy#1615

If anyone can help I'd be much appreciative.

 

I did, a little bit. Gameplay was a pretty big part of it, but after playing the first two as a kid I want to know where the story goes.

It may not be the best plot, but it's still fun to experience it. Also, them cinematics are amazing.

 

Blizzard has been pretty good with their small movies, but I always found them just a tad too short. All the other stuff, Blizzard kinda falls behind, even in this day and age. They're just not very creative, hence why I just call them EA Games these days. They don't really care much about what their customers want, minus that they patch things good with patches, and keep cheaters/hackers out, but that's about all they're good for.

Edit: That's also why I'm not buying D3, their "anti-piracy" crap is fucking bogus and I refuse to use it.

 

This game makes me rage. I want to love it, and when it is lag free, I do. By when I die because my FPS drops to 1 while my ping is still >100 and I'm fighting a tough mob I want to smash things. I can play WoW on max settings, and I turned my Diablo settings as low as they can get, and I'm still having this issue.

Otherwise, I'm having lots of fun as a DH, even if mono chakrams don't live up to the hype of dual chakrams. Aiming them is a PITA.

 

I have exactly the same sentiments. I never had a problem doing 40 man raids on full settings with this computer, yet I'm being defeated by some water reflections playing single player with graphics all the way down, and it's not a very intensive game.

The later half of act 3 was probably the best for me as it was all in doors, in caves, etc, and my fps was perfectly fine and I could actually play. There were a few areas like than in Act 2 as well.

While I struggled to defeat Belial due to lag, I had no troubles with Asmodan at all. My character didn't feel like a gimp because of the fps issues. Act 4 wasn't quite as good, as I couldn't kill any of the bosses by myself. The very first one I'd get like a 20+ kills in one hit and get my massacre streak up to nearly a hundred, by I couldn't actually move my character without lagging. Izual was impossible for me to do since I couldn't get away either due to lag. I actually said fuck it and joined a public game and beat izzy and diablo fairly quickly and without dying,

That being said, I do enjoy the game, but it just doesn't feel like it's living up to it's predecessor, but I'm pretty sure everyone predicted that it was going to be disappointing.

The levels/quests themselves are pretty boring. In act two, it takes like 8 quests just to resurrect some Kulle, who everyone knows is going to betray you, just so we can kill him again anyways. Seems pointless.

The Mahgda plot arc also seems pointless until the end of the game where a conversation with one of your hirelings reveals interesting bit of info about who the second coven leader was.

Act 3 was kind of cool, but a bit contrived. At least the end was. It feels like Blizzard was saying "oh, we don't want you to get to Azmodan too quick, So here's another random subboss that you have to spend 8 levels going through to kill in about 15 seconds. Then, you can kill Azmodan." Those two bosses were both extremely easy even with terrible lag.

Back to the plot. D2 was great in its simplicity. Sure, Maggot Lair and the Khalim's Flail quests were huge chores, but at least it all made sense, since there wasn't much to explain. We were nameless hero's doing our duty because no one else could. We weren't born special. We had out wits, and our weapons, and that's all we needed.

D3 goes off the deep end. A lot of recent games are using generic, bland plots like this game. In the weeks leading up to this, I was playing Kingdoms of Amalur, which exemplfies that. In that game, you are special. You are fateless, and you can form your own destiny, and your true past is murky. Sound familiar? The reigning race of Immortals are waning, and they realize that the humans have the power to change the course of history and the future. Sound familiar? D3 can be summed up in pretty much the same way.

In D3, it's said that your destiny is yours to control, and that you are not bound to fate's web, blah blah, how dramatic. And of course, the main character has to be some remnant of a long lost race of super!humans. Yawn. Perhaps I've read too much fanfiction, But that kind of shit never appeals to me. It's like Harry learning he's the heir to Merlin and has more powers than every one else in the world. It's fucking pointless. Perhaps that also why I dislike Skyrim so much (besides it being boring as fuck). Of course, Blizzard has to use the most unoriginal name ever 'Nephilem' I swear, every other game uses that name or a derivative of it. D2 pulled off the ordinary hero role perfectly fine.

Spoiler

Anyways, I'm not really going to rage about the plot, other than how uninspired it feels. I'm sure everyone playing figured out exactly who Belial was about 5 minutes in to the act, so the dramatic reveal fell flat. I'm sure everyone was suspicious of Leah from the very beginning too when she was displaying a mysterious power (of course) that she was born with, blah blah and all her magic looked like hell fire. And Adria was no surprise either, if you just listened to her conversations and all the plot involving her just didn't really make sense. Also, they killed off the coolest character in the first act by the random Rita Repulsa wannabe, but at least you could still hear his lore throughout.

But, There are some awesome things. The lore books are great, albeit short. It was interesting to hear some of the enemy's thoughts regarding the hero, and even better to hear throwbacks to the previous games and more background information on various characters.

The cutscenes were good too. Only two of them really stand out though, the one where you see Tyrael fighting Imperius (and Tyrael ripping off his wings), and then Imperius fighting Diablo. Let it be said, Imperius looks like a serious hard core bad ass and is an all around boss. I was actually expecting to fight him after he was raging about seeing a human walking around in heaven, and threatening to kill us. The end cutscene was pretty lame. I guess you sort of see the black soul stone fall to the ground while the rest of Diablo's body disintegrates. Tyrael (who it seems like everyone pronouncing his name like Tyreal instead). I was sort of hoping that Tyrael would regain his wings. Also, I think it was only stated once (through a lorebook) that the archangel of Wisdom was missing, so Tyrael's accession to that could have been explained better. And they could have made the hero the new Archangel of Justice (especially if Tyrael can regain his rank while still being mortal.)

So, this is pretty much exactly how I expected this game to go. It was never going to be as good as Diablo 2, and it isn't, but it's still a fun game to play. I didn't head into this thinking it was going to be an MMO and where your world first boss kills actually mean shit. It's just a bit too tame in all regards. Blizzard just took a check list of all the stuff wrong with D2, fixed them, and built that game around that, and thus diluting all the stuff that was absolutely amazing from D2, all in the name of "accessibility" which means trying to make as much money as possible from the most amount of people. It's definitely not going to be as repayable as D2, but it will be interesting to see what new stuff they add in to make the game fresh again (If any). LOD is really what made D2, so perhaps we can hope for the best, but be prepared to accept the worst.

 

I'm shocked at how much rage there is over the bland storyline. What the hell were you people expecting? Personally I thought that the story was more involved than either of D3's predecessors, though it was certainly more streamlined as well.

Anyways, I didn't buy the game to thrill me with it's deep story and shocking plot twists. I mean, Diablo is the boss of the game. Who didn't see that one coming (Hint: It's the name of the game).

I'm not sure what all of you people are talking about when you say it didn't live up to D2. Why? Because you played that game a decade ago and you didn't need anything from it aside from senseless violence and shiny items?

Why would you expect this to be any different? I know why I bought this game. It's not a thinker, and some days I just like wading through armies from hell. And it's great fun in multiplayer. As a solo game, none of the Diablos have been any good.

As far as gameplay goes, I much prefer this to D2's level up one skill to maximum and use it almost exclusively mindset. It was a God-awful grind. Not only do I love being able to use 6 different abilities effectively, but I can switch specs at the drop of a hat without leveling a brand new character. It's a good thing.

Anyways, I'm curious to hear what sort of abilities people are using primarily on their favorite classes. Now that I've gotten my shit sorted on my DH, I'm starting to have some fun with it.

My setup looks something like this:

1. Hungering Arrow (split rune)
2. Elemental Arrow (lighting orb rune)
3. Shadow Power (resource regen rune)
4. Rapid Fire (homing missile rune)
5. Caltrops (immobilize rune)
6. Vault (discipline reduced for 2nd vault rune)

What are you guys running with in the higher difficulties?

 

Standard on my characters:

Monk: Quickening Fists of Thunder + Mantra of Healing Shield
Wizard: Energy Force Armor + Diamond Prism Skin
DH: Smokescreen + Preparation

Skill combos too good to pass up for other stuff.

Unlimited Spirit, the highest durability possible in the game, and 12s of complete invincibility.

 

I'm using what you are but I replaced lightning with multishot with the 20 hatred cost rune. Besides that I replace caltrops rune for the 10% crit one, shadow power rune for the 65% reduced damage, and vault for the fire walk rune (though that's entirely for the fun of it and probably suboptimal). I switch out my multishot with the 12% damage runed to give 3 hatred per hit, because it effectively reduces rapid fire to 7 hatred vs bosses without heavy adds.

When clearing I also switch out one of my abilities (depending on my party makeup) for shadow ferrets because gold actually means something in this game, they do decent damage and can't be killed, and collect the gold for me which is a nice little novelty.

@Anarchy: I thought the whole thing about the nephalem was that all humans were nephalem but our powers were only re-emerging because of the worldstone exploding.


Oh I also found my first legendary, Blackguard. Level 48 2handed sword.
If anyone would like to purchase it for their barbarian or something, let me know.
Scratch that, it sold.

 

Haven't quite finished my first playthrough on normal yet.

Playing a Witch Doctor. Level 29 in Act 3.

Battlenet name is Poytin#1506

Also... That Gargantuan.

 

Monk. Levle 33.
Way of a Hundred Fists: Blazing Fists
Cyclone Strike: Implosion

Breath of Heaven: Blazing Wrath
Serenity: Peaceful Repose
Seven Sided Strike: Sudden Assault
Mantra of Conviction:

Perks:
Transcendence
Seize the Initiative
Chant of Resonance

 

Just curious, how much did you sell it for? I'm still trying to figure out if AH prices are stupidly high or if people actually fork out the cash for insanely high buyouts.

 

I have a level 15 legendary chest piece of shit. Got it in my first 3 hours of playing.

So that basically means I wasted all my luck right there.

 

Well mine was 50dps lower than the best the AH had, but the stats were pretty decently allocated for a barbarian, so I put it up for 250k and it sold within the hour.

A lot of my rares don't sell though and normally I only sell what I would use on a character and rarely above 35k which sucks because I have so much shit to sell that I'm stuck with for 2 days after I post an auction.

Blizzard went overboard with the random itemization though because there was a legendary crossbow with -2 seconds to the cooldown of zombie wall while the rest of the stats were DH heavy. Pretty stupid.

Meanwhile I am stuck with 2 legendary axes I picked up for my monk before finding out they are unique equipped. Anyone want a level 22 dexterity legendary 1handed axe? Just looking to get back the 15k I paid.

 

Mantra of Healing with Circular Breathing for +3 Spirit Regen, Chant of Resonance(passive) for another +2 Spirit Regen, Fleet Footed for 10% move, Exalted Soul for +100 max Spirit and Tempest Rush with Tailwind... relatively low level method to get all of the 'beat Act within an hour' achievements.

Preferably grab one of the bonus Spirit gain runes for a Primary attack and possibly take Dashing Strike too just for that extra push, and it's that much easier. If you can get any bonus regen from gear, that's nice too. I also prefer to run with Sweeping Wind, as it's free bonus damage with every hit performed in Tempest Rush resetting the timer, and at higher levels you can also rune it to give +3 Spirit Regen, making it a simple matter to have infinite running in Tempest Rush.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to get some move speed on your boots either.

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For actual fighting though on my 51 Monk, I think my current setup is:
Crippling Wave (Concussion) - 110% aoe dam, enemies get -30% mov/-20% aspd/-20% dam.
(varies, but want to test)Exploding Palm (Essence Burn) - Chain Exploding damage DoT.
Sweeping Wind (Bladestorm) - 20/40/60% constant pbaoe damage.
Serenity (Ascension) - 4 seconds of dam and cc imm. since I was tanking for my team.
Breath of Heaven (Blazing Wrath) - Modest Heal, with +15% dam buff for 45 seconds.
Mantra of Evasion (Divine Protection) - Dodge, with low-health damage protection.

Resolve - Enemies get -25% damage.
Seize the Initiative - 100% Dex as Armor.
The Guardian's Path - 15% Dodge since I'm Dual-Wielding.

Altogether, enemies get two damage debuffs with an aoe attack making it easily applied, and I have around 50% damage reduction from armor(could be 60% plus if I ran Keen Eye on Deadly Reach as my Primary, like I was when playing with another Monk earlier who used Concussion). The ~40% - ~47%(right after activation of the Mantra) Dodge is quite nice too.

If the rest of my team wasn't all dying from aoe(and the shadow clones >_>) against Nightmare Diablo, we would have been just fine, but sadly we didn't beat him until somebody d/c'd and we ended up fighting as three people. I beat him with that d/c'd friend directly after by replacing my Primary with One-Hundred Fists with Spirited Salvo, and Dashing Strike with a Stun-chance. Just kept stunning him if I could, whenever he would initiate a move. That and just stunning him when my Spirit was high.

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Also, yeah, Arcane with some cc like Jailer/Waller/Frozen/Nightmare sucks... a lot. Four seconds of invulnerability and cc immunity helps, but isn't always enough.

 

Inferno is fucking insane. Those fat zombies at the start? 15-20k dam / hit.
Just fought a Champion with mortar/waller/teleport/vortex ... fun.

 

wizards take maybe 2k damage from them depending on their gear. I love being a wizard.

 

I am a wizard and I'd like to see that :>