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[LadyCrimson]

My resists aren't high enough to forgo that other Mantra. I tried it with only 580 resists but that meant the explosions killed me in one hit (50-60k dmg instead of 30-40k), if I didn't avoid one in time. I used to use 7strike like that, early on, as another invulnerability method. Haven't thought of it in a long time.

 

Despite all my MF'ing, I'm still not "rich." I buy 200K pieces of armor now and then but mostly .... since the patch I've been using what I find. Finally found some ok weapons (not great, but better than what I had) + some good jewelry. Need more....

[Cantousent]

I've only finished the game on normal, mostly because I can't take the proper amount of time to play. A couple of observations:

 

1) The game is easy. I never died in a boss fight. The only times my mage died was getting surrounded. ...And, having tried the monk before I even came here to see, I can say that I agree with the assessment that the monk is far easier in the first part of the game, which I started recently. I'm going to create a hardcore demon hunter or barbarian next, I think, but the monk, in my limited experience, might be the best hardcore character.

 

2) The game is kind of boring. I'll probably play one more run as something other than the boring ol' monk, like I said. I have almost a million gold off of low level rare auctions, which I think is ridiculous. Still, it's entertaining enough to give one or two characters a try. Probably the demon hunter.

[entrerix]

yeah im pretty bored with the game now, i got a lot of time out of it, but since there is no point in making new characters to try new builds i just don't have anything else to do in the game

[MrBrown]

FYI, there's a longish post on the official forum by Blizzard about Diablo 3; what's happened so far, what they're doing in the future, etc.

 

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4940437236#1

 

TL;DR:

- Launch problems because of unexpected volume of usage.

- In the future: buffs for legendary items, extra stuff for lvl60 chars besides item grinding, PvP (more far off).

Edited July 27, 2012 by MrBrown

[Monte Carlo]

I took a fairly long break from it, went back with my monk and it's still pretty good fun.

[Gfted1]

I've only finished the game on normal, mostly because I can't take the proper amount of time to play. A couple of observations:

 

1) The game is easy. I never died in a boss fight. The only times my mage died was getting surrounded. ...And, having tried the monk before I even came here to see, I can say that I agree with the assessment that the monk is far easier in the first part of the game, which I started recently. I'm going to create a hardcore demon hunter or barbarian next, I think, but the monk, in my limited experience, might be the best hardcore character.

 

The game is way too easy on Normal however you have to keep going with the same toon to unlock harder difficulties. If you keep starting over with new toon you will continuously be stuck in Normal. You would probably enjoy Nightmare or Hell much more but IMO Inferno is just a pain in the ass, especially with the enrage timer.

 

2) The game is kind of boring. I'll probably play one more run as something other than the boring ol' monk, like I said. I have almost a million gold off of low level rare auctions, which I think is ridiculous. Still, it's entertaining enough to give one or two characters a try. Probably the demon hunter.

 

That sounds like a lot of gold but Im sure you have noticed the ridiculous prices on the auction house. You can get some pretty good stuff in the 500k range if youre willing to be patient.

 

The Demon Hunter is a blast. It does by far the most DPS out of the three classes Ive played (Wizard, Monk, DH) but the survivability is a bit meh. Its one class that doesnt have an "oh no" ability so if you get trapped / walled in then its light out for you.

[entrerix]

i think my problem is that i liked playing diablo 2 in normal mode. i'd get a character up to around level 32-35, kill baal, then start over with a new character and play the game using a new build

 

it was challenging and it was fun

 

diablo 3 normal difficulty is WAY too easy, and there are no new character builds to try (all the "builds" are done via equipment and skill swapping, which destroy your "character")

[Cantousent]

Yeah, maybe I'll go forward with my wizard and see if higher difficulties are more challenging. I suspect the wizard might be the hardest character (either that or I'm playing her wrong). I used to play on the lan all the time, but now my ol' skool lanning buddies want to play Dungeons and Dragons when we can get together instead (which would actually be a good thing except for the way they like to run the game, which is a separate topic altogether). The upshot is, sitting around drinking beer with friends, ordering some pizzas, and making fun of each other when we die is the best way to play Diablo. It's just not the same without all those things.

 

Still, the game was fun enough to finish once and I'm still slowly plugging away at it. I don't tend to buy stuff at auction, but I might get more into that sort of thinking once I really need better gear to survive. Meanwhile, I'm just wondering if this is going to be the last game in the franchise. It seems like it's all wrapped up to me. No more Diablos?

[entrerix]

i would love a hd version of the original diablo. give it a few gameplay tweaks and improvements and shiny new graphics, but keep the music and the atmosphere the same

 

will never happen though

[Monte Carlo]

I think wizard is tough. Then again, strangely, the brute-force melee barbarian isn't easy.

 

Have played them all and find the monk, if not the easiest, the most versatile. It's a solid melee / buff / interdiction class.

[MrBrown]

I've played Barbarian, Monk and Wizard to level 60, and found Wizard to be the easiest (pre-inferno anyway). They all have their weaknesses and strengths, though.

[LadyCrimson]

@Cant - you can't, imo, really judge the difficulty of classes by Normal. Even in that public beta when I had no clue I lol'd at the Normal difficulty. D3's Normal is like some other games SuperEasy. And Brown's right ... they all have strong and weak points, and how "difficult" they are to play is, of course, also dependent on playstyle, skillset, and gearset, with the latter becoming more and more difficult to maintain/acquire enough of as the difficulties pass by.

 

Also, a million gold is nothing in this game.

This is just considering through Hell difficulty. Inferno is a new ballgame and everyone can have big trouble there at some point or another.

 

As to no more Diablo's ... well, on the one hand, I'm sure D3 made Blizzard/Activision tons of money, so another may someday be made for that reason alone, story be damned. On the other hand, the long-term reception of D3 may make them think a lot harder about doing it.

[Blarghagh]

Yeah, maybe I'll go forward with my wizard and see if higher difficulties are more challenging. I suspect the wizard might be the hardest character (either that or I'm playing her wrong). I used to play on the lan all the time, but now my ol' skool lanning buddies want to play Dungeons and Dragons when we can get together instead (which would actually be a good thing except for the way they like to run the game, which is a separate topic altogether). The upshot is, sitting around drinking beer with friends, ordering some pizzas, and making fun of each other when we die is the best way to play Diablo. It's just not the same without all those things.

 

Still, the game was fun enough to finish once and I'm still slowly plugging away at it. I don't tend to buy stuff at auction, but I might get more into that sort of thinking once I really need better gear to survive. Meanwhile, I'm just wondering if this is going to be the last game in the franchise. It seems like it's all wrapped up to me. No more Diablos?

 

There's a few loose ends, but not enough to base more games on. Plus, Word of God states that this is the last Diablo game, but they might be doing more games in it's universe.

[Cantousent]

I usually like mages more than anything else, but she certainly didn't pack the punch I expected. On the other hand, maybe I just picked the wrong skills and runes. I played a little bit on nightmare and it didn't seem hard, but the part around Tristam could be lulling me into a false sense of security. I'm not one to worry about bragging rights and playing on the hardest setting. I just thought it was a bit too lenient. From what you guys are saying, I should plug away a bit longer on my main character and see how it plays. Fair enough. :Cant's broad grin icon:

[Tigranes]

It depends on how much you fooled around and levelled up in Normal, but there are, or at least used to be, some interesting difficulty spikes - first halfway through Act 2, then halfway through Act 3. Act 1 is generally tame except perhaps for the highlands areas after the skeleton king.

[Cantousent]

I actually worry about enrage timers for Diablo. The other bosses went down quick enough, but Diablo took a while to defeat with my wizard. I'm going to take a hard look and maybe (heaven forbid) number crunch the stats to see what could put ol' Diablow down faster. Otherwise, I still don't think nightmare will be that bad for the boss fights. For both my wizard and my monk, only getting completely and utterly surrounded, usually by being careless, meant real danger.

[MrBrown]

Enrage timers are only for Inferno, AFAIK.

[LadyCrimson]

Enrage timers are only for Inferno, AFAIK.

Yup. Don't have to worry about how long you take to kill stuff until then. Don't have to worry about resists either, altho in Hell some resists (200-300) does make things a fair bit easier/faster so I often get them up anyway. Normal-Hell, dps is total king, imo.

 

When I went through NM the very first time, I hadn't focused on dps at all (I'm weird that way), so had very low dps and it was tough for a while. I started doing the dps thing and it became cake and pie again. Then a difficulty spike would hit somewhere, get tougher. Repeat. I think I took almost 14 minutes to beat Diablo in NM, simply because of low dps for that stage.

 

In contrast, I gave my Wiz gear that my Monk had found so he always had moderate to silly-high dps for an area and blew through all 3 difficulties in no time, killing bosses in 20 seconds and such - he was a lightning/disintegrate/spectral blade wrecking ball. He's not at all ready for Inferno, tho.

Edited July 30, 2012 by LadyCrimson

[Gfted1]

Ran into an uber Demon Hunter last night who coached me up on a better build than the one I was using. Even though I had an awesome bow it had some less than desirable stats (life on hit) which he convinced me to drop and instead go for +Critical Damage. That combined with the Sharpshooter passive skill and my dps jumped from 33k to 58k. Took Shadow Power to give me back a healing mechanic. Now to work on my resistances a bit...

[Cantousent]

Yeah, Demon Hunter looks cool to me, but I don't want to replay every character on normal. Maybe I should cut my losses on the wizard and just dedicate myself to learning the ropes on the Demon Hunter. I want someone with excellent range dps and solid survivability and a bit of crowd control.

[LadyCrimson]

Apparently I can make 300K gold an hour in NM by putting on 240%GF gear and running through Cave of Betrayer. This is about the same as doing it in Hell with 195%GF. Except in NM, I can also put on 5000 attackers-take-dmg-per-hit and just run around the cave letting them kill themselves.

 

Many LOL's were had.

[Monte Carlo]

My drops on NM are still crap.

[Monte Carlo]

My monk is now level 51 on Hell. Drops are a mixture of meh and OK-ish. Obviously, co-op reaps bigger rewards but I like solo and clearing all the map.

 

Does anyone know if there are any new areas in any of the patches? I know the maps are randomised but I found some new cave areas / dungeons on co-op Nightmare, one in Act I and another in Act II (which was full of pretty good treasure for a change).

 

I'm also putting *all* my yellows on the AH for gold. I'm sure there's an economics PhD waiting to happen there, sheesh the crap people buy (i.e. all the stuff I put on )

[LadyCrimson]

Nope, no new areas. Some of the random stuff is just rare to show up. Even two months later I still found a few minor things/events I hadn't seen yet.

 

The AH (for me) is currently: low level stuff, if you sell it for cheap (under 15k), sells pretty well. clvl 60 stuff, however, can be hard to sell even for cheap because majority of ppl with lvl60 chrs wants the "top" stuff by now, and that sells for millions. Except, GF, MF and LoH items still tend to get picked up pretty swiftly if it's highish and with a decent other stat or two, or sockets. Most clvl60 stuff is vendor trash now tho....I can make more gold farming, faster than I can selling 10 items per day for super low prices. :/

[Cantousent]

That's a good heads up Red. I've managed to sell some of my low level rare gear for 200k or so, but then the well dried up. It has a lot to do with the number crunching for the level of the gear. Stuff that pops dps is probably more popular lower levels and stuff that pops survivability with maybe some solid help dps-wise probably sells for higher levels. That's just a guess, but I haven't spent much time at auction.

 

I love my vengeful little demon hunter vixen, but she just doesn't have nearly the survivability of my monk at the same level. Of course, I've only played her to seventh level, so that could change. Even my monk is only into the second act. I'm hoping to get some time just to grind out the levels soon, though. I'm really torn. I've decided I don't want to invest my my nightmare mage, I prefer my demon huntress, but I think the monk might be a better bet for my eventual sojourn into hell and beyond. I hate to dither, though, so I'll have to decide which way to go. I might give my demon hunter til level 15 or so see if she shines.