Diablo 3 new patch

[SadExchange]

May be a silly question that's been asked numerous times, so sorry about that, but what's the easiest way to post pictures in this forum?  I know Steam pics don't seem to work.

[Malcador]

Use tags and link to an external host like imgur.

[Gfted1]

Crusader skill Heavens Fury w/ Blessed Ground is nuts. It can be cast into another room and just clears the mooks before Im done clearing the room Im currently in.

[LadyCrimson]

So I realized today that the expansion is officially out now. Figured I'd download any patches first (it's been a long long time) then buy the expansion and download it. "Optimizing Game" ... does that equal a new company-speak to say "downloading/installing patches?" I hope so...since I don't really need b.net to defrag my software for me.

 

Also, it says it's going to update the launcher to Desktop App when I next run D3. I assume that's just a new personalized Steam-like thingie or something (universal launcher not just a D3 launcher)?

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yup! Battlenet App is just a portal for all your Blizzard games. In my case, there's still just D3. However, it shows info about which people are in-game in your clan and such, so I now use instead of the D3 shortcut.

[Malcador]

Act V sure was cooler than the previous acts, music, the nice touch of all the houses in Westmarch you can run in. Shame it's not nice for a DH, closed in spaces.

 

Did get a quiver that makes bolas explode immediately, so huzzah for that.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Finally! My crusader took down Malthael on her second try, but I lowered the difficulty to Expert for the occasion, though.

The crusader is a lovely class, with a nice mix of heavy damage and lots of protection and toughness. I'll definitely play it more now in adventure mode.

A third of my success was my Templar, though. That follower sucked in D3 vanilla, but now it's much better, and to top it off, in lvl 61 I found a fantastic legendary templar relic that makes that stuffy guy a beast. Also, it unlocks all his skills, so he becomes a healing and stun machine beyond measure. From now on, Cormak is my faithful companion. 

Myself, well I look like a female version of Captain America, and that legendary 2H sword makes me look a bit like the teaper death angel Malthael himself. It seems to be the theme in D3. In vanilla D3, most items made you look like a stupid cow, just like Diablo herself.

[Gfted1]

Saw something drop yesterday that Ive never seen before. The group was running a rift and one of the players links in chat a legendary crafting recipe for a unlimited Healing potion that also adds 15% armor for a few seconds. I was super jealous. Never have to worry about potions again!

[IndiraLightfoot]

Alright, I just did a marathon run with my monk. She had accidentally reset the quests just before the expansion hit, so I thought I needed to put that to good use and put her up to speed again.

Patiently (not), I ran through all content like only a monk can do. I started at level 60 with crappy gear, and nothing to twink hear with. I didn't even give her gems. Amazingly, though, she did find a few decent items along the way, and even three legendary weapons. First she had a legendary 2H, and then later two legendary 1H-wpns. And most conveniently, after Act V (which I did thoroughly. as I wanted to savour it), she hit lvl 70 just before Malthael.

 

This is Harmony right before Malthael. This looks quite a bit like a mix of scenes in MotB at the end, as well as the Outsider world in Dishonored.

And here she is just after having slain that beast Malthael. She found a nice legendary chest armor, btw. Also, notice that weird message: "I just blued myself". Well, I said I was going to put this act1-5 run to good use, didn't I? It's a weird achievement, where you have to keep your hero all painted in Mariner's Blue when you kill like 15 bosses.

She looked like this when she killed Diablo, and speaking of Diablo...

 

There are clear signs of her/his return in the next expansion. Other hints are equally clear about which new class will be in that xp: necromancer. You ven get to talk to one in Blood Marsh - Ayul, with his talking vessel - which resembles Morte from Planescape Torment a lot. I reckon it's a homage to that great game. )

 

[Gfted1]

 

There are clear signs of her/his return in the next expansion.

 

 

Iirc, Tyrael specifically states that the death of Malthael has released Diablo (since he had consumed the black soulstone that contained Diablo).

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

Gfted1: You are absolutely right, so that's a given. However, does this also imply...

 

...that all those pesky arch-devils have been set free? Coz if so, then we get to meet old friends from D2 as well.

 

[Malcador]

I guess

the Nephalem will the villain in D4 if it ever comes out, based on the RoS ending and Tyrael's worry.

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

That will be interesting, though.

 

Perhaps it will an Act VI, divided into two halves. In the first, you are the villain, almost an arch-demon per se, so you'll be reaping through, not demons and devils, but ordinary men and heroes, as well as angels, trying to stop you. Finally, you get to redeem yourself and your good name, and the latter half will be putting down all those arch-devils in a better container than that Soulstone, of course, killing Diablo at the end. Perhaps Diablo has taken over Imperius, and Leah somehow comes back alive again? I've always found his reddish wings suspicious. He seems susceptible to Diablo's strong possession ability.

 

[Gfted1]

Gfted1: You are absolutely right, so that's a given. However, does this also imply...

 

...that all those pesky arch-devils have been set free? Coz if so, then we get to meet old friends from D2 as well.

 

Good question. If the lore is consistent then I would say yes.

[Malcador]

Imagine all seven of them popping up and taunting you through out the game, hah.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yea! It seems all this makes for one hell of an expansion.

 

I can't wait! 

 

EDIT: Speaking of hell. I reckon D3 lacks proper hell sections. I don't think Azmodan's SM-paradise counts. I want varied levels, and loads of them. Think Hades or Dante's Inferno.

Edited April 1, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Monte Carlo]

The adventure mode is something else, ain't it?

[IndiraLightfoot]

It sure is! Once I've gotten all my toons to it, they'll never look back, except for cheevo hunting now and then.

It's almost a new game entirely.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yay! Malthael fell by my fist weapon (doesn't sound that good, huh?) on hardcore (normal difficulty)!!!

 

I'm very happy about that. I practised with my softcore monk yesterday, and today I used my backup hardcore monk Tranquility to do the first test run, with her slightly crappier items, and she pulled it off. I tried to skip a lot, since I didn't want to reach too high a level, to make Malthael as soft as possible. Also, Hiro's tip on that Epiphany-rune, certainly helped. I use the sand one, and indeed, the monk goes ape on anything within 20 yards. I stacked a lot of healing, I had 18,000-19,500 at the end (via skills too, of course).

 

 

Phew! Adventure mode in hardcore, here I come!

Edited April 2, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I've been achievement hunting this week. I'll post a screenshot in a few days. I have a certain number to get to by this weekend before I post the screen shot.

 

Also, congratulations. Good strategy to beat Malthael at a low level. The only thing that goes against this since I did it with my Monk is the guaranteed legendary that he drops is now gone. So that level 63 legendary you received will be obsolete when you hit level 70. But I was like you and rather live to tell about it than try at level 70 and possibly die.

 

What I do now is beat Malthael on level 70 to get the guaranteed level 70 legendary/set item when you first beat him with my other characters that I'm levelling up. If I'm only a couple of levels from 70, I hold off and level up in Adventure mode and then go back to Campaign and defeat Malthael at level 70.

 

And Epiphany is great. It's my favourite Monk skill. It's like WotB for the Barbarian but smaller duration and cooling time. You're not affected by the environment like freeze and you teleport to anybody you attack. And the spirit regen is great.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Thank you!

And indeed, better safe than sorry when you're unlocking adventure mode with your first hardcore character an all.

My 2nd monk probably will be close to level 70 when she takes on Malthael, not necessarily by choice, though. It turned out that I had taken for a new run through the campaign and reset the whole thing before the expansion hit, so she was just about to enter those lovely (deep irony) deserts and couldn't switch to just before Diablo in Act IV. Ho-hum! Well, I pretty much ran through all the content, and finally reached Act V and Westmarch at almost exactly the same level as my first monk killed Malthael. However, I got some sweet legendary fist weapon with great life per spirit spent on them. In fact, this monk has almost 35K in healing, and I was happy with the other that had 18-19K. She got dogpiled and stunlocked really bad in Act IV by Mallors and Fallen Angels and what not, and she just stood in the arcane/toxic puddles of vortex frozen doom and laughed. Almost invincible, it seemed. When she faced Diablo, and she picks you up, no life whatsoever dropped on my meter, that was insane!! :D

[IndiraLightfoot]

Oh, and a personal reflection on which passives to take for your monk (on hardcore, for best survivability):

I learned early on that One with Everything ain't that good and important anymore. I mean already (before lvl 70):

these two are a must:

Near Death Experience (it may be a welcome lifesaver, enough said)

Transcendence (your healing gets a huge boost).

 

Finally, I pick Exalted Soul (and get that spirit up and pumping - using a lot of skills, especially higher cost ones, now means that you heal yourself even faster. So even if you are stunlocked, you can use all sorts of skills until your free, and basically heal yourself big time!)

 

Weird thing is, I saw stats that 80 % of all RoS hardcore players have One with Everything, I reckon that's not very clever at all. Also, plenty of them use Seize the Initiative, that's nothing compared to high toughness and life on spirit spent skills.

 

Just my two cents.

Edited April 3, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Hiro Protagonist II]

The adventure mode is something else, ain't it?

 

Someone in my clan asked if they could have some help with a HC boss kill achieve and I said, yeah sure. He invited me and I thought huh, you're only level 60. He said he didn't have RoS. We went in with my level 70 monk and his level 60 monk and helped him get the achievement. He was at max level and I was too on T1 so the game registered it for him.

 

I know some people might not be financially able to buy RoS for different reasons or they might not see the value in the price, but my initial thoughts were, I could never go back to vanilla D3 and campaign. It feels like half a game. It would be so much of a drag just doing the campaign over and over. Just thinking about it makes me go 'ugh'.  Everything about the expansion and Adventure mode is where it's at. Once you've experienced it, you can never go back.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Oh, and a personal reflection on which passives to take for your monk (on hardcore, for best survivability):

I learned early on that One with Everything ain't that good and important anymore. I mean already (before lvl 70):

these two are a must:

Near Death Experience (it may be a welcome lifesaver, enough said)

Transcendence (your healing gets a huge boost).

 

Finally, I pick Exalted Soul (and get that spirit up and pumping - using a lot of skills, especially higher cost ones, now means that you heal yourself even faster. So even if you are stunlocked, you can use all sorts of skills until your free, and basically heal yourself big time!)

 

Weird thing is, I saw stats that 80 % of all RoS hardcore players have One with Everything, I reckon that's not very clever at all. Also, plenty of them use Seize the Initiative, that's nothing compared to high toughness and life on spirit spent skills.

 

Just my two cents.

 

I think that's a left over from vanilla D3. One with Everything and Seize the Initiative. I've been doing SC over the last week, levelling up a Barbarian, Monk, Wizard and finished off a DH today. Three other players from the clan asked me to join their little group and we worked out how to do the HC speed boss kills in Act 5. Unity is a passive I'll need to use for this. A couple of us (another guy and myself  ) need to improve our DPS before we try it. And we're going to test it on Adria first as she's the easiest boss of the three.

 

On normal Urzael is a push over, but on T1 he's as bad as Malthael. My monk has 295K dps unbuffed which is enough for T1 but not for a speed kill. Need to get it to at least 500K. So we're going to do rifts over the next few days for items.

 

My monk did kill Adria on SC with a dps of 305K a couple of days ago.

 

 

And no, it's not an April fools joke. 

[Malcador]

Am weak and couldn't hack Malthiel on my wizard at Expert, had to go down to Hard.  Got a Blackthorne piece (surprise) so that's gone to my DH.  Wizard is too damn squishy with the lack of healing I have on her.  Complete opposite approach to my friend whose wizard is 1MM damage, but he had better gear than me to begin with so that might have helped as he's not replaced all. 

 

DH is up to 5 MM toughness, but I must say I HATE Hellrack, even if it is a vast upgrade.