Diablo 3 Gameplay/Performance Impressions (NO SPOILERS ALLOWED)

What weapon is that? What is the damage on it? Weapons are very important for casters in D3, not like D2 or WoW where they're basically stat sticks.

 

Wizard must be OP first person to beat the game was a Wizard and those of you with lower gear that say its easy are also Wizards.

I still want to do Barbarian next for some reason even though they probably are the worst class after my witch doctor is 60.

I am 46 now so getting there.

 

Tell me about it...my friend is tankier than I am. He's a wizard and I'm a monk.

Wizards get this skill that let's them have a shield that absorbs 18k hp, he has 700hp regen/sec, and has 8k dps talk about broken. Oh and a skill that only allows him to take 35% of his hp in damage from a hit (susceptible to DoT's) but in boss fights = never dies

 

I'm nearly done retooling my gear for Intelligence and Vitality at 41, plus I just got the last rune I wanted at 39. I am super overpowered in small groups of 2-3. It's in groups of 4 when I actually have to take my time and kite and cc monsters. I went through the end of act 1 nightmare at 39 with another person in the party, and I just walked around one shotting everything.

Right now at 41, I have 995 dps and 10.8k hp. I got a new 2h weapon loaded with int and vit and I'm just walking through nightmare like it's a day in the park.

I just got my instant cast explosive blast that I can just use while running past mobs. I run into mobs, hit frost nova, explosive blast then wave of force, and in a group of 2 people, that either kills the group or brings it down to 20-30% hp.

I have to say thanks for telling me how to redo my gear. It's waaaay different now. Explosive blast is an instant cast aoe that is hitting everything for 2k for me right now. Wave of force is an aoe knockdown that also hits for 2k. My disintegrate is hitting for 750, and spectral blade is going at 375 a hit.

 

Server down for maintenance

 

^^ indeed

Instant No Button! Star Wars funnies FTW!

BTW I am level 28 wizard in act 3 of normal (I really don't have time to play too much ) is it normal? I mean there are guys finishing nightmare around level 35-40?

 

I'm level 43 and I'm just starting Act 3 of Nightmare. I think it all depends on how much time you spend really exploring and killing everything. I like to clear an entire area before I move on.

 

I want to know what level people are when they reach hell and inferno. I'm 41 at the 3rd quest of act 2 in nightmare. I'm leveling up fast and overleveled because I backtrack and farm a lot. I have no problem farming because my wizard has insane dps. The leveling system is just way funky, especially if you're overleveled for lower level dungeons.

They should at least keep the level restrictions as mere suggestions instead and instate experience penalties or something with higher level people, or just fix the leveling stuff. A cap of 99 or 100 and spreading things out would alleviate this as well.

I'm 68.3% of my way to the max level, but only 35% of my way through the game's content. There's something way off there. Why do they let you search for public games but then penalize your levels? You could say I just need to go to the quests I'm at and work on gear that level, but I still feel so intensely rushed to get through the game.

In nightmare, other than the poison stuff and occasional special abilities, the mobs got higher damage and health. Basically the same as Diablo 2.

 

You must be level 50 before preceding to Hell difficulty, and I assume 60 for Inferno. I think wizards must be overpowered because my brother's level 60 wizard is able to ignore VIT and concentrate on INT which leads to him having... 40k DPS. I'm stuck at around 10k DPS currently which makes slaying those elites much more difficult than it needs to be.

 

This is way off. First- the leveling process slows as you gain levels. I don't know how far you are from level 60, but it's certainly not 68%.

Second, I'm not sure how you valuate content, but I would say the bulk of the content is experienced in your first run through normal mode. After normal mode, there are slight variations and increased difficulty, new loot to get, but it's hard to accept that after a complete run through normal, you feel like you've seen 35% of the content of the game.

I'd make a guess that you are maybe 40% of the way to level 60, and you've probably seen about 90% of the content.

 

I just felt like I got to 41 fast compared to going through normal and one act of nightmare. I know the leveling slows, but even at 41, it's not *that* slow. It feels only slow right now because I'm taking time out for AH'ing or crafting.

I don't look at going through normal as seeing most of the content. I'm still being directed through the game by the game itself instead of finding my own experience. That's content to me. Finishing normal was only a small fraction of the experience for me. I still have multiple difficulties to go, and that's content.

 

the experience, the content? which? we will need to define our terms if we're going to communicate about the game.

 

Let me re-phrase, I'm 19 levels away from 60, but only 1/3 of the way through the game's ongoing story. Story is the best word for normal act 1 to Inferno act 4. Sure, you learn the lore from normal, but the story mode of the game including the scaling of the difficulties is what is a fraction of the content. The jewelcrafting and blacksmithing artisan professions are part of the content as well.

However, at 41, I am, like I said, only 1/3 of the way through the story mode of the game. Once I get to 60, the race to finish Inferno still occurs. After that, what's left is the endgame content, which is likely farming gold and loot, or helping lower levels, or twinking your alts. What I meant by creating my own experience is when I run out of things to do in the story mode, and the endgame is usually creating your own experience of how you want to play the game once the story mode is over.

The fact that I am still being driven by story mode on what to do next means I have not run out of content yet. I'm nowhere near it.

I'm also seeing potential issues with the economy as time goes on and we get more characters into hell and inferno. As I get to even Hell, the amounts of gold I'm going to have on a regular basis will be insane compared to a level 10-30 or even 40. The pricing of goods and equipment is going to have to stabilize as the amounts of gold at each level are distinguished. Even though alts could be twinked in World of Warcraft to high hell, there's a level of twinking that will be very prevalent here, especially since you can transfer very high amounts of gold to lower levels to buy gear off the AH. The other problem is with jewelcrafting vs. blacksmithing. Blacksmithing is a one-time deal. You only need one character on your account to do it. Jewelcrafting, however, is all about convenience and each character should have it. I'll be interested in seeing how future patches affect the game and how the economy turns out. In Diablo 2, there was no economy, or barely any at all. Everything was a free for all.

 

They will probably introduce gold sinks to remove gold from the economy like they do in WoW (epic mounts, training, respec fees, higher repair costs). D2 had an economy, but IIRC gold was so devalued that items became the defacto currency.

 

Jewelcrafting is acting as a decent gold sink. Pots were a gold sink until I got better gear and now I almost work off the pots I get from loots rather than vendor bought. I do too much DPS and have too much health to worry about pots that that only give me 2500 health.

The AH is just going to have to act as a gold sink, I guess.

 

Well the 15% transaction fee will certainly add up. Perhaps if they increased the repair costs a bit more.

 

But that doesn't do anything to act as a gold sink to remove gold from the economy. Sure it's a preventive measure that will act to keep gold out of the economy, but there are ways around it. Looking at Ebay, you can increase prices to account for fees. The AH really just transferring gold and items. The fees will do little.

The real gold sinks come in the crafting professions and repair costs.

Even World of Warcraft had sinks in the fashion of training costs and respec costs. The ease to respec in D3 is awesome, but it almost feels like God mode. Nothing has any sort of permanence.

 

But if it takes 15% of all money that goes through the AH... then it's removing currency. People can increase the price if they want to pocket more of it, but it still in the long term decreases inflation by reducing the amount of money in the market. None of these fix the real cause which is that money is not limited, which will continue to cause inflation until they add a real money sink (ie none of the money goes back to other players). Anything that is irresistibly good and costs ever increasing amounts of gold.

 

I reached Hell at level 51. I am 54 and only maybe 60% into Act I. Being level 41 doesn't mean you are 68% to max because the experience you need as you levelup is getting higher also. Being level 30 cant be 50% completed but maybe 20% only. We can only tell if we know the total experience needed per level up to 60.

I dont think there is something wrong with the leveling. If you think you are over-leveled on your current quest, then its your own doing because you chose to spend more time because you said you are farming. But time will come that you will not gain any more substantial experience by spending your time in lower level maps.

Its just like any other RPG or MMO.

 

the prices are driven by the market. the 15% AH rake is a huge gold sink.

as far as the leveling goes, I think his major complaint was that there are groups he can't play with because of his level. Catch me if I'm wrong, but that is a common problem in online RPG type games.

 

Well the only problem is that if you happen to outlevel the curve Blizzard has set, you can't join public games that are progressing through the quests you're doing. It's not a problem for me because I don't like playing with randoms (WoW made me allergic to pickup groups), but some people like doing public games.

 

Thanks guys for informing me about the DPS system in D3. After changing my weapon, which only had very high int but low pure damage, my dps went up by at least three times. A bit odd how the skills are based on weapon's damage rather than intelligence considering that the class is wizard.

 

I think it's kind of a nice change since weapons are usually pretty unimportant to casters in RPGs. It does make things kind of awkward when you're a wizard lugging around a 2 handed axe, though.

 

I read in diablowiki.net that its one of the changes for the caster for D3 compared to D2. In the past, sorcerer can use a weapon with a crappy damage as long as the intellect is high enough to affect the DPS. Unlike other melee classes that a good chunk of their DPS is dependent from the weapon damage, speed and dps.

Its kind of the same with rogue in (WoW) in vanilla where they can use a dagger with damage of 1-2 at level 60 and still be overpowered due to their damage scaling with the attack power that comes from agility more. That's why bliz normalized their damage later in TBC.

 

I just changed my spec at 43 and I'm 45 now on my wizard.

I have 14.6k hp and 1050 dps.

Familiar adds +12% dmg

Diamond skin which absorbs 8.5k dmg

Ice armor which slows movement speed of attackers and stacks a buff each time I'm hit to 3 times that increases my armor by 45% when fully stacked

Lightning hydra

Spectral blade - rune adds a bleed to attacks

Disintegrate - rune to widen beam

Passive skills:

Glass cannon - +20% dmg -10% armor/resistances

~115 health regen when I have an armor up

-20% melee damage

I'm officially a better tank than the majority of people I've played with, having better survivability than anyone I've seen in the last 2 levels.

At the same time I can tank 3 blue mobs in nightmare or a yellow mob.

Now I'm seeing why wizards are so vastly overpowered.

 

Lvl 50 Witch Doctor in Hell Mode

Started a new Rawr-Barrian today in Normal Mode.

Having more fun with it, yes its easy but Hell mode was the opposite its almost "too hard" cant just grind anymore I have to "Kite to Fight" making every battle of trash mobs a serious encounter and elite mobs like boss fights. I know its supposed to be like this and I probably need "better gear" but honestly for my level I have really good gear. I think Hell mode is just really starting to focus on group play more than solo and thus for our group we need a tank.

Also the most annoying thing is loot drops. In normal I get blues like crazy, yellows super often, and even some legendary here and there. Every boss always atleast 1 yellow.

Our entire group for Nightmare mode start to end never got even one yellow from a boss, and so much rubbish blues from elites with a few rubbish yellows. The loot drop tables do not carry over and it made Nightmare much less enjoyable for us as this is a loot grinding game and we never found any loot.

 

I followed your advice and switched from one handed + shield to 2 handed and it certainly made a difference in nightmare. Just finished Act 2 boss and didn't die at all (hardest boss in whole game imo), had to revive both a monk/wizard twice xD

I am level 43 and here is my build: Witch Doctor - Game Guide - Diablo III

Pretty damn good for nightmare so far. Slow down enemies to a standstill; confuse, stun and make enemies fight for me; turn them into chickens whilst healing myself; frighten them whilst doubling my armor; run away and restore mana + spam unlimited spirit barage thanks to vision quest for 2000-4000 damage. I may need to change it up for Hell though.

 

Tell me about it. I hit 55 last night with my wiz. The last time I remember fighting face to face with mobs was in normal mode. Since then it was just all kiting and its kind of exhausting lol.

I'm not sure what's should be the ratio between HP and DPS per level. I have 7k dps now and 25k HP at my level and it really doesn't feel like wiz is an OP.

When I was at your level, I have 3x your dps and maybe just 9k HP. I kite and it takes me a long time killing elites. That's why I cant imagine how long it takes you to kill them with 1k dps and how you can say wiz are OP.

Dont get me wrong, I know if you know how to play your class then its really powerful, but its not easy. Its not like hack and slash.

Last night, I was kiting a group of elites in an open ground when I accidentally aggro 2 more groups. So I was kiting like 9 elites (3 groups) and it feels like forever running around the map. I survived but I know if I got cornered and hit 3x then I'm dead.

I dont know your playstyle but I think we have some similarities anyway.
I have:

- Electrocute
- Disintegrate
- Arcane Hydra
- Bliz
- Diamond Skin
- Magic Weapon +%damage

I cant have familiar or I have to drop one. I prefer having bliz and hydra when kiting. But I think your dps at your level is still too low.

I'll check the other forum that I'm usually going and see if I can get some ideas and will update.

BTW. My gears are all level 51+ all rare except my rings (blues).
But my rings are both +8~12 Damage with Atk Speed +15%. I think I have decent gear but I still have to bleed leveling up

Hey Geo! what's your DPS and HP at your current level?

 

At 45 on my Wiz I have like 3500 DPS and 11k hp. I think I'm just really OCD about updating my gear. I also dye it to match (I had to dye my pants and my rare jazeraint mail because both of them were PINK by default and made my char look like butterfly Liberace).

 

Lol! Im doing the same. I dye everytime I change anything lol!
But that's what I'm saying. We have almost the same stats when I was at your level. I feel like raz's DPS is so low. I cant imagine how he kill mobs with it if I feel like it takes me long with 3x the dps..

 

@raz- I'd say it's about right, actually. My demonhunter is 46 and has 14k health and 1600 dps, and the abilities are extremely powerful (and I have completely crappy bottom-shelf purchased gear). I'm the total opposite of the guys above.

Twin chakrams in particular are quite destructive, he tosses out two blades that do damage down a really wide path for a very long range, penetrate 100%, each blade does 100% damage, and each blade can hit each enemy twice.

Plus stacked caltrops are huge. You can hit the invincibility button and drop 6 caltrops that snare and do 40% dps each, and they stay for a long time...

the 3 second total invincibility spell, and the "instantly restore all discipline (mana) and 60% health on a 30 second timer" spell are also quite powerful

the passive skills are also similar. There are several damage increasing choices at the +15-20% range (you could pick three of those for a serious effect as a DH)

---

point is: despite these skills all being quite powerful, all classes have really powerful skills at lvl 45, and it starts to become necessary. inferno difficultly is supposed to be hard, but largely it's an introduction to your higher tier skills and basic tactics. hell mode is going to be difficult and require better tactics and some coordination (or a lot of kiting)

watch this guy tank the siege breaker in inferno mode. Diablo 3 Siegebreaker (Nightmare) Solo Barbarian lvl 45 - YouTube

it's just completely different than what a ranged class could do (unless maybe it's geared up totally for defense at the expense of damage output). but no doubt the wizard is really good. i just don't think it's OP, based on my experience so far, and certainly not based on your particular wizard.

 

At 44 I have 10k HP, 1k armour and 1200 DPS. I do 190% of the 1200 damage on 1 target and 30% of it on 3 other targets with Spirit Barrage and gets even higher when I factor in the intelligence stack from gruesome feast. I could do with a better 2 handed weapon though.

 

So its not far from Raz'. I guess its really hard to come up with a standard due to varying playstyle. Hockeymass and I have the same and you, Raz and Masterchef are similar.

I think I will go back to increasing my DPS again. A 56 DH has 11k dps and a 57 Wiz has 9k and I have 7k so I think I'll try to up it more.

_________________

By the way, I found this in some forums, I didn't check if it has been posted already so sorry if it was.

Blizzard Entertainment: Press Releases

So this is the reason why the launch date is a mess lol!

 

and it's highly dependent on your gear, too. the difference between weapon only vs weapon + cheap gear is an order of magnitude increase damage output and survivability.

if you had better gear than me, it could make a dramatically bigger difference. i just bought cheap stuff off of the auction house (2-5k / item @ lvl 45). The gear variations are quite large.

 

I keep heading to the AH whenever I can and I look for things that are a mix of a vit and int, and keep updating it, but with keeping after the AH, I just can't get more than the 1100 DPS and 14k hp I have now.

My weapon is +120 Int +132 Vit +12-24 dmg gem and 77 dps



I check the AH as often as possible and try to keep up with it, but I just don't get how even with focusing on my two main stats my DPS is 1/3 of what others is.

 

You're right. But actually my point is I feel like Raz' dps is low and still he thinks playing wiz is easy for him as it is OP. And I have way bigger DPS when I was at his level and I dont find it easy but dependent on your tactics and skills.

Anyway, I am reading from some forums that Wiz and DH got nerfed from the last patch. I'm trying to look for the patch notes but site is blocked from work.

Can anyone paste the latest patch notes here if its not too long

 

How far do you normally update your items depending on your current level? If you are 46 and you have a level 36 item then its too far behind. A 5 level gap item sometimes equates to 100% difference in stats based on what I noticed.

I cant check my char now but I will later when I get a chance.
But I think you attack speed is a bit slow at 1.1 per sec. Speed has a substantial effect on your DPS too.

Edit: Sorry for the successive post

 

I think I'm realizing problems also with my income in how I anticipated certain things. My AH is completely screwed because I put stuff up not worth it that's not selling and now I can't do anything for 2 days. Plus there are other stupid things I'm not realizing until now because I'm seeing how useless blacksmithing is.

feh, if I could start this char over, I could do a lot of things better. I'll work on it later. Looks like I have a lot of Belial runs in my future to work on farming gold.

 

There's no point starting over though - the auction house, stash, and gold is shared between all your (non-hardcore) heroes. Since you don't actually make any permanent investments into your character, and everything is based on swappable skill choices / runes / perks / equipment, you can just refit your character to make it work. This is a good thing.

I also realized late that it wasn't worth it to invest any money into the blacksmith or gems, at least early where your money is definitely better spent elsewhere (by early I mean at least up to the lvl 46 where I am, probably further).

Sell rather than salvage for all equipment afaik. Some stuff you should sell on the AH, like yellow amulets and rings at least.

 

Ye I stopped leveling my BS by crafting when I was in 15 lol. When you loot trash items (white), you sell for a measly 10g or less. But when you sell magic items (blues), its normally about 300g per piece.
Because of that, I stopped salvaging blues and sell them instead to NPC and its a quick way to get golds aside from looting golds.

That's the reason why I can upgrade my gear almost every 3-5 levels. Yesterday, I spent another 130k on upgrades just to bring up my gear levels from 45 to 50+.

I plan to level my BS when I get to 60. I dont really need the low level mats anyway. You can just pay for upgrade and you will reach the max level. No need to craft like WoW to reach the next level.

Last time I had extra golds, I just bought upgrades for my BS and leveled it to adept.

 

77 DPS seems low for a 2h. My 1h is close to, if not over, 100 dps. Also, you should be getting +dmg gear where available (rings/amulet). Raiding Ring/Amulet of Agony.

 

Got a copy of the last patch notes.
Wiz Energy Armour got nerfed No more high damage - low HP wizard from now on!

I got that from here:
It's a bodybuilding site but they have a sticky for D3 thread lol.

The first part of the thread was just closed today as it reached 9527 posts (318 pages).
Here's the links for those interested.

Warning!!! Read at your own risk

1st Part - **Official Diablo III Thread** - Page 318 - Bodybuilding.com Forums
2nd Part - *** The Official Diablo 3 thread. part 2 - "Our long war ends today, Imperius! *** - Bodybuilding.com Forums

 

my 2h lvl 40 junk bow ~1000 gold in the AH does 134 dps

hint: sort by price and buy cheap if you intend to swap armor relatively regularly. I'm 47 now, probably will cheap-swap again at 50. Most of my equipment is 40-42. I'll probably do at least 3 more swaps at 50, 55 and 60.

 

@Raz - try to get something higher on your MH. I had a 1H that I used from 45 to 50 with a DPS of 160+ but with square ruby already.

Now at 55, I'm using a 260+ dps 1-hander and still the shield.

Try to refresh the AH search occasionally when you are there as things come and go very fast. Normally, I just put in my old gears for 5k just to sell it quick.

Message me ingame so I know your name so I can give you something if its still in my stash and maybe even the one I'm using now once I upgraded

 

I don't know what toon to level :|

I'm really enjoying my Monk at 46, but I am specced for group play so solo is a little boring.

Got my Wizard at 15 and it's really fun. Love shooting ice beam.

WD is 34 and my first toon but it's undergeared... don't know if I want to work on it or not.

Demon Hunter is 8 but seeing some in nightmare they seem like glass cannons like the wizard.

Barb is 12 but I don't like it at all.

 

I'll play later tonight after a job interview and homework. I'm just way underestimating the difference in the dps of your weapon. I have got to get out of this Diablo 2 mentality of focusing on stats. It's severely crippling me. Even in World of Warcraft, the DPS of your weapon never affected your effectiveness to this extent as a caster.

My ingame account name is the same as my forum user name.

 

Ye but we have spell power in wow for caster which is affected by weapon damage too so its like bliz is making the mechanics the same.

Ok, just message me ingame later.

 

Interesting - I'm in mumble with some of my friends (top D3 inferno players) and they mentioned that the reason people are getting hacked is because when you do public games, the game client get's copied by the hacker in the group/party and if you log out on your end, you remain online on their end. They can then strip your gold/stash/items.

3 of them were hacked and there's hundreds of posts on the blizzard forums, but they're getting deleted.

 

Yeah, that's what I heard as well. I believe it's called session hijacking.

 

I have to look into this more, I didn't think the traffic could do a man in the middle.