Diablo 3 Gameplay/Performance Impressions (NO SPOILERS ALLOWED)

If anyone wanted to add me, I'm not sure you need my username or battle tag, it's raz1337 or raz1337#1681 respectively.

Okay, yeah, energy armor is just...cool. It's basically ice armor's crystallize buff, but constant and 20% more. I'll take it. I'm just not liking poison hydra. It feels unpredictable with the pools. I like the lightning, you have more control over it. I can see poison being useful for bosses that are stationary, but not all of them are. Do the pools occur on top of each other and stack?

 

Poisoin Hydra still shoot fire orbs aside from the pool that it sprays on the ground. And its a DOT unlike the lightning. And any mobs who walk on it will be affected by the DOT. I just usually kite around the hydra so the mobs will be walking on the pool of poison. It works the same as the mammoth hydra spraying fire and leaving the ground burning for a few seconds.
Using any hydra on trash mobs doesnt really matter at all but in Hell, where in you can find champs/elites on almost every corner of the maps, its really very useful. Even trash mobs hit a lot harder too in higher acts.

Edit: Finally finished Hell. I run the whole thing solo
Let's see what's in Inferno now!

Found this while browsing lol!

 

Just finished Belial on hell at 59.

With 1h an shield on the wizard, I have 4800 dps, 3600 armor and 36.4k hp. I have a weapon upgrade waiting on the AH but it's down because it wasn't giving people completed auctions. =/

One level to go! Thinking about leveling a demon hunter or monk. Can't decide. Demon hunter looks like a mix between amazon and assassin in D2. Monk is Sorceress/Paladin combo? Witch Doctor I'm guessing is Necromancer on crack.

 

I finished Hell with 12k DPS, 41k HP, 2k armour. Killed Diablo in a 4man party, after a few failed attempts.. Mainly the shadow thingies that slaughtered us because we weren't working together, boss himself was easy. This is too low for later Inferno levels, I'll need 40k DPS somehow... Lol

Anyways, I tried adding you guys but you're not accepting?

 

Sent a friend request.

Got some upgrades. I'm at 5800 dps, 40.5k hp, and 3700 armor.

I need a good 2 hander though for my level so I can switch back and forth.

I think jinda had the right idea for hell. Solo it the first time. Doing it in groups is just painful to all hell. My merc is 10x more useful than most group members in hell.

 

I can't seem to see any friend requests?

I added you and jinda but it seems that you are not seeing my invite?

 

The damage scaling works out so that having a group isn't really helpful if you aren't pretty well coordinated. The group experience will be a lot more variable. Mediocre groups will be harder to find success with vs. going solo, but expert groups can excel.

 

geo I added you last Friday. Anyway I sent you an invite again.

 

The hell? Last night I was playing Diablo 3 for the first time and my 6970 temp went up to 82 degrees maximum while playing this game. My gpu rarely hit this temp mark when playing other games.

And I've also heard from people about how Diablo 3 is unstable for most of the cards out there with temperature spiking up randomly.

 

This seems like a very reasonable temperature for a 6970m. You shouldn't expect your GPU temperature to be exactly the same from game to game.

 

D3 is pretty optimized so you should see 99% load most of the time hence higher temp.

 

That is contradicting itself, an optimized game will not have to use the gpu or cpu to 100% to get full performance.

I know where your coming from, say a game that only uses 1 core out of 4 on a cpu, but thats not the same as seeing 100% load on something and calling it optimized.

If my dual 5870 system is 100% load for a simple game thats a bad sign of optimization. Use Vysnc of course else you let the system run faster than it needs to.

 

I just finally hit 60 playing with Jinda. I can either go 2 ways right now:

41.5k hp / 10k dps / 4700 armor with 1h + shield

or

40.5k hp / 21k dps / 1600 armor w/ 2 hander

Time to farm because me and jinda basically got our asses handed to us in inferno.

Kinda want to level a new char.

If anyone still wanted to add me you can do it by email [email protected]

 

60 Barb I had to run past some mobs in the last bit of the game, they just were too much work for what it was worth. I also ran into my first elite pack that I just could not kill, they regened hp faster than I could take it away.

So in Inferno now and I am way behind the "loot check' for barbarians. Apparently I need well over 600 resists lol and almost every piece of gear is like 3Million + each going all the way to 20+million for the better stuff.

So now I have to grind forever in lower difficulties or maybe Act 1 Inferno to get the money to buy gear, just so then I can farm Inferno for gear... For some reason this does not sound too appealing to me.

Also sucks for barbs because unlike other classes that can stack on a ton of magic find gear and a good weapon I must keep my armor on since I have to be in meele range.

My idea of being a pure tank for my team/friends seems to have fallen through big time. I had DarkPython with me and even as a glass cannon with uber high dps I killed things faster solo than with him tagging along as a team and it was 8x easier because I didnt have anybody dying or agro management.

The Agro thing is the other problem, little point of being a tank if after 2 shots all the mobs chase him instead of me, also stuff always comes up from behind to gank him. Even giving up some important skills for the taunt shout its only 3 seconds and often mobs tend to ignore it and kill him anyways.

At this rate the team needs to just be 4 wizards and we go nuke everything and then we can get rich due to the low equipment requirements.

Barbs either need to have no life or wizard friends to feed them gear

 

I roll'd a barb as well ,done inferno A1 with my bro (he got 60monk and 60wiz).
My survivability is worse than his monk, the only purpose of my barb is wrath + inferno that elite/rare pack and hope they die.

Hopefully this is not a spoiler but I find it a good read, I also posted on last page Blizz Sacrificed the Quality of D3 for Money - Forums - Diablo III

I probably keep on playing if my bro can stick on it.(He got no life so at least I can play with him and not let him solo like a mad man)

There is many ways to get gear progress in D2:
cow, mf, trade, follow runs and click fast, hammering the soulstone, pick up cheaped/flawless gems/socketable(yes they worth sumthing)

D3: Farm gold(or farm job) and buy off ah : So fun.

 

This is sort of a complex issue. When you're talking about optimization, idle resources are wasted resources. You want the game to be able to use all of the resources available, and use them effectively. It's really a 2d spectrum, where you have resources used on one axis and you have efficiency (how effectively are you using those resources?) on the other axis. Ideally, your software would hit nearly 100% on both. Of course, if you're willing to set a frame rate cap and a "visual quality cap" - now you have clamped your effectiveness to something finite, and so the the goal is to use as little resources as possible by increasing efficiency as much as possible.

 

Its getting frustrating already having to go back to Hell to farm so you can survive Inferno. I have only been trying to farm for 4 days and its already boring the hell out of me.

Then AH allows you to put 10 items only for auction. I cant create more mules for inventory. My character list is already full. I am now selling rare items in the NPC.

I was hoping there will be a lot of things we can do after 60 and in inferno than just repeating all the quests that we just did 3 times already.

 

I feel like I'm already pretty much done with D3. When I played WoW, the raiding scene was pretty repetitive, with months of farming between content patches. That was ok, because I was playing with my guild and the camaraderie and gear building and DPS races and whatnot made it fun. Doing the same run through 4 times, acquiring marginally better gear along with piles of useless gear is kind of tedious.

 

^Yep old WoW player here as well. Man I actually strictly PVP'd for a year cause PVE was so repetitive ...but even PVP got repetitive eventually. Everything's so based on farming and grinding for gear. Arena was prob my favourite aspect of WoW...despite poor class balancing sometimes. I guess PVP could be the only thing left for me to look forward to in D3.

Even knowing Diablo would be about gear and loot I decided to buy it. Rolled a monk and was darn fun...and then I hit Inferno mode -.-. Now I'm stuck trying to farm better gear or gold so I can spend it all on the AH.

Pretty soon real money AH will be here and some people will not be able to resist...cause they want dat phat legendary lewt >.<.

Anyways rerolling a wizard atm because I hear melee classes are just getting teared through like toilet paper in inferno(until ya spend 5M on AH gear :] ), while ranged can still maintain some good dps while kiting. Not saying melee classes can't kite but I don't think they can do efficient DPS while doing it LOL( like on my monk...). We'll see how it goes.

 

Yes, as many as you want. Then you get some random loot under level 60 items in which most of them are unusable. So you have to put them in AH at to get some golds but AH allows you 10 items at a time only.

About WOW, its pretty much the same kind of repetition but at least you get other options in wasting your time. I like it best before TBC then every patch seems to make me lose interest in it.

I am trying public games now and neglecting the dangers of being hacked. 2 of 10 tries, you get a group that wants to progress the quests in Inferno. 8 of 10 just repeatedly do the chest run in New Tristram and kill the blacksmith's wife

 

That's the thing, at least in WoW I could play the AH, farm for mats to craft something, run 5 mans, or PvP. Aside from running quests over and over there's not a lot for me to do. It was really fun for 2 weeks and now I'm just over it.

 

Can you be more specific on chest runs in new tristram?

 

Its when you are doing quest #2 The legacy of Cain. There is an underground cellar in the field with some elites guarding the chest. Then they will continue it to Quest No. 3 Shattered Crown to kill the blacksmith's wife for some drops.

 

I think that is the run I tried earlier, but it was no fun reloading the game every 3 minutes and I think the gold/drops were not that great.

I think so far the most fun farming is getting friends on and doing butcher runs on Hell. With Valor I get 3-6 yellows, and tons of blues and the run nets me about 40K gold or so. I have not timed it to get gold per hour and see if its effective but atleast its not boring.

I need almost 2Million for each piece of armor for my guy to get geared up to start Inferno seriously and almost 10M+ for one of the good weapons. That is so much farming. I would make money on the AH but the 10 Item limit is KILLING ME. I hold items to sell and forget to sell them or by the time I can sell them I have something else better to sell. I end up under selling hoping it sells faster and I often have people skip over it anyways.

Plus the 24 hour hold is even more dumb. Atleast let me vendor my stuff early if its not selling, and put my money in my bank automatically stop making me do that.... Ugh Blizzard you made WoW and it has a huge AH why did you mess this one up so badly?

Anyways my take on D3 so far is that it feels rushed. The first acts are long, drawn out with lots of lore, then end the end suddenly the acts are so short you didn't even notice you had gone to the next act. I think it was taking them so long to make the game somebody in charge said get this game out now and I dont care how.

All this talk about D2 and how it was better, the Irony here is that many of the D2 guys are the ones that made Torchlight 2. If it ends up being a better game I dont know to laugh or to cry as its only $20 vs the D3 price of $60.

My rating of games always comes down to the money. So I dont expect the same of a $10 indie game as I do a $60 AAA title, and the content D3 has for $60 right now is very disappointing.

I wish we never accepted $60 game prices in the first place, PC games were always known as being cheaper than consoles, and now almost daily I see game sales for consoles and PC games are full price other than some digital media like Steam having sales.

 

^You are actually right about those runs being fun when you're doing it with other people. I had a great time and collected good amount of golds and loots when I helped raz from his hell runs.

When we tried Inferno and it didn't work, raz decided to roll another class so I'm alone now

I tried public games today and managed to reach quest 8 of Inferno Act I. I started from quest 3. Got some level 60 loots but you have to spend so much time for a very small progress due to level of difficulty. Gold is supposed to be good due to valor buffs but the cost of repair is just high and have to do it frequently.

 

Did some runs today in inferno act 1 but no luck with loot haha...and yeah the AH is so dumb can't cancel auctions and can only have 10 active at once. My luck is so bad and If I try to stack magic find I'll be so squishy hehehe.

I also agree with the PC Game prices , as I usually just wait for those 50% or 75% steam deals nowadays to make a purchase, because the average amount of content in a game can be disappointing, and with the deals it'd finally just feel right for the price .

I got D3 though cause all my friends were like excited for it and even though I didn't think it'd be all that special (played D3 beta up to lvl 13 on a couple chars), playing w/ people you know has always been an aspect of online games that kept me playing. Still don't understand the hype atm, but I guess most people have the impression that Blizzard games never suck? And they spent a long time on it haha..

Speaking of taking a long time to develop...I have my sights set on guild wars 2 atm XD (FINALLY finally something that feels different than the WoW-set formula). I mean 60 bucks no subscription fee could be a steal for this one(played April beta weekend , about same time that I was playing D3 beta). Just gotta convince my friends and cousins that Arenanet is worth considering, Blizzard is starting to slack!

I wanna keep this on topic since it's a D3 thread but, I'm hoping Torchlight 2 will be good ^^, could be another steal for its price.

Overall though you guys nailed it lol, the problem with D3 atm is definitely that there isn't enough to do...it feels one dimensional and I find myself only playing when friends want to -_-. Not really feeling satisfied with the $60 spent but, the game hasn't been out for long yet so....in time we'll see what Blizz might do to fix some problems.

 

The reason I rolled another class is because I did my time in World of Warcraft dying over and over again to teach 25 and 40 man raids how to kill bosses. This time around, it's not fun, and this is 100x worse. At least in WoW, you weren't just throwing yourself out to slaughterhouse with the slimmest sliver of hope. You actually were learning the encounter as you failed each time.

I'm having fun with my Demon Hunter right now at 43. She has 2800 dps. I'll just see where it goes.

 

My laptop randomly shuts down while playing.

 

There are two simple aspects that TL2 lacks which could damage its longevity though:

1) lack of NG+, which means instead of being directed into a progression across several difficulties, you just pick one you're comfortable with and finish it, and MAYBE do the next difficulty up.

2) lack of official serverside hosting options, meaning hacking would run rampant in online games (but of course won't impact friends co-op)

Just hoping that they've done something special for end-game that would keep the game fresh, this is something that no one knows about yet.

 

Again I paid $15 for TL2 If I get a good amount of time out of it then it was worth its cost.

Hacking... not really valid since D3 has been hacked.

When I have played both I will have a good feel of what each offers and be able to give a personal review/opinion/comparison.

 

Rawr server went down just as I was killing the butcher. I did the whole run in 15 min because pretty much soon as I started my run I saw the 15 minutes till server shuts down message.

It was a very productive run I had my whole bag filled with yellows and blues, problem is my inventory was full so I had about 5 things on the ground when the server went down.

I picked up all the yellows though, my only concern is that it does not roll back any progress and the loot in my inventory is there when the server is up later.

So far as far as gold farming I think butcher runs on hell are working best for me. 40K gold in 15 minutes and its not nearly as boring as any spawn, kill, reload farming methods that have you log in/out of the game to repawn things constantly.

I tried belial and azmodan both take much longer and I didnt feel like the money was better, and the loot quality didnt seem much better. None of it is loot I can use as a lvl 60 anyways and almost none of it is sellable due to the 10 item limit on the AH so I end up just vendoring it all.

I have not tried a Diablo farm run yet but I am sure it will follow the same path of taking longer and being harder for little return.

My next thing to try is the pony level on Hell maybe I can find lvl 60 stuff there, but with no boss to kill not sure how well the loot will work out, its the 5x valor buff that seems to always give 3 yellows and about 5 blues on a boss kill every time.

 

I play both a monk and Barbarian and the latter of the pair seems to get involved in some of the more... heated fights... >.>

My Qosmio's GTX 460M runs the game on a mix of high/low settings (High textures and low shadows) and it's a very sustained middle framerate area that I see most of the time with only a few slowdowns during seriously intense combat with 4+ people.

I think it plays very well and the graphics are simply stunning.

Also, not a spoiler, but Diablo is sexy.

 

You know I'm kidding right? Lol!
Dont tell me I have to wait for your DH to get to Hell again

I did the belial runs many times and it isn't that long either but gold will not be that much as its just a straight run from bazaar to belial (emperor's castle). And the problem is the valor buffs you get from killing the elite before belial will disappear once you log out and repeat again.

I also did the quest in Act 3 starting from where you will light the torch in the battlefield? That field have a lot of elite packs so its so easy to stack up the valor buffs. Drops are pretty decent too. I think I will settle on doing Act runs for the valor buffs to stay.

I just hope bliz will change the AH limitations. Its really not working.

So those who are just starting or anywhere in Hell and if you feel like you want to do it faster, add me up so I have someone to talk to while farming

 

My demon hunter has 48k dps, crits for 100k, and opens with crits (sharpshooter)

Of course, I get one-shotted by everything, but whatever. I just have someone else take the enemy aggression, cloak or dodge when needed, or, worst case, run for the door and cloak->enter->fire->exit

So far, not a huge amount of trouble with inferno act 1, but the butcher fight did take 2 tries for me with a random 4-person group.

 

Using the AH feel like using editor in Single player imo....

Getting gear from ah to farm the same(inferior most of the time) gear on single player is .... aswell

Any 1 ever right click other player and check their achievement and skill/stat?

 

I'm thinking of doing all DPS with my wiz but that will mean having another set of DPS gear. I have 22k with 1H/Shield combo and 30k HP, 6k armor. I dont get killed in 1 shot but with all the cc skills of the elite in inferno, 3 shots can happen in 1 or 2 secs

Maybe I'll try getting a separate DPS gear when I have enough golds.
Is it working fine when you are playing alone in inferno?

 

D3 is my intro to the Diablo series and I really like it so far. I've just beaten Nightmare Mode and unlocked the secret level. I'm a little disappointed that I disregarded this series before in favor of Warcraft.

From what I hear, we've got some major balance issues coming from Blizzard though. I can already see that the AH is unfortunately the most efficient and easiest way of obtaining gear. You can farm all day long and never find anything as good as something you can get for cheap on the AH. That's a pretty disappointing way of playing the game.

I've also heard Inferno mode is not the fun sort of challenging people were wanting. It's the WoW style of challenge where, instead of having the challenge rest in interesting mechanics, the challenge is in surviving large hits and spiky damage; the kind where one or two shots from a mob will kill you. Also not a fun way to play a game. It's a good thing Blizzard has acknowledged this issue, although I'm doubtful they'll fix it because they could never quite pull it off in WoW.

 

I felt like they did finally get it right in Cataclysm. However, this does seem like the WoW bosses of old. Instead of giving them interesting new abilities and mechanics as the difficulty level ratchets up, they just make them hit harder and take more damage. Not really compelling gameplay.

The controls are also annoying. Maybe 25% of the time, my wizard will run up to an enemy instead of casting at them. I know I can hold shift, but why doesn't it work consistently all the time? I know I'm clicking on the enemy.

 

Wait wait wait...

I'm pretty sure you people aren't hitting for FORTY EIGHT THOUSAND damage per second. Hell, that might be... per minute, which my Barbarian can do around ~72.7k per minute if you DON'T include any critical hits or skills. I find it very hard to think that anyone here can manage what they're saying or even know what they're saying... >.<

 

What do you mean? The DPS we are saying is coming from your character profile details.

Mine is not 48 though It's still 22k for 1H and 30k for 2H.

 

Come back after you've played Inferno.. seriously now.

 

Hey Geo, did you accept my invitation yet?

 

At least 4 people have added me here... and I just don't see any invites! I've added them myself (copy and paste tag multiple times), but it's like my invite is not sending through. I've added people on public and they've added me back just fine. Not sure what I am doing wrong.

 

Have you ever read the damage tooltip? They factor in increased damage from skills, stats, buffs, adjust it by critical hit chance and damage along with attack speed to arrive at the DPS number in the character tab. If you sat spamming your highest dps attack on something, that's how much you'll do.

How far into the game were you again? It scales like crazy once you hit the end of nightmare.

lol, you know you can drag me into inferno games whenever you want me in there. I don't mind going in or helping out. It's just not my priority. I realized by rolling my DH that I'm basically copying what I did in Diablo 2. I had a Sorceress and Amazon in Diablo 2, which equates to a wizard and demon hunter. Haha. And I love both.

I think once I get my DH to Hell, I'll start making serious runs into Infero. I'm just beginning act 3 in Nightmare. The problem is I managed to get to act 3 while being underleveled. I'm 43, and even though I've beaten Belial in a group, I can't join public Belial or act 3 games because the minimum levels are 44-46. Wow. This is an interesting contrast to my wizard, which I spent ample time re-running things and ended up overleveled. So if I focus too solely on story progress, I reach a point where I'm underleveled, but if I focus on farming while questing, I get overleveled. Unbalanced, maybe?

 

Should I farm stuff in normal or just jump right into nightmare?

 

Man I go on leave for a week tomorrow and of course they're doing maintenance today.

What are your stats Getawayfrommelucas?

 

I finished normal at 30 on my demon hunter, and she had ~600 dps and 6-7k hp. A lot of people in nightmare don't keep up because they don't keep up with gear upgrades as they level, and as a result, their hp and dps suffer greatly. A lot of people are messing with the right builds and such. When I was in act 1 nightmare, people died left and right because their gear wasn't meeting the challenge. Plus a lot of people stood in the green poison pools thinking it was happy fun time.

If you're solo'ing and you felt like you killed stuff in act 4 of normal quickly, move on. Just keep in mind in public games that the difficulty scales by the number of people in the group. Act 1 of nightmare would be easy as pie for me as solo, but people insist on doing it with 4 people, which I have no idea why. Stuff takes too long to kill and people go afk after they join. Just some of my pet peeves.

Normal is a "Are you awake?" check. Nightmare is a DPS check. Hell is a character build check. Inferno is a gear check.

 

Are you going on leave for D3 playing purposes only
I envy you

 

I don't remember off hand, I'm lvl 32-34ish, around 450 dps and 4-5k hps, Wizard.

Yeah Act 3 and 4 was a complete joke, I spend a lot of G upgrading my gear about every 5 levels or so...basically when i feel like I'm taking too much damage and/or not doing enough damage.