Diablo III

[Turbanator]

Oh, image of my char, buffed with War Cry but no enchantress:
[lvlshot]http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/7817/screenshot026j.jpg[/lvlshot]

[bitWISE]

Do you mean pre-u4ea? If it was me, I didn't mean to directly suggest that I knew what I was talking about. I've never played barb and haven't talked much with my friends that do. However, if I recall what I've been hearing correctly, you want lots of effective HP, lots of life on hit, and a 1h weapon with a shield. You can't sacrifice armor and HP to pick up all resist since all the stats are relative to each other.

Here is a guy who is playing in Act 2 and getting some good feedback in the comments:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments ... tats_just/

Also, I don't know about barb gear prices, and how much act 1 clearing gear is going for these days, but its probably hard to find a single good piece for 200k. Gear above act 1 level is priced in the millions per slot unless you find a great deal. Gear to actually excel is in the tens/hundreds of millions.

Mostly, I would just say don't expect too much too soon. Inferno is frustratingly insane and being late to the party it will take a lot of effort to farm the cash needed to progress.

[U4EA]

Turb you got the wrong type of shield, but your survivability overall should be pretty solid now with those resists. The enchantress armour buff will help out a lot, so I would put that as a pretty high priority. Her DPS contribution is also non-trivial.

every Stormshield has +7% block. +30% rolls are common, ive seen 34%.
always resist all
always reduce dmg from melee
always reduce dmg from elites

Stormshield > *

Stormshield is a phenomenal piece of equipment, without a doubt. I do think it's a bit disingenuous to suggest it to a barbarian starting out in act 1, probably on a limited budget. The cheapest Stormshields around the 5 million gold mark have 17% block chance whereas you could probably get a 29% Sacred Shield for that amount with great ancillary stats on top. Good Stormshields generally run in 50-80 million range from what I've seen, not counting those jackasses putting stuff up for 500 million.

Also, I wasn't comparing block % or the shields overall, just block AMOUNT, of which Sacred Shield [3700-4700] is definitely a lot higher than Stormshield [2800-3700]. It makes a big difference.

[Turbanator]

Sorry, I meant U4EA not bitwise, sorry dude. The shield, I went cheap =P I only spent 60k. It's 900 def, 60 resist and 22% block, but at 60k, it was a worthwhile item to buy to test out with. I have to say though, duel wield with my double 300 LOH axes is pretty effective alternative, just higher risk when I get stunned or frozen (which is where the shield is better).

Bit annoyed after testing out that calculator, I paid 200k for a 61 resist amulet to find out my 139 str / 96 vit amulet was 6% better for EHP, not to mention the old amulet also had regen!

It's okay though, I've got the old one listed at 80k, so hoping it won't sell (lol), and then I can try flog this resist amulet back out for 200k again.

[xer0s]

Make it 250k, just for shits...

[SoM]

Diablo Horn for sale

$250US

fuck off gooks... er greeks

[U4EA]

Many exploits remain after 1.03

First, thank you for addressing so many of the important issues in this patch. After playing a couple of quests tonight, however, I've realized that the fight against exploiters will never truly be won.

• DPS is still way out of control - in some cases I've even seen players kill certain monsters before they were killed themselves
• People are still taking advantage of skills with unintended effects such as increased survival, damage output, and situation control
• There are several chests that continue to drop gold when opened; there are also still other, more nefarious means of gold farming, such as killing enough monsters that you actually MAKE more gold than your repairs cost
• I personally witnessed an incident where a player found a yellow item, and when they identified it, it had stats that could be exploited to increase their combat effectiveness - for the class they were playing at the time.
• Some gear seen on vendors still had stats other than Vitality that could, in the hands of an insidious agent, theoretically be employed toward the end of making combat easier (less dying, and in extreme cases, more killing)
• Bosses are still able to be killed by players - I don't have screenshots to prove this, but it is happening. Hopefully your data analysis can pick it up.
• Some bosses and rares are failing to properly spam stun, wall, poison, set afire, teleport into pools of acid, knockback, slow, and freeze players simultaneously while they teleport-kite the player at supersonic speed, carpeting every square inch of the zone with toxic ooze and letting their invulnerable minions with boss powers one- and two-shot us.
• I personally was able to set up a bizarre configuration in the auction house search panel where I could find items with specific stats and also be able to sort them in a way that was not effectively random.
• A friend of mine told me they were playing with some person earlier who - and I'm just the messenger here - seemed like they might be having fun while playing the game. I don't know how true this is, but if it's even a possibility, god help us all.

I'm just trying to do my part to ensure this kind of disgusting and cowardly behavior gets stamped out as soon as possible. If there's anything I hate in a game, it's feeling like I'm getting more powerful and that my time and efforts are culminating in some kind of... /shudder... progression. I'm in this for the frustration and disappointment, 100%, and I stand behind you with every patch that brings us closer to those ideals.

Keep up the great work.

[bitWISE]

So my friend and I are cashing out our godly gear until blizzard decides wtf they want this game to play like. Two of the items I loaned him already went for $270 total (1170 xbow and perfect dead man's quiver) and I've gotten $80 out of the attack speed gear I dumped after the patch. Still have another 9 slots to list of my own.

[xer0s]

I wish I had enough time to play this game to make some serious dough. (I don't wish this)

[Mat Linnett]

Pay yer money, play the game... in 3 days time.
This is getting bizarre. They must have some complete space cadets working for them.

[U4EA]

This is only for the digital version purchased directly from Blizzard and the article is misleading at best and malicious at worst. It's restricted only until such time that the payment is verified, which can take up to 72 hours.

It's to combat fraudulent methods of payment and is overall a good thing for the game. Gold sellers were using stolen credit card information to create new accounts with which to spam their gold selling services with these accounts. This will no longer be possible, as the payment for those accounts will not be verified, hence they will be a trial account still and thus unable to spam their gold selling services in game.

[Mat Linnett]

You pay $60 and only get a demo for the first three days?
It what world is this sane behaviour?
"Good for the game" my arse.
If I pay for a game on Steam, I expect to be able to play it as soon as it's finished downloading. And you know what? I am able to play it as soon as it downloads.
This is pure crazy, and buying into it, believing that the billion dollar corporation has the best interests of the players at heart?
CUCKOO! CUCKOO!

Tell, me, how is that article malicious or misleading?
Does it have the facts wrong? I don't think so, but please, feel free to enlighten me.
It has a mocking tone, but factually, it's bang on the money.

And even if I choose to live in your cloud-cuckoo land and believe that this is some batshit plan to stop gold-spamming, a 3 day delay really isn't going to do anything to stop it.

Besides, let's take the core argument, that credit cards take up to 3 days to verify. NEWSFLASH! This isn't exclusive to online payments. So if this really is to combat fraud, you should damn well put retail purchases into trial mode too.

It's just moronic, and justifying it spreads the ignorance like peanut butter mixed with dogshit.

Fuck me, first you force people to play online in order to "prevent cheating and exploiting", then you modify drop rates to encourage people to use the real money auction house, then finally you restrict new accounts 'cos you were too fucking stupid to realise that once a game becomes about money, there would be a criminal element interested in exploiting it.
*Golf Clap*

[U4EA]

I guess the 72 hour period is just a "cover their ass" length of time, for legal reasons. In reality, I doubt you'd actually get restricted for that long. Not sure though. Are there many games on Steam which are actively being spammed by gold selling services? Not being snarky here, I genuinely don't know. How do they deal with it there?

This is not a particularly great solution, but the gold selling problem is a real one with online RPG type games where gear features big and there's an actual market for people willing to pay real money for it. Gold selling services exist because people buy gold.

Of course I'm not simple enough to believe a gaming corporation always has the best interests of gamers at heart. They're doing it for the money and indirectly any way that gets them more money [sometimes this means keeping players happy]. There's been a lot of backlash on the forums about gold selling spam, so I would guess this is where it originated from.

As for why this is digital only and doesn't apply to retail boxes; gold spammers aren't exactly walking into stores and buying boxes with printed out fake credit cards and then using them for spam. That's just not happening. They are however buying digital accounts en masse and using them for spam, purely because it's so trivial to set them up without much effort. So that's what's being targetted with this move.

[Turbanator]

Old amulet back, listed the resist one for 220, sold within 2 minutes, 187 in the bank... a 13k mistake I wont make again thanks for the EHP calculator!

[Turbanator]

turbanator#1245

!! Q3W Crew... lets rock

[U4EA]

EHP is a great indicator when you are comparing specific pieces of gear in light of your overall stats, but it isn't everything.

For example, suppose perchance that you happen upon lots of good gear with really high vitality and Life%. You end up with great EHP, but as a result your resists and armour start to suffer. First off, the super high hp will devalue health potions, health globes and static life restores such as life on hit and life regeneration. On the other hand, they will make percentage based restores like Revenge and Dreadnought better.

Similarly, on the other side, you may be susceptible to stuns and freezes even with super high mitigation but low HP if you can't survive to get a Revenge off.

You'd still want a healthy balance of defensive stats without simply picking the item with the best EHP every time.

One more thing, after a couple of days of 1.0.3 I don't think super high defensive builds are as necessary as before. Act 1 hasn't changed, but [for example] with Belial's new enrage timer, a full tank build may struggle with low dps. I think skills like WotB now become more valuable and I am also considering dropping one of my armour passive for an offensive one. It's a good time to be a barbarian.

[shaft]

So my friend and I are cashing out our godly gear until blizzard decides wtf they want this game to play like. Two of the items I loaned him already went for $270 total (1170 xbow and perfect dead man's quiver) and I've gotten $80 out of the attack speed gear I dumped after the patch. Still have another 9 slots to list of my own.

What should I sell this for?
gold/$$

[Don Carlos]

Lotta nerds up in here...

[Mogul]

Well... the int affix is worthless, but the DPS number is what matters most, and 1390 is pretty nice! Maybe you could get 100 out of it? If not, at least a few million gold.

[xer0s]

Shaft, I'd try $250. It likely won't sell, but in a couple days you can lower the price to $200, a couple days later $150, etc...until you get a buyer. The market won't change much in a week, so I'd go for it...

[shaft]

@mogul
Int isn't worthless. A wizard could use it. Or your enchantress . You've played this game, right?

[shaft]

I may just try to sell it for ingame currency. I really don't have an endgame weapon for my monk. I'd like to flip it for a nice dagger or fist weapon.

[Turbanator]

Well... the int affix is worthless, but the DPS number is what matters most, and 1390 is pretty nice! Maybe you could get 100 out of it? If not, at least a few million gold.

Wonder what the DPS of an Enchantress would be with that, lol.

[Mogul]

@mogul
Int isn't worthless. A wizard could use it. Or your enchantress . You've played this game, right?

I've not played a wizard... They can equip 2h axes?

[U4EA]

Yes.