A question regarding items and difficulty levels

[Deleted]

Or picking up a unique ring and finding out it's a low % nagel *curses like mad*

[Cairhiin]

Exactly, which is why I personally doubt level 1-30 items which drop on normal difficulty will be dropping on hell, let alone inferno. They could, but it would feel stupid.

Doing 100 pindle runs or meph runs in a row on hell difficulty, just to get like 80 Sigon's Cages... Yeah, that was real fun.

The 70% statement means nothing really. It only confirms that items of exceptional and elite quality (in D2 terms) as well as certain affixes and suffixes (once again same as D2) don't drop in normal. It's pretty much guaranteed that Hell/Inferno monsters will drop normal/exceptional/elite items. Otherwise you hit jackpot every time you kill a bunch of normal monsters, and the economy would be flooded with high level rares. Remember also that while they can drop normal/exceptional/elite, we have no clue about these drop chances.

EDIT: Just as an example. Take Stone of Jordan for example. This ring was wanted and was easier to farm from let's say Andarial Hell than Diablo or Baal Hell, which means that higher level monsters will tend to drop higher quality items.

[Deleted]

It's pretty much guaranteed that Hell/Inferno monsters will drop normal/exceptional/elite items.

Well, I disagree. I don't think it's at all guaranteed, mainly because unlike D2, D3 will have several tiers of level 60 items on inferno, also because whites and blues can drop, and rares will have a wide range of stats, and as you said...

we have no clue about these drop chances.

Could very well be we'd be seeing whites and blues all the time due to the low rates on rares and especially legendaries, not to mention the higher tier gear. I'm pretty sure the majority of D3 players have a WoW mentality now; if you go to a raid or to kill a boss, you expect to get something useful to you, and I'm sure the developers know this, so while good rares and legendaries will be quite rare, the filler gear might very well be white and blue, and not low level rares and legendaries.

In any case, this remains to be seen.

[Cairhiin]

I guess we can but wait and see. But to me it sounds more that Inferno difficulty can drop a small array of level 60 quality items that cannot drop on Hell or lower which is similar to the Diablo 2 system.