Page 1 of 3
1
2
3
LastLast
  1. #1
    Field Marshal meldora's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Azeroth
    Posts
    74

    Biggest Mistakes in Diablo 3

    #1 Not Bringing a Follower Along

    Did you know if you’re playing solo you can bring a follower along with you? If you didn’t, you’re making the game more difficult than it needs to be. Maybe you’re a purist and insist on running through Hell mode alone. I bet you’re dying a lot. There are three follower types, the Templar, Scoundrel and Enchantress. There is a lot of debate which is best, but honestly it’s different for each class and each class play style. The templar heals, the Scoundrel slows and the Enchantress casts spells. Play with each of one, pick a favorite and use them diligently, you won’t regret it. If you didn’t know, you can even gear them up.

    #2 Not Buying Gear off the Auction House

    Sure, you’re too cool to buy gear from someone off the Auction House. You’re so good that you don’t need help. Well, you’re going to die. Thirty to Fifty thousand gold is all it costs to deck your character out in moderate gear. Hopefully you didn’t already waste all your gold on repairs and artisans. Don’t try to buy the best stuff there, you don’t need +100 Dexterity and +100 Vitality in Nightmare as a Demon Hunter. You just need something with both Dexterity and Vitality in that slot that you’re currently sporting +52 Strength and +42 Dexterity. If you can add a primary stat to each piece of gear slot, or round them all up a bit you can add hundreds of Vitality which equates to thousands of health points. All this equates to living instead of dying.

    Visit the auction house, sort by buyout (highest on top) and then go to page 10 or 30, there’s the clearance area you’re looking for. These sellers are stepping over each other left and right to sell you some nice gear. Let them help you out.

    #3 Wasting Gold on Your Artisans

    Most players are telling me that they have a level 4, 5 or 6 Blacksmith and/or Jeweler. I respond with, ‘oh yeah, what’s that get you?’ In the case of the Blacksmith you can make some pretty nice gear, but the Jeweler… you won’t be able to make gold with them until you can combine gems like squares and stars. Unless you’re really patient you’re not going to get a lot of upgrades from your Blacksmith. Just buy the gear off the auction house, it’ll be cheaper and save you 100,000 gold or more.

    You can make gold with both Artisans, but if you are not then you wasted money on them early in the game when money was especially valuable.

    #4 Ignoring Skill and Game Mechanics

    Diablo 3 is serious business. Consider the passive skill Archery for the Demon Hunter. It buffs your damage based on the type of weapon you’re using. If you’re comparing two weapons of different types the tooltip might tell you that one is better than the other but that just might not be true. Tooltips can’t predict everything so you have to understand what it is that is going on before making key decisions like what type of gear to equip. There are also skills like Steady Aim that increase your damage when an enemy is within a certain range of you. Do you know what 10 yards looks like in the game??!! If you don’t, what the hell do you expect?

    #5 Ignoring Vitality

    Damage is cool! Let’s see how high we can get the Damage stat to go in our stat screen. Oh, 500… 800… 1300… 2200, yes! But.. why am I still dying? Stop ignoring Vitality. Even if you’re a Demon Hunter… especially if you’re a Demon Hunter, you’re going to die a lot if you don’t have a lot of Vitality. Don’t be embarrassed to cut your DPS down 25% to double your Vitality. Watch your health globe in the bottom left when you equip some nice Vitality gear. See that new health? How nice would it be to have that when some cheating ass elite pack jails you, walls you and then hits you with something that you didn’t even see? What good is all that damage anyways if you’re spending 1/4 of your night running back?

    #6 Sticking with your Original Skills

    I’ll use the Demon Hunter again for this example. Rapid Fire looks pretty damn cool, and if you got in the habit of using it on Normal difficulty it probably worked just fine. But once you reached Nightmare or Hell and started dying did you blame your class (this class just sucks) or your skills? Chances are it’s your fault, but you should look to your skills before blaming your class. Rapid Fire is primarily for cooperative play where your allies take the damage and afford you the opportunity to hold still. A skill like Chakram will let you dance around while doing high amounts of AoE damage. This is just one example, I’m sure there are more for each class. Play with each and every skill at least once before you pretend like you know what you’re doing.

    #7 Running Back in Cooperative Games

    This is a pet peeve I’ve noticed recently in cooperative games. If you die, release your body and immediately teleport to town, then click on an allies’ banner and you’ll be instantly teleported back into the action. Don’t run back… Of course if you aren’t making the mistakes listed above you probably aren’t dying in cooperative games unless it’s a complete wipe. Either way, this is a helpful trick to get back into combat really fast and I’m seeing too many players run back the hard way when in a cooperative game.

    #8 Using Only One or a Few Skill Builds

    At level 60 you’ll receive a bonus the longer you can play using a single skill build. This should give you a hint that frequent skill swapping makes the game easier. While you’re leveling, there’s no harm in swapping from build to build based on whether you’re solo’ing, playing coop, fighting a boss or running easy content. Slowing mobs might be helpful now, but later when your friend joins its not so helpful. Switch to another ability!

    #9 Not Using About Elective Mode

    Some players don’t realize that there is an ‘elective mode’ when it comes to skill builds. Just because there are only four options for your primary skill doesn’t mean you have to choose from one of those four options. Go to Options -> Gameplay -> Interface and check ‘elective mode.’ This will allow you to assigned whatever abilities you want in whatever location you want. You’ll see most of the skill builds on Diablo 3 Artisans don’t use elective mode. That’s because the default setup is actually pretty nice. However, there are some common situations where you might want to swap out Sentry for a Bat Companion (just an example) instead of being forced to sacrifice your Bat Companion for Vault.

    There are probably more mistakes that players are making, these are just the 7 that stand out to me. If I’m missing one, please share it below in the comments area.

    There are also some small tips that might take new players awhile to figure out:

    Hold CTRL to preview gear before looting it
    Hold ALT to compare a ring to your second ring
    Vendor your Magic Items, don’t salvage them.
    Check every vendor for upgrades.
    Tap ALT to auto-show loot that isn’t otherwise being shown.

    If you’re still having problems with your class ask other players that you meet how they are overcoming the challenge that you’re stuck on. Chances are they will be willing to share their stats, gear, skills and play-style with you.

    Copied with permission from: Diablo 3 Artisans

  2. #2
    Sweet list!

  3. #3
    This is going to sound like a dumb question, but is there anyway to "hotswap" skills ala Diablo 2?

    Would address the skill problem for me, thanks.

  4. #4
    Field Marshal meldora's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Azeroth
    Posts
    74
    Quote Originally Posted by Baelic View Post
    This is going to sound like a dumb question, but is there anyway to "hotswap" skills ala Diablo 2?

    Would address the skill problem for me, thanks.
    I've looked around and haven't found an answer to that one. There are no third party addons for D3, so I'm thinking no dice.

  5. #5
    The answer to hotswapping is to open up your skill page and run around like a crazy person while you're swapping!

  6. #6
    Epic! Dave131's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Pasadena, Ca.
    Posts
    1,584
    Well. I have spent almost all my money on the Jewel Smith and Blacksmith

    I honestly have been regretting it too

    Oh wells
    “Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy." ~Frank Sinatra

  7. #7
    One more thing to add if it applies to all classes, though I certainly know it does to DH:

    Weapon Damage > All

    Right now the + dmg stat is absolutely broken and OP probably to the point of seeing a nerf soon. Although you have to monitor the dps tooltip carefully when swapping items, generally +damage weapons will give you more than stacking your primary stat. The best items of all, in fact, have both.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Dave131 View Post
    Well. I have spent almost all my money on the Jewel Smith and Blacksmith

    I honestly have been regretting it too

    Oh wells
    On the bright side it's account-wide. You can only make that mistake once

  9. #9
    I am Murloc! Mister K's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Under your desk
    Posts
    5,628
    Quote Originally Posted by Nerraw View Post
    Sweet list!
    Agreed.

    FIX CRAFTING, IT SUCKS
    -K

  10. #10
    Deleted
    you want as little vitality as possible as a wizard, if you can get gear with no vitality and high life regen then you are set for solo anything

  11. #11
    Warchief
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Michigan
    Posts
    2,144
    Quote Originally Posted by meldora View Post
    #2 Not Buying Gear off the Auction House

    Sure, you’re too cool to buy gear from someone off the Auction House. You’re so good that you don’t need help. Well, you’re going to die. Thirty to Fifty thousand gold is all it costs to deck your character out in moderate gear. Hopefully you didn’t already waste all your gold on repairs and artisans. Don’t try to buy the best stuff there, you don’t need +100 Dexterity and +100 Vitality in Nightmare as a Demon Hunter. You just need something with both Dexterity and Vitality in that slot that you’re currently sporting +52 Strength and +42 Dexterity. If you can add a primary stat to each piece of gear slot, or round them all up a bit you can add hundreds of Vitality which equates to thousands of health points. All this equates to living instead of dying.

    Visit the auction house, sort by buyout (highest on top) and then go to page 10 or 30, there’s the clearance area you’re looking for. These sellers are stepping over each other left and right to sell you some nice gear. Let them help you out.
    My only comment is in regards to this, specifically the second paragraph. Instead of sorting by BuyOut and trying to scroll through pages (which I found is laggy and is slow to update), you can instead go to the bottom left hand side of the AH screen. At the very bottom there is a field for Set/Legenardy name, and to the right of that is a "Set Max Buyout" field. In the Max Buyout field, just throw a low number in like 5000g. Now you can add your other fields like "Show me Dex Items" and do your search. You'll find a ton of wicked upgrades for cheap, because there are just SO MANY items on the AH.

    Which leads me to my next two suggestions; don't freak out about too much magic find, and don't bother crafting low level gear (and thus, don't bother dusting your blues).

    Both of those suggestions are born from the cheap prices on the AH. Dust are not worth much, and crafting costs thousands of gold to get a random item. Why would you want to dust items and then burn up mats and gold in order for a RANDOM chance at an item, when you can go to the AH, sort for a cheap buyout, and find awesome rares for sale for cheap.
    Which leads to the Vendor Your Gear suggestion. Dusting it is worthless, you should just vendor and pocket the gold. I do this for just about every blue item. If a super keen blue item comes up, or a good itemized rare, go ahead and auction house it for a couple thousand gold instead of just the 150g vendor price.

    If an item has stuff like "+5 Yards for Gold Pickup" and "Health Globes give +38 health" then that item is pretty much trash and you should vendor it. If you get a weapon with +Str and +Int on it, it's going to pretty trashy too.

    Don't be afraid to vendor gear. I was latched on to rares until I stopped giving a shit and started vendoring. I had a full stash and full bags with +5 Experience and +20 Health rares, just because it had 5% magic find on it. What is the point of 5% magic find if it's going to just give you +5 Experience items. Go to the AH, sort for 5000 gold, and buy yourself some awesome stuff.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    Finally some common sense. I vote for a sticky.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by meldora View Post
    Do you know what 10 yards looks like in the game??!! If you don’t, what the hell do you expect?
    I don't think anyone knows what yards look like in the game. I have +7 yards to pick up health globes and gold but still have to pretty much walk right over top of it...

  14. #14
    Field Marshal meldora's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Azeroth
    Posts
    74
    Quote Originally Posted by ikas6 View Post
    you want as little vitality as possible as a wizard, if you can get gear with no vitality and high life regen then you are set for solo anything
    Dang, I didn't know that! thanks

    ---------- Post added 2012-05-21 at 09:17 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Porcell View Post
    My only comment is in regards to this, specifically the second paragraph. Instead of sorting by BuyOut and trying to scroll through pages (which I found is laggy and is slow to update), you can instead go to the bottom left hand side of the AH screen. At the very bottom there is a field for Set/Legenardy name, and to the right of that is a "Set Max Buyout" field. In the Max Buyout field, just throw a low number in like 5000g. Now you can add your other fields like "Show me Dex Items" and do your search. You'll find a ton of wicked upgrades for cheap, because there are just SO MANY items on the AH.
    Thanks man. This updated to reflect this shortly after I published, obviously after you read it

  15. #15
    Herald of the Titans Drunkenfinn's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Mar 2009
    Location
    Finland
    Posts
    2,560
    I got both BS and JC maxed out and at least BS has made me a nice profit and will probably continue making more as I'm starting to get dem recipes from Inferno. Sure, sometimes you get some items with crappy stats but most of the time its something useful for at least some class. Put it on the AH and win the game.

    Got a recipe for a rare shield last night and tried making one. Cost me 94k to craft it. Got decent stats on it and over 1k armor. Sold for a good 180k gold.

    JC was a bit of a waste of gold but hey, at least I can make my own gems (lol).

    Also lol'd@ 100k for 6 dollars

  16. #16
    vendor magic items? and earn like 200 gold?

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by reyareya View Post
    vendor magic items? and earn like 200 gold?
    That 200g is better than the worthless items you can pay to make at the blacksmith.

    The only reason you should think about using the blacksmith is if you have a good recipe for level 60 gear.

  18. #18
    Moderator chazus's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    Las Vegas
    Posts
    17,222
    Quote Originally Posted by ikas6 View Post
    you want as little vitality as possible as a wizard, if you can get gear with no vitality and high life regen then you are set for solo anything
    Because life regen totally helps you not get one-shotted. Yeah, no.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Maelstrom51 View Post
    That 200g is better than the worthless items you can pay to make at the blacksmith.

    The only reason you should think about using the blacksmith is if you have a good recipe for level 60 gear.
    I used to salvage items, but I found that I could buy the Blacksmithing materials cheap off of the Auction House. Why salvage a 200 gold item, when you can buy a fallen tooth off of the Auction House for 50 gold?

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by chazus View Post
    Because life regen totally helps you not get one-shotted. Yeah, no.
    The Force Armor rune makes sure you can't be one-shotted. Any damage above 35% of your total HP is reduced to 35% of your total HP. It's only really useful for boss fights though, champion packs will hit you far too often.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •