State of Inferno

[Kelimbror]

I stopped playing this game long before paragon was introduced, picked it up again for a day when that patch hit, but just yesterday started playing again. I heard that since the 'loot' patch, better gear is cheaper and easier to get from the AH.

I popped on and bought 2 pieces of gear for about 200k.

Before now, I have been 'stuck' on Act III for some time. My stats weren't terrible, but Elite Packs would just destroy me. The two pieces of gear didn't boost my stats by that much, but I did increase the block% of my shield from 14 to 20. I have around 30k hp, 800 resist with OwE, and 21k dps. This is my build:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...TYQ!aXU!acbZca

I don't feel like I'm particularly talented, nor that I'm using the 'best' build. I do know that coming back for two days allowed me to kill Diablo on Inferno. I was pretty excited, because I wanted to 'finish' the game...but looking at it, I feel pretty unaccomplished. It's kinda bittersweet. Obviously it's a form of accomplishment, but I'm not sure how I feel with the nerfs coming. Am I excited to try and find more gear, or now that it's already 'easy' for me - is the thrill gone?

Has anyone else had a similar experience when they finally beat Diablo?

[Maximus4004]

I left to, and came back with the new patch, it was fun to not completely be wrecked in A3 like I used to be, the fun part comes from the paragon grind, and the fact that legionaries are awesome. A4 blows, but A3 is still pretty fun especially with friends. I love that a lvl 60 wep can roll high dps as well makes it alot more fun when looking for good weapons.

[Kelimbror]

I left to, and came back with the new patch, it was fun to not completely be wrecked in A3 like I used to be, the fun part comes from the paragon grind, and the fact that legionaries are awesome. A4 blows, but A3 is still pretty fun especially with friends. I love that a lvl 60 wep can roll high dps as well makes it alot more fun when looking for good weapons.

I can totally agree with the friends part. I had some people jump in with me and it was significantly more enjoyable than the solo grind. I know I'm not 'hardcore', but the Paragon grind seems incredibly immense for me. As I am not a youtube professional out to accomplish a world first, I won't spend time strategizing and determining the most efficient XP routes. With that being said, Paragon is kinda stifling. However, there was a vast army of D2 hardcore players that played for years.

In my defense, there's really no hurry so it's ok if my game enjoyment waxes and wanes. I did get one 'decent' legendary to drop on that first run. It's like they new I was coming back and had to give me a rush to try and addict me again, lol.

[Deleted]

I know I'm not 'hardcore', but the Paragon grind seems incredibly immense for me. As I am not a youtube professional out to accomplish a world first, I won't spend time strategizing and determining the most efficient XP routes. With that being said, Paragon is kinda stifling.

I experienced the same thing but after a while I think you will get to 'ignore' the Paragon Level system. I just do my normal A3 farming most of the times ignoring that bar on my screen and get surprised when I lvl up Also, this is a great time to sell items that give bonus experience for enormous amounts to those 'hardcore' players you mentioned! Leoric's Signet farming seems quite popular. Just pointing out that the introduction of leveling at 60 brought some changes to the economy and farming routes as well.

[Kelimbror]

I experienced the same thing but after a while I think you will get to 'ignore' the Paragon Level system. I just do my normal A3 farming most of the times ignoring that bar on my screen and get surprised when I lvl up Also, this is a great time to sell items that give bonus experience for enormous amounts to those 'hardcore' players you mentioned! Leoric's Signet farming seems quite popular. Just pointing out that the introduction of leveling at 60 brought some changes to the economy and farming routes as well.

I 'forced' myself to play for a bit last night and I didn't pay attention to the bar. I wound up playing for a couple of hours on accident. With my gear I can currently farm a lot of content that I had to pay close attention to, so it's a little addicting again. Once you have 5 stacks rolling, you keep telling yourself "just one more pack", "one more room", etc.

[Firecrest]

You feel unaccomplished because the challenge has been sucked from the game. The difficulty of Inferno has been reduced by nearly half since the game's original release and is slated to be reduced even further. The whole point of a game is the enjoyment that comes with overcoming an obstacle. The bigger the obstacle, the greater the thrill when you finally beat it. The converse is also true. The smaller the obstacle, the less enjoyment that comes along with conquering it.

Lately, in both WoW and D3, Blizzard seems to have forgotten this fact. They have a presumably large portion of their audience that is, to put it plainly, unskilled or undedicated. Casual. Such a hot button word lately, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s plenty of people out there who just don’t want to dedicate hundreds of hours to a game. That’s not really a problem. The problem is that those people expect to get the same thing out of the game as the people who do put in hundreds of hours. And Blizzard has shifted towards making that possible. It’s great if you’re the type of guy who wants easy rewards. But not so much if you enjoy the thrill of a challenge.

Lastly, stop using Mantra of Healing. It freaking sucks. Evasion is a thousand times better for survivabilty and Conviction is what you really should be using since dead mobs can't hurt you.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

Lately, in both WoW and D3, Blizzard seems to have forgotten this fact. They have a presumably large portion of their audience that is, to put it plainly, unskilled or undedicated. Casual. Such a hot button word lately, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s plenty of people out there who just don’t want to dedicate hundreds of hours to a game. That’s not really a problem. The problem is that those people expect to get the same thing out of the game as the people who do put in hundreds of hours. And Blizzard has shifted towards making that possible. It’s great if you’re the type of guy who wants easy rewards. But not so much if you enjoy the thrill of a challenge.

Blizzard have not forgotten anything. If anything, they're doing like so many others are doing and looking at Diablo from the same perspective which they look at World of Warcraft. It's not compatible. Diablo is a classic dungeon crawling experience, built around hack'n'slash where your character decimates legions of hellish creatures while collecting loot. There should be nothing difficult about it other than the loot grind and that's why people still play the second title to this day. They don't play it because Baal is hard and want to overcome the challenge, they do it for what he drops after fighting him for 4 seconds so they can make the next game to do the same thing for the afternoon.

To me, these Inferno 'nerfs' are simply bringing the game back in line with how Diablo works best. They simply painted themselves in the corner when they decided to throw in an 'end game' structure which goes beyond the simple mechanic of collecting loot and are slowly moving back to this philosophy which is fine with me.

As for the gear, it's random so pouring hundreds or hours in to the game doesn't necessarily mean you'll be better off than someone who only puts in a quarter of that time. Some people in D3 have never seen a legendary drop but have hundreds of hours whereas some with far less time have, it's the nature of the beast. Just last night, after not playing since GW2 released, the first mob I killed dropped the Blade of Prophecy (which sucked) so it goes to show that you don't have to spend tons of time, just luck.

[Kelimbror]

You feel unaccomplished because the challenge has been sucked from the game. *snip* But not so much if you enjoy the thrill of a challenge.

Agree, it's definitely not as fun. It's one thing saying you wish it were easier so you felt like you were doing something and another to suddenly find yourself able to complete a task without doing anything differently than before.

Lastly, stop using Mantra of Healing. It freaking sucks. Evasion is a thousand times better for survivabilty and Conviction is what you really should be using since dead mobs can't hurt you.

I already said my build probably isn't the best, you big meanie I don't research that part specifically, I just use what works for me. I posted it so people could see exactly where I am at in terms of my character and juxtapose that with my opinions.

With that said, thanks for the tip. Since I think I'm going to play a little before Pandas drop, I'll look into the suggestion! I remember hearing the healing was terrible a long time ago, but stopped playing and never really changed it. I was having gear issues where I would constantly run out of melee and kite until my heals were back up, the mantra helped a little topping me of while I ran away.

Since the nerfs, it appears I don't have that problem anymore.

[Firecrest]

Agree, it's definitely not as fun. It's one thing saying you wish it were easier so you felt like you were doing something and another to suddenly find yourself able to complete a task without doing anything differently than before.

To be fair to Blizzard (and game developers everywhere), I can only imagine how hard it must be to ballance the difficulty of a game. You have to make it easy enough that people don't get frustrated, but difficult enough that they don't get bored. Plus the fact that everyone who plays will be at a different skill level.

I don't envy them their task. But I do think they're fucking it up lately.

I already said my build probably isn't the best, you big meanie I don't research that part specifically, I just use what works for me. I posted it so people could see exactly where I am at in terms of my character and juxtapose that with my opinions.

With that said, thanks for the tip. Since I think I'm going to play a little before Pandas drop, I'll look into the suggestion! I remember hearing the healing was terrible a long time ago, but stopped playing and never really changed it. I was having gear issues where I would constantly run out of melee and kite until my heals were back up, the mantra helped a little topping me of while I ran away.

Since the nerfs, it appears I don't have that problem anymore.

The "freaking" was meant for the sucky-ness of MoH. Not for you. To be honest, MoH was my mantra of choice at the begining and, frankly, lasted a lot longer than it should have before I finally did the research and got on the Evasion Train (which I later jumped off of to go pure DPS with Conviction).

[Kelimbror]

To be fair to Blizzard (and game developers everywhere), I can only imagine how hard it must be to ballance the difficulty of a game. You have to make it easy enough that people don't get frustrated, but difficult enough that they don't get bored. Plus the fact that everyone who plays will be at a different skill level.

I'm thinking they are approaching it with a WoW mentality, which is fine for them on a large scale. It just tends to upset the more vocal/forum crowd. It is strange though, considering that they don't have a revolving income with this game. My only guess is they want to continue selling boxes through word of mouth and just to satisfy their continuing WoW playerbase.

The "freaking" was meant for the sucky-ness of MoH. Not for you. To be honest, MoH was my mantra of choice at the begining and, frankly, lasted a lot longer than it should have before I finally did the research and got on the Evasion Train (which I later jumped off of to go pure DPS with Conviction).

I was just giving you a hard time since we went at eachother as grammar nazis in the other thread. You clearly stood out as someone like me who can be fighting in the trenches one day and then have a normal discussion somewhere else. It's why I like forums...it's kinda like a sporting event except without any winning or losing.

I probably won't evaluate my build until the next patch hits and the need for defensive abilities is gone. I might be able to up my damage by so much that I can steamroll farm through content when it drops.

[Firecrest]

I'm thinking they are approaching it with a WoW mentality, which is fine for them on a large scale. It just tends to upset the more vocal/forum crowd. It is strange though, considering that they don't have a revolving income with this game. My only guess is they want to continue selling boxes through word of mouth and just to satisfy their continuing WoW playerbase.

Well, there is the RMAH. I'm not all tin-foil-hat about it, but it's pretty indesputeable that more players = more RMA use = more money for Blizzard. Since we can't see behind Blizzard's doors we can only speculate, but I suspect that this revenue stream is, at the very least, given consideration when highlevel planning is done for the game.

I was just giving you a hard time since we went at eachother as grammar nazis in the other thread. You clearly stood out as someone like me who can be fighting in the trenches one day and then have a normal discussion somewhere else. It's why I like forums...it's kinda like a sporting event except without any winning or losing.

I read the forums in a collapsed window that's only about 10 inches wide. This allows me to scroll over to the right where I can see posts but not Avatars or names, so I didn't even know it was you. Signatures occasionally ruin the effect, but this generally allows me to consider each post I read on its individual merit as opposed to coming at something with a pre-conditioned idea that "This guy is an idiot, so what he's saying must be idiotic".

Also, I hate looking at MLP avatars.

[Spider Klein]

My opinion is that Blizzard actually had it right at launch, They stated the three levels were there for the casual gamers and they made inferno only for the most dedicated hardcore players. This is how it should have been left. However I believe they should have given a small chance (1% of yellows maybe) that are level 63's so the casual gamers still have some chance of getting the top end gear.

I agree with what another poster said saying it's there so everybody feels the need to be able to do it. I have had plenty of games that I couldn't complete (I am a pretty unskilled first person shooter) They should have left the difficulty for the more hardcore players and let casual gamers have their challenge in Hell still giving them a chance at the best gear for their gear grind.

I never really focussed on MF when I was buying gear but had a few pieces in my stash that I decided to put on and still cleared act 3/4 with about 550 resists and 31kdps on my monk since the nerf.

[juzalol]

I really don't get it. Blizzard creates a hard difficulty level and then nerfs it to the ground.

Then they introduce even harder difficulty mode (monster power) and after a couple of weeks
they nerf it to the ground too.

Then they introduce monster power power which makes monster power power the monsters
even more.

Then they nerf the monster power power to the ground.

And then comes the Über bosses. Have you killed Über Diablo on inferno with monster power at 8
and monster power power at 15?

Just doesn't make any sense. They could just have inferno being batshit hard and people who can't
do it stay in Hell difficulty. I mean you already have 4 difficulty levels for a reason...

[nightshark]

I really don't get it. Blizzard creates a hard difficulty level and then nerfs it to the ground.

Then they introduce even harder difficulty mode (monster power) and after a couple of weeks
they nerf it to the ground too.

Then they introduce monster power power which makes monster power power the monsters
even more.

Then they nerf the monster power power to the ground.

And then comes the Über bosses. Have you killed Über Diablo on inferno with monster power at 8
and monster power power at 15?

Just doesn't make any sense. They could just have inferno being batshit hard and people who can't
do it stay in Hell difficulty. I mean you already have 4 difficulty levels for a reason...

Because Hell difficulty doesn't have any good loot. Saying to the casual section of the game "you can play in this carebear difficulty, but you won't get any rewards at all" saps the fun for that entire section of the playerbase.

[juzalol]

Because Hell difficulty doesn't have any good loot. Saying to the casual section of the game "you can play in this carebear difficulty, but you won't get any rewards at all" saps the fun for that entire section of the playerbase.

You can still get gear improvements from Hell difficulty and you should easily be able to move to Inferno
Act1 with the items from hell.

And what's the point of having 4 difficulty modes if they are all piss easy...?

At the moment you just do 5 runs of Inferno act 1 as you hit lvl 60 and then start
endless act 3 farming.

[Redblade]

They should have ended the leveling around the time you hit hell in my opinion, that way they could have had a lower difficulty all through out hell with i-lvl 61-62 split between the 4 acts and it's own 61-62 legendary items and sets, inferno should have been the hard challenge and also being the only place to get i-lvl 63 items.

To late to change that now though.

[nightshark]

You can still get gear improvements from Hell difficulty and you should easily be able to move to Inferno
Act1 with the items from hell.

And what's the point of having 4 difficulty modes if they are all piss easy...?

At the moment you just do 5 runs of Inferno act 1 as you hit lvl 60 and then start
endless act 3 farming.

I haven't tried the progression from Hell -> Inferno without using the AH, since the game was first released so I can't comment on how "easy" it is now. It's a moot point, you were suggesting that casuals should be happy with playing on Hell mode and I pointed out a good reason why they are not. You don't get "rewards" in hell mode because you can easily find something on the AH that will trump almost anything that comes from hell mode, for 10k.

I personally don't see a problem with the current state of Inferno and don't care if they make it easier. Gear disparities still cause a large difference in farming speed, which is all that matters in the end. The game was never very difficult to complete since you can corpse rush your way to Diablo for the most part, which is what everyone did in the first week, or abused some OP build to get there.

I do agree 4 difficulties is a bit pointless, normal mode is joke-easy and nightmare isn't much harder. Hell does pose a challenge if you don't use the AH and Inferno is still pretty damn hard on HC.

[Mister K]

You feel unaccomplished because the challenge has been sucked from the game. The difficulty of Inferno has been reduced by nearly half since the game's original release and is slated to be reduced even further. The whole point of a game is the enjoyment that comes with overcoming an obstacle. The bigger the obstacle, the greater the thrill when you finally beat it. The converse is also true. The smaller the obstacle, the less enjoyment that comes along with conquering it.

Lately, in both WoW and D3, Blizzard seems to have forgotten this fact. They have a presumably large portion of their audience that is, to put it plainly, unskilled or undedicated. Casual. Such a hot button word lately, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s plenty of people out there who just don’t want to dedicate hundreds of hours to a game. That’s not really a problem. The problem is that those people expect to get the same thing out of the game as the people who do put in hundreds of hours. And Blizzard has shifted towards making that possible. It’s great if you’re the type of guy who wants easy rewards. But not so much if you enjoy the thrill of a challenge.

Lastly, stop using Mantra of Healing. It freaking sucks. Evasion is a thousand times better for survivabilty and Conviction is what you really should be using since dead mobs can't hurt you.

They need to add another mode, just a boost in enemy stats where drop chance of rare items is rather higher.

[Kelimbror]

They need to add another mode, just a boost in enemy stats where drop chance of rare items is rather higher.

They are doing this, with increasing the power and so forth, but like a couple of posters have said...it should have never come to this. I am realizing that it was in combination with the disparity of loot drops versus the availability(though at a high cost) of better gear on the AH. If we really hone in on it, everyone claiming the AH ruined this game are exactly right. If they hadn't approached the entire effing game design from the standpoint of the AH, we could have had the original 4 difficulties, without nerfs, and played for years.

Instead, you are forced to purchase gear off the AH because the chances of getting anything are almost 0%. Without gearing MF out the wazoo and/or being a much higher skilled player from the beginning, there was no learning curve or reward from continuing play. It was AH or bust and this game busted big.

Now that they are in over their heads, I do think the upcoming changes will save the game for them in keeping more casuals and hardcore people around. It just was the least ideal way to ever have to do things.

[Deleted]

The whole point of a game is the enjoyment that comes with overcoming an obstacle. The bigger the obstacle, the greater the thrill when you finally beat it. The converse is also true.

Yet people were fine with doing Baal runs while outgearing it completely. Your point is invalid.

The difficulty is not the problem, it's the crappy game in itself.