Biggest Improvement since Launch

[aeir]

for a Wizard, or a demon hunter, yes, damage > all.

I played with demon hunters that had 60+k damage and under 10k health. But it was a totally different story for melee. It wouldn't matter if you had 100k damage, for life-steal to work you need to live long enough to deal damage in the first place.

This is my barbarian now: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/F...79/hero/321688

If I had turned up to an Act 3 Inferno farm run 4 weeks after the game released in that gear, I'd be lucky to get more than the initial charge damage done. Mobs would hit me (not even crit) for 40+k in my 1000 AR/10k armor/tank talents+skills setup. If mobs came out of stun-lock and hit you, you were as good as dead, and after 5 deaths you had a 2 minute wait to respawn. I would spend 100k on repairs during an act 3 run, only dying because I got unlucky and was feared into a green puddle on top on a red puddle with 5 arcane beams rotating around me (and just touching one of them took half my life off). People worked out how to get a RANGED barbarian to work because of the splash damage that was totally unavoidable. Shielding mobs make the entire pack immune for ten seconds. Try surviving with life-steal when you can't do any damage to any of them.

Act 1 inferno with a 2h dps build was doable. Act 2 inferno in the same gear got you one-shotted by the adds summoned by the desert flies before you even reached the end of the first canyon.

And back then champion packs had berserk timers.

Yeah, the transition from act 1 to 2 was insane. If you were playing a barb without stormshield and those other defensive legendaries, you were in tough luck.

Ranged could glass cannon, barbs just ate a dick.

[Alski]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA1rk5aLNd4 Okay his gear is very defensive compared to what you need now days on MP1, but Im 100% sure that is overkill defense even back then (Notice the video/upload is over 1 year old, not 6 months or 9...).

This is after the first damage nerf to inferno creatures, before that his 1.2k RA/5k armor was needed just to survive regardless of how much damage he could do. As the game is currently(Several damage nerfs later), even setting it to MP10 the monsters do about half the damage they did at launch.

[Deleted]

AH filter and MP for me.

[traen]

I can barely call "improvements" anything that they implemented.
I would rather call it "bugfixes".

Paragon levels? Total bullshit. Why not to make 160 levels initially? Was not it obvious from the beginning that people need to grind something in grinding game?

Nerfs? What was the point to add difficulty#4 and then nerf it so it became easier than difficulty#3 in the previous game? "Why don't you just make ten louder?"

MP? You would not need it if the game was not nerfed so much. You would not need it on low levels if red gems were not as unbalanced as they are now for low level characters. Besides that - why not to implement it from start, /players X was in d2 for ages.

Gear inflation? What was the point to increase gear drop and quality by 10(?) times? 2 guaranteed yellow items from every elite. 300 mf from paragon. Increased drop chance for ilvl 63 items. What was the point in all that? To push people to the MP system? It's like "- Good news citizens, your all just got 10x salary increase. - Hooray! Oh wait, why my hamburger just got 10 times more expensive?"

more AH filters ^^

Probably. But even new implementation is miles behind any modern AH system in means of usability. Even my local supermarket got "save search" option on their online store.
And it's still not possible to use AH without leaving your game, and it is really annoying considering that you lose your valor when you exit.

They added several minor interface improvements to the game, it's true. But it's not even half of the features people want to see in the game.


So what was the biggest improvement? Ubers I guess. New content is always good. Even if it's reused content At least people had one additional thing to do in the game but mindless farming of the same route. Not for too long though, recent change to MP system made hellfire ring pretty much useless.

[Coldkil]

MP levels, Paragon, Monster density changes.

Now farming has a sense (well, loot needs to be redesigned but give them time, they have fixed a lot of bad stuff and i see them doing it again).

[freeforumuser]

Gear inflation? What was the point to increase gear drop and quality by 10(?) times? 2 guaranteed yellow items from every elite. 300 mf from paragon. Increased drop chance for ilvl 63 items. What was the point in all that? To push people to the MP system? It's like "- Good news citizens, your all just got 10x salary increase. - Hooray! Oh wait, why my hamburger just got 10 times more expensive?"

If they actually gave serious thought to the game mechanics we wouldn't see DPS scaling in this game outdoing the whole of WoW and all its expansions in 9 years. Really, what is the point of inflating numbers to the millions? Are they telling us they can't make this game work with damage only in the thousands like that "badly designed" game called D2?

[Konik]

Do you remember when Unique dropped in D2? You knew it was good at least if not great. Now - "well, another crappy legendary" even without IDing it

new items should be even more versatile that they are planning to make them

for example rolls like 1400dps 1h with 500 str but nothing else, or 800dps with 10% LS but other limitations (could not roll crit or socket), etc. so people can have way different item sets then now where everyone has same gear set

[freeforumuser]

Do you remember when Unique dropped in D2? You knew it was good at least if not great. Now - "well, another crappy legendary" even without IDing it

new items should be even more versatile that they are planning to make them

for example rolls like 1400dps 1h with 500 str but nothing else, or 800dps with 10% LS but other limitations (could not roll crit or socket), etc. so people can have way different item sets then now where everyone has same gear set

The beauty about D2 is even when you have access to all the items in the game you STILL have to make tradeoffs in gearing your character depending on build and purpose. D3 is just boring higher-and-higher main stat/DPS trifecta/vit and AR combo regardless what.

[Underverse]

meh, until they give it the shadows and darkness, the psychological effects that made D2 such a great game, I won't be able to play D3 with any consistency. I mean, it's a good game, but without psychological factors, it just gets bland

But OT: I would say the book of cain is nice, lol

[traen]

Do you remember when Unique dropped in D2? You knew it was good at least if not great. Now - "well, another crappy legendary" even without IDing it

Yeah, I remember when "Unique" dropped in D2. It happened about 100-150 times per hour of farming. Teleport-teleport-teleport - 5 seconds pressing one button - 3 uniques.

d2 trash: (grey - white - blue - yellow)
d3 trash: (grey - white - blue)

d2 potentially good items: (unique)
d3 potentially good items: (yellow - legendary)

For me d3 system looks to be a bit more logical. Also legendaries are semi rare, I can farm just 3-5/hour.

The number of "good" uniques per hour of farming was not higher in d2. It took realtime days of farming to get elite uniques.
Also don't forget stat inflation in d3 due to AH.
One can only imagine what would happen to d2 itemization if there was AH in d2. I guess nothing but top unique with perfect stats would cost anything. Anything else would've been considered trash. Just imagine if you was able to buy the gear that is just 1-2% worse than absolutely perfect gear any time you want. The game would be pretty boring then, won't it?

[Djuntas]

Yep, thats the problem off Diablo3 AH, its to good at what it does ^^

BUT! I will just say this: Nearly all drops inn Diablo2 had some sort off value, cause people we're alot more trade oriented, so even low items could eventueally be traded. I know when I made a new character I would often trade my lesser good items for items for the new character, and save my HR's/Stormtreks/charms whatever for the big items

I mean, even Sigon if you collected the hole set, could sell. Okay not many would bother pick em up as you farm for little profit, but the point still stands, you could pick em up.

[traen]

Yep, thats the problem off Diablo3 AH, its to good at what it does ^^

BUT! I will just say this: Nearly all drops inn Diablo2 had some sort off value, cause people we're alot more trade oriented, so even low items could eventueally be traded. I know when I made a new character I would often trade my lesser good items for items for the new character, and save my HR's/Stormtreks/charms whatever for the big items

I mean, even Sigon if you collected the hole set, could sell. Okay not many would bother pick em up as you farm for little profit, but the point still stands, you could pick em up.

a) gold had no real value so people had to exchange items directly. They even used soj as a currency before runes were implemented.
b) items had no real value. There were too many of them, they dropped all the time. You had the stash full of items that no one wanted because other people had full stashes of exactly the same items. So if you needed sigon set for your alt "paying" for it by something semi-rare was not a big deal.

Now you sell anything you can sell on AH right away. You trash anything else.

Sigon is like Decard Cain's set. It's pretty cheap and very useful for leveling. Sells pretty well on both normal and hardcore.

[Coldkil]

Tbh all the AH fuss is a collateral damage born when the game was unforgiving and really difficult with crap itemization.

Progressing on inferno was slow, painful, and totally dependant on gear - to the point people was stuck at act1 and maybe 2 because they didn't drop useful things and couldn't afford to buy extra expensive upgrades from the AH.

If D3 came out with today itemization, AH probably would have been less of a hassle - clearing/farming is perfcetly possible even as a self-found char (at low MP) and you can either grow slowly via farming or buy yourself a boost to the higher levels. In any case, literally everyone can progress through inferno even if they buy the game an stard playing it today with no help from others.

[ldev]

Yep. Because MP has an effect throughout the whole game, as early as lvl 1.

Oh yes, leveling alts doesn't feel that boring anymore.

[Boottybounce]

Tmog
/10char

Thank god we have tmog, Since most of the gear nowadays is ugly as fuck.

[Kelimbror]

Thank god we have tmog, Since most of the gear nowadays is ugly as fuck.

That's interesting. I've yet to be able to transmog my Diablo 3 characters' gear.

[Spider Klein]

I did enjoy runewords from D2. They added a completely different itemisation by being able to gets auras and other spells. Granted teleport became a bit OP when you could teleport 20 skeletons on someones head.

But the differences in characters wanting completely different items. Now aside from weapons its pretty much AS CC and CD please. Every character wants them.

Also single stat on an items. i.e: Bracers with no CC = garbage. Even Lacuni's for the most part follow this rule. Boots with no MS = garbage with the exception of the rare Dex user using Inna's Temp and godly Lacuni's with CC.

A change I would like to see is being able to fully deck out my follower. I know my follower was crucial for my D2 sorc facing immune to magic monsters.

[Ron Burgundy]

what exactly is wrong with itemization right now? what r they going to fix?

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

what exactly is wrong with itemization right now? what r they going to fix?

Right now: too many shit items drop, you know before ID'ing that you'll be vendoring all but maybe one of them.

Their aim: less items drop over all, but you'll see more of the decent items.

[yeto]

Yeah, I remember when "Unique" dropped in D2. It happened about 100-150 times per hour of farming. Teleport-teleport-teleport - 5 seconds pressing one button - 3 uniques.

d2 trash: (grey - white - blue - yellow)
d3 trash: (grey - white - blue)

d2 potentially good items: (unique)
d3 potentially good items: (yellow - legendary)

For me d3 system looks to be a bit more logical. Also legendaries are semi rare, I can farm just 3-5/hour.

The number of "good" uniques per hour of farming was not higher in d2. It took realtime days of farming to get elite uniques.
Also don't forget stat inflation in d3 due to AH.
One can only imagine what would happen to d2 itemization if there was AH in d2. I guess nothing but top unique with perfect stats would cost anything. Anything else would've been considered trash. Just imagine if you was able to buy the gear that is just 1-2% worse than absolutely perfect gear any time you want. The game would be pretty boring then, won't it?

uhm yellow in d2 could / can be alot better then uniques, ontop of that there is amazing craftet items

d2 trash: (grey - white - blue)
d3 trash: (grey - white - blue)

d2 potentially good items: (unique - craftet- Yellow)
d3 potentially good items: (yellow - legendary)