Thinking of returning to D3 but have question...

[warningsigns]

I stop playing about a month it was released and I know there have been a ton of changes since then and I have not kept up with all of them. I also know there is something called "loot 2.0" coming which I do not fully understand yet.

The thing about D3 that personally drove me crazy was the stats on the weapons and armor and I am wondering if they have changed since I stop playing. I play a wizard.

1) When a "Wizard Hat" would drop and it has stats on it for a class other than wizard. Why would a "Wizard Hat" drop with strength or dexterity? I never understood that.

2) Follower's Armor - Because I played a wizard I used the templar as my follower so he could sort of tank for me. It would seem I would get shields that again had the wrong stats on them such as Intellect.

Does this still happen? Or do items now have the proper stats for the classes that can use them?

Thanks

[Djuntas]

99.9% off all your loot is garbage, no change there. Chance off finding any worth-while items that sells for more than 5-10 million gold is very rare. You can play self-found mode and maybe enjoy that abit, but loot you find will largely still be all useless for your character

In order to get wealthy/good inn the game you need to play the AH or buy on RMAH.

You *might* get a lucky drop, but don't count on it ever really.

[traen]

D3 got many problems but trash stats on items is the least out of them all.

Just imagine that item generated without the stat you don't like and the problem is sorted.

[dragnipur]

Don't even consider returning.It's a waste of time until they add many more things,which should have been in the game from the release but were cut for unknown reason.

[rogoth]

since u quit (assuming u haven't played the game since last june/july), there have been alot of major game changes that have made the game better such as:

paragon system: once u hit lvl 60, u still gain xp up to a lvl cap of 100, (clvl60-plvl100), which adds 3 of primary stats, 2 vitality and 1 of the non class primary stats (so for wizard u would get 3 int/2 vit/ 1str/ 1dex), on top of this per lvl, u also get 3% gold find and magic find, up to teh character cap of 300% for lvl 100, which means u no longer really need magic find gear.


monster power levels: each individual difficulty level of the game now has 10 sub difficulty levels, each one increases the health and damage dealt by monsters, and also increases gold/magic find by 25% per monster power lvl, above the personal player cap (so for MP10 u can have upwards of 700% MF/GF at 100 paragon), and aswell as that each monster power lvl adds to the amount of bonus xp u get too, so allows for faster and easier lvling, both up to 60, and beyond.

loot 1.0: all set legendary items got buffed in stats so they were actually "legendary" compared to a rare item in the same slot, also, the stats on rare items were changed to scale with the level of the monster that dropped them, so, if u don't use monster power, u would ignore anything other than ilvl 63 drops, but with monster power enabled, even on MP1, all monsters are considered lvl 63, so all rares that are dropped, can potentially roll ilvl 63 stats, regardless of the actual ilvl of teh item, only the base stats are lower (like natural armour values, base weapon dmg etc), but more importantly, it means every item can possibly be awesome.

loot 2.0: incoming patch some time end of this year, possibly early next year, to address the problem of non class specific stats on class specific items (like wizard hats with str/dex, might belts with dex/int, hand crossbows with int/str etc), also, to help improve the stats on existing gear so that the stats rolls aren't soo random and close the gap on rteh chasm between bad items, good items, and godly items among other tyhings, u should read the blogs/posts about stuff that has been talked about soo far for more info.

demonic essences and ilvl 63 crafted gear: in 1.0.7 blizz added a new crafting material ilvl 64, used to craft bind on account shoulders/gloves/chests/amulets, which can roll perfect stats (however for most classes/builds, it isn't worth bothering with the chest as the set legendaries and set bonuses are just too powerful to give up using), and can roll best in slot stats in those slots, and being bind on account, they cannot be traded, so u have to get a little lucky with the roll but it means they will be better than anything u can buy with gold/real money off the AH (demonic essences are also BOA so u have to actually gather them urself off killing elites/bosses), also, all of these BOA items have a set base stat range, u can have 1 of the 4 primary stats, which will always roll 200-230 main stat, plus 5 random affixes.


uber bosses and hellfire ring crafting: blizz added a mini set of dungeons to the game for lvl 60 players where u face a dual combination of bosses, there are 3 realms of evil, each realm has 2 bosses from the normal game, but suped up and did i mention there were 2 of them together?, in one realm u have maghda and skeleton king, all the same abilities they each have individually, but harder hitting, and more annoying, in another realm, u have rakanoth and ghom, considered the easiest realm to deal with, but still problematic in its' own way, and lastly, biggest ball ache of them all, zoltun kulle and siegbreaker, this realm is just a clusterfuck waiting to happen.

in order to open up these realms of evil, u need to gather 3 keys which are dropped by each keywarden in each of the first 3 acts (each keywarden drops a different key and u need 1 key of each type to create the infernal machine which is used to open the portal to these realms of evil), and the plan to craft the infernal machines which requires these keys off the keywarden in act 4, as of 1.0.8 the act 4 keywarden will not only drop the infernal machine plan, but also drops one of the 3 other keys at random, to get these keys depends on what monster power lvbl u play on, as each monster power lvl increases the drop chance by 10% up to a guarenteed drop on MP10, to follow on from that, each of the uber boss encounters drop a "demonic organ" and also have drop rates tied into monster power lvl with a 10% increase per monster power lvl up to a guarenteed 100% drop on MP10, it is these demonic organs that are needed to craft hellfire rings, which roll guarenteed primary stats of ur choice, and 35% bonus XP gain, and have no lvl requirement, so can be equipped on brand new lvl 1 characters to help lvl alts faster or help lvl paragon faster at lvl 60.

so in summary, u have missed out on alot of game changing, and potentially awesome upgrades to the game and would probably do well to come back to the game to learn how to play again, as the game is nothing like it was at release, it is soo much easier, in softcore there is almost no need to build defensively like u did at release, and builds have changed quite alot since then aswell, give it a go, not like it costs anything if u bought the game, and u don't really have anything to loose either, cos lets be honest, if u haven't played in a year+, ur gear is gonna be considered, "ultra low end" anyway, so u will highly liekly find an upgrade straight off the bat in teh first game u play.


also little sidenote, ofc having the primary stat roll being non class specific isn't great, but having non class primary stats on items isn't the end of the worl,d each stat is useful to all players which is something i really like with D3, str gives armour at a 1:1 ratio, which helps alot when trying to gear on a budget in some slots, dex improves dodge chancce, which may or may not save ur life at some point, int gives all res at a 10:1 ratio, so being an int class (i also main a wizzard), u have the highest base resistance of any class aside from WD, and vit is self explanatory, makes life pool bigger.

[grrmisfit]

i to quit over a month after release and just came back about 3 weeks ago.. its much better.. its not perfect far from it.. but paragon system and other changes made it worth it so far

[Fishyface]

I just recently came back myself, i never hit 60 let alone got a char into paragon leveling. Plus im in between mmos atm and this gives me something to do.

I quit about the same time you did, and just from playing things have gotten better, not alot, but better. Loot is still a travesty, when im looking for gear im thinking about gold more than getting a drop because i know i wont be able to replace what i bought on the auction house till i get into inferno and doing MP.

As for those 2 questions:

1. I still see wizard hats like that, but every item is a random roll, so no that hasnt changed
2. Same thing here, its just rng and part of the lotto system, sometimes you get get stuff. Sometimes you dont.

[von Richthofen]

The thing about D3 that personally drove me crazy was the stats on the weapons and armor and I am wondering if they have changed since I stop playing. I play a wizard.

The 'wrong stats' came with a design philosophy shift that came after, or caused, the game's delay in 2011. Before these changes their philosophy was 'when an item dropped it should always be useful to you in some way, either the stats could be an improvement for you, or in the case of white items you could break it down and craft something better.' (White items were able to be salvaged, and you had a mobile salvage and/or vendor in the Nephalem Cube and Cauldron of Jordan). They decided to take the opposite stance, that there should be junk items and other things not useful to you, in part so that finding the one 'good' item makes you feel really excited.

The build before these changes had Attack (+ damage), Defense (+ damage reduction vs. everything), Precision (+ critical hit chance), and Vitality - which meant any item that dropped could be beneficial. This was a problem - with these stats every item could be useful for every class (except the class specific things like Mighty Weapons, of course). Once they decided that there should now be 'non-optimal' items, they had to change the stats to really drive it home, and thus they changed these stats to the current format, where each class had one specific +Damage attribute and the rest would provide defensive bonuses, while Precision and some of Defense were changed into being affixes.

This change makes the stats more intuitive and fixes some of the itemization issues we were running into. We want to make it clear that junk items aren’t worth picking up, and make it easy to identify other items as not for your character. We want to drop a ton of items, but to really pull off a sense of excitement when finding a great item, there needs to be non-optimal items, both for your class, and in general. By specifically targeting stats at classes, we can reduce the amount of item overlap, diversify our item pool, and create a cleaner, more exciting itemization system.

By and large these changes have little impact on which items you’re going to want. The item hunt has always been based on secondary stats and affixes, and we’re working hard to ensure build diversity is as large as possible by getting as many affixes into the game as possible (adding more item affixes is also something we’ve been working on). Simply including affixes that augment specific skills greatly expands the itemization pool and build possibilities.

[traen]

The 'wrong stats' came with a design philosophy shift that came after, or caused, the game's delay in 2011.
{...}

Nice post.

Sadly it's not obvious for players that trash loot was added to make not-trash loot feel more valuable.
Human brain is used to optimization. If something is unnecessary it's trying to find a solution to avoid it.

Sadly, it does not work for games. Games are not real. You are just moving useless bytes in the database.
To give you a feeling of the reward developers add obsticles. Overcoming an obsticle allows your brain to feel an achievement and you are awarded with a little bit of dopamine.

"Optimizing" the process in this case is useless.
Currently it works like this "blue-blue-white-white-blue-white- oh, a yellow, grab it!". It's not a big achievement, but you recieve your dopamine,

Let's say we removed all the "trash items" from the game. "yellow-yellow-yellow-yellow". No feeling of achievement at all. To keep player interested you'll have to give him a legendary more often than 2-3 times per hour. And that brings another problem - legendaries won't feel "legendary", as well as unneeded stat inflation.

Blizzard developers knew about it, and I'm sure that before implementing this system they tried different options.

Yes, white items are annoying, but they were added to make you feel that yellow items are more valuable.
Trash stats are annoying, but they were added to give you a feeling of accomplishment when you get an item without them.

It's not hard to remove the trash items from loot and make all the stats ~equally valuable.
But it means that the difference between items will be just in the sum of stats on them.
And you'll have to use calculator to tell your brain that you just "accomplished" something.
It just won't work. Players will lose interest to the game significantly faster.

[warningsigns]

Thanks for all of the replies. I have been playing a little over the last 7 days or so. Found a couple of cheap upgrades on the gold AH but not one from a drop. I guess this just isn't the game for me. I just get hung up on the whole gear thingy with useless stats. The game play I find fun, but I can only hack and slash for so long through the same acts without getting any upgrades.

[traen]

You can't be able to find upgrades and be able to buy them from AH in the same time.
You have to choose.

Either play self-funded character and you will find upgrades every day.
Or farm gold and use it to buy updates on AH.

It's just a simple math.
If you was able to find an item of rarity X after 7 days of playing, it means that 2.000.000 players (who played 7 days as you did) already found similar item of rarity X and the AH is full of items of this rarity.
But there are hundred of thousand players who played significantly more than 7 days. They find items of rarity X+1, X+2, X+... every day.
The items you'll be able to find just after months of playing.

You came to an environment where everyone already found everything you need and are ready to give it to you pretty much free of charge.
You took items from them, geared your character and now you are surprised that you can't find any upgrades.

It just does not work like that, sorry.

Try to play self-funded character. Or hardcore character, the economy is much more healthy on hardcore.
Or maybe chinese farmer simulator games like diablo are just not for you.

[Vespian]

Or maybe chinese farmer simulator games like diablo are just not for you.

Oh pa~lease. At least get over this *the game is as good as it could have been* attitude, because really, we've seen random drops in Diablo II (played HC for over 6 years) and those rares often were garbage as well, but never to the extent of Diablo III. The sole reason for it is the AH, which is why everything went to hell in the drop department. Diablo II was never a Chinese farmer simulator, Blizzard made that of Diablo III. Don't generalize everything, just because you want to throw in a mockery at the end of a post.

And surely, no one actually wants to play a chinese farm simulator. But than again, a dead discussion. Blizzard gambled, significantly lost (yeah I know, 9 mil copies sold, I was one of those suckers) and now tries to cheat people on PS3 into buying it as well.

I occasionally play DIII when I'm in the mood for a; hey, 1 in 1.000.000 should be a guaranteed 100% chance (Discworld), but after an hour the truth hits you where it hurts.

[traen]

Diablo II was never a Chinese farmer simulator, Blizzard made that of Diablo III. Don't generalize everything

I did not generalize anything.
By "chinese farmer simulator" games I meant ALL chinese farmer simulator games. "Diablo" was short to "diablo3", not "diablo1" and not "diablo series".
But diablo2 is actually a pretty good example. That's where it all started - chinese farmers realized that it's more profitable to sell items to stupid rich kids than to grow rice, first bots appeared, because gameplay was so stupidly simple that bot primitive ai was more than enough to beat the game. I've seen people selling gold in UO and Everquest . But it was never on so large scale as it was with d2. D2 was a golden age of chinese farming.

And chinese farming is not about drop chance. It's about your gameplay. You spend hours and days running the same route doing the same thing over and over.
It does not really matter if you find any items on your course and how many items you find. You can farm experience for example.
Getting lvl99 in d2 before LOD required more farming than getting paragon lvl100 in d3.
So don't fool yourself about the nature of d2. It was 100% farming game, just like d3 is.

I occasionally play DIII when I'm in the mood for a; hey, 1 in 1.000.000 should be a guaranteed 100% chance (Discworld), but after an hour the truth hits you where it hurts.

And it's actually working surprisingly good.
If you was getting "1 in 1.000.000" items all the time, like in d2, you would probably stop logging in a long time ago.
Bad drops keep 2M players logging in and trying to farm their way to the "top". And they will always do because unlike in d2, "top" is absolutely unreachable.

[BenBos]

since u quit (assuming u haven't played the game since last june/july), there have been alot of major game changes that have made the game better such as:

paragon system: once u hit lvl 60, u still gain xp up to a lvl cap of 100, (clvl60-plvl100), which adds 3 of primary stats, 2 vitality and 1 of the non class primary stats (so for wizard u would get 3 int/2 vit/ 1str/ 1dex), on top of this per lvl, u also get 3% gold find and magic find, up to teh character cap of 300% for lvl 100, which means u no longer really need magic find gear.


monster power levels: each individual difficulty level of the game now has 10 sub difficulty levels, each one increases the health and damage dealt by monsters, and also increases gold/magic find by 25% per monster power lvl, above the personal player cap (so for MP10 u can have upwards of 700% MF/GF at 100 paragon), and aswell as that each monster power lvl adds to the amount of bonus xp u get too, so allows for faster and easier lvling, both up to 60, and beyond.

loot 1.0: all set legendary items got buffed in stats so they were actually "legendary" compared to a rare item in the same slot, also, the stats on rare items were changed to scale with the level of the monster that dropped them, so, if u don't use monster power, u would ignore anything other than ilvl 63 drops, but with monster power enabled, even on MP1, all monsters are considered lvl 63, so all rares that are dropped, can potentially roll ilvl 63 stats, regardless of the actual ilvl of teh item, only the base stats are lower (like natural armour values, base weapon dmg etc), but more importantly, it means every item can possibly be awesome.

loot 2.0: incoming patch some time end of this year, possibly early next year, to address the problem of non class specific stats on class specific items (like wizard hats with str/dex, might belts with dex/int, hand crossbows with int/str etc), also, to help improve the stats on existing gear so that the stats rolls aren't soo random and close the gap on rteh chasm between bad items, good items, and godly items among other tyhings, u should read the blogs/posts about stuff that has been talked about soo far for more info.

demonic essences and ilvl 63 crafted gear: in 1.0.7 blizz added a new crafting material ilvl 64, used to craft bind on account shoulders/gloves/chests/amulets, which can roll perfect stats (however for most classes/builds, it isn't worth bothering with the chest as the set legendaries and set bonuses are just too powerful to give up using), and can roll best in slot stats in those slots, and being bind on account, they cannot be traded, so u have to get a little lucky with the roll but it means they will be better than anything u can buy with gold/real money off the AH (demonic essences are also BOA so u have to actually gather them urself off killing elites/bosses), also, all of these BOA items have a set base stat range, u can have 1 of the 4 primary stats, which will always roll 200-230 main stat, plus 5 random affixes.


uber bosses and hellfire ring crafting: blizz added a mini set of dungeons to the game for lvl 60 players where u face a dual combination of bosses, there are 3 realms of evil, each realm has 2 bosses from the normal game, but suped up and did i mention there were 2 of them together?, in one realm u have maghda and skeleton king, all the same abilities they each have individually, but harder hitting, and more annoying, in another realm, u have rakanoth and ghom, considered the easiest realm to deal with, but still problematic in its' own way, and lastly, biggest ball ache of them all, zoltun kulle and siegbreaker, this realm is just a clusterfuck waiting to happen.

in order to open up these realms of evil, u need to gather 3 keys which are dropped by each keywarden in each of the first 3 acts (each keywarden drops a different key and u need 1 key of each type to create the infernal machine which is used to open the portal to these realms of evil), and the plan to craft the infernal machines which requires these keys off the keywarden in act 4, as of 1.0.8 the act 4 keywarden will not only drop the infernal machine plan, but also drops one of the 3 other keys at random, to get these keys depends on what monster power lvbl u play on, as each monster power lvl increases the drop chance by 10% up to a guarenteed drop on MP10, to follow on from that, each of the uber boss encounters drop a "demonic organ" and also have drop rates tied into monster power lvl with a 10% increase per monster power lvl up to a guarenteed 100% drop on MP10, it is these demonic organs that are needed to craft hellfire rings, which roll guarenteed primary stats of ur choice, and 35% bonus XP gain, and have no lvl requirement, so can be equipped on brand new lvl 1 characters to help lvl alts faster or help lvl paragon faster at lvl 60.

so in summary, u have missed out on alot of game changing, and potentially awesome upgrades to the game and would probably do well to come back to the game to learn how to play again, as the game is nothing like it was at release, it is soo much easier, in softcore there is almost no need to build defensively like u did at release, and builds have changed quite alot since then aswell, give it a go, not like it costs anything if u bought the game, and u don't really have anything to loose either, cos lets be honest, if u haven't played in a year+, ur gear is gonna be considered, "ultra low end" anyway, so u will highly liekly find an upgrade straight off the bat in teh first game u play.


also little sidenote, ofc having the primary stat roll being non class specific isn't great, but having non class primary stats on items isn't the end of the worl,d each stat is useful to all players which is something i really like with D3, str gives armour at a 1:1 ratio, which helps alot when trying to gear on a budget in some slots, dex improves dodge chancce, which may or may not save ur life at some point, int gives all res at a 10:1 ratio, so being an int class (i also main a wizzard), u have the highest base resistance of any class aside from WD, and vit is self explanatory, makes life pool bigger.

If anyone would read this post, he would understand not only how much the game got better, but also the complaining about those gear stats is trivial even, because an extreme grind is what makes this game special.

I think the only thing they can add is a good PvP arena system AND a way to change the softcore AH so goods dissapear from the AH, like a bind on account system when you buy AH gear.

In hardcore the economy functions by constant gear resets due to death, so no complaining there.

The argument that all drops need to be adapted to your class is silly as it would mean you outplay the game in a matter of days/weeks.

I love it the way the stats drop now, 2.0 will just bring even more whiners.

just do BOA on bought gear and add a nice PvP arena system.

[Underverse]

Not sure I get this whole 'quit/return' thing. I mean, it's free to play. Play when you feel like playing. It really isn't that hard, I promise

[Vespian]

I did not generalize anything.
By "chinese farmer simulator" games I meant ALL chinese farmer simulator games. "Diablo" was short to "diablo3", not "diablo1" and not "diablo series".
But diablo2 is actually a pretty good example. That's where it all started - chinese farmers realized that it's more profitable to sell items to stupid rich kids than to grow rice, first bots appeared, because gameplay was so stupidly simple that bot primitive ai was more than enough to beat the game. I've seen people selling gold in UO and Everquest . But it was never on so large scale as it was with d2. D2 was a golden age of chinese farming.

And chinese farming is not about drop chance. It's about your gameplay. You spend hours and days running the same route doing the same thing over and over.
It does not really matter if you find any items on your course and how many items you find. You can farm experience for example.
Getting lvl99 in d2 before LOD required more farming than getting paragon lvl100 in d3.
So don't fool yourself about the nature of d2. It was 100% farming game, just like d3 is.


And it's actually working surprisingly good.
If you was getting "1 in 1.000.000" items all the time, like in d2, you would probably stop logging in a long time ago.
Bad drops keep 2M players logging in and trying to farm their way to the "top". And they will always do because unlike in d2, "top" is absolutely unreachable.

I just had an awkward moment in which I think someone tried to explain to me what Diablo II was all about.

Let me then, rephrase it.

I never got a single item through trading in Diablo II and I had [everything]. I didn't manipulate the market, I never traded SOJs and I never felt that by not trading, I would miss out on my maximum potential. Hell, I had one mule character that only carried Shako's. I had that many. I even found all my runewords myself (but, granted, I only found a few high level ones, had two slightly below perfect Call to Arms. Luck of the draw).

So, deducting from my own experience, the difference is not in the gameplay, but in how the game rewards you for it. Actually, how it does not reward you for it. Diablo II and Diablo III are lightyears between in terms of accessibility and selfsustainability.

[draykorinee]

I have to agree its a lot better now, but I ignore nearly all drops now, I spent about £10 and can pretty much gear up character after character with decent stuff. Loot and AH is just horrible, the game itself is a massive improvement from release.