I went chakram/impale/FoK with the quiver that makes chakram generate hatred. Pretty good times.

any shadow set build seemed to have so little aoe until FoK time, maybe chakram is better but less powerful than impale

the game is NOT in a good place right now tho...

the 4man gr meta is STILL twister wiz + 3 zdps and they actually managed to lower the top end ranks from some nerfs. think people were saying max gr/gr farming was like 3-5 lower than last patch (still ~gr110 tho)

dh builds are still lon shiz/nat fok/UE farm (which they just doubled in power with no new items)

paragon grind is absurd. people claim those farming gr100+ 4man groups are getting 2-2.5 trillion xp/hr. farming ~70s solo today i can probably do slightly better than 300b/hr.

so they are higher paragon (avg is ~3000 now at the top), therefore they are more powerful, therefore can farm higher grs, therefore they rank gems higher, therefore their caldesanns are WAY higher, therefore they are more powerful... aaaand therefore they can farm higher grs.

leaderboards are dominated by that right there and its no fun. a couple patches ago i was rank 9 dh in americas, still was ~500 paragon below everyone else (2500 dex). now im ~12k dex lower than people at the top. all gear equal, they are almost 2x stronger than i am...

ill still play here and there but i dont expect them to do anything with d3 except run it into the ground further

skipped last season and havent played in a few months so I rolled a monk this time.
skipping a season is great.
gonna play a bit but definitely dont like the paragon grind,this is really wrong.
and yet the game is really smooth and fun for a few days every few months.
Im just gonna try out a few builds and stop playing for a while like I always do.
Idk whats wrong with this game tbh,it has a huge amount of content compared to vanilla,and yet its depressing after a few days (

really hope we ll see diablo 4 though

was tempted to grind this season, but it started before work season ended for me plus i wasnt a huge fan of the same meta from last season

maybe next season tho....

hoping for a d4 and another auction house tho, those were good times

im thinking theyll make warcraft 4 before d4

Everything you listed is true, but I don't think it makes the above statement true; I think it makes this statement true:


They've added a gold sink, a gem sink, regular rifts, greater rifts, the cube and everything it brings, etc etc. It's easy to take these things for granted, and to forget that they didn't always exist.

Yes the top is stale, but that was my point. I was saying that it's a shame the 4-man meta is not exciting because so much else is in a good state.

Why should we care if the top groups clear lower than previous seasons? Why are you lamenting about that if you're also lamenting that paragon disparity is a problem? If power creep led to higher farming this season, the disparity would be even larger.

Those are fair points but they haven't added anything new to the first go round loot hunt, haedrigs gift or w.e just further trivialized it. I have 30b gold and could rip through that in no time at all. Takes 3x as long to get it as spend it (on grs). With the gem converter recipe there's no way to spend them all after a while. On ns I have like 10k of everything but ems, they'll last forever. Rifts and tx isn't enough after all these power buffs but they react to that so late. I still grind tho cause there's more room to improve now.

All those sinks you mention are the opposite of innovation imo, they just found ways to creep faster. I guess it is true that limiting the cap limits the disparity BUT you punish one of your bigger player pools (20hr a day grinders) by removing the bonuses they can get. They will always have insane hourly xps and paragon gap will never close, just a more flat plateau at the top.

I haven't looked through all classes but wiz solo @103 seems strong.

As a fairly casual player, I think the gifts at the start of the seasons have been awesome. Makes it way easier to get into a class and set I haven't played before. Much less intimidating to get going and into something resembling endgame.

Well it's all about what you consider endgame. Do you want to #1 lb? #1 4mans? Get full ancients/hellfire/caldesanns? Get a 6pc set for each class? Get to speed farming tx? Etc each lower level has gotten easier to achieve and that's where you lose another chunk of the "rec" populous. At least if it takes 10+ hours of gearing up; going from yellows on expert to random build on t1, there's a slightly longer hunt and progression curve involved. Finally being geared for t6 back in the day was so nice, you actually "accomplished" something. If you can just step into t6 and farm away I feel like you are missing a huge piece of why you guys find the game enjoyable

man, if you're playing over 10 hours a day, you're gonna run out of content eventually. Sooner than later, too.

well that was sort of my point; if they are happy grinding out +10-20 caldesanns each patch as their "content", and you remove that, what is left to achieve? paragon 4500?

on another note, im not nearly high enough para/caldesanns to compete on LBs anymore, but have done 81/82/83 in succession now, sitting at 149 dh atm. mortar blues are LOLWTF and reflect you actually cant keep shooting through or you just kill yourself.

leveling my main gems running solos lol, 84 bot 79 zeis and 74 bots o.O

ohhhhh the grind

http://www.diablofans.com/forums/dia...explained-with

The wizard exploit build topping the leaderboards that blizzard doesn't care about

might have to try that out..

turbohud got killed after someone hacked their forum and while the map "hack" was very nice, honestly the endless numbers on screen were something to pay attention to behind the mindless button clicking that has become diablo...

played a monk at the very start till para 160 or so and uninstalled.
im curious hearing about path of exile praise,what exactly makes it better?
I see the problems with d3 and always play a bit then uninstall cause bored.
lot of people complain about endgame but Ive never read a proper answer to what a good endgame would be.

Path of exile has new leagues every few months. There is a ton of rng based crafting. The skill tree is ginormous. You can be any race and use any skill. There is no "i pick monk, so i can only have monk skills and items. "

Any race can use any skill or item. The only difference in races are the stats and where they start in the skill tree. Some races are int based and start in the int area, so naturally spells would be the ideal way to go, but you can make them melee or bow people.

The main downside to poe is that it uses an outdated engine with poor optimization, also d2 like graphics. If you can get past that, it's a great game. I have over 1200 hours in it.

i cant play poe on my laptop it doesnt recognize my card its a common problem ive read.
i tried it in beta then again not long ago but with my laptop i cant play it.
I get the skill tree and other games have same feature.
what I dont get is what is different endgame?
it seems to me its just more of the same with slight variation?
like gearing up to beat more powerfull stuff to gear up?

I really have no idea what kind of endgame would fix thos type of games,by default we dont want them to end.

Im thinking about giving torchlight 2 a shot again or maybe victor vran that i havent tried yet and sit in my backlog like a good steam addict

editne thing i hate about d3 is paragon grind.
we should be capped and seek awesome items.

Yea I've thought about this a lot. TBH I think what kept me going in D2 for so long was just being a kid + the community + friends playing. I don't think the endgame was orders of magnitude more interesting or anything...

ARPG's don't really have end game. It's all grinding for better gear. The only difference is the experience and if you enjoy doing it.

POE's developer is constantly adding/ removing/ balancing things. They have races which range from 12 minutes long to 1 week. They add special rules to the races/ leagues to make them harder/fun/ interesting. Different races have Different goals.

Some races put a dot on you when you attack things that stacks, so it makes you balance your attacks. Some make enemies explode upon death, etc. Some make super mobs spawn if you kill too many things close together. Etc etc

There is trading also. That's another story, but it's basically determined by the players what the value of things are based on the current meta.

torchlight 2 was pretty fun. its not so much of a "story" but the zones you grind through are refreshing vs d3. first time playing that with some friends was actually tough; kiting boss fights forever, dying a lot along the way. but it was a new game and we played on a pretty high difficulty. lowering it trivialized it but it was still a fun playthrough. after you "beat the game" you just get a + rank on your game and start over, at like lvl 50 then lvl 100 is ++, etc. def gets boring and it seemed like a lot less public games or things to do after a while. they also have a console cheat to lvl up etc which was fun for a little bit. def worth a play, idk what it costs but could try it

This is the first time I've really done anything at level 70 (first time I did it was just before the end of a season. The next season, I got up to level 64 before getting bored and trying a different game. Since then, I played each season only up to level 7, then stopped. Wasn't even a conscious decision, I looked at my character list and they all stopped at level 7.

This season, again I got really bored getting my character up to 70. (I don't think I'll ever do the 1 to 70 leveling again, just get someone to powerlevel me instead. It's just so boring). But after I did get to 70, I've been having a blast with my whirlwind barbarian. Only playing at Torment 4 right now. I tried a Nephalem rift at Torment 5 and died 3 times within the first minute, so I guess I need better gear for that level. I've cleared GR21 in under 5 minutes, so it's nice to have something to aim for improving.

people enjoy the game in all different ways, but getting to max level is really only where it begins. gearing up then is the goal, sets and paragons for power. none of that is part of it under 70. powerlevel and then grind is the best way but i personally wont ever play another season because of the grind. gems, gear, etc all to get to the same place you were before.

ive prob played more than most in here by now, its a little stale at the moment (forever prob) at the higher end, but as long as you want to hunt upgrades, theres game to be played.

I wonder what Diablo news there will be at blizzcon. If they really have scrapped plans of an expansion (there are clues to this) i think it would be weird if there is no diablo 4 in the workings, because then the series have just stopped. A mobile game or diablo 2 hd is not continuing the series, its just digressions.

How many times can you kill Diablo, really?

As many as people are willing to pay for.