Items in Diablo 3

[KoProvoke]

I wana bring this up because in diablo 2 the items have clearly insufficient stats. I always recall my newb days when I was act2 normal looking for a sword that had a 15% edam mod and I basically spent hours trying to get gear that by far was unable to beat duriel unless I died like 25x.

The whole game is centered on getting gear, and that's not because I cant beat the game without gear no, I can go naked and beat the game, but I'll die so many times that my finger would get sore from pressing the esc key but I will beat the game. You can picture me at hell baal doing a 2k blizzard on him then dying, taking tp again making another tp making another blizz die again, for about 45x then I will win.

The problem is that it's annoying to die all the time because the gear cant hold. For example, the merchand in town sells either 4os jewelers 500def armors or 60 life armors, if you look at them, they are entirely useless. 60life on an item is as good as plain. An item must have:

- Skills
- Speed ( fcr ias fhr frw)
- Resists ( all res, sorb, dam reduction etc.)
- Damage
- Defense

Like fortitude has defense damage resists and fcr so it's a quite good armor. It would be nice if we could buy armors at merchands that are not 300%edam 200@ edef but maby 119%edam 10fcr 90%edef +23 all res +1 to all skills. Or it coud also be 1 all skills 185% edef 135%edam 15fcr +16 all res you get it?

Griffons has skill, damage -25/20, and fcr which makes it a good item so It's another example.
If I could buy a 1 all skills 10fcr 9% to lite skill damage 2os helm at merchand, would make the game more interesting.

So it's bad that the accessible atems are plain and void, compared to the inaccessible uniques who hold ALL the power.

With this kind of items instead of dying like 40x before you beat the game you only die once or twice which makes more sense.
My point is that the items sold at merchands are basically just plain items with no magic enhancements and quite useless and that shouldn't be the case.
So in Diablo 3 I would want to have more equilibrium, not just ware plain items, while the few uniques that are actually good are impossible to come across.

Diablo 2 is a specialist into newb items, Ill give examples:

- 24% plain fhr armors ( you probably die in 1 hit, won't have anything to recover from if your dead lol.)
- 100life armor ( ya with -50res you might consider making it 10 000life to stand a chance)
- poison length reduced by 75% armors. ( seriously)
- +6 to light radius ( yuhooooo! light!)
- +36 to mana, ( I'm sure that's a good reason to ware an armor)
- +30 strength belt (another useless mod)
- Damage or attack rating to demons or undead, (takes alot of space to write but it basically means that the item is as good as plain)
- replenish life +10 ammy. ( wow thats so bm! I would ware one on my bmana sorce...NOT)
- +20 all resists 20strength ring ( makes me thing of the obsidian ring of the zodiac but I guess d1 items won't stand a chance in d2)
- Causes monster to flee. ( this one is good, I have a 10-68 hydra bow but monsters run away from me, I may need 40 shots to kill one but oh well)
- Fools mod, ( very useful especially on a 70damage zerk)


The list goes on for ever, problem is, if the mods are not: skill resists speed damage defense, the mods are useless, as good as plain.

People may ask, dude how come a 25res ammy is better then a 100life ammy. Easy to reason:

you have 34res with 100life ammy and 1600life
and 59 res with 25res ammy and 1500 life

If souls hit you with lite, you have 34% dr in the first case, as if you had 2424 life with 0 res
In the second case you have 1500life with 59dr, as if you had 3658 life with 0res.
For the ammy to be as good as the 25 res it must have 1000life.

I mean a 1000life ammy looks hacked...but if you have no res, it's useless.

Discuss

[Sass]

Vendor Items are usually worse than the items you find, but saying that things are so very item dependent that you can't play well is ludicrous at best. There are countless untwinked pats / mats on this forum alone! They started from nothing, most likely found very great gear.

My first sin (untwinked in '01) found full nats relatively quickly.

It sounds like you have a problem with untwinked. Nothing can really make you appreciate it w/o trying it. It's better than you make it seem and even vendor items are good 80+ life / sockets

Also, IMO, Duriel's the hardest boss (in terms of comparing to the char strength vs the challenge).




However, D3 may or may not be like this. The best account is from a blizzcon attendee about how good drops were, but even untwinked in d3 might be hard to start off if you are clueless.

[korialstraz]

I never had any problems with items in the game, and if you strouble against Duriel untwinked something is wrong. There are plenty ways to get good items. Gamble for rares, money isn't a problem. By act 2 you should easily have at last 30k gold. Use mercs, they're life savers early on if you equip them with some high dmg weapon (easy to come by). Use gems! They're great early on. I've never felt this game is too difficult really. Normal is fairly easy and nightmare is even easier. Not trying to bash you here, since I can see where you are coming from, but your suggestion of making normal/magic/rare items better and making uniques impossible to find. Why do you think people are duping?

Also I'd rather like a huge variaty of items, both magical/rare affixes and suffixes, set items and uniques. With the ability to change out equipment more often instead of waiting like 10-40 lvls between chaning out items. Still some items should not be as easy to find, and I think part of the reason this game still lives is (or would have been if not for dupers) hard to get items. That and it's easy to learn but difficult to really master. There is always something new to learn.

And why would you die 40+ times against baal? Y'know about runewords right? Spirit sword and shield, and with some luck in nm you have a viper. Use the rest of your gear slots to make up with res and you're good to go. Just to name one way of doing it. Some items was WAY overpowered for their price imo, while other items were overpriced but useless. But game development has come a long way and _hopefully_ the game will be more balanced than what D2 is.



Welcome back buddy! Missed your discussions! ^_^

[Findux]

How easy do you want the game to be, if I may ask?

[Sass]

I never had any problems with items in the game, and if you strouble against Duriel untwinked something is wrong. There are plenty ways to get good items. Gamble for rares, money isn't a problem. By act 2 you should easily have at last 30k gold. Use mercs, they're life savers early on if you equip them with some high dmg weapon (easy to come by). Use gems! They're great early on. I've never felt this game is too difficult really. Normal is fairly easy and nightmare is even easier. Not trying to bash you here, since I can see where you are coming from, but your suggestion of making normal/magic/rare items better and making uniques impossible to find. Why do you think people are duping?

:( unless I pick up and sell pretty much everything I wouldn't have that much. Duriel is hard (not impossible, but early on in a cramped room + HF....yeah he's hard) for me at least. I won't auto die, but I usually take the time to guarantee I get some arctics before hand O.O

[korialstraz]

:( unless I pick up and sell pretty much everything I wouldn't have that much. Duriel is hard (not impossible, but early on in a cramped room + HF....yeah he's hard) for me at least. I won't auto die, but I usually take the time to guarantee I get some arctics before hand O.O

You won't need to sell everything. All staves, orbs, wands, scepters and rares should suffice. That is for not getting to Duriel as fast as possible, but doing all quests and killing as much as you can. Also sell most/all chiped and flawed gems until you get the cube, then start collecting. Stackable pots sell for good amount as well. Then get a nice act 2 merc with some good armor and high dmg weapon to tank while you attack. Alternate between you and merc taking damage. Sure you'll need to travel back to time quite a few times compared to other bosses, but he is far from as difficult that KoProvoked seems to make him. It also depends on char/build ofc. Some builds don't have any effective attack until 24, which is close to end of act 5 from my expirience.

[Sass]

Some builds don't have any effective attack until 24, which is close to end of act 5 from my expirience

me in a nut-shell :P I'm usualy too weak to take on duriel, or too poor to constantly get a merc. farming some orbs would certainly help tho ^^

[korialstraz]

I guess I was a bit quick on saying Duriel is usually always easy. I can certainly see him be difficult on some builds, but if you've played SP for any lenght of time you know how to do stuff. I used to play SP for a long time, not even reading on forums. Had to rely on whatever I knew. Selling class specific items and high def armor for lots of gold payed off in the long run. Learned that fast when sometimes my merc killed more than me

[sunflowersmooth]

I agree. I don't get vendor items at all. Once in awhile you can shop a godly but that's rare in a diablo career.

Who wants a chain mail 24 fhr?
No one.

Moneys only purpose is to serve as a gamble, which personally I feel like is a weaker point in D2.

[korialstraz]

Did you try and play untwinked sunflowersmooth? A lot of the time back in the day when I did, all my items was shoped from stores, sometimes all the way to act 5. Same for my merc and never did I feel like the game was way too difficult.