Elites are completely broken

[CarsV]

Nah.

I am wearing only 1 item that I bought from AH. The rest I farmed myself.

If you have trouble farming or don't like farming, this isn't a game for you. But then I struggle to think you really like D2 either, because farming in D2 was actually more daunting in places. Itemization was better, true (it'll get fixed in D3 eventually btw), but finding upgrades was NOT an easy task unless you specifically went MF sorc route.

-Untwinked barb trying to get to nm? GL farming 100+ weapon like Bonesnap or Steeldriver. Seriously, have fun in baal normal.
-High end farming? Run pit/tunnels for 2 weeks to maybe find 1 upgrade.
-5000 baal runs? Sorry, no windforce, seeya
-1.0 high stat lance/executioner/battlehammer/ornate plate farming? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA, oh this one brings tears to my eyes. About the same as "zod farming".

The big difference was, you could beat Hell Baal in crap gear sorc. You cant beat D3 inferno in crap gear.

But finding upgrades being easier? Oh give me a freaking break. D2C had everyone wearing duped rares. Someone wearing a legitimate 300+ lance was an anomaly. Same as D2x and all the HRs/HR words. Botted or duped.

Yeah, you could still find amazing gear like stormshield with some dedication on Hell Meph, but even that took hours/days of grinding.

Itemization in D3 sucks, but it will be fixed. Droprates on upgrades are fine. All the crying about being goaded towards RMAH makes it sound like you hate farming in general. I sell 99 items before I buy 1 on GAH (and wouldn't ever use RMAH, personally). If you feel forced otherwise, you're doing it wrong.

Think about it. Who put up those 1200 dps 1handers up on RMAH? Blizzard did? Nope. Someone found them.

Why wasn't that someone - you?

I can tell this guy has never invested any time in Diablo 2, let alone UNTWINKED and HARDCORE. Nice try at pretending to look like you know what you're talking about. I'll repeat it again: I have leveled MANY untwinked characters in hardcore on my own. Who gives a **** about Windforce? That right there tells me that you're just pulling crap out your *** to save face.

[sifuedition]

I can tell this guy has never invested any time in Diablo 2, let alone UNTWINKED and HARDCORE. Nice try at pretending to look like you know what you're talking about. I'll repeat it again: I have leveled MANY untwinked characters in hardcore on my own. Who gives a **** about Windforce? That right there tells me that you're just pulling crap out your *** to save face.

Alex has had a few replies in threads that I thought went too far, but he hasn't done so to me, yet. Regardless, kill them with kindness. Post a constructive rebuttal and it will help the cause more.

For instance...Alex admitted you didn't have to have all the gear that everyone envied to beat the game in D2. He has already basically capitulated your point so such a vitriolic reply is unnecessary.

To me, the key to Alex's comment there is that it allowed me to farm where I wanted to. Sure there were a bajilion Baal runs. I just didn't usually do them. I ran a little of everything and might find an incremental upgrade anywhere. I did Baal runs too, just not nearly as exclusively as most. That's the option I am missing. I need more content that can reasonably drop a piece I would equip over my level 52-61 stuff I'm wearing.

When I say reasonbly, I mean I have 13 slots and most of those should be probably 59-61 to do Act 1 completely. I don't think that should take more than about 2 weeks on average. Maybe three with terrible luck. That's about a piece every 6-12 hours, tops. I'd be ok with that. With about 200 hours on my inferno toons combined, that should be more than the 1 upgrade I've found.

[AlexanderBarin]

Actually it depends on how you define upgrades. I frequently found stuff just a little better than what I was wearing. Total guestimate, but I'd say every 6-12 hours. That's not saying I found perfectly rolled anything or that one awesome unique everyone wanted. I'm just saying stuff I actually equiped over what I was previously wearing.

I have two inferno toons and a level 50. Of those three toon, I have exactly 1 slot I am wearing that is self found...out of 39 possible slots. I do still play quite a bit so I am obviously farming. Not saying I don't like farming. I'm saying I don't like farming where I make enough gold to upgrade 38 slots in the time it takes me to find 1 upgrade. That.....removes all feeling of reward from the game.

Edit: And that one upgrade is a bracer slot that is more of a side grade. It didn't have vit on it but did have all res, so it might not have been a true upgrade but I equiped it just to pretend I found an upgrade. So sick of not having any self-found gear.

Edit to address Alex's edit: (This is kinda funny, lol)
Alex, the reason that person wasn't me is because of two factors.
1. Many of the people (not saying all but I firmly believe most) farming A 3/4 got there by being AH players or using exploits/bots early in the game. They have had exclusive access to that content and are manipulating it to full advantage. I won't do that even if I could.
2. Even a 0.00000001 chance becomes possible when you have 7 million people putting in the play time as the game has seen so far. In fact, if you really consider all the hours played by all the players combined, the number of well itemized/well rolled pieces on the AH is actually remarkably LOW.

You can't point to a group and say, "They all won the lottery, so why haven't you!". Given enough time and enough players, of course there are a lot of people who found awesome gear. Doesn't mean I have a chance of finding USABLE (not asking for awesome-I fully believe that should take time) gear that is high enough to be fun to me.

You say you sell 99 pieces to every one you have found. I've found 1 piece I equiped even though it was more of a side grade as I mentioned. I have only been able to sell about 10 pieces and three of those were re-sells of stuff I bought. None of that was level 60+ items. None of it even sold for 100k.

I might be a statistical outlier who has worse luck than most. Even if I'm the worst care scenario, however, shouldn't I still be able to have fun? Should I just be totally SOL in progression due to that? Sounds like it could/should be fixed at a design level to me.

Yes, many exploiters got to the goodies early, especially in SC. But at this point the field has levelled, due to inferno nerfs and overall more people reaching it. Look at how cheap good 60-61 gear is. Look at how cheap 900+ 1handers are. At this point finding good upgrades is a matter of dedication, not luck. This morning I farmed A1 for 2 hours. It was almost all garbage. But on the third run I found an amazing belt I'll sell for 1 million+ as well as a lvl 63 spear I haven't IDed yet, which may turn out to be a 1k+ with good stats, and sell for 20+ million (just like the spear I'm wearing right now, which I found awhile ago).

I also have 75 million gold right now, and could technically purchase any upgrade I like from GAH - which I don't because I like to hoard gold for absolutely no reason. I also like to find my own stuff.

Right now I'm wearing a 100 sta 250 str amulet, which will be tough to beat. I'd want another 250 str AND either LOH or high AllRes on an upgrade. No such thing on AH at all. I'll probably spend weeks farming one like that. But that's the point, when I find it, I'll be incredibly happy. Amazing upgrades like this shouldn't come easy. It's kinda like expecting a windforce within 10 hours of farming in D2. Not going to happen.

My advice to you is - move on from hell to A1 Inferno. I don't know which class you play, but generally you want 300+ All res , 35k+ HP and good dps (whatever your class considers good, for barbs its 9k+). I could purchase all this gear from SC GAH for about 500k gold. From then on, you can find your own upgrades, with solid dedication, I guarantee it (assuming you're about as skilled as me or more skilled - and I'm not very skilled. I don't kite lasers with precision, I go in and pop cooldowns and watch stuff die in seconds, then wait for another cooldown to open up).

Out of 100 rares you get, you should have 4 ilvl 63s, 8 62s and 16 61s. At least one of them should be good enough to either sell or wear. 100 rares should take about 2 hours of farming at the gear level listed above. Does that sound fair?

[pulli]

Nah.

I am wearing only 1 item that I bought from AH. The rest I farmed myself.

If you have trouble farming or don't like farming, this isn't a game for you. But then I struggle to think you really like D2 either, because farming in D2 was actually more daunting in places. Itemization was better, true (it'll get fixed in D3 eventually btw), but finding upgrades was NOT an easy task unless you specifically went MF sorc route.

-Untwinked barb trying to get to nm? GL farming 100+ weapon like Bonesnap or Steeldriver. Seriously, have fun in baal normal.
-High end farming? Run pit/tunnels for 2 weeks to maybe find 1 upgrade.
-5000 baal runs? Sorry, no windforce, seeya
-1.0 high stat lance/executioner/battlehammer/ornate plate farming? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA, oh this one brings tears to my eyes. About the same as "zod farming".

The big difference was, you could beat Hell Baal in crap gear sorc. You cant beat D3 inferno in crap gear.

But finding upgrades being easier? Oh give me a freaking break. D2C had everyone wearing duped rares. Someone wearing a legitimate 300+ lance was an anomaly. Same as D2x and all the HRs/HR words. Botted or duped.

Yeah, you could still find amazing gear like stormshield with some dedication on Hell Meph, but even that took hours/days of grinding.

Itemization in D3 sucks, but it will be fixed. Droprates on upgrades are fine. All the crying about being goaded towards RMAH makes it sound like you hate farming in general. I sell 99 items before I buy 1 on GAH (and wouldn't ever use RMAH, personally). If you feel forced otherwise, you're doing it wrong.

Think about it. Who put up those 1200 dps 1handers up on RMAH? Blizzard did? Nope. Someone found them.

Why wasn't that someone - you?

In d2 when 1 character got stuck I made a second character.. And worked my way as far as I could. Then a 3rd, 4th .... 20th I even reached.

I never really "farmed" hell baal. What I did was just constantly playing the game: and those drops from mephisto & diablo & random act 4/5 monsters *EVEN IN NIGHTMARE* actually finally gave me the items to continue in hell.


Here in this game this isn't the case: it only makes sense to farm the very last act, anything before that is redundant as the drop rates are so low, and the items of later acts will always be better.

[sifuedition]

I have both a wiz and barb in Act1 Inferno. The wiz makes it about half way between SK and Warden before the death toll starts. He can reliably make it through SK with maybe a death or two, maybe none. Is getting into the dungeons on the way to Warden that there is ALWAYS a bad affix/affix or mob/affix combo in a small amount of space or two packs too close and it's restart time. Like you, I can't stand the idea of skipping or parking mobs. Until my gear can handle those situations, I simply accept the situation, that my gear is not ready.

That leaves a rather small window of content to farm. I can go back and do hell siege or azmodan or whatever runs I want and feel kinda overpowered. There is A chance that usable gear can drop from there. Doing thsoe runs (Act 1 Inf as far as I can and late hell) has made me enough gold to max my vendors and make the Staff of Hellish herding. Not many more gold sinks for me so it should start piling up quickly now. I recently spent just under 1 million on two upgrades for my barb. Since then, I've made another 300k in a relatively short time.

But I don't want to buy my gear. It's just not rewarding. But after playing for 12 hours a day on a Sat and Sun, I want SOMETHING to show for it and have to buy every time.

You are obviously better at the AH than me. I can't buy a complete Inf ready set for 500k. I would estimate that is what I have spent on my wiz and barb each to start inf but it won't get either one all the way through act 1. Upgrades from there look to be closer to 1 million a slot. Sure, if I wanted to hawk the AH, I can find the bargins and get them cheaper...maybe even MUCH cheaper.

But I want to spend my time in the game world, not some Econ 101 game. I think I should be MORE rewarded for that than some guy playing an Enterprise Square economy game (Enterprise Square is an economy museum here in Ok. Was cool as a kid. They have economy type video games to teach concepts).

The rate of ilvl 61+ sounds...about right. Picking up all blues and yellows, I would estimate each full bag has 1.5 62+. Sometimes 1 and rarely 3. Probably a little under 2 per full bag. However, every one I've ever seen from my drops is HORRIBLY itemized. I may have seen 3 in all the time I've played that had all usable stats and those three were laughably low rolled. They always have a really bad stat with the good ones or the good ones are extremely low rolled (iLvl 63 with 30-40 str seems about average for me, no kidding).

[Brak]

In diablo 2 any build (at least decent builds with thoughts behind it) could beat any circumstance with even suboptimal gear. As monk I simply can't escape from such a combo - the walls block my dash & the arcane melt you even with full tank build. - heal & serenity only help you so far.

You can do the same in D3 Hell Difficulty

I really think Inferno was a bad idea, at the very least in the way it was implemented. Blizz seemed to think most people would see Inferno as an optional bonus difficulty for only the hardestcore gamers, and everyone else would just not feel the need to beat it because it was INSANE. But they also put all the good gear there. Diablo is all about farming gear, of course everyone is going to want to be able to handle Inferno if thats where all the good gear is.

[AlexanderBarin]

In d2 when 1 character got stuck I made a second character.. And worked my way as far as I could. Then a 3rd, 4th .... 20th I even reached.

I never really "farmed" hell baal. What I did was just constantly playing the game: and those drops from mephisto & diablo & random act 4/5 monsters *EVEN IN NIGHTMARE* actually finally gave me the items to continue in hell.


Here in this game this isn't the case: it only makes sense to farm the very last act, anything before that is redundant as the drop rates are so low, and the items of later acts will always be better.

I agree that D3 lacks those lower level items which were important to keep and cherish (e.g. Sigons, Angelic, Tarnhelm, etc). Hopefully they will address this in 1.1, and up the drop rates on those items, so we would have more fun lvling up.

I disagree that upgrades were very easy to find. Unless I started with MF sorc, who was non gear-reliant, I'd have issues even in normal. Last time I tried untwinked barb, I quit before NM because I couldn't find a good weapon at all and there was no point trying to slowly farm NM baal for a steeldriver/bonesnap.

[AlexanderBarin]

You can do the same in D3 Hell Difficulty

I really think Inferno was a bad idea, at the very least in the way it was implemented. Blizz seemed to think most people would see Inferno as an optional bonus difficulty for only the hardestcore gamers, and everyone else would just not feel the need to beat it because it was INSANE. But they also put all the good gear there. Diablo is all about farming gear, of course everyone is going to want to be able to handle Inferno if thats where all the good gear is.

Very good point. I too wish that best gear dropped in Hell, and Inferno was a bonus difficulty for achievements only, not gear.

My current hope is that they slowly nerf Inferno like they always do in WoW, and eventually it will be as easy as D2 hell, with armies of monsters dying within seconds for that awesome feeling of "DAMN RIGHT, SON, I AM GOD".

[sifuedition]

I agree with your end state there Alex, but I hope that is actually just gradual gear acquisition instead of content nerfs. I like that feeling in an ARPG and I like feeling that I "earned" that.

Personally, I would like to have seen it play out more like:

Clear normal with self found and laugh

Clear nm with self found and maybe restarting 2 of the acts somewhere in the progress for a few stronger drops (preferably, found drops the first time through but maybe they weren't rolled as high as you would have liked)

Clear hell with maybe a few restarts on each act. 13 slots divided by 4 acts divided by 3 restarts = 1 upgrade each. So maybe play through act 1 and act 2 is hard. Restart act 1 up to about the third play through for an upgrade that makes the next act tough but doable, etc.

Inferno you have upgraded every slot during hell so you are all 58+ as long as you didn't rush it too hard in hell. Now, instead of upgrading all slots in hell mode, you need to upgrade all slots in each act of inferno, so maybe 12-13 restarts per act.

You would still have whiners both ways in a progression that worked like this. Some saying too easy, some saying too hard. I'm also not implying that this rate of progression should be easy. It should still be hard and kinda holding your breath a bit on tough affixes or act bosses. The easy mode should only come with eventually getting those godly items.

All I can say is that if I could actually FIND upgrades at about the rate listed in that very brief and loose idea of upgrading, it would amount to...at a guess...10 to 25 times faster than what I am seeing. Then, make any godly items inferno only and extremely rare. I don't care if they are yellow/gold/green, so much. Ideally, I like being excited to see that unusual item color drop, but I can get over that.

Edit:
I was rereading this post and realized the implication of what I was saying.

This is saying that you would be getting about 1 upgrade per play-through of an act. Doing a full act does seem to take me anywhere from 4-8 hours, so that seems ok.

As the difficulty levels increase, you simply increase the number of upgrades you need before being able to put the next act to the same difficulty you just farmed.

Hell would be about 3 upgraded slots to make the next act about the same. Inferno would be all 13 slots to make the next act about the same difficulty.

Even though I didn't think of it in those terms as I wrote it the first time, it still seems reasonable to me.

[Nizaris]

I actually think Alexander is being quite reasonable, especially in comparison to some of the more preaching posts.

Diablo 3 has plenty of downfalls, and I don't even seeing him deny that. Itemization has its issues - lots of them. It's a combined factor of elective skill swapping, affixes, and customizable avenues.

It is somewhat of a domino effect when looking at the item meta game and the how/why it failed.

1) Free respecs > No alt characters = 1 set of loot ever for each hero
2) Homogenization of item pool > Less variation = less hording and therefore less will for farming
3) Streamlined Trading with GAH/RMAH > Ease of finding loot = higher utility in buying rather than finding.

There's a combination of factors of why the item game is not sustainable, but these are the main ones I see. These are the things Diablo 3 falls short (other than story). What it does do, however, is provide $60 of entertainment, and for many much more than that.

When I read vitriolic responses by "haters" like those I've seen above, I can only attribute such hate to a person that dreamed of something better, and Diablo 3 was not that dream. Games can always be better - that's the whole point of constructive criticism (what forums SHOULD be for). But when passion clouds judgment and reasoning, you lose respect and therefore the message that may have some real meaning behind it.
___________

As for the elites and the other side of this thread, I have several barb and monk friends that are having a good time in Act 2. They farm Act 1 mostly because it's most efficient, but they can get through Act 2 just fine. While I'm not a fan of the gear check that Inferno provides from Act to Act, the current tuning suggest to the player that more farming is needed.