Saturday, June 30, 2012

Day Z: From Another Perspective

The Indecisive Gamer: A Survival Tale

A nice read similar to my previous Day Z posts from my buddy. Check it out.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Day Z: Fear the Living, Not the Dead

I wake up from my slumber. Kev still sleeps. I see if I can get the supplies he needs. I try to get into the Hospital below, but my Makarov shots do not break the windows. I end up killing a zombie or two that I attracted thanks to the noise. I decide that I will check the apartment across the street for anything useful for my survival.

I scour each room, finding a few useful items hear and there. Some shotgun shells, some soda for my thirst. I stand on the roof looting. I turn around to see another survivor.....he fires a shot off with his revolver and hits me. I fire back with my shotgun. I do not know if I hit him or not. I am suddenly on the ground.....the life leaving my body....killed by a bandit. I hope that he chokes on my beans. Blackness.

In the meantime, Kev crawls down from the top of the hospital. He finds a treasure trove of supplies in the hospital and repairs his broken legs. He seareched the area and finds a Winchester. A great weapon for holding off the zombie hordes. As he searches for supplies, he is also betrayed by his fellow man. Gunned down for no other reason than the gear in his bag.

A new chance at life. I am standing on the coast. Where am I? I am armed with just a bandage, a can of soda, and a flashlight.

I piss off a zombie while trying to search a small house. I make for the coast. The zombie is hot on my heals. I run onto a dock. He trys to follow, but ends up in the water instead. Not very intelligent. I run back onto land and manage to lose him. A close call. I come to a small village full of zombies. I crawl from house to house, avoiding the Zed Heads and trying to get something of use. Not much to be had.

After a while, I come to a larger town. Scrounging around, I find a revolver and six rounds. As I creep through, I catch the attention of a walker. It attacks, but I dispatch it with a single shot. The sounds draws more. I kill three more but here more growls coming near. I sprint from the area, four zombies hot on my heels. I see a military camp in the distance......there is no way in. I must run on. I see some hangars in the distance. This could be my salvation. I run into a hangar and lose two of the Zeds, but two continue to pursue. I have two bullets remaining. I dispatch both of them, but the shots draw the interest of the two I previously got away from. I run into a building and hide in a corner.

They are none to perceptive. I see a survivor laying on the floor of this hangar. I creep closer. He has an axe. A weapon. Thank god. I crawl from the hangar and continue to make my way West along the tracks.

I come to a city. This will be a place to gather supplies. I rummage around the city alone besides a few shamblers. I find a bounty of gear. A makarov pistol and about 10 magazines. A new backpack to hold more gear. Food. Drink. Matches. A compass and map. I creep out and head towards a hangar on the ocean. Nothing to be found. As I exit, I see a survivor running in the distance. I hit the ground and watch. He did not seem to see me and runs off. Survivors cannot be trusted.

I make my way along the coast to the west. I see two more survivors running together. I hit the ground and watch as they run past with a zombie on their tails. It is none of my concern. Survivors are more of a certain death than zombies themselves. I hanker down on the coast, hidden in a bush. This is where I will rest for the night.

In the meantime, Kev made his way to a town. He finds supplies and a weapon. Unfotunately, he uses all of the ammo in it to hold off zombies. As he searches for other supplies, he spots a survivor in army gear with a rifle. Kev tries to hide, but is spotted....and murdered. Survivors cannot be trusted ever. They must be avoided or eliminated.

Tommorow, I will try to meet up with Kev. We will continue our journey, and hopefully be joined by Fett who has been in a long slumber. Once we have met up and supplied ourselves, we will probably head into the wilderness. Staying away from civilization may be the key to lasting survival.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Day Z: Another Day Survived.

We woke up in the same shed we had fallen asleep in. Only Kev and I were there. Fett must have gone off hunting.

We decide that we need to get into Elektro and search the area for supplies. Kev has a hatchet for a weapon now, but still no firearm. I am armed with a trusty double barreled shotgun. We make our way slowly through town. At one point, I enter a building with walkers inside. I dispatch them with extreme predjudice.

We continue our scavenging and make our way to the shipping containers just off the close. While confronting another walker in a doorway, Kev ends up with a broken leg, which can be a death sentence in this post apocalyptic world. I make the decision to go after some medicine to patch up his leg and get him back on his feet.

While I make my way towards the Hospital, Kev crawls to an open field where he finds a cow. This cow will one day be a tasty meal, if we can ever find matches to make fire.

I creep through town, being extra careful not to alert anyone....or anything. I finally get to the Hospital and there are tons of supplies. I get four bags of blood for transfusions and two epi-pens. Unfotunately, there is no Morphine to be found.

I hear gunshots in town. They do not see very far off.

I make my way to a nearby apartment building where I find three dead survivors, laying in one of the rooms. Perhaps it was a shootout. There were no survivors. I find a Makarov on one of the bodies. I am glad to have a side arm. An extensive search turns up very little. There is another Makarov on the roof, which would be nice for Kev if we can get his legs properly repaired. No morpine however.

As I make my way back towards the Hospital, I see a ladder heading to the roof.....if there had been airlifs from the roof, there may be extra supplies up there. I make my way to the top and find the treasure I have been looking for. The elusive morphine gun.

I hear gunshots in the distance. I see a survivor on a roof either fighting another zombie or possibly killing a fellow survivor. I watch him from prone. As he crawls down, there are more gunshots. Zombies give chase.

I then decide to make my way down and try to get back to Kev. As I get down, I hear small caliber gunshots...probably a Makarov. I peek around the corner and see a survivor get overwhelmed by Zombies. I don't dare give away my position. I use the distraction to head to the tracks and make my way back to the field. In my excitement, I catch the attention of two walkers and use my last shotgun shells to dispatch them.

I reach Kev and repair his damaged legs. We decide to make our way back to the apartment where I found the Makarov earlier and get him a sidearm. We reach the building with little trouble and he gets his weapon. We decide that we should find a safe place to rest for the night, then we hear some gunshots. We see through the windows of the apartment building a survivor get overwhelmed by zombies. We do nothing as they eat his flesh.

Once the screams have died down, we slowly make our way over. There are two zombies still on the body. We dispatch them quickly and head towards the body. Suddenly a "dog" charges in. It takes a whack at Kev and runs off. What kind of strange behavior is this? Kev lays on the ground clutching his leg. The zombie has rebroken it.

We decide that we must crawl to the roof of the Hospital and hope that we can scavenge more morphine. If not, the journey ahead will be very slow going. We climb to the roof and find a defensible place. We then close our eyes to sleep. We hope that we wake up in the morning.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

D3: The Bearness Farm Route and RMAH sales

So, last night I played a little bit of D3 with blog reader and adventuring partner Bearness, who had a pretty interesting rare farming method. During the time, we did not pick up a ton of cash, but we got many yellow items, which is the point of the farming.

From what I remember, you start Act 1 on the Fallen Angel quest.

You then port to the Northern Highlands. You look for the Watch Tower. If it spawns, go inside. Kill the elite mobs. Exit and head towards Leorics manor. Kill any rares on the way, and ignore regular mobs if you can. Go kill the elite mobs outside of Leorics manor. Town portal and head to the area just past the sunken temple. Find both of the small dungeons in that zone and kill the elite mobs.

After that, town portal and head to the cemetery. Go to each dungeon, kill until you find a rare, and then town portal. Rinse and repeat each step. I got a few decent items to sell on the AH as well as a lot of scavenging fodder.

In other news, I also made TWO sales on the RMAH yesterday for a grand total of 5 dollars after Blizzard's cut. I am now up to 11 bucks in my Blizzard bucks account. I am mostly doing it so that I can get MoP for my wife and I without actually having to pay for it.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Day Z: Doing a lot of nothing was never more intense

Leaving off from yesterday, Fett and I met where we left off and did not find any good loot in the area. Fett aggroed a zombie in the area and ended up with broken legs. He decided to let him self bleed out as it is no good crawling around. I took what I could from his dead body. I got attacked by a couple of zombies and wasted a bunch of shot dispatching them. Our friend Kev was nearby, and I headed down to the beach to meet with him. Somehow I aggroed a zombie and thanks to his Barry Sanders like juke moves, I was unable to kill him before running out of ammo....then he broke my legs. I died on the beach,

After respawning, we decided to try and meet up again. I was in Electro while they were both down the beach a ways. I snuck through Electro and found a few items here and there. A smoke grenade would come in very handy at some point. More bandages. A can of food.

I make my way towards their location. Along the way, I finally find a weapon. A Shotgun. THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK.

After much coordination, we meet up about a mile outside of Electro and walk in the Hills to avoid the shambling death. Neither of my companions has a weapon with them. We hear gunshots in the distance. There is a survivor fighting of Zed Heads at the gas station a ways a way. Kev watches it unfold through his binoculars. It actually ends up being three survivors. We debate on looting them if they die. We also debate killing them if they dont and taking their precious weapons. However, with me being the only one with a weapon, we decide against it.

We make our way to the outskirts of the town and find a house that can shelter us for the night. We live to see another day.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Day Z: The Zombie Apocalypse

First, just let me say that my awesome friend Fettsbounty at The Indecisive Gamer bought ARMA2 CO for me so that I could play Day Z with him.

I should also say that I am a huge fan of Zombie Apocalypse related things. World War Z is one of my favorite books, and it makes you think what you would do in that situation.

Well, after getting everything downloaded and installed, we hopped into a game. It was dark....like, cant see shit dark.

I cant quite figure out immediately how to turn on my flashlight, so I am muddling around by a house when I suddenly see a dark silouette in from of me. SHIT ITS A ZOMBIE. Keep in mind that you start the game with zero weapons. I start sprinting down the beach to get away, Zombies in hot pursuit. We get disconnected from the server. Saved by the DC.

We decide that perhaps we should try a daylight server and hop onto a German server. I am back on the beach where I started and find a boat....and HOLY SHIT IT WORKS. I hop in and start cruising down the coast to see if I can find my friends. I start getting sick and coughing. I lose some blood along the way. I decide that I want to find some supplies and pull up where I can see some houses. While trying to sneak around, I catch the attention of some Zombies. SHIIIIIIITTTT BACK TO THE BOAT.

I run and hop in the boat. I am having a very difficult time getting it off the beach....IT IS DAMAGED BADLY. Shit shit shit shit. I finally get it moving and I am out on the Ocean. I head North and park at a dock before logging off so that we can find a night server.

We made a brief stop on a NZ server which was daytime. I make my way into a village and find an open building. SWEET SUPPLIES!!! I find some Chemlights, soda, a backpack, and most importantly a Makarov pistol. As I finish looting the house, I get disconnected from the server. We all migrate to a US server that is still using daytime. I go back inside the house and stock up on some more supplies, picking up several Lee Enfield rounds as well.

Fett and I decide to meet up as we are actually in the same town/area. I snoop around the area and aggro a zombie. I panic and unload a bunch of bullets into them. I end up killing them and running inside a big tin building and closing the door behind me. DAMN WALL HAX!!!! Two zombies come through and I head shot them. A third comes in. Shit I am out of bullets. I run up the stairs and walk along the catwalk to avoid the zombies until it cools down. One walks straight thru the warehouse and back outside. One comes up the catwalk....crap. I run to the other side and hop the railing, injuring my leg. Fett in the meantime had made it to the building, but was forced to stay a ways off due to the zombie presence. I open the door. There is a "Dog" outside (credit to Fett on that one) with its back turned. SHIT. I close the door. The Zombie on the catwalk is making its way back. It is now or never. I run from the building (as fast as you can with an injured leg) and make it to the train tracks. Fett and I meet up at this point. I have an unloaded gun. He has a hatchet. He will be guarding me until I can reload.

I mention the house I was in previously, and that there were a few supplies still there. We found out that more had respawned. Sweet. We stock up on drink, and I now have two magazines for my Makarov.

We decide to explore the town and encounted many zombies, avoiding most. We hop fences and crouch around corners to avoid detection. We aggro a zombie....if I shoot, it will alert other zombies in the area....I slowly start to squeeze the trigger.....then I stop short. Fett has hacked it in the head with his hatchet. No sound needed.

After more fruitless searching, we decided that the supply building will be a good place for us to log off for the night. We make our way back towards the building, avoiding a "Worm" (crawling zombie, also Fett's idea). There is a walker shambling across the street near the gate we need to enter. Fett sneaks over and gives it a mighty hack.

We find a corner in the house and lay down. We sleep for tonight.....we have survived to fight another day.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Of Wasting Gold....

Today I spent about 1.8 million in upgrades. It dropped my health by about 13k, but my resistance went up by about 300ish and my DPS went up a bit as well.

The problem is that Act 2 is still a pain in the ass. Namely, damage reflect mobs. They dont want us to Zerg rush mobs to death, then they have an affix that doesnt allow you to kill it without dying unless you have an insane amount of life on hit.

Good job Blizzard. It also seems like at least 50 percent of all mobs have this affix since the new patch came out. Sure, they make them hit less hard, but does that matter when you are hitting yourself in the face essentially?

Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Because Blizzard made me do it.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Playing with people is more fun

Last night while watching the NBA finals (congrats to the Heat and Lebron James), I was playing some D3. I got a few levels on my Demonhunter while running through Act 2 on Nightmare.

After the game was over, I ended up joining up with one of the readers of my blog (Bearly) to run some Inferno Act 1 on my Barbarian with his Wizard.

I must say that I have much more fun running around with people than I do playing solo. I would even rather run through Hell difficulty with friends than through Inferno by myself.

Last nights game sessions made me realize something.....I really need to level my Wizard. Some of the abilitites look awesome, and they appear to have a very nice amount of crowd control.

Another thing I have been decently impressed with is the drops in Inferno. Instead of every drop being completly worthless vendor trash, now only MOST of it is vendor trash. I actually picked up a couple of pieces that should sell on the AH including a 960 dps Monk two hander and a 730 dps one hand crossbow with dexterity, vitality, and IAS.

I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

D3: Impressions on Nerfed Difficulty

Well, I got a chance to play a bit yesterday in Act 2. I think it is easier, but it does not seem overly easy. Champion packs are still not really a pushover for someone in decent gear like myself. I actually like the way it is tuned now. What I dont like is the new repair bills. It makes dying a pain in the ass. Dying makes me frustrated enough that I dont want to play.

I think that the ideal setup for Inferno would be to have a Barbarian tank, and the rest of the group be very well geared DPS. Unfortunately, if the DPS is not very well geared, it seems to take forever to kill Champions and Elites. It becomes a question of what is better. Slowly going through Solo or hoping that the group you get is not terrible. Not to mention 50 percent of the groups I join seem to be afk or something. There is almost always someone sitting in town not responding to chat. It is fucking annoying.

So, overall, I like the nerf to difficulty. I hate the repair bill change and the changes to drop off of breakable items. I dont understand why you would nerf the amount of gold that drops and buff repair costs when most of the crap that drops is unsellable for any kind of decent price.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

QQ in the D3 Community: Haters Gonna Hate

I do not agree with every change that they made with the last patch. I think the repair bills are now a bit excessive. I died once on a Butcher run last night and my repair bill was 13k gold.

I have not tried Act 2 since the nerf, but the amount of QQ by some players is just ridiculous. There are people complaining that it is now too easy, AKA, they feel a little less special because their millions of gold worth of gear is not as needed as before.

People will whine just for the sake of whining. Most of the whiners are ranged classes. They were completely OP before, cruising through the game with 10k health because of broken OP glass cannon builds. Melee was incredibly broken. I was struggling through act 2 with 67k health and 450 plus resist all while buffed on my Barbarian. I am hoping that the changes alleviated this problem. The Demon Hunters are crying the most...WAHHHH you took away my attack speed...WAHHHH you nerfed Nether Tentacles. Shut the fuck up. Everyone knew those changes were coming. When a stat or an ability makes content trivial to certain classes, it is going to get the nerf bat. The smart ones have already moved on and found the next OP ability.

I will be glad to advance through Inferno. It is a nice change. Now they just need to fix the apparently broken Witch Doctor, which is a ranged class that still sucks ass.

Things are going to change a million times. Deal with it. What was nerfed today will be buffed tommorow.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

RMAH, Leveling, and Patch thoughts

Well, first of all, I just wanted to say that I made my first sale on the RMAH. I sold some item or other for 7 dollars, of which I received 6. My goal is to make enough money on the RMAH now to purchase MoP for my wife and I.

In other news, I spent quite a lot of time leveling over the weekend on my Demon Hunter. I finished all of normal, and am now in act 1 of Nightmare. So far, I have died a couple of times, but overall have found the DH playstyle to be pretty easy. The hardest boss to face was Diablo as I ended up joining a group to kill him. I kept getting killed in phase two by my shadow clone. I am currently level 33 or 34.

Now, on to the new patch and what I think about some of the changes.

1) Reporting another player using the Report > Spam option will now mute that player for the duration of your gaming session


Thank god. I reported the hell out of gold spammers, but it did not previously put the on ignore.
 
2) High-end items (items level 61-63) will now drop in all Acts of Inferno and Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty


Inferno - Act I


iLvl 61: 17.7%
iLvl 62: 7.9%
iLvl 63: 2.0%

This will be a nice change and actually give people farming act 1 a chance to pick up some of the better items without having to die a million times in other acts.

3) Repair costs have been increased for item levels between 53 and 63

Well this kinda sucks. I have big enough repair bills as it is. I think they also lowered monster damage, which would help out. Will these even out? There are also a bunch of nerfs for drops from bodies, breakable objects, weapon racks. Kinda sucks.

4) Items level 50 and above will now display their item level in the tooltip



This will be nice for finding actual upgrades as well as flipping on the gold or RMAH.

5) The gold cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50%


The number of Pages of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Blacksmithing, or Tomes of Secrets required to level the Blacksmith has been reduced

Base levels now require 1 page/tome, down from 5

Milestone levels now require 2 pages/tomes, down from 5

Thank god! Now I can finish leveling my BS when I get home and learn two new recipes that I have sitting in my bags! 

6) The gold and material cost to combine gems ranks 2-8 has been reduced




Combinations for these ranks now only require 2 gems, down from 3



The gold cost to combine each rank of gems is now as follows:

Rank 2: Flawed: 10 gold (down from 500 gold)
Rank 3: Regular: 25 gold (down from 750 gold)
Rank 4: Flawless: 40 gold (down from 1250 gold)
Rank 5: Perfect: 55 gold (down from 2000 gold)
Rank 6: Radiant: 70 gold (down from 3500 gold)
Rank 7: Square: 85 gold (down from 7500 gold)
Rank 8: Flawless Square: 100 gold (down from 20,000 gold)

Woohoo. I have been saving all of me gems and will now turn them all into Flawless Squares at the least.

7) Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced


THANK YOU!!!! Maybe I can make some progress on my Barbarian now!

8) Wasps in Act II, Mage Constructs in Act II, and Winged Mollocks in Acts III and IV will now run away less


Thank god. This was hell on melee. Especially the fucking wasps. FUCK THOSE WASPS.

Overall, I think that there were several very awesome changes as well as a couple of annoying ones. I am interested to try some of these changes out tonight.

Patch Notes, Copied from Diablofans

Diablo III Patch 1.0.3 - v.1.0.3.10057
General
  • To prevent monsters from being unintentionally kited into town from other areas of the game, portals have been placed at both ends of the bridge from New Tristram to The Weeping Willow. Towns have always been intended to be a safe haven from combat, and this change will help keep the denizens of New Tristram safe from the dangers that lurk beyond its walls.
  • The real-money auction house is now available for Chilean, Argentinian, and Brazilian currencies
Battle.net
  • General
    • Friends will now sort alphabetically by name within the Friends List, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
    • The Quick Join menu will now also sort alphabetically by name, first by Real ID and then by BattleTag
    • Chat settings and preferences will now be saved whenever you log out
    • Reporting another player using the Report > Spam option will now mute that player for the duration of your gaming session
  • Bug Fixes
    • Using the /who command in a heavily populated chat channel should no longer cause the client to crash
    • The "Invite to Party" button should no longer become grayed-out if a player:
      • Declines a party invite
      • Requests a party invite and then declines it
      • Accepts a party invite, but immediately then leaves the party
    • The character screen should now always display the display the correct act and quest information
    • If Real ID has been disabled for a Battle.net account, attempting to add a Real ID friend in Diablo III will now prompt the player with the following error message: "Battle.net is unable to add friends because you have Real ID disabled."
Classes
  • Barbarian
    • Active Skills
      • Ignore Pain
        • Skill Rune – Contempt for Weakness
          • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
      • Overpower
        • Skill Rune – Crushing Advance
          • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
          • The tooltip has been updated to represent that both melee and ranged damage are reflected
      • Weapon Throw
        • Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be slowed: "Hurl a throwing weapon at any enemy for 100% weapon damage and Slow the movement of the enemy by 60% for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
    • Passive Skills
      • Relentless
        • Now reduces the Fury cost of all skill by 75%, down from 100% (the 50% damage reduction remains unchanged)
  • Demon Hunter
    • Active Skills
      • Cluster Arrow
        • Skill Rune - Dazzling Arrow
          • Tooltip now displays the correct type of weapon damage dealt by Dazzling Arrow: "Enemies hit by grenades have a 55% chance to be stunned for 2 seconds and changes the damage to Physical." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
      • Grenades
        • Skill Rune - Stun Grenades
          • Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Hurl grenades that have a 25% chance to Stun enemies for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
    • Bug Fixes
      • Caltrops
        • Skill Rune – Jagged Spikes
          • Effect will now only stack up to 10 times on a single target
      • Elemental Arrow
        • Skill Rune – Nether Tentacles
          • Tentacles will now only hit each target once
  • Monk
    • General
      • Monks can now use spears, two-handed weapons, and two-handed swords
    • Active Skills
      • Serenity
        • Skill Rune – Instant Karma
          • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the player's maximum Life
      • Seven-Sided Strike
        • Skill Rune - Sustained Attack
          • Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Reduces the cooldown of Seven-Sided Strike to 23 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
      • Mantra of Retribution
        • Damage will now cap based on the maximum Life of the target
    • Bug Fixes
  • Witch Doctor
    • Active Skills
      • Summon Zombie Dogs
        • Skill Rune – Leeching Beasts
          • Tooltip has been updated for clarity: "Your Zombie Dogs heal 50% of the damage they deal as Life divided evenly between themselves and you." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
  • Wizard
    • Active Skills
      • Diamond Skill
        • Skill Rune – Mirror Skin
          • The amount of damage reflected will now cap at the amount of damage absorbed by Diamond Skin
      • Magic Weapon
        • When activated, a buff icon will now appear that displays the amount of time remaining
      • Meteor
        • Skill Rune - Star Pact
          • Now deals damage as Arcane instead of Fire
      • Passive Skills
        • Paralysis
          • Tooltip now displays the correct duration for how long a target will be stunned: "Lightning damage dealt to enemies has up to a 8% chance to Stun the target for 1.5 seconds." (The functionality of the skill has not changed.)
Items
  • General
    • + Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and armor have been reduced by 50%
      • This change does not apply to quivers
    • High-end items (items level 61-63) will now drop in all Acts of Inferno and Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty
      • The new approximate drop rates are as follows:
        • Hell - Act III and Act IV
          • iLvl 61: 9%
          • iLvl 62: 1.9%
          • iLvl 63: 0%
        • Inferno - Act I
          • iLvl 61: 17.7%
          • iLvl 62: 7.9%
          • iLvl 63: 2.0%
        • Inferno - Act II
          • iLvl 61: 18.6%
          • iLvl 62: 12.4%
          • iLvl 63: 4.1%
        • Inferno - Act III and Act IV
          • iLvl 61: 24.1%
          • iLvl 62: 16.1%
          • iLvl 63: 8.0%
      • Please see the Patch 1.0.3 Design Preview for more information and specific details
    • Repair costs have been increased for item levels between 53 and 63
    • Magic Find will no longer be considered when looting objects in the environment such as chests, barrels, vases, pots, and corpses
    • The item quality of all components needed to craft the Staff of Herding, as well as the Staff of Herding itself, have been changed from Common to Legendary (i.e. their item names will appear orange in color)
    • The Staff of Herding can no longer be salvaged or dropped
    • Crafted items that are dropped on the ground due to a player’s inventory being full can no longer be seen or picked up by other players
    • Unique monsters in Hell and Inferno difficulty are no longer guaranteed to drop two Magic items when slain
    • Weapon racks will no longer drop weapons 100% of the time
    • Destructible objects no longer have a chance to drop items, and will only have a small chance to drop gold when destroyed
  • Weapons and Armor
    • "Balanced" superior items (i.e. Balanced Short Sword) will now grant a percent attack speed increase that only affects the weapon itself, rather than a flat increase to attacks per second that affected both equipped weapons when dual-wielding
    • Crowd Control Reduction from items and skills will now reduce the percentage value of Slow, Chill, and Attack Speed debuffs rather than reducing how long the debuff lasts
      • For example: previously, if you were debuffed by a 60% slow that lasted for 2 seconds while wearing gear that provides 20% Crowd Control Reduction, your movement speed would be reduced by 60%, but only for 1.6 seconds. Now, the same amount of Crowd Control Reduction will reduce the Slow effect to 48%, but the effect will remain for the full 2 second duration.
    • Manticore now has one additional bonus affix
  • User Interface
    • Minimum damage and Maximum damage values will now display separately in an item's tooltip (i.e. "+2-4 Damage" will now display as "+2 Minimum Damage” and “+2 Maximum Damage")
    • Tooltips for items on the ground will now show comparison stats
    • Resist values will now be taken into effect when calculating the Protection comparison stat (the Protection value is an average protection estimate of all your resists)
    • When comparing a two-handed weapon against two currently-equipped one-handed weapons, the game will now simulate the removal of both one-handed weapons (instead of simply removing the main-hand weapon, which resulted in an inaccurate comparison)
    • When selling items to a vendor, the most recently sold items will now always display at the bottom of the Buyback tab
  • Bug Fixes
    • Items level 50 and above will now display their item level in the tooltip
    • Damage Over Time (DoT) skills will now properly benefit from items with the +Critical Chance affix
    • Legendary items with the +Attack Speed bonus will now correctly provide a bonus to attack speed
      • Please note that this fix will only affect new Legendary drops. Existing Legendary items will be addressed in future patch.
    • Players wearing +Life on Kill items should no longer receive a benefit from this affix when "killing" friendly monsters (e.g. when a witch doctor re-summons a Spider Queen while another Spider Queen is still active)
    • Fixed a bug with linking items with socketed gems in chat
    • Fixed a bug where vendors would occasionally not have any items for sale
    • Fixed a bug where selling more than 12 items to a vendor and then buying back 1 of those items could cause multiple items to disappear from the Buyback tab
    • Fixed a bug where swapping a 1-slot item (i.e. a ring) with 2-slot item (i.e. a weapon) in the second or third tab of a player’s stash would sometimes cause the 2-slot item to be filtered incorrectly to the first tab
    • Fixed a bug that was causing Collector's Edition dyes to sell for the same price regardless of stack size...
Crafting
  • General
    • The gold and material crafting costs for all items level 1-59 have been reduced by 50% to 75%
  • Blacksmith
    • The gold cost to level the Blacksmith has been reduced by 50%
    • The number of Pages of Blacksmithing, Tomes of Blacksmithing, or Tomes of Secrets required to level the Blacksmith has been reduced
      • Base levels now require 1 page/tome, down from 5
      • Milestone levels now require 2 pages/tomes, down from 5
    • The number of Pages of Blacksmithing and Tomes of Blacksmithing required to craft items level 1-59 has been reduced
    • Items with 3 affixes no longer require Pages of Blacksmithing or Tomes of Blacksmithing to craft
    • The gold cost of crafting items with 4 affixes and 5 affixes (including items in Inferno difficulty) has been reduced
    • Weapon crafting costs have been reduced
    • The chance for level 60 items to produce Legendary crafting materials when salvaged has been reduced
  • Jeweler
    • The gold and material cost to combine gems ranks 2-8 has been reduced
      • Combinations for these ranks now only require 2 gems, down from 3
        • The gold cost to combine each rank of gems is now as follows:
          • Rank 2: Flawed: 10 gold (down from 500 gold)
          • Rank 3: Regular: 25 gold (down from 750 gold)
          • Rank 4: Flawless: 40 gold (down from 1250 gold)
          • Rank 5: Perfect: 55 gold (down from 2000 gold)
          • Rank 6: Radiant: 70 gold (down from 3500 gold)
          • Rank 7: Square: 85 gold (down from 7500 gold)
          • Rank 8: Flawless Square: 100 gold (down from 20,000 gold)
Followers
  • General
    • Bug Fixes
      • Fixed a bug where the maximum Life of your followers was being displayed as different values in different parts of the game UI
  • Enchantress
    • Skills
      • Mass Control
        • Radius reduced from 15 yards to 8 yards
        • If Enchantress also has Reflect Missiles trained, Mass Control will no longer accidentally hex the player when both skills are activated
        • Skill will now correctly target enemies in all circumstances
Bosses
  • General
    • Bosses have had their pathing improved
    • The quality of the item for the fourth stack of Nephalem Valor from bosses has been slightly reduced
  • Skeleton King
    • Abilities
      • Will now summon Skeletal Archers in Hell and Inferno difficulties
  • The Warden (mini-boss)
    • General
      • Now has Fast and Molten affixes, in addition to Jailer
      • In Inferno difficulty, the Warden will also gain the Desecrator affix
  • Butcher
    • Bug Fixes
      • Fixed an issue where the corner panel fires in the Chamber of Suffering were doing twice as much damage as intended
  • Ghom
    • Abilities
      • Gas Cloud
        • Radius of Gas Cloud has been slightly reduced
        • Slowing effect has been removed
        • The amount of damage dealt by Gas Cloud when first entering the cloud has been reduced, but the amount of damage incurred for remaining in the cloud has been increased
        • In Inferno difficulty, Gas Clouds will last longer, spawn 2 at a time, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more quickly
  • Maghda
    • Bug Fixes
      • Punish Dust projectiles can no longer be reflected
  • Zoltun Kulle
    • General
      • Zoltun Kulle will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes, using his Ceiling Collapse ability more often and for much higher damage
    • Abilities
      • Ceiling Collapse
        • Can now be cast at a player from any range
      • Fireball
        • Fireball attack now moves slower
        • Can now be cast at a player from any range
      • Teleport
        • Will now Teleport and run away from the player less often
        • Will now occasionally Teleport to the player
  • Belial
    • General
      • Belial will now enrage in Inferno difficulty after 3 minutes in his final phase, increasing the number of green pools dropped across the entire encounter platform
    • Bug Fixes
      • Fixed a bug that was causing Belial to use his breath attack away from the player rather than towards the player under certain circumstances
  • Siegebreaker
    • General
      • Overall damage has been reduced
      • No longer vulnerable to Confuse and Charm effects
      • Will now drop a health globe every 25% health mark (i.e. at 75%, 50%, and 25% health)
      • Now enrages after 4 minutes
      • In Inferno difficulty, Siegebreaker will now gain the Reflects Damage affix
  • Cydaea
    • Abilities
      • Spiderlings
        • Spiderlings will now have an easier time hitting players, but their damage has been reduced by 20% to compensate
        • In Inferno difficulty, Spiderlings will now live longer, be more spread out, and (after 4 minutes) spawn more often
  • Rakanoth
    • General
      • In Inferno difficulty, Rakanoth will now become much more aggressive after 3 minutes
  • Izual
    • General
      • Health pool has been increased
      • The number of Oppressors that join the fight has been reduced from 4 to 2
      • Will no longer target Followers or Tyrael as frequently
    • Abilities
      • Base Attacks
        • Base attack damage has been lowered
        • No longer does Cold damage on top of base attacks
      • Charge
        • Charge damage has been reduced
        • Knockback has been removed
        • Will Charge slightly more often, but will only target players
      • Frozen Bombs
        • Frozen Bomb damage has been reduced
        • Bombs will now explode faster
        • Only 8 Bombs will now spawn around the player rather than 12
        • Bombs will spawn at Izual's feet less often
      • Frost Explosion
        • Frost Explosion damage has been reduced by 70%
        • Duration of freeze has been increased
        • Damage dealt to players while frozen will now break the effect
        • Players can now use defensive cooldown while frozen
        • Players can no longer avoid being frozen by doing high amounts of amount to Izual
    • Bug Fixes
      • Izual will no longer spawn twice if a player skips his introductory cut-scene
  • Diablo
    • Bug Fixes
      • Damage Over Time (DoT) effects will now be properly cancelled when Diablo becomes invisible and casts Shadow Clones in Phase Two
      • Diablo "Stomp" ability is now correctly classified as a debuff instead of a buff
      • Fixed a bug that was causing pets to not attack Shadow Clones
Monsters
  • General
    • Champions, Rares, and Uniques have had their pathing improved
    • Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality
    • Damage from monsters in Acts II, III, and IV in Inferno difficulty has been reduced
    • Colossal Golgor base damage has been reduced
    • Herald of Pestilence tentacle attack damage has been reduced
    • Soul Ripper and Soul Lasher damage has been reduced and both monsters will now run away less often
    • Wasps in Act II, Mage Constructs in Act II, and Winged Mollocks in Acts III and IV will now run away less
    • Succubus monsters will now run away less and for a shorter distance
    • The health pools of Woodwraiths in the Highlands now match the health pools of Woodwraiths in the Fields of Misery
    • Lacuni and Scavenger Rares and and Champions will now un-burrow when called by their allies
    • Bloodclan Warriors no longer knockback when buffed and attack slightly slower
    • Morlu no longer have the Invulnerable Minions, Health Link, or Fire Chains affixes
    • Plagued, Arcane Enchanted, and Electrified monsters no longer have resistance to Poison, Arcane, and Lightning damage (respectively)
    • Leaders of Invulnerable Minions packs have had their health pools reduced
    • Mortar monsters can now hurl projectiles farther, but their minimum range has also been increased by 100%
  • Bug Fixes
    • Interrupting a monster attack before it lands will now properly trigger its cooldown
    • Treasure Goblins will now drop gold piles for all nearby players
    • Lacuni Warrior Rares and Champions will now reset their enrage timer correctly in Inferno difficulty
    • The Succubus "Blood Star" debuff will no longer affect the player if the damage from the projectile is dodged/blocked/etc
    • The damage from the Succubus “Blood Star” debuff will now scale based on the current cost of a player's skill, even if the cost is reduced by items or skill runes
    • Monsters with the Extra Health affix should no longer gain more health every time players leave and join the game
    • Monsters with the Reflects Damage affix will no longer reflect Follower damage back to the player
    • Monsters with the Health Link and Knockback affixes will no longer knockback friendly monsters
    • Fixed a bug that was causing Champion Wallers to occasionally create walls at their location rather than the player's location
    • Fixed a bug where Sandwasp projectiles could sometimes become invisible
Bug Fixes
  • General
    • The experience bar for characters at level cap on a Guest Pass account will now display 0-0 experience. If the account holder upgrades to the full game, their characters will be at 0/41000 experience towards the next level.
    • The speed of the animation that plays when resurrecting another players should no longer scale with your attack speed
    • Attempting to cast a skill while spamming the Town Portal hot key will now correctly interrupt the Town Portal cast and animation
    • Players who use Town Portal while in a tar pit will no longer keep the tar pit debuff after being teleported
    • It is no longer possible for players in Hell difficulty to skip to Inferno difficulty by creating and leaving Public Games
    • It is no longer possible to prevent character death in a single-player game by pausing the game in one game client and then logging into the same account from a different game client
    • Fixed a bug where The Lyceum in the Southern Highlands was not appearing
    • Fixed a bug where players could switch their offerings in the Trade window right before clicking "Accept" and, due to high latency, the game would not always be able to verify that both players were accepting the same offerings
    • Fixed a bug that was allowing players to temporarily pick up items that belonged to another account
    • Fixed a bug that was causing players to become stuck when using a banner to port to another player that was in an "un-walkable" location (i.e. to a barbarian in the middle of performing Leap)
    • Fixed a position desync bug ,aka "rubberbanding", that could happen when some movement skills (Strafe, Whirlwind, Tempest Rush) ended because the player ran out of the appropriate resource
    • Fixed several issues where a player's character would get stuck or "rubberband" while moving if their movement speed was slowed in any way
    • Several performance improvements have been made to both the PC and Mac client
  • Auction House
    • Item tooltips in the auction house will now correctly reflect stat bonuses provided by socketed gems
    • Items with class-specific affixes should now display the class restriction properly
    • It should no longer be possible for players to purchase a stack of items so large that it cannot be sent to their stash
    • The data displayed in each auction house tab should now properly reset when logging out

Friday, June 15, 2012

D3 RMAH: Want to make a fortune? Think again.

There were people who made a decent amount of money in the first couple of days of the RMAH. That will certainly go down as competition goes up.

Blizzard takes a pretty big cut. I read a funny post here Diablohead about selling something for the RMAH minimum ($1.25) and coming out with a whopping .25 cents. Blizzard and Paypal get 1 dollar. You get 25 cents. EXCELLENT!!!!

Yet another reason I will probably no be doing anything on the RMAH. I won't say I will never use it, but as of right now, it is not looking good. I will never buy any gear off of it.

This is going to be a great way for Blizzard to make a killing.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

D3 can get tedious without friends.

My game time has been pretty much split three ways these days. I have been playing D3, WoW, and MW3. D3 has seen its play time dwindle a little bit due to friends playing other games *cough* minecraft *cough*.

D3 is still enjoyable, but to maximize my time in game, I have to undertake a run that I have done many times unless I feel compelled to group with random people who may or may not be terrible. I have not been so compelled, especially since they raised the repair bills. I didnt mind zerging champion mobs before, but when you pay 10k after wiping several times, it gets annoying.

Another thing making the game somewhat tedious is the spike in difficulty between Act 1 and Act 2. I can go through the entire last part of act 1 without getting close to dying. I feel like I can't even defeat a single elite pack in Act 2. It feels like going from taking on level 85 mobs at level 85 in WoW to suddenly facing level 90s at the same level. It is a pain in the ass.

I really want to progress through the game, but gear is incredibly expensive, and farming for gear is just not viable if you have less than 12 hours a day to do so.

So in the meantime, I have been doing a run or two in Diablo 3, then spending a bit of time shooting stuff in MW3. I am actually looking forward to the PvP aspect of WoW when it arrives as an alternate way to play.

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

D3: Quick Gold Tip and a WoW Milestone

I have not made a ton of gold in D3. The main reason is that I keep spending it on upgrades for my Barbarian. In the meantime, I have been farming Warden to Butcher on act one for some extra loot and gold. Now for that gold tip. Blow up all level 60 blue items, do not vendor them. I was selling the essences that drop from level 60 blue items for 2000 gold last night and they were selling instantly.

Overall yesterday, I went from about 800k to 1.5 million on D3. Part of that was the above essence selling, and part of it was a couple of decent flips. Sold a two hander I grabbed for 10k for 75k and sold a chest I purchased. for 5k for 125k. When I log on, I first look for any good deals based on very specific parameters. If I find something, I flip it.

My WoW milestone also has to do with making gold. In the last few days, I hit 3 million gold. The 240 Queen's Garnet that I bought have paid off well. I still have around 100 of them left.

In other D3 gold making news, they made it so you cant start too many games in a short period, which means that many of the farming areas are going to be farmed less. I will probably just continue running the Warden/Butcher run.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Real Money AH Live in D3

Well, I must say that this was met with a big ol.....MEH from me.

I originally thought I would be able to make some cash on this. Not being a gold farmer or botter, I have since decided that this in not going to happen.

It is hard enough to sell decent items on the gold AH. People just dont seem to be buying anything. Maybe I am just pricing wrong. I dont know. What I do know is that I will not likely be making real money playing Diablo 3.

If you want to get ahead in D3, you need to be a cheater. If you can bot farm gold and transfer it around and then sell it, that would probably more than make up for having to buy the game again each time you get banned.

I will continue to try to make fake gold just as I did in Diablo 3. I may see about trading some WoW gold for some Diablo gold. Who knows.

Anyone who has a life, or does not cheat should not expect to make a bunch of real money.

Arthas gets Lich Slapped

As the title says, we took down the Lich King. It was not however all that easy. We could have made it significantly easier from the beginning by inviting two additional people, which we eventually did.

The kill took quite some time for a number of reasons. The first was that we kept wiping in the second phase. We were only using one healer, and it was a bit too much.

The second was that Blizzard went all fucking laggy and we had to sit around until it was fixed.

After that, we invited two people (a Shadow Priest and a Resto Druid). The Druid was on another server, so we had to wait for him to make his way to the instance. In the meantime, I opened Diablo 3 and made about 50k doing Dank Cellar runs.

Once everyone was there, we killed the Lich King on the first attempt with mostly no issues.

Next up for out group is probably Ulduar as I love that raid and have never completed it (I have actually never finished more than the first half of it).

I think we may start doing all of the content we have yet to see, probably going backwards from Wrath to BC to Vanilla. The list is fairly long of instances that people in our group may not have seen.

Ulduar, AQ 40 and 20, The Eye, Magtheridon, and Gruul to name a few off the top of my head.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Weekend Update: Act 2 in D3 and Transmog in WoW

As it says, I played a bit of both this weekend and made a little bit of progress in ACT 2 of Inferno. One thing of note....some of the other players in Inferno are terrible. How are these ranged classes dying so damn much....and when they arent dying, their damage output is pitiful. I ended up killing Magda, but I needed to solo it instead of doing a group. People in groups are just not reliable enough. That said, ACT 2 still sucks. The mobs hit pretty hard, and it seem near impossible to kill rares (especially in groups).

In WoW news, we did a few transmogs yesterday. We started off with the customary BWL run where a few people got pieces, and a Warlock would have been happy to be there.

Then we decided to do something we had never done before. Take on ICC.

I had previously done up to the Blood Council, but we had several people in the Raid who had never been there before. We cleared all the way to the Lich King with minimal wipes. We had one on Gunship (I know, embarrasing), one while healing the Dragon, and one on Blood Queen.

We wiped twice on the LK at the end due to having never done the fight and we called it a night because it was 1230 in the morning. We plan on taking his ass down today. I got a couple of place pieces and a pair of two handed weapons out of the instance.

I am hoping that we will be able to do Ulduar soon as well. IMO that was the best raid in Wrath, and I have yet to see the end.

In other Diablo News, a bunch of farming spots we nerfed. That sucks.

In non game news, the Pacquiao loss was complete Bullshit. That fight was not even close.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Sometimes, Solo is Easier

Last night, I decided that I wanted to try soloing the Warden to Butcher run that I usually do in a group after we got our ass kicked multiple times by an Elite Mob in a group.

Turns out that soloing as a decently geared Barbarian is significantly easier than going through it in a group.

It seems like I got a bit less money (don't know if that has to do with going solo as opposed to grouping or I was just mistaken), but in two or three runs, I only died twice. Once was to a mob of fire chain, walling, arcane enchant, vampiric. The other one was similar, only instead of vampiric, they had mortars.

I did not die on any of the boss mobs, I picked up a large number of yellow items, and a large number of blue items.

What I have started doing with both yellow and blue pieces is DE them if the stats suck and they are level 60 or vendor them if the stats suck and they are below level 60.

I also decided to cut down on the number of yellows I had in storage. I had way too many and I was out of room. That includes a full stash and 5 bank characters with their bags full. I ended up deleting 4 of those bank toons by the time I was done.

I may have been able to sell some of those items on the AH, but I have had great difficulty turning items over until this morning. I started listing any OK rare items at 7-9k and I sold about 5 of them in 10 minutes. This may have to be my permanent sales model. Sell mediocre ones for super cheap (still better than vendoring them) and try to make a nice chunk on items with better stats.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Upgrading Gear really matters

So, after my resistance post yesterday, I went home and spent about 600k gold on new gear.

I got several pieces that had All Resistance and upgrades for stamina. I did however lose a lot of strength. To counteract this, I paid 200k for a new one handed sword that was over 200 dps higher. It turned out with the new weapon that I had higher DPS than before despite the loss of Strength.

I also ended up with about 13k more health and over 100 more resistance to everything.

The results were quite stunning for me to be honest.

Most of the times I have been in Inferno runs, I have died on almost every rare or elite mob and used tons of potions. I started my Inferno Warden to Butcher run with zero potions. I would normally go through about ten in any given run, and die a ton. After this run, I had died twice (against fire chain mobs) and ended the run with 12 potions that I did not have to purchase.

Grabbing that gear made everything a ton easier. I must also add that I did this in a four person group, so the mobs hit pretty hard overall.

All Resistance does not see like a sexy stat, but it really does kick ass.

I think that I will try to go through act two this weekend.

In other news, on the ALT front, I have not been playing a whole lot on my alt characters. Last night I gained one level to get to 25 on my monk and two levels to get to 13 on my Wizard. I have a feeling that being a Wizard in a group at Max Level is going to be very OP.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Resistance is NOT futile.

This is just a quick post on the ridiculous effects of All Resistance in Diablo 3. As a Barbarian, this is apparently the most important stat. It was never more apparent than an Inferno Warden and Butcher run I did last night.

I was in a group with another Barbarian. I died constantly. He died rarely. I can't remember him dying once as a matter of fact. The guy was taking hits like nobody's business. I inspected his gear and found that he was rocking A LOT of All Resistance on his gear.

I am currently working on building up that stat. Unfortunately, it is quite expensive. I think I have two or three pieces of gear with the stat on it, and I will be looking to grab some more.

I think that it is also the most important stat for Monks. Melee classes get blown up big time in Inferno. And for the ranged classes, make sure that you practice your kiting and defensive cooldowns, or you could well be one shotted.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Diablo 3: Farming Tips! and What is gold good for?

Well, being at "end game" in Diablo, I have been doing a decent amount of farming. First, I have been farming The last part of act one on Inferno with random groups. I die a lot....however, I get a metric crap ton of loot and gear to sell.

If you are going to do act one of Inferno, start with the quest where you are going to go rescue Tyrael and have to go through the Halls of Agony.

Make sure that you kill enough rare or elite mobs to get five stacks of Nephalem Valor and then proceed to the Warden. Kill the Warden and them move on the Butcher. Simple. During this run, you will get a ton of blues and yellows. I had to sell my blue items off at least half a dozen times and I ended up with around ten yellow items for the run.

When I am soloing, I just solo in Hell difficulty. It is incredibly easy once you have some decent level 60 gear. I have been running through act one and making a couple hundred thousand gold in the time it takes me to get to the Skeleton King and Kill him. Nephalem Valor applies to every difficulty once you hit level 60, so farming in Hell will net you a lot of gold and items to sell. Today, I will solo the second half of Hell to see how the gold per hour is on that.

Now onto the subject of gold. What is it good for? Well, the only thing it is really good for at this point is buying the best gear you can. I just bought a pair of pants today which were an upgrade in strength, vitality, and gave me physical resist and resist all of 200k, which was about 25 percent of my gold. It is not like I can buy things such as pets and mounts in Diablo. Gear is the name of the game.

Speaking of gear, Resist All is the stat of Kings apparently. The more you have, the easier the game will get for you. Unfotunately this gear is expensive, so go out and far the crap out of that gold.

Monday, June 4, 2012

WoW and Diablo 3: The Weekend that Was

Well, most of my weekend was taken up with Diablo 3, but I did actually play a bit of WoW as well.

Last night we did two transmog runs (BWL and Black Temple). As per usual, I did not really get anything of use.

We had a Shaman in each run (two different friends), and they each pretty much cleaned house in both instances. In the second instance, the same Shaman from BWL also got a bunch of pieces on his Priest.

Black Temple was a bit strange for the fact that every boss that dropped tier pieces dropped zero duplicates which meant more people got loot. Still no Bulwark of Azzinoth for me, but my wife got the staff from Illidan that look slike a Zergling/Fel Puppy had a child.

I played quite a lot of Diablo 3 over the weekend, but it was spread out amongst my characters. I finished act one of Inferno on my Barbarian. What a pain in the ass some of those rare and elite mobs are. We ended up zerg rushing the next zone to get away from one pack of baddies lol. We had no problems with both the Warden and the Butcher. That is probably the part I will be farming until I start adding more resistance to my gear. Resistance is apparently one of the most important stats for Barbarians in Inferno and most suggestions I have seen range from 500 to 900 resist all. Which will be expensive.

I also helped out friends who made it through Nightmare and are getting started on Hell difficulty. I dont mind, because I still get tons of drops and gold, and I get to play with my friends. A win/win in my opinion.

One of my friends also had the staff to get to Pony Land. It is hilarious destroying ponies, teddy bears, and flowers in a bloody whirlwind.

As far as alts go, I got my Monk to about level 24 and the start of act three. I love the monk and his Kung Fu badassness. The only problem is that he is melee....and melee is rough once you get to Inferno. I also got my Demon Hunter up to around level 23 and he is currently towards the end of act two.

I plan on saving my level 9 Witch Doctor to level with my wife. She has not been playing any Diablo 3 due to being incredibly busy with school, but that should change soon. I am looking forward to playing the game with her.

My buddy and I also found a rare level in Act 1 of Hell called Developement Hell. Read his post for more The Indecisive Gamer: Developement Hell

Friday, June 1, 2012

DIablo 3: More Inferno and a New Alt

As the title says, I did some more inferno mode yesterday. I must say that it was significantly more effective than my first attempts the main reason for this is that I found a guide for a good build for my Barabarian.

Diablo 3 Blog: Barbarian Guide

In this build you have to use elective mode. This basically means that you can use any ability in any slot.

Thank god for theory crafters.

I went from dying multiple times on every rare or elite to one shotting them most of them time with a few exceptions. I also one shotted all of the bosses that I faced, up to and including the Skeleton King.

It is amazing the difference that a good build can make.

I also started a Wizard last night with my buddy. So far, so good, but I have noticed that if a bad guy catches up with you, you are quite squishy. I like the spells so far, and Diamond Skin is quite nice for surviving momentary rough spots. I have now taken every class at least as far as the Skeleton King on Normal besides the Witch Doctor (Oh ee, oh ah ah, ting tang wadda wadda bing bang).

Back to inferno. The main advantage to this new build is that I am not essentially breaking even with terrible high repair bills.

I think the next thing for me to try in Inferno is to team up with some other Inferno goers. The only problem is that I have zero confidence in people not being terrible. I also find that I die much more in a group because I am often the only one in Melee range.