1.0.3, Attack Speed Changes, and Hypocrisy

[Roland]

What is your off-hand? I'm assuming this is a bug with the introduction of the ability to compare 2 handers with Dual Wield. May erroneously be comparing your current Bow+Off-Hand to the new Bow by itself.

According to Mavfin that's exactly what's happening. Of course, because I use a Bow my Off-Hand has a Quiver. Not a huge deal, it just took me by surprise after I checked with a damage calculator to make sure it was a damage gain. Thankfully the Character Screen doesn't lie (much?).

[Lissa]

What is your off-hand? I'm assuming this is a bug with the introduction of the ability to compare 2 handers with Dual Wield. May erroneously be comparing your current Bow+Off-Hand to the new Bow by itself.

According to Mavfin that's exactly what's happening. Of course, because I use a Bow my Off-Hand has a Quiver. Not a huge deal, it just took me by surprise after I checked with a damage calculator to make sure it was a damage gain. Thankfully the Character Screen doesn't lie (much?).

I'm not so sure that's really a bug though. Look at the damage ranges on the two bows. Wild Hold should have a much higher Damage because it's 347 to 1056 where as Bullseye Ruin is only 340 - 741. That additional 300 damage can easily make up the difference between the lost dex.

[Roland]

I'm not so sure that's really a bug though. Look at the damage ranges on the two bows. Wild Hold should have a much higher Damage because it's 347 to 1056 where as Bullseye Ruin is only 340 - 741. That additional 300 damage can easily make up the difference between the lost dex.

. . .

Serious? That's the whole point. The higher damage bow increased my DPS by just shy of 4k damage, and yet it's showing I'll LOSE over 1k. That is the very definition of a bug.

[Lissa]

I'm not so sure that's really a bug though. Look at the damage ranges on the two bows. Wild Hold should have a much higher Damage because it's 347 to 1056 where as Bullseye Ruin is only 340 - 741. That additional 300 damage can easily make up the difference between the lost dex.

. . .

Serious? That's the whole point. The higher damage bow increased my DPS by just shy of 4k damage, and yet it's showing I'll LOSE over 1k. That is the very definition of a bug.

Ok, I see what you're looking at now. I was looking at what you highlighted which is why it didn't seem off to me.

[MongoJerry]

Next to go, imo, will be the 'free gold' from the chest in the Act 3 town, and the books in the Act 2 inn. There are people creating games sitting there all day just to go hit those, then create another. That sounds fine, but, creating a new game every 30 sec creates server stress and lag for people trying to kill mobs when thousands do it all the time.

Really? That has to be one of the more inefficient ways to farm gold out there. I mean, you could just go back a couple of acts, mow down screenfuls of mobs and make a ton more money per time. Toss on some modest gf% gear, and it'd be a way better.

On a different topic, Bashiok confirms that the A3/A4 loot table is bugged:

http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/...a3-4-loot/

[Ruvanal]

Thankfully the Character Screen doesn't lie (much?).

Compared to how much of a fabrication that the D2 Character Screen showed, even this is incredibly accurate.

[RiotInferno]

No one's mentioned it, yet, so I will: It appears that experience and gold rewards for quests have been significantly reduced across the board. For example, the Road to Alcarnus quest (Kasim Outpost), a favorite self-power leveling area, went from being a roughly 50k exp quest to an 18k quest. But it wasn't just favorite power leveling spots (Zoltan Kuhl, Kasim Outpost, Wortham, Belial). It appears that all quests everywhere got their rewards slashed. I guess Blizzard wants people to gain experience by killing things. The nerve of them.

What my friends and I have dubbed "Murdertown" (Running Siegebreaker backwards, from the WP to the start of the bridge) still works swimingly for leveling. It's packed full of guys, that you can kill pretty quickly.

[MongoJerry]

What my friends and I have dubbed "Murdertown" (Running Siegebreaker backwards, from the WP to the start of the bridge) still works swimingly for leveling. It's packed full of guys, that you can kill pretty quickly.

Oh, yeah, there're lots of areas with lots of mobs that are good for leveling. I like the ballistae area myself -- lots of mobs with a (albeit smaller) quest reward at the end. The jail in Act 1 is good, too. Blizzard is just trying to make it so that the most efficient way to get experience is to actually kill things rather than sit in town for quest rewards. Funny that they would want that. It would be better, though, if they added a mechanism that would give you a good sized reward the first time you complete a quest in a difficulty but then give you little or nothing on subsequent completions.

[Mavfin]

It would be better, though, if they added a mechanism that would give you a good sized reward the first time you complete a quest in a difficulty but then give you little or nothing on subsequent completions.

Might be something they have to code first, so we'll see what gets added later.

[Quark]

The melee wizard is doable in Act 2, but I'm short a bit of gear for it myself. It might actually be feasible in multiplayer as opposed to solo, thanks to Barbs and Monks that can help split the damage and give me a buff.

My melee Wizard can do Act 2 with only a small spec change and some more +crit%. If I'm patient and realize meteor kiting isn't terrible against the worst mobs, it can even be productive.

Melee Wizard. Swap Galvanizing Ward for Glass Cannon in Act 1. Could drop Magic Weapon for Slow Time if I have allies that bring DPS.

Am I insane in that this is at least as much fun as Disintegrate?

[Elric of Grans]

You are insane if you are using Meteor. Use a more melee-wizard-themed spell: Meteor is for standard `run away, run away' casters

[ViralSpiral]

Meteor is perfectly fine for melee; actually I'd say melee benefits the most from it, since if you're personally tanking, you ensure the monsters will stand still. Since Meteor still takes a couple of seconds to fall from the sky, this works well. If anything, my complaint would be that Blizzard is 100% better than Meteor until Meteor gets the Comet rune. Blizzard deals more damage, has no delay, snares, and you can still throw a rune on top of that. Not to mention it's cheaper than 5 of the 6 Meteors.

If I had a complaint, it would be Critical Mass - there's only two skills with timers to reduce, and I'd think if you REALLY wanted to reduce the timers, Evocation would be better unless your crit rate is up over 15%. I'd probably still run Blizzard over Meteor and either Cold Blooded in that passive slot or something else entirely. Either Arcane Dynamo to up Blizzard damage or Prodigy to up Blizzard spammage.

[Quark]

The reason for Meteor/Star Pact is it has a high coefficient for Life on Hit and Critical. So, more than any other AP spender, it keeps your HP high and allows you to keep Diamond Skin / Frost Nova running with Critical Mass. Critical Mass is key for this build. Last night I watched my Frost Nova refresh in a single second when I got lucky crits.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5...265?page=1

[MongoJerry]

Melee Wizard. Swap Galvanizing Ward for Glass Cannon in Act 1. Could drop Magic Weapon for Slow Time if I have allies that bring DPS.

Couldn't you use Slow Time - Time Warp instead of Magic Weapon and get all the benefits of the extra dps while also getting the defensive benefits from Slow Time? Your critical mass build should be able to bring the cooldown time to less than 8 seconds, so you should pretty much be able to have it up all the time.

[Concillian]

You are insane if you are using Meteor. Use a more melee-wizard-themed spell: Meteor is for standard `run away, run away' casters

Meteor mechanics are precisely what make a melee wizard even possible.

You go ahead and try with any other skill, but the puddles and the sheer number of possible crits are the important factor.

[MongoJerry]

The 1.0.3a patch is now live:

http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/...-now-live/

The key item is that they reduced the rate of wear and tear on items from fighting in half. I wonder what "Fixed several gold and leveling exploits" refers to specifically.

[Concillian]

I'd hope that the gold and leveling exploits refers at least to the 2 person Kull ridiculousness (1 person kills Kulle, then makes games all day, while the other one joins the game, leaps / vaults to the quest completion, completes the quest, moves into the next game.) It was like 1 quest completion every 8-10 seconds, resulting in 0-50 leveling and 600k+ gold in like 2 (very boring) hours.

[MongoJerry]

I'd hope that the gold and leveling exploits refers at least to the 2 person Kull ridiculousness (1 person kills Kulle, then makes games all day, while the other one joins the game, leaps / vaults to the quest completion, completes the quest, moves into the next game.) It was like 1 quest completion every 8-10 seconds, resulting in 0-50 leveling and 600k+ gold in like 2 (very boring) hours.

Unless there was an exploit that was added in 1.0.3 that I'm not aware of, this isn't quite how it worked. In the scenario you described, you couldn't have the person killing Kuhl leave the game because both players would get kicked out before the turn-in due to the way the checkpoint system works. The most efficient way to level using Kuhl (and previously Azmodan) was with a four player system that would get people between 5 and 12 turnins per kill of Kuhl depending on where you were in the order. However, when the quest rewards were massively slashed, this mechanism wasn't worth doing anymore.

[NotSoDarklord]

Unless there was an exploit that was added in 1.0.3 that I'm not aware of, this isn't quite how it worked.

There was indeed a new exploit added. I believe 1.0.3(a?) did away with the old system where a person creating a game would have to stay in that game for a few minutes before leaving otherwise the game would dump everyone out. This allowed for infinite Z'K turn ins off of a single kill with only a 2 man team. Create a game at the quest reward stage, wait for powerlevelee to join, leave game while he turns in quest. Rinse & Repeatx1000

[MongoJerry]

There was indeed a new exploit added. I believe 1.0.3(a?) did away with the old system where a person creating a game would have to stay in that game for a few minutes before leaving otherwise the game would dump everyone out. This allowed for infinite Z'K turn ins off of a single kill with only a 2 man team. Create a game at the quest reward stage, wait for powerlevelee to join, leave game while he turns in quest. Rinse & Repeatx1000

Ah, jeez. I wasn't aware of that. Yeah, that's bad. The way it worked before was that the game had to go through to another checkpoint before the originator of the game could leave without dumping everyone else. Dunno why they would take out that system, as it was the only thing keeping certain exploits being absolutely abused.

And, of course, it would be even better if they just made it so that you get a large reward the first time you do a quest in a difficulty but then only a small reward or even no reward if you do it again in that difficulty. That would eliminate town leveling exploits all at once.