1.0.3, Attack Speed Changes, and Hypocrisy

[Chesspiece_face]

Well, as expected, the battle.net forums are filled with a lot of people who were struggling in act 1 inferno being worse off since now they can't pay the repair bills. This doesn't affect people that can clear act 1 easily though. So in the end, the poorer players as I had anticipating suffer and I sorta understand what Redradical is experiencing. This actually makes inferno even more exclusive though if you can survive inferno act 1/2 you'll be better off. Coincidentally, this group consists of the hugest whiners... Hmm. :p

I really don't understand what gear/builds/playstyle people would have that they couldn't manage A1 Inferno. The most basic of defensive stats and situational awareness should be able to get you to the Forsaken Cemetary which, along with the surrounding areas and crypts, can be 5-stacked and farmed easily. Now that these areas actually have a chance to drop vast upgrades there is no reason a person shouldn't be able to gear up and progress without racking up massive repair bills.

It was bordering on absurd when people complained about A1 pre-1.03. Now that people can gear up on the easiest areas in Inferno it is beyond absurd that people are complaining about it.

[Archon_Wing]

Well, as expected, the battle.net forums are filled with a lot of people who were struggling in act 1 inferno being worse off since now they can't pay the repair bills. This doesn't affect people that can clear act 1 easily though. So in the end, the poorer players as I had anticipating suffer and I sorta understand what Redradical is experiencing. This actually makes inferno even more exclusive though if you can survive inferno act 1/2 you'll be better off. Coincidentally, this group consists of the hugest whiners... Hmm. :p

I really don't understand what gear/builds/playstyle people would have that they couldn't manage A1 Inferno. The most basic of defensive stats and situational awareness should be able to get you to the Forsaken Cemetary which, along with the surrounding areas and crypts, can be 5-stacked and farmed easily. Now that these areas actually have a chance to drop vast upgrades there is no reason a person shouldn't be able to gear up and progress without racking up massive repair bills.

It was bordering on absurd when people complained about A1 pre-1.03. Now that people can gear up on the easiest areas in Inferno it is beyond absurd that people are complaining about it.

They can, but a lot of people will still fall victim to the elite monsters. Pre-patch they'd die a bit more, but now every death is taking them to the cleaners. I just had to pay 10k in repair bills without dying.

Now it's true that a lot of people just need to l2p. Chances are that anyone struggling could just post their gear/builds and it could be solved. But if you were on the borderline of making headway, chances are your earnings will actually tank a bit. The same is happening to me in act 2. I don't die by far as much, but there are times where I'm actually losing gold more than before and it's no longer profitable.

I was geared to clear act 1 and most of act 2 pre-patch. But bad enough affixes will still nuke me even in act 1 if I'm not careful.

[DeeBye]

I was geared to clear act 1 and most of act 2 pre-patch. But bad enough affixes will still nuke me even in act 1 if I'm not careful.

That's what bugs me about Inferno the most. There are some champ/rare affix combos that are literally unbeatable, no matter what I do. The only answer to this is "Well, don't fight them" - but that goes against everything Diablo games have taught me. Running from a fight, or deliberately avoiding one, is outright failure. I must kill every mob, explore every area, and smash every pot.

Today I had such an encounter. I don't recall the exact monster affixes (something like Vortex, Shielding, Extra Health, and whatever else), but it was enough to kill me about 4 times before I said "Screw it" and hung my head low while paying my huge repair bill and stopped playing for the day. It wasn't challenging and it wasn't fun, so I simply stopped playing. I'm geared and skilled enough to kill the Butcher in Inferno with ease, but a stupid random champ pack in act 1 made me stop playing. I can handle dying when I know I screwed up, or when I can learn from the encounter and do better next time. There wasn't anything I could do in this case to win the fight, so why fight?

[Elric of Grans]

It can be more than just the attributes; the whole story can conspire to add to the difficulty.

I fought a champ pack before with my Demon Hunter. Three Unburied, Mortar/Vortex/Extra Health/(forgot the fourth). It was in a small room just after the cleaver traps in the Halls of Agony. Because of the Cleaver traps, and the Vortex, kiting was dramatically more difficult than normal, and Mortar is always super nasty in enclosed areas. In addition, Unburied have so much health to begin with that Extra Health makes them kind of tedious. I brought them down to about 1/3 life before I ran out of Discipline, which equals death for a Demon Hunter. I tried again with a slightly different plan, but same result. In the end, I decided there was no chance I could beat them without invoking the Out of Time debuff, so quit the game and reloaded. If I had faced those attributes on, say, Fallen in a wide open area, I have no doubt I could do it in no time without any difficulty.

Demon Hunters (probably Wizards too) have similar situations with Elite Scavenger packs, under any condition. They cannot be kited (because of the Blizzard's approach to hitboxes), swarm you and attack extremely fast. Add just about any attribute and you have an unwinnable battle. I am sure we have all had a Waller drop a wall on us, unable to move at all, followed by a Plague/Desecrator pit, then multiple Arcane beams move in on you while you cannot move. That is one Demon Hunters can handle, but it probably sucks for the rest of you

I read a Blue post on the forum earlier where they commented that Blizzard considers it acceptable that we have to park/restart games because an Elite was impossible. Essentially, the post was `get better gear and learn to play.' Pretty odd approach to such a common complaint. Then again, they did not get rid of the hated Invulnerable Minions attribute, which still inspires me to auto-quit the game.

[Bolty]

Well, as expected, the battle.net forums are filled with a lot of people who were struggling in act 1 inferno being worse off since now they can't pay the repair bills. This doesn't affect people that can clear act 1 easily though. So in the end, the poorer players as I had anticipating suffer and I sorta understand what Redradical is experiencing. This actually makes inferno even more exclusive though if you can survive inferno act 1/2 you'll be better off. Coincidentally, this group consists of the hugest whiners... Hmm. :p

And on the flip side, I know a Barb who's rocking almost 60k hps, 11,500 armor, and 1000+ resists who hangs out in Acts 3/4, and he hates the patch because the gear drops have been effectively nerfed in those later acts. So everyone's kind of annoyed at the redesign.

The patch benefits those who have been stuck running Act 1 and Act 2 for ages; you have potential for better drops now. For everyone else, it's not all that helpful...

[ViralSpiral]

*Shrugs.* It's like they dealt with immunities in D2; they eventually caved and let a few skills work at reducing immunities at 1/5th effectiveness, but then raised some of the resistances to just beyond where you could get rid of some of the immunities. Blizzard seems to enjoy spiting the player base. I'm rather hoping IM goes the way of De Seis's Thief ability and is gone after the third or fourth patch, but we'll see.

The philosophy that "welp, sometimes you're just going to have to restart because we can't be arsed to make sure we produce a playable game" smacks of laziness. I mean yes, okay, I understand that to some extent it's very difficult to build a balanced game that's balanced for five different classes with 2-6 different Inferno-viable builds each. Let alone the goal of making any (non-stupid like all defence skills) build viable. I get that. But that attitude sounds like they don't even want to try, or at least not admit they goofed on the power level of some of the boss affixes. Then again, MSLEB/CELEB/FELEBs weren't fully fixed until 1.10, which was...many, many years after the game had come out. So yeah, I'm not holding out a lot of hope on Blizzard's ability to publicly admit big mistakes.

[DeeBye]

And on the flip side, I know a Barb who's rocking almost 60k hps, 11,500 armor, and 1000+ resists who hangs out in Acts 3/4, and he hates the patch because the gear drops have been effectively nerfed in those later acts.

That dude has no right to bitch about gear drops with stats like that. Wow.

[Elric of Grans]

Is it just me, or are Elites using their skills more often? My defensive strategies from before the patch are no longer working because cooldowns have not ended when I expect they would have, and certain abilities (eg Illusionist) seem like they are making a bigger impact on play than before.

[BellaStrega]

Demon Hunters (probably Wizards too) have similar situations with Elite Scavenger packs, under any condition. They cannot be kited (because of the Blizzard's approach to hitboxes), swarm you and attack extremely fast. Add just about any attribute and you have an unwinnable battle. I am sure we have all had a Waller drop a wall on us, unable to move at all, followed by a Plague/Desecrator pit, then multiple Arcane beams move in on you while you cannot move. That is one Demon Hunters can handle, but it probably sucks for the rest of you

My monk usually deals with those reasonably easily, at least in act I. Even with the attack speed nerf.

I read a Blue post on the forum earlier where they commented that Blizzard considers it acceptable that we have to park/restart games because an Elite was impossible. Essentially, the post was `get better gear and learn to play.' Pretty odd approach to such a common complaint. Then again, they did not get rid of the hated Invulnerable Minions attribute, which still inspires me to auto-quit the game.

Their fix to IM isn't a fix. The problem is not how much health the boss has. The problem is inflicting damage in the first place. No idea why they won't admit that, because I can't imagine they don't realize it.

---

Is it just me, or are Elites using their skills more often? My defensive strategies from before the patch are no longer working because cooldowns have not ended when I expect they would have, and certain abilities (eg Illusionist) seem like they are making a bigger impact on play than before.

One of the things that prompted my quitting yesterday was running into a pack with nightmare/frozen and only avoiding either condition when I used my 4 seconds of immunity window. And then nightmarish sent me into a second pack that was less than a full screen from the first pack. It just seemed like the frozen bombs were being continuously spammed.

[MongoJerry]

And on the flip side, I know a Barb who's rocking almost 60k hps, 11,500 armor, and 1000+ resists who hangs out in Acts 3/4, and he hates the patch because the gear drops have been effectively nerfed in those later acts.

Really? I haven't heard anything about this. How have the drops in Acts 3/4 been nerfed? Is he just talking about mf% no longer working on chests, etc, or a nerf to item drops on monsters? It would seem like with the gear he has, he'll have to wait a long time to find an upgrade no matter what.

Edit: There's a forum post with Bashiok responses regarding this. No confirmation yet on whether this is a real or a perception issue, however:

http://www.diablofans.com/blizz-tracker/...nd-please/

[Chesspiece_face]

They can, but a lot of people will still fall victim to the elite monsters. Pre-patch they'd die a bit more, but now every death is taking them to the cleaners. I just had to pay 10k in repair bills without dying.

we're already looking into reducing the durability hit players take from normal wear-and-tear. This way, players who never die aren't getting hit with a giant repair fee every 3-4 hours.

[FoxBat]

Really? I haven't heard anything about this. How have the drops in Acts 3/4 been nerfed? Is he just talking about mf% no longer working on chests, etc, or a nerf to item drops on monsters? It would seem like with the gear he has, he'll have to wait a long time to find an upgrade no matter what.

Could be stuff selling for less on the AH now that everyone is finding those same items in A1/A2.

OTOH I've been seeing more overgeared toons in public Butcher games. They might just not feel slower/more challenging is worth it vs slaughtering things fast on a low ilvl63 drop rate.

[Archon_Wing]

They can, but a lot of people will still fall victim to the elite monsters. Pre-patch they'd die a bit more, but now every death is taking them to the cleaners. I just had to pay 10k in repair bills without dying.

we're already looking into reducing the durability hit players take from normal wear-and-tear. This way, players who never die aren't getting hit with a giant repair fee every 3-4 hours.

Why does it feel like no testing went into this? :p

[Elric of Grans]

Testing? Why would they do that? All they needed to do was double it... *cough*

[BellaStrega]

Will that be the new gaming meme?

"We took as many arrows to the knee as we could, and then we doubled it."

[MongoJerry]

The philosophy that "welp, sometimes you're just going to have to restart because we can't be arsed to make sure we produce a playable game" smacks of laziness. I mean yes, okay, I understand that to some extent it's very difficult to build a balanced game that's balanced for five different classes with 2-6 different Inferno-viable builds each. Let alone the goal of making any (non-stupid like all defence skills) build viable. I get that. But that attitude sounds like they don't even want to try, or at least not admit they goofed on the power level of some of the boss affixes.

Let's be a little fair to him. What he was saying was that at first, as you enter a new act/difficulty, etc., you might run into some elite packs that you can't handle. But after a time, as you gear up, you will be able to take on more and more of those packs until eventually you will be able to take on anything and you can move on to the next area, if you wish. If you could just take on any elite pack you come across the first time you come across it, then the game would just be too easy and that wouldn't be fun either.

[Nystul]

Will that be the new gaming meme?

"We took as many arrows to the knee as we could, and then we doubled it."

It's funnier when you apply it to something that is not actually a quantity, like the difficulty of a game section...

[BellaStrega]

It's funnier when you apply it to something that is not actually a quantity, like the difficulty of a game section...

But game difficulty is a series of quantities - how much health, how much damage they put out, how often they can use their special attacks. While "Inferno" is not a quantity, saying that he doubled it actually makes sense in terms of quantities because the features that make the game difficult are quantifiable.

[ViralSpiral]

I used to be a balanced game, like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee. - Diablo III Esquire, while on gate duty.

[RogueMage]

That's what bugs me about Inferno the most. There are some champ/rare affix combos that are literally unbeatable, no matter what I do. The only answer to this is "Well, don't fight them" - but that goes against everything Diablo games have taught me. Running from a fight, or deliberately avoiding one, is outright failure.

Response to player complaints about unbalanced champion affix combinations, by Blizzard rep Lylirra:

There's a difference between saying "that's an unfair affix combo" and "I can't beat this affix combo" (yet). Certain affix packs will be harder than others. The variance in randomness and in the difficulty of the packs is completely intentional and we're happy with where things are right now.

Having to restart a game or skipping packs altogether is also totally fine.

But as we all know, rerolling the whole game to get a boss combo you like can be quite tedious. I think a far more efficient solution would be to introduce a Legendary Blacksmith Plan that rerolls monster stats, much like crafting a new item. And in case game balance becomes an issue, Blizzard could make the plans available only through the RMAH.