via Bashiok:
This is may be a good a time as any to REVEAL TEH SEKRITS! that Inferno monster levels aren't linear any longer. They get progressively more difficult. This was really a reaction to Inferno playtesting. Our original intent was to have a flat difficulty level where you could go wherever you want, farm for items, and it'd be no more or less difficult than any other area in Inferno. This caused a few inherent issues for us, though:
It just felt wrong. It didn't feel right to be progressing through the game and have it stay pretty much the same difficulty the whole time. It felt like a letdown to get to the final boss of the game and it be no more difficult than the first.There’s a wide variety of players out there and we wanted to make sure everybody had something to sink their teeth into. We expect that anybody with enough time and dedication will reach level 60. But the jump in difficulty to Inferno needed to be different amounts for different people. For the crazy people they need a HUGE ramp in difficulty, for a more “casual but still hardcore” audience you want an obvious but milder increase in difficulty. So for the crazy people who play non-stop they’ll hit Act I and get a challenge, but 1 month later they’ll still have something to work on (Acts II, III and IV). For the “hardcore-casual” they will reach level 60 later and not get brick walled when they reach Inferno. They can experience some “small victories” working on Act I with the dream of maybe someday reaching the later acts.Longevity. We know people really want goals to work towards and challenges to overcome. We made Act III and Act IV really, really brutally hard, for the most elite players only. It felt wrong to make ALL of Inferno that brutally hard.
Now, you may be saying “I thought you wanted us to be able to farm anywhere we wanted. Now we only have half as much area in the game to farm in? What gives?” Our goal is to make the loot mathematically better in the later acts without making the earlier gear completely obsolete. We feel Diablo II actually did a very good job with this and we expect Diablo III to perform similarly.
Specifically, people in D2 did Diablo runs, Mephisto runs, Pindleskin runs, Pit runs, Baal runs, etc. because the loot in Diablo is extremely random. Even though the theoretical best items might come from the later Acts, well-rolled items from earlier acts will still be better. Internally we find sometimes after an intense session of brutally hard Inferno it can be really fun to cruise through Hell Act III or IV and it’s not too uncommon surprise when an upgrade drops. We expect this to carry through to Inferno difficulty where somebody who can theoretically farm Act IV will likely still enjoy romping through Act I simply because the drop potential is still there. It’s all because of the highly random items having lots of overlap in their power distribution curves.
Sounds fantastic!
I tend to be quite a hardcore player anyway so I'm delighted to have more to get my teeth into.
Eceonomically I think this move pushes more earning power into the hands of the most successful.
See you in Inferno Act 4!
Gold Guide affiliate
Saturday 31 March 2012
Stabs' Third Party Trading Service
I'd like to announce a service I will be offering for Diablo 3 players.
Trusted third parties are a way of trading between players who are strangers and who have no reason to trust each other but want to make a non-simultaneous transaction. It's a practice used in Eve Online where it successfully protects people from scams and cheats.
Normally if you want to trade in the game you will just put the stuff in the trade window, double check then hit Accept. (Watch out for last minute switches!).
However for some trades it's not possible to do that. If you want to trade Hardcore gold and items for Softcore gold and items then you need to trade your Hardcore stuff to a Hardcore character and your Softcore stuff to a Softcore character.
Example: Bob wants to trade a Grandfather he found in Softcore for a good Wizard rare Sue found in Hardcore. Bob gives the Grandfather to me in the trade window along with a small fee in gold. Sue gives my level 1 Hardcore alt the rare in Hardcore. I screenshot the trades and send the screenshots to each player by email and wait for confirmation. When both confirm that they are happy with the trade I give Bob's Hardcore character the rare and give the Grandfather to Sue.
This allows players to trade in all sorts of innovative ways. Want to trade Age of Conan gold for D3 hardcore gold? No problem I'll have characters available in both to hold your stuff. Want to trade stuff on the American realm for stuff in Europe, hardcore to softcore? No problem.
What I don't do is find trades for you. If you want to trade your Grandfather for stuff in Hardcore you find a player and agree a trade. I just secure the transaction.
This service is completely legitimate and permitted within the TOS and the EULA of the games for which it is provided. Here's an example of a forum for a SOE game where players quite often trade between different games. Players can generally give items to other players in most online games without restriction. This is not a RMT or grey trading operation.
This service simply means people have more fun. The person burned out on Eve can trade his spaceships for a shiny big sword to the delight of the Eve newbie he deals with. The person who played in Europe when she was stationed here on military duty can exchange her stuff here for stuff she can use on her new characters when she goes back home.
So what makes Stabs a "trusted" person?
1) Self-interest. I get fees for doing this and if I rip someone off, no more customers, no more fees.
2) My blog presence. I've blogged on Stabbed Up since July 2009 and was commenting on many other people's blogs before then. I have invested a huge amount of time writing and have a good reputation in the blogging community. It also makes me very traceable in real life if a dispute became a legal matter.
3) My personality. If you read my blogs you will see that I am an honest and principled gamer with a history of principled action. I'm a decent person and I think you can see that from my writing.
4) My Diablo 2 community involvement. I was heavily involved in the Diablo 2 forums writing thousands of posts as Brista on the Amazon Basin and Lurker Lounge.
5) Feedback from satisfied customers. As this service continues I hope to receive feedback from players who use it. (There's none yet but give me time, the game hasn't started!).
Services offered:
Diablo 3 same mode same region trading. Only use this if it's a very valuable trade and you're paranoid about someone switching the item just as you click Accept.
Diablo 3 mode to mode trading. Hardcore to Softcore or Softcore to Hardcore.
Diablo 3 region to region trading. I'll update this as soon as I have characters available in different regions.
Diablo 3 gold and items for other game gold and items. If you want to swap your EQ2 gold for D3 gold or Eve isk for D3 gold then I can arrange it. (I don't currently have a WoW account so I can't offer this service in that game).
Basically I'll install most popular games that are free to play and I subscribe to Eve. Just ask me if you want to know if I cover a particular game. Games I certainly do cover include:
Eve Online
Everquest 2
Magic The Gathering: Tactics
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Age of Conan
Trusted third parties are a way of trading between players who are strangers and who have no reason to trust each other but want to make a non-simultaneous transaction. It's a practice used in Eve Online where it successfully protects people from scams and cheats.
Normally if you want to trade in the game you will just put the stuff in the trade window, double check then hit Accept. (Watch out for last minute switches!).
However for some trades it's not possible to do that. If you want to trade Hardcore gold and items for Softcore gold and items then you need to trade your Hardcore stuff to a Hardcore character and your Softcore stuff to a Softcore character.
Example: Bob wants to trade a Grandfather he found in Softcore for a good Wizard rare Sue found in Hardcore. Bob gives the Grandfather to me in the trade window along with a small fee in gold. Sue gives my level 1 Hardcore alt the rare in Hardcore. I screenshot the trades and send the screenshots to each player by email and wait for confirmation. When both confirm that they are happy with the trade I give Bob's Hardcore character the rare and give the Grandfather to Sue.
This allows players to trade in all sorts of innovative ways. Want to trade Age of Conan gold for D3 hardcore gold? No problem I'll have characters available in both to hold your stuff. Want to trade stuff on the American realm for stuff in Europe, hardcore to softcore? No problem.
What I don't do is find trades for you. If you want to trade your Grandfather for stuff in Hardcore you find a player and agree a trade. I just secure the transaction.
This service is completely legitimate and permitted within the TOS and the EULA of the games for which it is provided. Here's an example of a forum for a SOE game where players quite often trade between different games. Players can generally give items to other players in most online games without restriction. This is not a RMT or grey trading operation.
This service simply means people have more fun. The person burned out on Eve can trade his spaceships for a shiny big sword to the delight of the Eve newbie he deals with. The person who played in Europe when she was stationed here on military duty can exchange her stuff here for stuff she can use on her new characters when she goes back home.
So what makes Stabs a "trusted" person?
1) Self-interest. I get fees for doing this and if I rip someone off, no more customers, no more fees.
2) My blog presence. I've blogged on Stabbed Up since July 2009 and was commenting on many other people's blogs before then. I have invested a huge amount of time writing and have a good reputation in the blogging community. It also makes me very traceable in real life if a dispute became a legal matter.
3) My personality. If you read my blogs you will see that I am an honest and principled gamer with a history of principled action. I'm a decent person and I think you can see that from my writing.
4) My Diablo 2 community involvement. I was heavily involved in the Diablo 2 forums writing thousands of posts as Brista on the Amazon Basin and Lurker Lounge.
5) Feedback from satisfied customers. As this service continues I hope to receive feedback from players who use it. (There's none yet but give me time, the game hasn't started!).
Services offered:
Diablo 3 same mode same region trading. Only use this if it's a very valuable trade and you're paranoid about someone switching the item just as you click Accept.
Diablo 3 mode to mode trading. Hardcore to Softcore or Softcore to Hardcore.
Diablo 3 region to region trading. I'll update this as soon as I have characters available in different regions.
Diablo 3 gold and items for other game gold and items. If you want to swap your EQ2 gold for D3 gold or Eve isk for D3 gold then I can arrange it. (I don't currently have a WoW account so I can't offer this service in that game).
Basically I'll install most popular games that are free to play and I subscribe to Eve. Just ask me if you want to know if I cover a particular game. Games I certainly do cover include:
Eve Online
Everquest 2
Magic The Gathering: Tactics
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Age of Conan
Wednesday 28 March 2012
Return of capital in the first month
The sub-prime crash of 2008 generated a lot of very interesting economic analysis. One of the lines that stayed with me is that while wheelers and dealers managed to make money shorting a falling market, for most regular savers the focus shifted from return on capital to return of capital.
Thus the rather remarkable fact that when Standard & Poors downgraded the USA, US government bonds became more popular. The thinking is this: if the US got downgraded the world economy is screwed. If the world economy is screwed businesses, banks and so on might go bust, land might plummet in value. But the US government will still pay back its lenders most of what they lend as long as money is still in operation. So the response to the US being rated less worth investing in is that people invested in the US!
That tells us a lot about deflationary economies, economies that are crashing.
The Diablo 3 economy will be born crashing. Day 1 there will be thousands, even millions of pounds, of real money chasing a negligible quantity of goods and gold. I'll probably stick up all my gold on the RMAH at level 10 if I get in right at the start - there will be some people who will pay £50 for a little boost at the start.
From that point it will head very quickly towards its equilibrium point. I think the economy will be balanced by very expensive repair bills and will eventually be mildly deflationary not strongly deflationary. But it will start off strongly deflationary.
So where do you keep your in-game assets to achieve return of capital? That 20 dps sword that will seem amazing on Day 1 and be worth £20 will be worth pennies by the end of the week. 1 million gold, worth a very significant amount on Day 1 will be something we farm in an hour once we're running around easimode Hell with a level 60 in 900% gold find gear.
Here's some ideas:
1) Invest it. Getting ahead of the pack with your artisans could allow you to practically mint money. It's probably best to just concentrate on one. I'm going to be focused on my Jeweler and my friend Wazzer is doing the smith.
2) Gems. Gems never become not valuable. Even at level 60 a chipped gem puts you that little bit closer to an upgrade. It's not like a level 10 sword that's only useful for alts and newbies once the main part of the player base has gone past it.
3) Pages of training. I think these will go UP in the first month. Competition for these will intensify as people close in on Rank 10 artisan.
4) Undiscovered marvels. Currently on the Beta AHs the worst affixes are Attacker Takes Damage and Health Regeneration. Usually people salvage this gear as junk, sometimes they put it up for some trivial price (and it almost certainly returns unsold).
However when the game goes live there's a very specific point at which those mods become valuable to a small group of players. At level 45 the Witch Doctors get Fierce Loyalty. So suddenly these junk mods become very useful to those WDs who like summoning.
Now I think summoning will be pretty strong and that Fierce Loyalty builds like this one will gain in traction. So this gear will suddenly become much more expensive as people realise that it's not junk after all and it will rise in price.
Another example is real dps v apparent dps. Once players get more experienced they'll realise a 280 dps weapon with + Int (or whatever your dps stat is), + Crit chance, + Crit damage is far better than a 300 dps weapon that lacks any such dps-boosting stats that aren't factored in. I explained about buyer psychology yesterday.
I'm sure there are other examples of gear that people will think is rubbish early on but then realise is good once they get more experienced at the game. High level Vit gear will go up if people discover they can't survive Inferno without it.
5) Store it as real money or the equivalent. Either cash out or you can leave it there as Blizzbucks or whatever the currency is. (thanks to Loque for reminding me of this option, I'd meant to put it in but forgot).
Thus the rather remarkable fact that when Standard & Poors downgraded the USA, US government bonds became more popular. The thinking is this: if the US got downgraded the world economy is screwed. If the world economy is screwed businesses, banks and so on might go bust, land might plummet in value. But the US government will still pay back its lenders most of what they lend as long as money is still in operation. So the response to the US being rated less worth investing in is that people invested in the US!
That tells us a lot about deflationary economies, economies that are crashing.
The Diablo 3 economy will be born crashing. Day 1 there will be thousands, even millions of pounds, of real money chasing a negligible quantity of goods and gold. I'll probably stick up all my gold on the RMAH at level 10 if I get in right at the start - there will be some people who will pay £50 for a little boost at the start.
From that point it will head very quickly towards its equilibrium point. I think the economy will be balanced by very expensive repair bills and will eventually be mildly deflationary not strongly deflationary. But it will start off strongly deflationary.
So where do you keep your in-game assets to achieve return of capital? That 20 dps sword that will seem amazing on Day 1 and be worth £20 will be worth pennies by the end of the week. 1 million gold, worth a very significant amount on Day 1 will be something we farm in an hour once we're running around easimode Hell with a level 60 in 900% gold find gear.
Here's some ideas:
1) Invest it. Getting ahead of the pack with your artisans could allow you to practically mint money. It's probably best to just concentrate on one. I'm going to be focused on my Jeweler and my friend Wazzer is doing the smith.
2) Gems. Gems never become not valuable. Even at level 60 a chipped gem puts you that little bit closer to an upgrade. It's not like a level 10 sword that's only useful for alts and newbies once the main part of the player base has gone past it.
3) Pages of training. I think these will go UP in the first month. Competition for these will intensify as people close in on Rank 10 artisan.
4) Undiscovered marvels. Currently on the Beta AHs the worst affixes are Attacker Takes Damage and Health Regeneration. Usually people salvage this gear as junk, sometimes they put it up for some trivial price (and it almost certainly returns unsold).
However when the game goes live there's a very specific point at which those mods become valuable to a small group of players. At level 45 the Witch Doctors get Fierce Loyalty. So suddenly these junk mods become very useful to those WDs who like summoning.
Now I think summoning will be pretty strong and that Fierce Loyalty builds like this one will gain in traction. So this gear will suddenly become much more expensive as people realise that it's not junk after all and it will rise in price.
Another example is real dps v apparent dps. Once players get more experienced they'll realise a 280 dps weapon with + Int (or whatever your dps stat is), + Crit chance, + Crit damage is far better than a 300 dps weapon that lacks any such dps-boosting stats that aren't factored in. I explained about buyer psychology yesterday.
I'm sure there are other examples of gear that people will think is rubbish early on but then realise is good once they get more experienced at the game. High level Vit gear will go up if people discover they can't survive Inferno without it.
5) Store it as real money or the equivalent. Either cash out or you can leave it there as Blizzbucks or whatever the currency is. (thanks to Loque for reminding me of this option, I'd meant to put it in but forgot).
Buyer psychology in Diablo 3
I'm going to show you something.
What in that image stands out? What, when people look at it, immediately jumps out at them first?
18.7
In fact it's so visually strong that people don't even need to know what 18.7 is a measurement of, they'll just know it's a little better than 17 but not quite so good as 20.
Remember the first part of Blizzard's mantra is Easy to Play. This is stats made simple. How good is that sword? It's 18.7. That's all most people will feel they need to know.
If that weren't already strong enough have a look at the AH interface. What does it sort on by default? DPS
Item, DPS, Bid, Buyout, Time Left. The game is structured as if there's only one thing you need to know about a weapon - DPS.
In fact there can be other dps elements to a weapon that don't show up in the number. An 18.7 dps weapon with bonuses to crit strike chance, crit damage rating, and Strength might be a much better dps option than a plainer 20 dps weapon but most players would never know. Your buyers generally won't know.
Shopping is all about taking mental shortcuts.
Harvard Prof Robert Cialdini told a story in his excellent book Influence about a woman acquaintance who was selling gems. She left a note for an assistant to half the price of a slow selling stock of Jade. He mis-read the note and doubled the price. Suddenly these gems that no one wanted sold out. She asked Cialdini why?
Most people have no clue about what makes a good piece of jade. Actually we have no clue about lots of things but our brains have evolved a mechanism to cope. What we do is we take mental shortcuts. In the case of jade we look at the price.
Jewelry is a very personal present. We tend to buy it for someone close to us - a wife, a daughter, a mother. A $25 piece of jade is a bit too cheap for most people to buy as a present. A $50 piece of jade is just right. It doesn't matter that it's the same piece of jade in both cases, we equate quality with price, It's a method that works 99% of the time.
Part of mastering the Auction House in Diablo 3 will be understanding the difference between buyer psychology and optimisation.
Next consider movement speed. Now arguably for certain fights, dangerous act bosses, Inferno and so on it might make more sense to have combat stats on your boots than run speed. But no one playing Diablo will want to move like they're walking though treacle. It's too mentally offputting to consider. So boots without movement speed will almost certainly be underpriced relative to their mods and boots with movement speed, especially max move speed, will be expensive.
There are six principles in Influence that explain why people make decisions, particularly decisions where someone else has talked them into something.
Reciprocity. So if I play with someone and give them a nice item they are very likely to respond, especially if there's a sustained social relationship. This of course can be manipulated, one could give people rare boots with no run speed and be quite likely to get random rares back.
Commitment and consistency. If we set up a Sunday afternoon gear swap market then over time people will come to really appreciate it. Sticking to the same time every week and never missing a week could establish some sort of player trade fair.
Social Proof. People will gear up in the way they see other people developing their characters. If some people in Inferno early on get a very distinctive look, the item that gives that look will be sought even if the stats aren't great.
Authority. Check what top players and D3 celebrities like Force and Athene are wearing. Buyers will want to buy the same gear. They know it works. The exception, sadly is me, because I'm expert in specialising in random junk ghetto gear and still kicking butt. Maybe, come release, if I attract a group of fans who particularly want to emulate me we'll see a trend for blues with + Gold Radius on. A boy can dream.
Liking. People are influenced by people they like. Force will probably get copied much more than Athene because Force is more likeable. Athene's rather odd sense of humour puts many people off. So expect people to influence and be influenced by friends and guildies. If you sell to someone ask them if they are in a guild and if anyone else in the guild would like the item. Being introduced by someone they like makes people more receptive to you.
Scarcity. People often panic buy when they fear a window of opportunity is closing. When you trade you can excite a buyer by mentioning that you have to go soon or that someone else is interested in the item. Of course scarcity is already heavily built into the item system so people will be open to the notion that your offer is a unique and special chance to enhance their character that they'll regret missing if they don't buy now.
Good luck in the D3 Trade Wars. I think the getting rich game is going to be as fascinating as the RPG!
What in that image stands out? What, when people look at it, immediately jumps out at them first?
18.7
In fact it's so visually strong that people don't even need to know what 18.7 is a measurement of, they'll just know it's a little better than 17 but not quite so good as 20.
Remember the first part of Blizzard's mantra is Easy to Play. This is stats made simple. How good is that sword? It's 18.7. That's all most people will feel they need to know.
If that weren't already strong enough have a look at the AH interface. What does it sort on by default? DPS
Item, DPS, Bid, Buyout, Time Left. The game is structured as if there's only one thing you need to know about a weapon - DPS.
In fact there can be other dps elements to a weapon that don't show up in the number. An 18.7 dps weapon with bonuses to crit strike chance, crit damage rating, and Strength might be a much better dps option than a plainer 20 dps weapon but most players would never know. Your buyers generally won't know.
Shopping is all about taking mental shortcuts.
Harvard Prof Robert Cialdini told a story in his excellent book Influence about a woman acquaintance who was selling gems. She left a note for an assistant to half the price of a slow selling stock of Jade. He mis-read the note and doubled the price. Suddenly these gems that no one wanted sold out. She asked Cialdini why?
Most people have no clue about what makes a good piece of jade. Actually we have no clue about lots of things but our brains have evolved a mechanism to cope. What we do is we take mental shortcuts. In the case of jade we look at the price.
Jewelry is a very personal present. We tend to buy it for someone close to us - a wife, a daughter, a mother. A $25 piece of jade is a bit too cheap for most people to buy as a present. A $50 piece of jade is just right. It doesn't matter that it's the same piece of jade in both cases, we equate quality with price, It's a method that works 99% of the time.
Part of mastering the Auction House in Diablo 3 will be understanding the difference between buyer psychology and optimisation.
Next consider movement speed. Now arguably for certain fights, dangerous act bosses, Inferno and so on it might make more sense to have combat stats on your boots than run speed. But no one playing Diablo will want to move like they're walking though treacle. It's too mentally offputting to consider. So boots without movement speed will almost certainly be underpriced relative to their mods and boots with movement speed, especially max move speed, will be expensive.
There are six principles in Influence that explain why people make decisions, particularly decisions where someone else has talked them into something.
Reciprocity. So if I play with someone and give them a nice item they are very likely to respond, especially if there's a sustained social relationship. This of course can be manipulated, one could give people rare boots with no run speed and be quite likely to get random rares back.
Commitment and consistency. If we set up a Sunday afternoon gear swap market then over time people will come to really appreciate it. Sticking to the same time every week and never missing a week could establish some sort of player trade fair.
Social Proof. People will gear up in the way they see other people developing their characters. If some people in Inferno early on get a very distinctive look, the item that gives that look will be sought even if the stats aren't great.
Authority. Check what top players and D3 celebrities like Force and Athene are wearing. Buyers will want to buy the same gear. They know it works. The exception, sadly is me, because I'm expert in specialising in random junk ghetto gear and still kicking butt. Maybe, come release, if I attract a group of fans who particularly want to emulate me we'll see a trend for blues with + Gold Radius on. A boy can dream.
Liking. People are influenced by people they like. Force will probably get copied much more than Athene because Force is more likeable. Athene's rather odd sense of humour puts many people off. So expect people to influence and be influenced by friends and guildies. If you sell to someone ask them if they are in a guild and if anyone else in the guild would like the item. Being introduced by someone they like makes people more receptive to you.
Scarcity. People often panic buy when they fear a window of opportunity is closing. When you trade you can excite a buyer by mentioning that you have to go soon or that someone else is interested in the item. Of course scarcity is already heavily built into the item system so people will be open to the notion that your offer is a unique and special chance to enhance their character that they'll regret missing if they don't buy now.
Good luck in the D3 Trade Wars. I think the getting rich game is going to be as fascinating as the RPG!
Monday 26 March 2012
Movement
Much of the leveling in Diablo 3 is simply moving and the faster you move the faster you level. In addition it's very useful to be able to keep up in multiplayer. It rather sucks to find everything dead by the time you arrive over and over.
In addition to run speed when considering how fast you move consider Gold Pickup Radius. If you ignore gold then you don't especially have to worry about this affix in terms of your speed. But if, like me, you instinctively collect all the gold before moving on you will play through the game much quicker with some Gold Radius bonuses. I personally like at least 4 yards. This affix also boosts two Witch Doctor passives (Circle of Life and Grave Injustice). Note that the Demon Hunter can have a ferret companion that collects the gold for her.
Run speed is only found on boots in the Beta. The datamined affix information also says it can spawn on weapons and belts although that's probably a smaller amount and quite a high level. In addition legendary and set items get to break the normal rules. Run speed was quite a common set bonus in Diablo 2 and I'm sure that'll be true in D3 too.
The best mod in Beta that people can use is +7% although faster boots exist for unplayably high levels.
Faster movement is one of people's top priorities and most people will consider boots useless if they don't have faster movement. Even blue boots with one affix are reasonably expensive on the auction house but I doubt many players would buy rare boots with good affixes that lack movement speed. It's very noticeable, even a small percent.
Selling crafted faster boots should be a reasonably profitable niche market for people interested in that side of things.
As well as gear, each class has a greater or lesser degree of movement buffs from abilities runes and passives. Demon Hunters Barbarians and Monks all get good speed options, Wizards get Teleport and the poor Witch Doctor is a lot slower than everyone else.
These are the relevant abilities:
Barbarian
Leap . Covers distance quicker than running, allows otherwise impassable terrain to be navigated.
Frenzy - Vanguard. +15% move while Frenzying.
Sprint. +40% for 3 seconds, can be runed into Marathon (50% for 5 seconds) or Forced March (affects allies, 20% for 3 seconds). It looks like you can chain Sprints as long as you have the Fury.
Demon Hunter
Smoke Screen - Displacement gives +35% movement speed when activated (for 3 seconds presumably, the duration of the ability).
Shadow Power - Shadow Glide gives +40% for the 3 seconds it's active.
Tactical Advantage gives you +60% move for 2 seconds after you Vault, Smokescreen or flip with Evasive Fire. I've been using this in the Beta and it's really good. Monster packs aren't that far separated and a Vault or two is usually enough to get to the next pack.
Hot Pursuit gives you +15% when you're at Full Hatred. Another nice ability, best to open on packs with your spender and finish off the last few with your builder if you have this. Combines well perhaps with Vengeance because that fills you up after a fight, there's usually a few globes around after you kill a decent size group.
Monk
Way of the Hundred Fists - Blazing Fists applies a 5% move and attack speed buff every crit that stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 5 seconds.
Dashing Strike - Way of the Falling Star gives a +25% move speed buff for 3 seconds after you hit an enemy.
Mantra of Evasion - Wind through the Reeds adds a 5% move speed buff to the group.
Fleet Footed gives 10% movement speed. This is a very nice passive for so early on, arguably the best skill in the game.
Witch Doctor
Horrify - Stalker gives +20% for 4 seconds. The skill has a 20 second cooldown.
Spirit Walk seems to allow you to pass obstacles. Possibly it will let you walk through walls and doors which would be handy.
Spirit Vessel knocks 2 seconds off your Horrify and Spirit Walk cooldowns.
Wizard
Teleport was really good in D2. The combination of moving very fast with ignoring walls made it the top movement skill in the game. In D3 it has a cooldown although the Wormhole rune seems to allow you to chain spam it. It may once again be the best skill in the game if you can feed it enough Arcane Power.
Archon has a rune just called Teleport that allows you to teleport when you're an Archon.
Illusionist is a passive that resets the cooldowns on Teleport and Mirror Image if you take 15% damage in a single hit.
Conclusion:
In this area my beloved Witch Doctor class sucks royally. All of the others seem pretty good. I suspect that once people have good gear fast cast Wizards permaspamming Teleport will have the rest of us eating their dust.
In addition to run speed when considering how fast you move consider Gold Pickup Radius. If you ignore gold then you don't especially have to worry about this affix in terms of your speed. But if, like me, you instinctively collect all the gold before moving on you will play through the game much quicker with some Gold Radius bonuses. I personally like at least 4 yards. This affix also boosts two Witch Doctor passives (Circle of Life and Grave Injustice). Note that the Demon Hunter can have a ferret companion that collects the gold for her.
Run speed is only found on boots in the Beta. The datamined affix information also says it can spawn on weapons and belts although that's probably a smaller amount and quite a high level. In addition legendary and set items get to break the normal rules. Run speed was quite a common set bonus in Diablo 2 and I'm sure that'll be true in D3 too.
The best mod in Beta that people can use is +7% although faster boots exist for unplayably high levels.
Faster movement is one of people's top priorities and most people will consider boots useless if they don't have faster movement. Even blue boots with one affix are reasonably expensive on the auction house but I doubt many players would buy rare boots with good affixes that lack movement speed. It's very noticeable, even a small percent.
Selling crafted faster boots should be a reasonably profitable niche market for people interested in that side of things.
As well as gear, each class has a greater or lesser degree of movement buffs from abilities runes and passives. Demon Hunters Barbarians and Monks all get good speed options, Wizards get Teleport and the poor Witch Doctor is a lot slower than everyone else.
These are the relevant abilities:
Barbarian
Leap . Covers distance quicker than running, allows otherwise impassable terrain to be navigated.
Frenzy - Vanguard. +15% move while Frenzying.
Sprint. +40% for 3 seconds, can be runed into Marathon (50% for 5 seconds) or Forced March (affects allies, 20% for 3 seconds). It looks like you can chain Sprints as long as you have the Fury.
Demon Hunter
Smoke Screen - Displacement gives +35% movement speed when activated (for 3 seconds presumably, the duration of the ability).
Shadow Power - Shadow Glide gives +40% for the 3 seconds it's active.
Tactical Advantage gives you +60% move for 2 seconds after you Vault, Smokescreen or flip with Evasive Fire. I've been using this in the Beta and it's really good. Monster packs aren't that far separated and a Vault or two is usually enough to get to the next pack.
Hot Pursuit gives you +15% when you're at Full Hatred. Another nice ability, best to open on packs with your spender and finish off the last few with your builder if you have this. Combines well perhaps with Vengeance because that fills you up after a fight, there's usually a few globes around after you kill a decent size group.
Monk
Way of the Hundred Fists - Blazing Fists applies a 5% move and attack speed buff every crit that stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 5 seconds.
Dashing Strike - Way of the Falling Star gives a +25% move speed buff for 3 seconds after you hit an enemy.
Mantra of Evasion - Wind through the Reeds adds a 5% move speed buff to the group.
Fleet Footed gives 10% movement speed. This is a very nice passive for so early on, arguably the best skill in the game.
Witch Doctor
Horrify - Stalker gives +20% for 4 seconds. The skill has a 20 second cooldown.
Spirit Walk seems to allow you to pass obstacles. Possibly it will let you walk through walls and doors which would be handy.
Spirit Vessel knocks 2 seconds off your Horrify and Spirit Walk cooldowns.
Wizard
Teleport was really good in D2. The combination of moving very fast with ignoring walls made it the top movement skill in the game. In D3 it has a cooldown although the Wormhole rune seems to allow you to chain spam it. It may once again be the best skill in the game if you can feed it enough Arcane Power.
Archon has a rune just called Teleport that allows you to teleport when you're an Archon.
Illusionist is a passive that resets the cooldowns on Teleport and Mirror Image if you take 15% damage in a single hit.
Conclusion:
In this area my beloved Witch Doctor class sucks royally. All of the others seem pretty good. I suspect that once people have good gear fast cast Wizards permaspamming Teleport will have the rest of us eating their dust.
Sunday 25 March 2012
Account security
Diablo 3 is going to see an unprecedented wave of online game crime.
Not a pleasant fact but worth stating. For the first time your game is not just a leisure pursuit but a store of wealth, a piggy bank full of bank notes. And there's a lot of people who would dearly love to smash it.
The Background
Professor Richard Heeks studies and writes about how developing countries use computers and communication technologies, a discipline called Development Informatics. In 2008 he authored a report on gold farming which is probably still the leading single piece of research in this area. (If I'm wrong I'd be delighted to find out otherwise).
There's two things in particular I'd like to highlight from Heeks' work that are relevant to understanding the RMT industry.
First the idea that you can't earn more than $5 per week because of Chinese farmers is false. Chinese farmers, according to Heeks get a salary of $145 per month at the meanest estimate and operational overheads are 100%. In other words if you earn $289 per month and absorb your own overheads you operate cheaper than a Chinese farmer. No one in China would farm gold for $5 per week.
Next Heeks feels that perhaps "gold farming's crepuscular status was artificially suppressing consumer expenditure". He means less people buy gold because it's forbidden. Diablo 3 changes that.
I think the RMT economy in Diablo 3 is going to be huge. Massive, beyond anything seen before.
The gold farming industry since professor Heeks wrote his report has continued to grow. The World Bank reported it at $3 billion in 2009. As it has been pretty much doubling every year for which we have figures it may be over $10 billion now. This is seriously big business and Blizzard's last RPG was right at the heart of the sector's growth. How much bigger could it get when D3 makes gold buying respectable?
It's also a very shady business. Gold farming operations have been linked to pedophile rings, have used forced labour, have been compared operationally to mafia organisations.
Gold selling operations often result to preying upon their clients. According to Blizzard:
Gold sellers and leveling services are responsible for the vast majority of all account thefts, and they are the number-one source of World of Warcraft-related phishing attempts, spyware, and even credit card theft. Players who buy gold actively support spam, hacks, and keyloggers, and by doing so diminish the gameplay experience for everyone else.
They also prey heavily on the games companies. And there's no way in hell these companies will meekly hand over the profits from RMT back to Blizzard and go off and do something else.
They'll attack Diablo 3's security. Blizzard's security. And YOUR security.
Securing your account
1) Use an authenticator. If you're not happy about paying for one grind some Blizzbucks and spend it on one in your first couple of weeks playing Diablo 3. EU customers get one here and US customers get one here. South East Asian customers get redirected to the US store.
2) Use unique passwords and a unique email for Blizzard. Don't tell anyone this. I regularly get exciting sounding phishing emails that appear to come from Blizzard in my public email - I know they're fake because it's not the email address that Blizzard has.
3) Never open a phishing email. Not even to read how dumb they are or whatever. Just mark them as spam.
4) People always say never share your account. It happens to be against the TOS. It's good advice but if you do share your account change the password after each time your friend or family member uses it. Your kid sister isn't going to be as security conscious about your stuff as you are and before you know it half of her school has your log-in details.
5) Don't trust fan websites. It's pretty easy to put up a fansite. And you can put almost anything in the html.
I'm going to now put my tin foil hat on and ask you to consider major fan sites. There's a history in online gaming of professional gold farming outfits buying out popular amateur fan sites. In fact it's almost the dream one has when making a fan site - that in 3 years some company will offer a million quid for it. Well, I have a question I'd like you to think about.
Why?
Why would someone buy a game fansite for huge amounts of money? I've heard people say it's because they can advertise there but internet advertising is cheap. They could advertise on dozens of fansites for a decade for less money that they pay to buy them.
So...
Why?
What if some of the most popular fan sites have been bought out by gold sellers so that they can get people's game log-in details. In some cases they wouldn't even need to keylog although there have been stories of keyloggers downloaded from popular sites. But I bet if people had to put a username and password to read this blog some of you muppets would give me the exact same user name and password you use for your Battlenet account. <3
The basic fix is having up-to-date browser, addons (like Flash), virus scan and firewall. Some browsers may be safer than Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and NoScript.
A more paranoid fix is simply to use a different computer for web browsing than you do to play your games on. You'll probably need to browse a couple of sites on your gaming rig - downloading from Blizzard for example but you sure as heck don't need to surf to see what Inferno Skeleton King can drop on the pc that has your £5000 BNet account on. Alternatively you can run your browser in a sandbox with sandbox software like this one.
6) Don't use addons for D3. It's very likely that any addon won't work on D3 (or if it does you'll get caught and banned) but is issued knowing that it won't work on D3 but it will work on your pc, sending your personal details out over the wires. Just be suspicious - why is some random stranger on the internet giving you a maphack for free? Just because they're nice?
7) Be VERY careful if you trade on third party sites. It's probably not worth doing at all, some people might see a great deal and think yeah I'll buy that for $5 and sell it for $20 in game. Stop! Cons work on us because we're greedy.
8) Read the official information from Blizzard and CCP.
Not a pleasant fact but worth stating. For the first time your game is not just a leisure pursuit but a store of wealth, a piggy bank full of bank notes. And there's a lot of people who would dearly love to smash it.
 |
| This is what your Diablo 3 account looks like to some people. |
The Background
Professor Richard Heeks studies and writes about how developing countries use computers and communication technologies, a discipline called Development Informatics. In 2008 he authored a report on gold farming which is probably still the leading single piece of research in this area. (If I'm wrong I'd be delighted to find out otherwise).
There's two things in particular I'd like to highlight from Heeks' work that are relevant to understanding the RMT industry.
First the idea that you can't earn more than $5 per week because of Chinese farmers is false. Chinese farmers, according to Heeks get a salary of $145 per month at the meanest estimate and operational overheads are 100%. In other words if you earn $289 per month and absorb your own overheads you operate cheaper than a Chinese farmer. No one in China would farm gold for $5 per week.
Next Heeks feels that perhaps "gold farming's crepuscular status was artificially suppressing consumer expenditure". He means less people buy gold because it's forbidden. Diablo 3 changes that.
I think the RMT economy in Diablo 3 is going to be huge. Massive, beyond anything seen before.
The gold farming industry since professor Heeks wrote his report has continued to grow. The World Bank reported it at $3 billion in 2009. As it has been pretty much doubling every year for which we have figures it may be over $10 billion now. This is seriously big business and Blizzard's last RPG was right at the heart of the sector's growth. How much bigger could it get when D3 makes gold buying respectable?
It's also a very shady business. Gold farming operations have been linked to pedophile rings, have used forced labour, have been compared operationally to mafia organisations.
Gold selling operations often result to preying upon their clients. According to Blizzard:
Gold sellers and leveling services are responsible for the vast majority of all account thefts, and they are the number-one source of World of Warcraft-related phishing attempts, spyware, and even credit card theft. Players who buy gold actively support spam, hacks, and keyloggers, and by doing so diminish the gameplay experience for everyone else.
They also prey heavily on the games companies. And there's no way in hell these companies will meekly hand over the profits from RMT back to Blizzard and go off and do something else.
They'll attack Diablo 3's security. Blizzard's security. And YOUR security.
Securing your account
1) Use an authenticator. If you're not happy about paying for one grind some Blizzbucks and spend it on one in your first couple of weeks playing Diablo 3. EU customers get one here and US customers get one here. South East Asian customers get redirected to the US store.
2) Use unique passwords and a unique email for Blizzard. Don't tell anyone this. I regularly get exciting sounding phishing emails that appear to come from Blizzard in my public email - I know they're fake because it's not the email address that Blizzard has.
3) Never open a phishing email. Not even to read how dumb they are or whatever. Just mark them as spam.
4) People always say never share your account. It happens to be against the TOS. It's good advice but if you do share your account change the password after each time your friend or family member uses it. Your kid sister isn't going to be as security conscious about your stuff as you are and before you know it half of her school has your log-in details.
5) Don't trust fan websites. It's pretty easy to put up a fansite. And you can put almost anything in the html.
I'm going to now put my tin foil hat on and ask you to consider major fan sites. There's a history in online gaming of professional gold farming outfits buying out popular amateur fan sites. In fact it's almost the dream one has when making a fan site - that in 3 years some company will offer a million quid for it. Well, I have a question I'd like you to think about.
Why?
Why would someone buy a game fansite for huge amounts of money? I've heard people say it's because they can advertise there but internet advertising is cheap. They could advertise on dozens of fansites for a decade for less money that they pay to buy them.
So...
Why?
What if some of the most popular fan sites have been bought out by gold sellers so that they can get people's game log-in details. In some cases they wouldn't even need to keylog although there have been stories of keyloggers downloaded from popular sites. But I bet if people had to put a username and password to read this blog some of you muppets would give me the exact same user name and password you use for your Battlenet account. <3
The basic fix is having up-to-date browser, addons (like Flash), virus scan and firewall. Some browsers may be safer than Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and NoScript.
A more paranoid fix is simply to use a different computer for web browsing than you do to play your games on. You'll probably need to browse a couple of sites on your gaming rig - downloading from Blizzard for example but you sure as heck don't need to surf to see what Inferno Skeleton King can drop on the pc that has your £5000 BNet account on. Alternatively you can run your browser in a sandbox with sandbox software like this one.
6) Don't use addons for D3. It's very likely that any addon won't work on D3 (or if it does you'll get caught and banned) but is issued knowing that it won't work on D3 but it will work on your pc, sending your personal details out over the wires. Just be suspicious - why is some random stranger on the internet giving you a maphack for free? Just because they're nice?
7) Be VERY careful if you trade on third party sites. It's probably not worth doing at all, some people might see a great deal and think yeah I'll buy that for $5 and sell it for $20 in game. Stop! Cons work on us because we're greedy.
8) Read the official information from Blizzard and CCP.
 |
| Let's be careful out there. |
Saturday 24 March 2012
Skill calculators updated for patch 15
The Diablo 3 skill calculators have been updated on the official site.
It comes in both European and American flavours.
Enjoy skill doodling!
It comes in both European and American flavours.
Enjoy skill doodling!
I found this really funny.
Over on the US boards someone started a thread with the title I don't think D3 is going to do well at all and went on to explain why he thought that in a wall of text.
He got a blue response.
This response:
He got a blue response.
This response:
Nah, it'll be fine.
I bet some of the other games companies really hate Blizzard at times.
Corpse Spiders
Beta patch 15 moved the Corpse Spiders spell to level 3 and dramatically reduced its mana cost. The mana cost varies with level but when you get it it costs just 2 mana to cast. It always costs less to cast than you naturally regenerate making it completely spammable.
At level 13 it looks like this:
You get about 3 attacks each spider so the basic version does about 4 spiders * 3 attacks * 16% and the Leaping Spiders is 4 * 3 * 19%. That works out to 192% weapon damage and 228% weapon damage. Worth 3 points of anyone's mana!
At level 9 you unlock a rune for it. This changes the spell's visuals quite dramatically and improves it by increasing the damage the spiders do per bite and giving them a leap. This makes them better at attacking moving prey but it has been claimed that the basic spiders are better against stationary targets.
Runed it looks like this:
They're quite good at munching things as these unfortunate zombies discovered:
Another subtle advantage of the Leaping Spiders is that although they don't attract aggro (ie no mob thinks I'm picking that spider as my target), they do disrupt pathfinding. Leaping Spiders are bigger than the basic spiders so they get in the way more.
In this shot the Skeleton King was briefly trapped. He hesitated as if he wanted to move towards someone but couldn't path find. (Although he escapes when he uses his Whirlwind or Vanish abilities).
If you cast it at monsters that are moving towards you they form behind it. You can cast it onto the ground by holding shift, so dropping them into the paths of monsters slows them a small amount (as they have to deviate around the spiders).
Like all summons it's dynamic. If you have spiders out and cast Soul Harvest or equip a better weapon you'll see their damage increase dramatically.
It's possible to set up traps. If you're waiting for a monster to spawn you can spam spiders to create a reception committee. The unfortunate Mira Eamon met such a committee in this shot - she died almost instantly:
And just in case anyone hasn't had enough spiders already here's a fabulous video from a fellow arachnid enthusiast. Hat tip to Plateau Gaming and FixtionFXR for this wonderful film.
At level 13 it looks like this:
 |
| Corpse Spiders (basic version) |
You get about 3 attacks each spider so the basic version does about 4 spiders * 3 attacks * 16% and the Leaping Spiders is 4 * 3 * 19%. That works out to 192% weapon damage and 228% weapon damage. Worth 3 points of anyone's mana!
At level 9 you unlock a rune for it. This changes the spell's visuals quite dramatically and improves it by increasing the damage the spiders do per bite and giving them a leap. This makes them better at attacking moving prey but it has been claimed that the basic spiders are better against stationary targets.
Runed it looks like this:
 |
| Leaping Spiders |
They're quite good at munching things as these unfortunate zombies discovered:
 |
| What do spiders eat for dinner? Everything! |
Another subtle advantage of the Leaping Spiders is that although they don't attract aggro (ie no mob thinks I'm picking that spider as my target), they do disrupt pathfinding. Leaping Spiders are bigger than the basic spiders so they get in the way more.
In this shot the Skeleton King was briefly trapped. He hesitated as if he wanted to move towards someone but couldn't path find. (Although he escapes when he uses his Whirlwind or Vanish abilities).
If you cast it at monsters that are moving towards you they form behind it. You can cast it onto the ground by holding shift, so dropping them into the paths of monsters slows them a small amount (as they have to deviate around the spiders).
Like all summons it's dynamic. If you have spiders out and cast Soul Harvest or equip a better weapon you'll see their damage increase dramatically.
It's possible to set up traps. If you're waiting for a monster to spawn you can spam spiders to create a reception committee. The unfortunate Mira Eamon met such a committee in this shot - she died almost instantly:
 |
| The ! denotes Haedric experiencing a what the fuck moment. |
And just in case anyone hasn't had enough spiders already here's a fabulous video from a fellow arachnid enthusiast. Hat tip to Plateau Gaming and FixtionFXR for this wonderful film.
Friday 23 March 2012
What to do with this Blizzard money?
Diablo 3 offers players a revolutionary depth of real money trading. And no doubt many players are quite without planning it going to find themselves with a significant amount of real money. You will be able to cash it out in most countries via Paypal but I'd like to explore some of the other options. There are in fact quite a lot of ways to spend your Blizzbucks.
1) Games
Well Blizzard is a games company so it makes sense that they have rather a number of good games. While you can't pay for recurring sub fees directly with game money you will be able to buy games and you can buy WoW game time.
You could buy
- another copy of Diablo 3. More auction house slots, more character slots, more storage space, ability to cheese your other characters if you set it up on two computers.
- Diablo 2 (released 2000). Superb game that still has hundreds of thousands of players and ranks 18th in the all-time PC bestseller chart. It's one of the games that made Blizzard. My only quibble is that picking up gold is really annoying after you've played Diablo 3!
Starcraft I (released 1998) or II (Wings of Liberty campaign released 2010 and Heart of the Swarm campaign expected this year). Classic real time strategy games with a gritty sci fi style. So well balanced they've become one of the defining e-sports games supporting a community of professional gamers and commentators.
World of Warcraft. At the time of writing, if you've played WoW before the best way back in is with their scroll of resurrection deal. You can also get regular copies of the game as well as game time in the Blizzard store if you're not eligible for the scroll. If you've never played WoW it's a wonderful deep world full of little oddities and unexplored nooks. The main focus of players is raiding (killing big monsters in a large group) and group pvp in battlegrounds.
Warcraft 3 (released 2002). Another classic RTS, this is actually the base game that spawned the entire DOTA genre. Both DOTA and League of Legends emerged from Warcraft 3 mods. And Warcraft 3 is a very good real time strategy in its own right.
2) A Blizzard authenticator.
Phishing, keylogging, trojans - it's a brutal internet out there. And with Diablo 3 you'll be keeping REAL MONEY on the internet.
Lock your front door, folks, it's just common sense.
3) Cuddly toys
Like kids? I adore them although I don't have any myself. I do have friends with kids and the idea of playing Diablo 3 for a weekend then buying one of them a present from the proceeds seems like an excellent plan.
They even have a cuddly toy that looks like little Ashley:
4) Books
Among my many other talents I'm a librarian and like most librarians I love a good read. Richard A Knaak is a talented writer who's done lots of fan fiction (and my, hasn't that come a long way since Gary Gygax's terrible novels). He's done 6 Diablo novels which I aim to collect by playing Diablo 3 and earning them in-game.
There's also the Book of Cain which is an encyclopaedia of the Diablo universe. I know one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover but - damn:
5) Mouse mat
Ah yes, the mouse mat. THAT mouse mat. The picture tells it all:
Apparently there are other mouse mats in the store if you prefer something more wimpy. I couldn't really see them, my eyes were full of spikey mace.
6) T -shirts
There's both male and female T-shirts and they look pretty good.
7) Other stuff
There's a lot of other stuff in the Blizzard store too. There's an expensive but good mouse, an expensive but good headset, loads of WoW-related stuff and Starcraft stuff. So if you're someone who baulks at the idea of playing all night for $1 an hour maybe it's more palatable to think you play as you would anyway but sometimes treat yourself or your family to a present as a reward!
1) Games
 |
| Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm is due out this year. |
Well Blizzard is a games company so it makes sense that they have rather a number of good games. While you can't pay for recurring sub fees directly with game money you will be able to buy games and you can buy WoW game time.
You could buy
- another copy of Diablo 3. More auction house slots, more character slots, more storage space, ability to cheese your other characters if you set it up on two computers.
- Diablo 2 (released 2000). Superb game that still has hundreds of thousands of players and ranks 18th in the all-time PC bestseller chart. It's one of the games that made Blizzard. My only quibble is that picking up gold is really annoying after you've played Diablo 3!
Starcraft I (released 1998) or II (Wings of Liberty campaign released 2010 and Heart of the Swarm campaign expected this year). Classic real time strategy games with a gritty sci fi style. So well balanced they've become one of the defining e-sports games supporting a community of professional gamers and commentators.
World of Warcraft. At the time of writing, if you've played WoW before the best way back in is with their scroll of resurrection deal. You can also get regular copies of the game as well as game time in the Blizzard store if you're not eligible for the scroll. If you've never played WoW it's a wonderful deep world full of little oddities and unexplored nooks. The main focus of players is raiding (killing big monsters in a large group) and group pvp in battlegrounds.
Warcraft 3 (released 2002). Another classic RTS, this is actually the base game that spawned the entire DOTA genre. Both DOTA and League of Legends emerged from Warcraft 3 mods. And Warcraft 3 is a very good real time strategy in its own right.
2) A Blizzard authenticator.
 |
| No, you can't have my stuff! |
Phishing, keylogging, trojans - it's a brutal internet out there. And with Diablo 3 you'll be keeping REAL MONEY on the internet.
Lock your front door, folks, it's just common sense.
3) Cuddly toys
Like kids? I adore them although I don't have any myself. I do have friends with kids and the idea of playing Diablo 3 for a weekend then buying one of them a present from the proceeds seems like an excellent plan.
They even have a cuddly toy that looks like little Ashley:
 |
| Ashley. xx. |
4) Books
Among my many other talents I'm a librarian and like most librarians I love a good read. Richard A Knaak is a talented writer who's done lots of fan fiction (and my, hasn't that come a long way since Gary Gygax's terrible novels). He's done 6 Diablo novels which I aim to collect by playing Diablo 3 and earning them in-game.
There's also the Book of Cain which is an encyclopaedia of the Diablo universe. I know one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover but - damn:
 |
| Dare you smell the pages? |
5) Mouse mat
Ah yes, the mouse mat. THAT mouse mat. The picture tells it all:
 |
| Bring it on, Inferno level! |
Apparently there are other mouse mats in the store if you prefer something more wimpy. I couldn't really see them, my eyes were full of spikey mace.
6) T -shirts
There's both male and female T-shirts and they look pretty good.
7) Other stuff
There's a lot of other stuff in the Blizzard store too. There's an expensive but good mouse, an expensive but good headset, loads of WoW-related stuff and Starcraft stuff. So if you're someone who baulks at the idea of playing all night for $1 an hour maybe it's more palatable to think you play as you would anyway but sometimes treat yourself or your family to a present as a reward!
Thursday 22 March 2012
Nephalem Valour: analysis
OK, after absorbing the news it's time to analyse the new game mechanic. (Because that is, after all, what this site is all about).
On the face of it the buff encourages people to simply play through the game without cherry-picking. However I still think that's probably sub-optimal.
Inferno item farming will be all about killing random boss packs and champion packs that have random affixes. I wrote about D3 end game farming here and about boss affixes here.
Not all boss mods are equal. Moreover, not all boss mods have the same impact on different types of character/build. A Barbarian for example isn't really hurt by the Vortex mod. The boss pulls the Barb in close, the Barb smacks him in the face, what's not to like? Nor is he hurt much by the Teleporter mod. The boss Teleports to the Barb, the Barb smacks him in the face, again what's not to like?
However Plagued (extra poison damage plus aoe poison damage if close), Molten (extra fire damage plus aoe fire damage if close), Frozen (extra cold damage, slows movement and attacks) and Electrified (extra lightning damage, spits out highly damaging bolts in its vicinity) - that would be a horrible boss to melee.
So it makes sense in that example for the Barb to skip very melee-unfriendly combinations and cherry-pick easy kills.
Also you only need to achieve a minimum boss kill per unit of time that will be determined by the developers before release. They're toying with the 15 minutes to an hour range. I don't think it will be 15 minutes. 15 minutes to find your next boss pack and kill them? In a game where people wipe for an hour on boss packs? It's too fast. They have to allow for people needing to afk and people with no faster run so I think it will be at least 30 minutes, possibly an hour.
If you have an hour to kill your next pack then it will certainly be possible to skip difficult ones. In fact if you spend an hour wiping you've lost your buff anyway.
Next they've said the buff will have a stacks cap of a "number you can count on one hand". There's lots of boss packs and champion packs in a game. There are a lot more than 5 just in the Beta content and that's just a part of one of the 4 acts. So there's lots of bosses to choose from.
The waypoint system will, I think, become part of a complicated routeway of boss running.
Teleport to Old Ruins
- run back to the Dank Cellar, check for a boss
Town Portal
Teleport to the Cemetery of the Forsaken
- run back to the Weeping Hollow, check for packs and shrines
Town Portal from the far end of the Hollow
Teleport to the Cemetery of the Forsaken again
check graveyard and each Tomb, skipping the jar of souls event (because it doesn't spawn a boss) but doing the Lady event (it always spawns a boss)
and then on to the Cathedral etc.
Possibly you might know how many packs normally spawn on each dungeon level so if Cathedral 2 only shows you one pack before you find the way down you might double back to check the other bosses.
It could be possible that once you have a full stack of Nephalem Valour an act boss drops better than random bosses so you might do 5 bosses + Diablo, save and exit, repeat over and over. But I think that's possibly less likely because for several of those bosses you'd be at gimped Nephalem Valour.
What might be better if Neph Valour makes Act bosses really good is you get your full set of stacks then kill each Act boss, Baal running style. So basically you'd kill 5 champ packs in the Cemetery or wherever then use the last waypoint in each Act to get the act boss.
Now there's an advantage to working through the quests - you get extra bosses on the quests. For example Manglemaw is a boss that only spawns if you're doing A Shattered Crown quest. Otherwise his spot is empty. So part of this optimisation process may include doing the quest.
However, even with all the waypoints and optimising the hell out of the system you may end up doing something very similar to playing through the whole game in the right order (with some boss skipping). So well done Bllizzard! Looks like mission accomplished.
On the face of it the buff encourages people to simply play through the game without cherry-picking. However I still think that's probably sub-optimal.
Inferno item farming will be all about killing random boss packs and champion packs that have random affixes. I wrote about D3 end game farming here and about boss affixes here.
Not all boss mods are equal. Moreover, not all boss mods have the same impact on different types of character/build. A Barbarian for example isn't really hurt by the Vortex mod. The boss pulls the Barb in close, the Barb smacks him in the face, what's not to like? Nor is he hurt much by the Teleporter mod. The boss Teleports to the Barb, the Barb smacks him in the face, again what's not to like?
However Plagued (extra poison damage plus aoe poison damage if close), Molten (extra fire damage plus aoe fire damage if close), Frozen (extra cold damage, slows movement and attacks) and Electrified (extra lightning damage, spits out highly damaging bolts in its vicinity) - that would be a horrible boss to melee.
So it makes sense in that example for the Barb to skip very melee-unfriendly combinations and cherry-pick easy kills.
Also you only need to achieve a minimum boss kill per unit of time that will be determined by the developers before release. They're toying with the 15 minutes to an hour range. I don't think it will be 15 minutes. 15 minutes to find your next boss pack and kill them? In a game where people wipe for an hour on boss packs? It's too fast. They have to allow for people needing to afk and people with no faster run so I think it will be at least 30 minutes, possibly an hour.
If you have an hour to kill your next pack then it will certainly be possible to skip difficult ones. In fact if you spend an hour wiping you've lost your buff anyway.
Next they've said the buff will have a stacks cap of a "number you can count on one hand". There's lots of boss packs and champion packs in a game. There are a lot more than 5 just in the Beta content and that's just a part of one of the 4 acts. So there's lots of bosses to choose from.
The waypoint system will, I think, become part of a complicated routeway of boss running.
Teleport to Old Ruins
- run back to the Dank Cellar, check for a boss
Town Portal
Teleport to the Cemetery of the Forsaken
- run back to the Weeping Hollow, check for packs and shrines
Town Portal from the far end of the Hollow
Teleport to the Cemetery of the Forsaken again
check graveyard and each Tomb, skipping the jar of souls event (because it doesn't spawn a boss) but doing the Lady event (it always spawns a boss)
and then on to the Cathedral etc.
Possibly you might know how many packs normally spawn on each dungeon level so if Cathedral 2 only shows you one pack before you find the way down you might double back to check the other bosses.
It could be possible that once you have a full stack of Nephalem Valour an act boss drops better than random bosses so you might do 5 bosses + Diablo, save and exit, repeat over and over. But I think that's possibly less likely because for several of those bosses you'd be at gimped Nephalem Valour.
What might be better if Neph Valour makes Act bosses really good is you get your full set of stacks then kill each Act boss, Baal running style. So basically you'd kill 5 champ packs in the Cemetery or wherever then use the last waypoint in each Act to get the act boss.
Now there's an advantage to working through the quests - you get extra bosses on the quests. For example Manglemaw is a boss that only spawns if you're doing A Shattered Crown quest. Otherwise his spot is empty. So part of this optimisation process may include doing the quest.
 |
| No quest? No shinies. |
However, even with all the waypoints and optimising the hell out of the system you may end up doing something very similar to playing through the whole game in the right order (with some boss skipping). So well done Bllizzard! Looks like mission accomplished.
Nephalem Valour clarifications
Courtesy of Reddit we have some more information about the new game mechanic:
Straight from Blizzard:
When you say extra loot, do you mean, extra loot. Or do you mean extra loot that is on par with what elite/champs drop. I remember from the article before, bosses do not drop gear that is as good as champs/elites.
They will drop gear as good as champions and elites with this buff (because you have to kill champions and elites to get it, which was the point). With the buff active you’re guaranteed one extra item drop from the boss, and it’s likely that it’ll be 1 item per stack of the buff. Up to X stacks. We don’t know how many it’ll be, probably a handful.
(Hat tip to Degrin).
- How many stacks if any?
We're not totally sure but probably a number you can count on one hand.
- Do you lose the buff when you die
It lasts through death currently, and we like it. I know some people will also want it to be a punishment for death, but repair costs are already extremely impactful.
- If the buff splits between players
Like someone joins after you've been killing and they have less stacks? It's a direct increase to your MF/GF, so it uses the same mechanics.
- If you lose it on disconnect
There's a small grace period, similar to WoW where you can get back into the game before your character is actually logged out (ie a timeout), but yes if your character times out you would lose the buff.
- Time limit on stack if any?
We're messing with times from about 15 minutes to an hour. We don't know yet.
- Stacks removed after boss?
We don't really think it needs to. Your focus is still going to be seeking out champions and rares. If you want to get full stacks, kill a boss, and then try to rush to kill another boss before the buff falls off... have fun? It's not going to be the most lucrative way to play, so it's likely a non-issue hypothetical.
When you say extra loot, do you mean, extra loot. Or do you mean extra loot that is on par with what elite/champs drop. I remember from the article before, bosses do not drop gear that is as good as champs/elites.
They will drop gear as good as champions and elites with this buff (because you have to kill champions and elites to get it, which was the point). With the buff active you’re guaranteed one extra item drop from the boss, and it’s likely that it’ll be 1 item per stack of the buff. Up to X stacks. We don’t know how many it’ll be, probably a handful.
(Hat tip to Degrin).
Wednesday 21 March 2012
Blizzard unveils new loot buff
Bashiok has just unveiled details of the new Nephalem Valour buff:
Nephalem Valor is one of the major new systems in Diablo III and it kicks in at level 60. Keep in mind that this is still in testing and we’re still working out the details. Here’s how it currently works internally: Rare and Champion packs already have great loot on them. By killing a Rare or Champion pack, not only do you get their loot, but you’ll also receive a buff granting you increased magic find and gold find. However, if you change a skill, skill rune, passive, or leave the game, the buff disappears. As an extra reward, if you kill a boss while this buff is active, you’ll receive extra loot drops from that boss.
The exact amount of magic find and gold find provided by the buff is still being reviewed, as is the amount of extra loot you get from a boss while the buff is active. We’re also playing around with whether or not the buff stacks, what the duration should be, and whether or not it should persist through death. We want to make sure the buff is strong enough to make staying in your current game more rewarding than creating a new game. At the same time, if the buff is too strong, it risks making shorter play sessions feel not worthwhile.
We expect this system will encourage players to stick with a skill build of their choice, select an area of the game they enjoy, and sweep it for rare and champion packs on their way to a boss, finishing off a run with a boss that’ll be worth killing. If you wanted a shorter play session you could be done at that point, but if you have more time, the path of least resistance would ideally be to stay in the same game and make your way towards the next boss.
He also clarified a point raised by a player:
We’re working hard on balancing and testing
Diablo III, and one of the major components is making sure that the end
game experience is fun and exciting. We’d like to share a few of our
goals for end game:
- We have an enormous number of skill build combinations, and we want a lot of those skill builds to be viable and interesting
- While there are millions of skill builds available to players, we don’t want players swapping skills regularly to beat specific encounters as they come up
- We don’t want repeatedly running specific three-minute chunks of the game to be the most efficient way to acquire gear for your character
- While a three-minute run shouldn’t be the most efficient, we also don’t want you to feel like it’s a two-hour commitment every time you sit down to play
- Bosses should still feel worth killing
Nephalem Valor is one of the major new systems in Diablo III and it kicks in at level 60. Keep in mind that this is still in testing and we’re still working out the details. Here’s how it currently works internally: Rare and Champion packs already have great loot on them. By killing a Rare or Champion pack, not only do you get their loot, but you’ll also receive a buff granting you increased magic find and gold find. However, if you change a skill, skill rune, passive, or leave the game, the buff disappears. As an extra reward, if you kill a boss while this buff is active, you’ll receive extra loot drops from that boss.
The exact amount of magic find and gold find provided by the buff is still being reviewed, as is the amount of extra loot you get from a boss while the buff is active. We’re also playing around with whether or not the buff stacks, what the duration should be, and whether or not it should persist through death. We want to make sure the buff is strong enough to make staying in your current game more rewarding than creating a new game. At the same time, if the buff is too strong, it risks making shorter play sessions feel not worthwhile.
We expect this system will encourage players to stick with a skill build of their choice, select an area of the game they enjoy, and sweep it for rare and champion packs on their way to a boss, finishing off a run with a boss that’ll be worth killing. If you wanted a shorter play session you could be done at that point, but if you have more time, the path of least resistance would ideally be to stay in the same game and make your way towards the next boss.
He also clarified a point raised by a player:
No, it kicks in at 60. Once you hit 60 you have
access to this buff regardless of difficulty. You can use it and go back
to Hell to help you gear up for Inferno, absolutely.
Pretty sensational stuff and it will really affect the way we play. Personally I love it, I'm looking forward to playing through the game rather than doing the same old runs over and over.
I don't think it will entirely cut out optmising - clearly players will choose where to start.
Following on from yesterday's post about farming clearly it's optimal now to race to 60 and farm before most people are 60. A shame for those of us who like messing about with alts but I for one will certainly race up to 60 and try to knock some of those terrifying Inferno bosses over!
Tuesday 20 March 2012
Item farming for real money
There's a widespread assumption that item farming in Diablo 3 will be for pitifully small amounts of money, largely because of the existence of a large Chinese gold farming industry which will drive prices down. Force and Sixen voiced this opinion on the latest of their excellent series of podcasts and Marcko of the gold guide more or less agreed.
I'd like to question this assumption:
Marcko wrote: Force stated several times that competition would drive down prices to make farming virtually slave labor. He jokingly mentioned a certain ethnicity known for gold farming and said that this group of people would drive prices into the ground. You're right Force, but they can only drive them down so much. At some point, demand and supply will meet to create a consistent trend for prices. Being ignorant of this balancing act will lead to the assumption that it's impossible to make any money playing the system. But you are correct that simply farming items and selling them is a terrible way to make money on any auction house.
Remember the You Will Die! video that Blizzard released? This is what farming in Inferno looks like when done by some pretty serious gamers (serious enough to work for a games company).
Now I've met a number of Chinese farmers in WoW and read a lot of articles. Generally the typical Chinese gold farmer in previous games has been very unskilled killing very easy mobs for loot. In Vanilla WoW they did the owlbears up in Winterspring all day (and I used to go gank them sometimes).
Another problem is that the accounts are worked in shifts. At the end of an 8 hour shift a farmer sells everything he possibly can to meet his quota and leaves his shift-mates with an almost naked character. That wasn't too bad in WoW where most of the gear, even the bags later on, was bound to the character. But in D3 nothing is bound, a farmer can strip his guy naked for extra gold.
There's no way that these people are going to become effective Inferno teams, at least not early on. In fact we have strong evidence for this because there was already a practice in WoW of selling raid and arena spots - you'd pay a good player to haul your not-so-talented butt past content you wouldn't otherwise beat.
I've never heard of Chinese gold farmers selling arena ranking or raid spots.
So while there will be competition if you are farming effectively in Inferno, particularly if you are ahead of the curve, there won't be millions of semi-literate people from the Third World in the next game farming the same mobs. Not even if their prison guards try to make them.
I'd like to question this assumption:
Marcko wrote: Force stated several times that competition would drive down prices to make farming virtually slave labor. He jokingly mentioned a certain ethnicity known for gold farming and said that this group of people would drive prices into the ground. You're right Force, but they can only drive them down so much. At some point, demand and supply will meet to create a consistent trend for prices. Being ignorant of this balancing act will lead to the assumption that it's impossible to make any money playing the system. But you are correct that simply farming items and selling them is a terrible way to make money on any auction house.
Remember the You Will Die! video that Blizzard released? This is what farming in Inferno looks like when done by some pretty serious gamers (serious enough to work for a games company).
Now I've met a number of Chinese farmers in WoW and read a lot of articles. Generally the typical Chinese gold farmer in previous games has been very unskilled killing very easy mobs for loot. In Vanilla WoW they did the owlbears up in Winterspring all day (and I used to go gank them sometimes).
Another problem is that the accounts are worked in shifts. At the end of an 8 hour shift a farmer sells everything he possibly can to meet his quota and leaves his shift-mates with an almost naked character. That wasn't too bad in WoW where most of the gear, even the bags later on, was bound to the character. But in D3 nothing is bound, a farmer can strip his guy naked for extra gold.
There's no way that these people are going to become effective Inferno teams, at least not early on. In fact we have strong evidence for this because there was already a practice in WoW of selling raid and arena spots - you'd pay a good player to haul your not-so-talented butt past content you wouldn't otherwise beat.
I've never heard of Chinese gold farmers selling arena ranking or raid spots.
So while there will be competition if you are farming effectively in Inferno, particularly if you are ahead of the curve, there won't be millions of semi-literate people from the Third World in the next game farming the same mobs. Not even if their prison guards try to make them.
A Diablo themed picture every day
Talented Diablo fan Waies has decided to draw a Diablo themed picture every day until release.
His album is here:
Several of his pieces draw from famous art works, there's also a piece inspired by Da Vinci's Last Supper which is breathtaking.
All art is copyright of the original artist.
His album is here:
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| 28th Feb: Soul leeched by an Apparition |
All art is copyright of the original artist.
Monday 19 March 2012
Soul Harvest: it's awesome
The Witch Doctor is great fun to play in Patch 15.
This was my first impression:
Level 1 Poison Dart, Level 2 Grasp, OK nothing new.
Level 3 Corpse Spiders. And you can spam it so much - your blue ball barely moves while spamming it. On mobs like Mira, the Blacksmith's wife you have about 20 spiders there waiting as she turns into a zombie, she got devoured!
Then Level 5 Firebats. Kills the mana but whoo hoo, running about with your own personal flamethrower is fantastic.
Level 6 now, nearly 7 and the server's just fallen over again. I'll go to sleep happy and dream of creepy-crawlies.
Level 3 Corpse Spiders. And you can spam it so much - your blue ball barely moves while spamming it. On mobs like Mira, the Blacksmith's wife you have about 20 spiders there waiting as she turns into a zombie, she got devoured!
Then Level 5 Firebats. Kills the mana but whoo hoo, running about with your own personal flamethrower is fantastic.
Level 6 now, nearly 7 and the server's just fallen over again. I'll go to sleep happy and dream of creepy-crawlies.
I've now got to level 12 and oh my, is Soul Harvest good or what?
This is my stats page without Soul Harvest. 28.18 dps (all my spells are based off that).
So what happens with one click of the Soul Harvest button? This happens - 60.76 dps
OK, big numbers but does it actually kick butt in practice? Hell yes!
Sunday 18 March 2012
Beta's back up!
After being down most of the weekend the D3 Beta is back up. On the log in screen it warns that service may be intermittent.
I do feel for the people at Blizzard, some of them won't have got much sleep in the last 48 hours.
Apologies too to all those who haven't yet got a Beta key. I'll start keeping an eye open for any contests and I'll post them here when I see them.
Now excuse me - I've zombies to kill!
I do feel for the people at Blizzard, some of them won't have got much sleep in the last 48 hours.
Apologies too to all those who haven't yet got a Beta key. I'll start keeping an eye open for any contests and I'll post them here when I see them.
Now excuse me - I've zombies to kill!
Comparing different weapon loadouts
This post is a response to Darth Solo's post wondering how Diablo 3 skills work.
Take the Barbarian, Monk or Witch Doctor. They can equip either one of the following:
- 1H weapon + shield
- 2H weapon
- dual-wield 1H weapons
Actually all five classes can equip any of those weapon load-outs.
Edit: In patch 15 my Witch Doctor can't dual wield. Left hand is for offhand only (or half of a two-hander). No idea if it was like that before.
Most offensive spells and skills are based on weapon damage.
It says that but in practice it's not true. Ability damage is really based on your dps and it's dynamic. So if someone casts a group attack speed buff your nukes do more damage.
The detailed theorycraft is here.
Here are my questions:
How the hell is damage calculated for 2H weapon vs dual-wield 1H weapons? I'm sure this has been explained at some point by the devs but I missed it. It should be fairly obvious, yet I don't know what the answer is.
Dual wield dps is the average damage improved by a 15% attack speed bonus. So if you have a 10 dps weapon in one hand and a 12 dps weapon in the other hand your dps is (10+12)/2 * 1.15 = 12.65
To express this the other way round let's assume you can find a 20.2 dps two-hander fairly easily off the Beta auction house. To be better dps a pair of one-handers would have to average 20.2/1.15 = 17.56.
So you can throw away any one-handed weapon under 17.6 dps assuming you can buy or craft a 20.2 dps flamberge.
There's a very useful dps calculator here.
In which situations is it preferable to wear a 1H weapon + shield instead of 2H weapon or dual-wielding?
OK so with a shield you sacrifice 15% of your dps assuming equal 1H weapons. In return you get an item which can take 2 socket slots instead of just one. An item which gives you a block chance and adds some armour. And an item which will have different magical properties because it accesses a different affix pool with more defensive mods in it. For example you could get up to 80 resist all or +100% maximum life on a shield - there's no equivalent defensive mods for a sword.
Essentially shields do the obvious job - they make you harder to kill at the price of some offensive power.
If spells and skills are based on weapon damage, won't a spellcaster pick the hugest 2H weapon she can find?
It's an option but generally spellcasters will do better using special offhand items that are in the game for them. Wizards get wizard orbs, witch doctors get voodoo dolls. Just pick whatever displays the most dps on the character sheet.
this whole thing feels like lazy design to me
I'm looking under the hood more than you are and to me the system is absolutely fascinating because it throws up so many variables. It fulfills the part of the Blizzard mantra about Hard to Master.
It's certainly not lazy design. You may dislike it and are certainly entitled to if you choose. But there are real and quite clever choices underlying the system. In some ways it's quite elegant.
I will probably go with the highest DPS weapon combo I can find
Yup, do this. Unless you hit some higher level area and find yourself dying a lot then use a shield. Well done, you've solved the puzzle that is Diablo 3 gearing!
Take the Barbarian, Monk or Witch Doctor. They can equip either one of the following:
- 1H weapon + shield
- 2H weapon
- dual-wield 1H weapons
Actually all five classes can equip any of those weapon load-outs.
Edit: In patch 15 my Witch Doctor can't dual wield. Left hand is for offhand only (or half of a two-hander). No idea if it was like that before.
Most offensive spells and skills are based on weapon damage.
It says that but in practice it's not true. Ability damage is really based on your dps and it's dynamic. So if someone casts a group attack speed buff your nukes do more damage.
The detailed theorycraft is here.
Here are my questions:
How the hell is damage calculated for 2H weapon vs dual-wield 1H weapons? I'm sure this has been explained at some point by the devs but I missed it. It should be fairly obvious, yet I don't know what the answer is.
Dual wield dps is the average damage improved by a 15% attack speed bonus. So if you have a 10 dps weapon in one hand and a 12 dps weapon in the other hand your dps is (10+12)/2 * 1.15 = 12.65
To express this the other way round let's assume you can find a 20.2 dps two-hander fairly easily off the Beta auction house. To be better dps a pair of one-handers would have to average 20.2/1.15 = 17.56.
So you can throw away any one-handed weapon under 17.6 dps assuming you can buy or craft a 20.2 dps flamberge.
There's a very useful dps calculator here.
In which situations is it preferable to wear a 1H weapon + shield instead of 2H weapon or dual-wielding?
OK so with a shield you sacrifice 15% of your dps assuming equal 1H weapons. In return you get an item which can take 2 socket slots instead of just one. An item which gives you a block chance and adds some armour. And an item which will have different magical properties because it accesses a different affix pool with more defensive mods in it. For example you could get up to 80 resist all or +100% maximum life on a shield - there's no equivalent defensive mods for a sword.
Essentially shields do the obvious job - they make you harder to kill at the price of some offensive power.
If spells and skills are based on weapon damage, won't a spellcaster pick the hugest 2H weapon she can find?
It's an option but generally spellcasters will do better using special offhand items that are in the game for them. Wizards get wizard orbs, witch doctors get voodoo dolls. Just pick whatever displays the most dps on the character sheet.
this whole thing feels like lazy design to me
I'm looking under the hood more than you are and to me the system is absolutely fascinating because it throws up so many variables. It fulfills the part of the Blizzard mantra about Hard to Master.
It's certainly not lazy design. You may dislike it and are certainly entitled to if you choose. But there are real and quite clever choices underlying the system. In some ways it's quite elegant.
I will probably go with the highest DPS weapon combo I can find
Yup, do this. Unless you hit some higher level area and find yourself dying a lot then use a shield. Well done, you've solved the puzzle that is Diablo 3 gearing!
The Hounds from Hell
So far people theorycrafting around the summoned creatures have discovered some very interesting information about how summons scale with gear. Big thanks to the people at Armada and Diabloinc.
Here's the summary:
Summon damage is based on weapon dps, not the damage range. For instance a 2-8 damage 1.0 speed weapon will see summons do the same damage as a 4-16 2.0 speed weapon.
Summon damage scales with your damage. If you equip a better weapon or gain a temporary INT buff your summoned creatures will do more damage.
Summons life does not scale with Vitality.
Summons armour does not scale with your armour.
OK, so the only way we can improve summons is by damage buffs? Well we have some of these.
Soul Harvest gives us up to +650 Int per cast.
Gruesome Feast gives us up to +50% Int from using health globes.
Provoke the Pack gives us +5% damage per dog sacrificed.
Here are two builds based on boosting our damage so that our summons become much much more dangerous.
The Hounds from Hell
This build tries to cast Soul Harvest as much as possible. The aim is to get many stacks of it going at once to create a positive feedback loop. You kill things fast because you have very high bonus damage. Your cooldowns are reduced because you are killing things fast. You can cast Soul Harvest a lot because its cooldown gets reduced causing you to have high bonus damage.
The build has 2 permanent summons following you about and the plan is that early in the fight you drop a giant toad and a giant spider. If it looks like a tough fight you can also throw in a Fetish army. You then cast Soul Harvest as much as you can. Its cooldown is reduced by 2 from one passive and reduced by 1 per kill from another passive so with enough mobs around you could be casting it every few seconds. Each cast gives you a 650 Int buff that lasts 60 seconds. We should be able to get 10 going at once for +6500 bonus Int as long as we can kill 7 mobs every 6 seconds.
So just how smart could you be? Well in theory given infinite targets and 3 friends who kill infinitely fast you could spam Soul Harvest in your fast cast gear at the fastest possible casting speed while permanently being deluged with health globes. Assuming max cast is 3 per second this would give you a total intelligence of:
Base Int for a naked character * 1.5
+ Int on gear * 1.5
+ 3 casts * 60 seconds * 130 Int buff per mob * 5 mobs * 1.5 gruesome feast bonus = +175, 500 Int Soul Harvest bonus.
That's a lot of damage and a +17k resist bonus!
Who let the dogs out?
This build is trying to generate Zombie Dogs so that we can Sacrifice them. In addition it will generate a lot of health globes. The idea is to use Sacrifice any time we have 3 dogs up and cast a dog generator any time we don't Summon Zombie Dogs, Mass Confusion and Big Bad Voodoo are all dog generators in this build. We also have passive dog generation.
The high throughput of dogs allows us to get stacks of Provoke the Pack up quite high. It also has the side effect of leaving a lot of health globes behind which feeds our Gruesome Feast passive. We cast Soul Harvest whenever it cools down and kill things with Explosive Beast when there's nothing else to do. The beast is a Zombie Dog and so may benefit from our health globes rune.
There's a variation on this build where you drop Circle of Life for Zombie Handler. This gives us up to 4 dogs out at a time. This is a very useful variant if you plan to make a Youtube video showing people your spectacular damage numbers.
For example if a mob is hit by all 4 zombie dogs when your buffs are up and it crits then damage could be:
Sacrifice 200%
* 4 zombie dogs
* 1.5 for 10 stacks of Provoke the Pack
* 1.2 for Big Bad Voodoo's attack speed bonus
* 1.5 (or higher with gear) because it crit
Adjusted by +650 * 8 Int for 8 stacks of Soul Harvest buff
and all Int, including the Soul Harvest stack, *1.5 for Gruesome Feast.
I imagine that will look rather spectacular :)
If you really wanted to get a huge number for a screenshot you could try the Slam Dance rune for another 30% damage and Hex for another 20% damage. But that wouldn't be a very viable build as you would lose dog generation.
Here's the summary:
Summon damage is based on weapon dps, not the damage range. For instance a 2-8 damage 1.0 speed weapon will see summons do the same damage as a 4-16 2.0 speed weapon.
Summon damage scales with your damage. If you equip a better weapon or gain a temporary INT buff your summoned creatures will do more damage.
Summons life does not scale with Vitality.
Summons armour does not scale with your armour.
OK, so the only way we can improve summons is by damage buffs? Well we have some of these.
Soul Harvest gives us up to +650 Int per cast.
Gruesome Feast gives us up to +50% Int from using health globes.
Provoke the Pack gives us +5% damage per dog sacrificed.
Here are two builds based on boosting our damage so that our summons become much much more dangerous.
The Hounds from Hell
This build tries to cast Soul Harvest as much as possible. The aim is to get many stacks of it going at once to create a positive feedback loop. You kill things fast because you have very high bonus damage. Your cooldowns are reduced because you are killing things fast. You can cast Soul Harvest a lot because its cooldown gets reduced causing you to have high bonus damage.
The build has 2 permanent summons following you about and the plan is that early in the fight you drop a giant toad and a giant spider. If it looks like a tough fight you can also throw in a Fetish army. You then cast Soul Harvest as much as you can. Its cooldown is reduced by 2 from one passive and reduced by 1 per kill from another passive so with enough mobs around you could be casting it every few seconds. Each cast gives you a 650 Int buff that lasts 60 seconds. We should be able to get 10 going at once for +6500 bonus Int as long as we can kill 7 mobs every 6 seconds.
So just how smart could you be? Well in theory given infinite targets and 3 friends who kill infinitely fast you could spam Soul Harvest in your fast cast gear at the fastest possible casting speed while permanently being deluged with health globes. Assuming max cast is 3 per second this would give you a total intelligence of:
Base Int for a naked character * 1.5
+ Int on gear * 1.5
+ 3 casts * 60 seconds * 130 Int buff per mob * 5 mobs * 1.5 gruesome feast bonus = +175, 500 Int Soul Harvest bonus.
That's a lot of damage and a +17k resist bonus!
Who let the dogs out?
This build is trying to generate Zombie Dogs so that we can Sacrifice them. In addition it will generate a lot of health globes. The idea is to use Sacrifice any time we have 3 dogs up and cast a dog generator any time we don't Summon Zombie Dogs, Mass Confusion and Big Bad Voodoo are all dog generators in this build. We also have passive dog generation.
The high throughput of dogs allows us to get stacks of Provoke the Pack up quite high. It also has the side effect of leaving a lot of health globes behind which feeds our Gruesome Feast passive. We cast Soul Harvest whenever it cools down and kill things with Explosive Beast when there's nothing else to do. The beast is a Zombie Dog and so may benefit from our health globes rune.
There's a variation on this build where you drop Circle of Life for Zombie Handler. This gives us up to 4 dogs out at a time. This is a very useful variant if you plan to make a Youtube video showing people your spectacular damage numbers.
For example if a mob is hit by all 4 zombie dogs when your buffs are up and it crits then damage could be:
Sacrifice 200%
* 4 zombie dogs
* 1.5 for 10 stacks of Provoke the Pack
* 1.2 for Big Bad Voodoo's attack speed bonus
* 1.5 (or higher with gear) because it crit
Adjusted by +650 * 8 Int for 8 stacks of Soul Harvest buff
and all Int, including the Soul Harvest stack, *1.5 for Gruesome Feast.
I imagine that will look rather spectacular :)
If you really wanted to get a huge number for a screenshot you could try the Slam Dance rune for another 30% damage and Hex for another 20% damage. But that wouldn't be a very viable build as you would lose dog generation.
Friday 16 March 2012
WD abilities in patch 14 - list
Apologies for something of a text dump. Much of the information around is incorrect so I thought it would be useful to record what the in-game descriptions say. Some runed skills are missing. This is because if you haven't unlocked the skill you can't read its runes. This is a list of all abilities, all runes visible at level 13 and all passives.
Format is character level - skill - description
Diablo 3 patch 14 – skill
descriptions
Witch Doctor
1 Poison Dart. 6 mana. Shoot a deadly
poison dart that deals 100% weapon damage and an additional 50%
weapon damage as poison over 2 seconds.
2 Grasp of the Dead. 75 mana, cooldown
8 seconds. Ghoulish hands reach out from the ground, slowing enemy
movement by 60% and dealing 20% weapon damage as Physical for 8
seconds.
3 Corpse Spiders 48 mana. Throw a jar
with 4 spiders that attack nearby enemies for 25% weapon damage as
Physical before dying.
4 Summon Zombie Dogs. 30 mana, cooldown
60 seconds. Sumon 3 Zombie Dogs from the depths to fight by your
side. Each dog deals 9% of your weapon damage as Physical per hit.
5 Plague of Toads. 21 mana. Release a
handful of toads that deal 130% weapon damage as Poison to enemies
they come in contact with.
6 Poison Dart – Splinters. Shoot 3
Poison Darts that deal 60% weapon damage as Poison each.
7 Grasp of the Dead – Groping Eels.
Increases the damage done to 36% weapon damage as Physical.
8 Hex. 30 mana, cooldown 10 seconds.
Summon a Fetish Shaman for 8 seconds that will hex enemies into
chickens. Hexed enemies are unable to perform offensive actions and
take 10% additional damage.
9 Horrify. 22 mana, cooldown 20
seconds. Don a spectral mask that horrifies all enemies within 12
yards, causing then to run in Fear for 4 seconds.
Leaping Spiders Summon jumping spiders
that leap up to 25 yards to reach their target and attack for 30%
weapon damage as Physical.
10 Jungle Fortitude. Reduces all damage
taken by you and your pets by 20%.
Vermin. Your Plague of Toads, Corpse
Spiders, Locust Swarm, and Firebats abilities do 20% more damage.
11 Haunt. 9 mana. Haunt an enemy with a
spirit, dealing 360% weapon damage as Arcane over 15 seconds. If the
target dies, the spirit will haunt another nearby enemy.
Explosive Toads. Mutate to fire
bullfrogs that explode for 169% weapon damage as Fire.
12 Firebats. 27 mana. Call forth a
swarm of fiery bats to burn enemies in front of you for 100% weapon
damage as Fire.
Rabid Dogs. Your Zombie Dogs gain an
infectious bite that deals 9% of your weapon damage as Poison over 3
seconds.
13 Poison Dart - Numbing Dart. Toxins
in the Poison Dart reduce the target's movement speed by 60% for 2
seconds.
Sacrifice. Banish your Zombie Dogs and
cause them to explode, each dealing 200% of your weapon damage as
Physical to all enemies within 12 yards.
Circle of Life. Whever an enemy dies
within 12 yards there is a 5% chance that a Zombie Dog will
automatically emerge. The range of this effect is increased by items
that increase your gold pickup radius.
Spiritual Attunement. Maximum mana is
increased by 20%. Regenerate 1% of your maximum mana per second. Mana
is the fuel you use to cast your offensive and defensive spells.
14 Zombie Charger. 86 mana. Call forth
a reckless, suicidal zombie that deals 165% weapon damage as Poison
to all enemies in its path before decomposing.
Hex – Hedge Magic. The Fetish Shaman
will periodically heal allies for 56 Life.
15 Grasp of the Dead – Unbreakable
Grasp. Increases the Slow amount to 80%
Horrify - Phobia - increases the duration
horrified enemies run in Fear to 6 seconds.
16 Spirit Walk. 30 mana, cooldown 15
seconds. Leave your physical body and enter the spirit realm for 2
seconds. While in the spirit realm your movement is unhindered. Your
link to the spirit realm will end if you cast any spell or if your
physical body sustains 50^ of your maximum Life in damage.
Gruesome Feast. Whenever you are healed
by a health globe, you gain 10% of your maximum mana and 10%
intelligence for 10 seconds. The intelligence bonus can stack up to 5
times.
17 Haunt – consuming spirit. The
spirit returns 5 life per second.
Spirit Barrage. 66 mana. Bombard a
target with a spirit blast that deals 190% weapon damage as Physical.
18 Corpse Spiders - Spider Queen. Summon a Spider Queen
that births spiderlings, dealing 20% weapon damage as Poison to
enemies in the area. Lasts 15 seconds. You may only have one spider
queen summoned at a time.
Sacrifice - Black Blood. Ichor erupts from the
corpses of the Zombie Dogs and Slows enemies by 60% for 8 seconds.
Firebats - Dire Bats. Summon fewer but larger bats
that travel up to 40 yards and hit for 170% weapon damage as Fire.
19 Gargantuan. 90 mana, cooldown 60
seconds. Summon a Gargantuan zombie to fight for you. The Gargantuan
attacks for 25% of your weapon damage as Physical.
Plague of Toads - Toad of Hugeness. Summon a giant toad
that swallows enemies whole for up to 5 seconds, digesting for 28% of
your weapon damage per second as Physical. Adds a 5 second cooldown
to Plague of Toads.
Summon Zombie Dogs - Final Gift. Your Zombie Dogs have a 15%
chance to leave behind a health globe when they die.
20 Locust Swarm. 75 mana. Unleash a
plague of locusts that swarms enemies, dealing 150% weapon damage as
Poison over 3 seconds. The locusts will jump to additional nearby
enemies.
Bad Medicine. Whenever you deal Poison
damage to an enemy, their damage is reduced by 20% for 3 seconds.
Blood Ritual. 15% of mana costs are
paid with Life. In addition you regenerate 1% of your maximum Life
per second.
21 Firebomb. 6 mana. Lob an explosive
skull that deals 90% weapon damage as Fire to all enemies within 8
yards.
Hex – Jinx. Hexed targets take 20%
additional damage.
Horrify - Stalker – Increases movement speed by
20% for 4 seconds after casting Horrify.
22 Soul Harvest. 36 Mana, cooldown 15
seconds. Feed on the force of up to 5 enemies within 16 yards. Gain
54 Intelligence for each afflicted enemy. This effect lasts 30
seconds.
Mass Confusion. 45 mana, 60 seconds
cooldown. Incite paranoia in enemies, confusing them and causing some
to fight for you for 12 seconds.
Acid Cloud. 120 mana. Cause acid to
rain down, dealing an initial 85% weapon damage as Poison followed by
60% weapon damage as Poison over 3 seconds to enemies who remain in
the area.
23
24 Haunt – Resentful Spirit. Summon a
vengeful spirit that does 180% weapon damage as Arcane over 3
seconds.
Sacrifice - Next of Kin. Each Zombie Dog you
sacrifice has a 35% chance to resurrect as a new Zombie Dog.
Zombie handler. You can have 4 Zombie
Dogs summoned at one time. The health of your Zombie Dogs and
Gargantuan is increased by 20%.
25 Poison Dart – Spined Dart. Gain 9
mana every time Poison Dart hits an enemy.
Big Bad Voodoo. Cooldown 120 seconds.
Conjure a Fetish that begins a ritual dance that increases the attack
speed and movement speed of all nearby allies by 20% for 20 seconds.
Firebats - Vampire Bats. Gain 2.5% of damage done
by the bats as Life.
26
27 Grasp of the Dead – Rain of
Corpses. Corpses fall from the sky, dealing 76% weapon damage as
Physical to nearby enemies.
Pierce the Veil. All of your damage is
increased by 20% but your mana costs are increased by 30%.
28 Grasp of the Dead – Desperate
Grasp. Reduces the cooldown of Grasp of the Dead to 6 seconds.
Wall of Zombies. 63 mana, cooldown 25
seconds. Raise a line of zombies from the ground that attacks nearby
enemies for 80% weapon damage as Physical for 5 seconds.
Summon Zombie Dogs - Life Link. Your Zombie Dogs absorb 10%
of all damage done to you.
29
30 Fetish Army. Cooldown 120 seconds.
Summon an army of dagger-wielding Fetishes to fight by your side for
20 seconds. The Fetishes attack for 20% of your weapon damage as
Physical.
Fetish Sycophants. Whenever you cast a
physical realm spell, you have a 3% chance to summon a
dagger-wielding Fetish to fight by your side for 60 seconds. Physical
realm spells are Poison Dart, Plague of Toads, Zombie Charger, Corpse
Spiders, Firebats, Firebomb, Locust Swarm, Acid Cloud, Wall of
Zombies.
Spirit Vessel. Reduces the cooldown of
your Horrify, Spirit Walk and Soul Harvest spells by 2 seconds. In
addtion, the next time you receive fatal damage, you automatically
enter the spirit realm for 3 seconds and heal to 10% of your maximum
Life. This effect cannot occur more than once every 90 seconds.
31
32 Horrify - Face of Death. Increases the radius
of Horrify to 24 yards.
33 Corpse Spiders - Widowmakers. Summon widowmaker
spiders that return 4 mana to you per hit.
Rain of Toads. Cause toads to rain from
the sky that deal 200% weapon damage as Poison to enemies in the area
over 2 seconds.
34 Hex – Angry Chicken. Transform
into an angry chicken for up to 5 seconds that can explode for 215%
weapon damage as Physical to all enemies within 12 yards.
35 Haunt - Lingering Spirit. If there
are no targets left, the spirit will linger for up to 10 seconds
looking for new enemies.
Firebats - Plague Bats. Diseased bats fly towards
the enemy and infect them. Damage is slow at first, but can increase
over time to a maximum of 150% weapon damage as Poison.
36 Sacrifice - Pride. Regain 100 mana for every
Zombie Dog you sacrifice.
Rush of Essence. Spirit spells return
30% of their mana cost over 10 seconds. Spirit spells are Haunt,
Horrify. Mass Confusion, Soul Harvest, Spirit barrage, Spirit Walk.
37
38
39 Horrify - Frightening Aspect. Gain 100%
additional armour for 8 seconds after casting Horrify.
40 Summon Zombie Dogs - Burning Dogs. Your Zombie Dogs burst
into flames, burning nearby enemies for 2% of your weapon damage as
Fire.
Vision Quest. Any time you have 4 or
more skills on cooldown, you mana rengeration is increased by 300%.
41 Sacrifice - For the Master. Gain 186 life for
each Zombie Dog you sacrifice.
42
43 Poison Dart – Flaming Dart. Ignite
the dart so that it deals 170% weapon damage as Fire at once.
44 Hex - Painful Transformation. Hex causes
the target to Bleed for 12% weapon damage as Physical.
45 Corpse Spiders - Medusa Spiders. Summon paralyzing
spiders that have a 25% chance to Slow enemies' movement by 60% with
every attack.
Plague of Toads - Addling Toads. Mutate to yellow frogs
that deal 130% weapon damage as Poison and have a 15% chance to
Confuse afflicted enemies for 4 seconds.
Fierce Loyalty. All your pets get 100%
of the beneift of your Thorns and Life regeneration items.
46
47
48 Firebats - Hungry Bats. Rapidly summon bats
that seek out nearby enemies and engulf them in flames for 200%
weapon damage per second as Fire.
49 Horrify - Ruthless Terror. Gain 16 Mana for
every Horrified enemy.
50 Grave Injustice. Whenever an enemy
dies within 8 yards, regain 1% of your maximum life and mana and the
cooldown on all of your abilities is reduced by 1 second. The range
is extended by items that increase your gold pickup radius.
51 Haunt – Grasping Spirit. Slow the
movement of haunted targets by 30%.
Provoke the Pack. Each sacrificed
Zombie Dog increases your damage by 5% for 30 seconds.
52 Poison Dart – Snake to the Face
Transform you Poison Dart into a snake that has a 25% chance to Stun
the enemy for 2 seconds.
53 Grasp of the Dead – Death is Life.
Enemies who die while in the area of Grasp of the Dead have a 5%
chance to produce a health globe.
54 Summon Zombie Dogs - Leeching Beasts. Your Zombie Dogs
gain 50% of damage they deal as Life, half of which heals you.
55 Corpse Spiders - Blazing Spiders. Summon fire spiders
that deal 32% weapon damage as Fire.
Tribal Rites. The cooldowns of your
Fetish Army, Big Bad Voodoo, and hex abilities are reduced by 25%.
56 Plague of Toads - Toad Affinity. Removes the mana cost
of Plague of Toads.
57 Haunt – Draining Spirit. The
spirit returns 1.2 mana per second.
Firebats - Cloud of Bats. Call forth a swirl of
bats that damage nearby enemies for 130% weapon damage as Fire. The
damage of the bats increases by 10% every second, up to a maximum of
50%.
58
59 Hex - Unstable Form - Hexed targets
explode when killed, dealing 135% weapon damage as Poison to all
enemies within 8 yards.
60
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