Diablo 3 Crashing Randomly

Well- I am getting random crashing with Diablo III. I will ask our resident IT guy to look at the situation, but he is going to swear up and down that it is Blizzard's problem- and not the networks. I thought I was getting random disconnects because he was playing League of Legends at the same time. It's almost 1 in the morning and his machine is shut off. I am still getting random disconnects.

Diablo III should have been a single player experience- not an online DRM one.

Diablo 3 - Monk - Master Difficulty

The official Diablo 3 forums aren't much help. The biggest problem is that the information is outdated by a year or more. Second- people constantly call each other names and attack each other instead of helping. Third- when most reply to a topic, they don't answer the question or contribute.

I'll write a few articles about what I know and how I am progressing. I am having little trouble in MASTER difficulty with:

300k Damage
4,700,000 Toughness
20,000 Healing

I always wish my healing was a bit higher, but I survive. I tried Torment 1 and got my ass handed to me- so back to Master I go. I have found that Dexterity, combined with crit dmg and crit chance increases have dramatically increased my overall DPS. If you have questions let me know.

Diablo III Making Changes for the Better

When the auction house and stat itemizations weren't fixed, I said after 180 hours "I'm done with Diablo III". However, there are some changes being made with the new expansion 'Reaper of Souls'. While we just have a teaser video to look at, I am hoping that the content of the game will be good. Blizzard is known for their high quality cinematics.

The company has decided to side with the players on the issue of the auction house- it's ruined the game because the company cannot keep a tight enough lid on botters and cheaters. It led to massive inflation and gold sales. So now if you want the best in gear and loot- you'll have to go find it. In addition- what I perceive is more important is the broken stat itemization. When I get a piece of loot, I shouldn't see "+200 Intellect" on a barbarian only waist. That's dumb. Fixing itemization and/or allowing the swap of one stat is a step in the right direction.

Diablo III is a fun game. I still believe Torchlight II is a better product and a better game- but I am willing to play the new Diablo III because my friends and roommate do.

Diablo 3 Game Review

This text will be going into a game review video of mine, and I felt I would share it before going into recording. This is an honest look at the game, despite all of the negative posts on the forums, to help individuals on a purchase decision for buying Diablo 3 or not; coming from 20 years of gaming experience. Blizzard can consider this a testimonial and has my permission to use the text of the review.

TL;DR: 82% score as of 1.0.3; improvements to be made, but overall incredibly fun and addicting game

Many fans have been waiting 15 years for this game: and Blizzard has finally delivered. Diablo is a legendary franchise well known for hack and slash and RPG elements. The game features five character classes, of which one is a returner- the Barbarian. Players will be able to choose their class and gender, but that is where visual body customization ends. Featuring four levels of difficulty, the game will coast you into proper mechanics. Towards the end of your destination, a jackhammer will be inserted in “you know where” and turned on. Diablo 3 offers great replayability for the price of the game.

Barbarians are one of two melee classes in the game that benefit from a 30% damage reduction. In your face, tough and brutal, Barbarians chew everything for lunch then spit it back out. Monks are a true utilitarian melee class- they offer buffs, fast combos and healing at the expense of high damage. Witch doctors are the ranged DOT class of the game which can take combat companions along too. Demon hunters lay traps, sentries and use discipline to maneuver around the battlefield, and the classic wizard becomes a low orbit cannon to destroy enemies at range.

Like a real time strategy game, Diablo is a top down and slightly isometric view. Each class has a plethora of abilities to choose from, and those abilities can be further customized by runes. This is an excellent system that encourages experimentation and utility. The frames display the information you need to know- including your health bars, experience to level and your resource pool. The inventory system is a grid, but stops there in its simplicity. If you have played world of warcraft or other diablo games, you will be familiar with where you can place a piece of gear.

Gear is the primary way to boost the power and effectiveness of your character- abilities will revolve around the stats that are on a particular piece.
In this game, you do not need to click on gold to pick it up- simply run over it and it will be collected. All characters on your account share the same pool of money and stash space, allowing you to level one character to a high level, acquire a lot of gold, and have another low level character use that money for gear, potions, etc. The town portal feature is extremely handy when you are overburdened, allowing you to return to town in order to sell stuff, buy potions, make repairs, etc.

You can play single player in this game or multiplayer with three other individuals. Blizzard has allowed public games, so if you don’t have any buddies locally to play with you can host or jump into a game and play. Mobs gain health when you join a game though, but they will still deal the same damage they dealt in single player.

Diablo 3 features four unique bosses and many sub-bosses. You will play through the story in four acts, each one getting slightly shorter than the other with act IV being the shortest. Below sub-bosses are champion packs which sport a unique name with unique affixes. To ramp up the difficulty in the game, elite and champion mobs have affixes, of which there are over 30. For normal difficulties there is one affix, and in inferno, there are four. Normal and Nightmare are extremely easy to clear, while Hell will give you a harder time, and Inferno will chew you up and spit you out.

Elite mobs, which glow blue, give the best loot in the game when they die. You can use magic find or gold find gear to boost respective outputs. When you reach level 60, a buff called nephalem valor kicks in and you have an even better chance of finding good loot. What you use on your character is up to you, but it is highly recommended you begin stacking all resists around act 3 of Hell. The sheer difficulty of the game has challenged many players, has caused many to whine on the forums, and has caused a smaller bunch to rage quit or break their computers. If you are not prepared, certain packs will down your health either instantly in a one shot kill, or within two to three seconds, especially compounding molten and poison pools.

For those that wish to use it, Blizzard included two auction houses in the game. Although not required, you can purchase and sell gear on the auction house for your characters. The economy is player driven with players setting the prices. The RMAH, or Real Money Auction House, allows players to sell in game items and gold for real world currency, of which blizzard takes a cut. The company hopes this will curb 3rd party black market sales, but we have yet to see the effects the RMAH has. Some people are listing items for hundreds of dollars while other items are waiting to be bought at a steal.

For those that are achievement aficionados, Diablo 3 will not disappoint. While not important to the reviewer, some of the achievements are harder to get and can be a lot of fun to attempt. You will not get anything special for achievements other than banners, which rotate around the teleporter and are on the main screen when you log in.

There are quite a few problems with Diablo 3, and thankfully a lot of them can be fixed in future patches. Unfortunately, at this time, there are more negatives weighing in than positives- but if you can live with some of the negatives, then by all means give the game a try. Repair costs are currently high- they need to be adjusted and reduced by about 25-50% of their current value, especially in Inferno.

Many gamers view DRM, or Digital Rights Management as anti-consumer. While some of the practices are anti-consumer, requiring online access to a server isn’t necessarily going that far in my opinion. There are good advantages- and blizzard is active in banning cheaters and bots. They may or may not do this for the players, but they have a financial incentive with the in game economy to do so. After all, if they start chipping at the black market, they may influence players to pay in game, where Blizzard makes a cut. Examples, in the reviewer’s opinion, of going too far with DRM include in game commercials, interrupting gameplay experience, disk locked content, charging for cheat codes, etc.

The reviewer has a 25Mbps connection to the internet, and at times I am experiencing some lag, but more so annoying rubber banding. I understand when it happens occasionally, but it is occurring more than I would like. Had the game had an offline mode option, this wouldn’t have happened.

There are also a number of outstanding bugs and exploits out there, including item duping and linking socketed items in chat. They said they fixed it, but the problem is still there. In the video version of this review, which you are probably watching, I experienced a glitch interface, and occasionally, errors that should not pop up.

Another downside is server down times. Most people will not be affected by the downtimes as they are usually in the morning, however, server maintenance can and has extended into half a day to a full 24 hours. This would not have happened with an isolated single player offline mode.

Although the auction house isn’t required, it feels like players need to use it in order to advance. This is caused by drop rates by the RNG generator: I am picking up wizard wands with strength and dexterity or monk daibos with strength and intelligence. To further complicate the issue, the majority of gear that drops “sucks”, but good stuff WILL occasionally drop, just not the best stuff ever seen.

Another negative to the game, although this will not count against it numerically in my analysis, are the large number of morons on the forums. This will occur with many games, but the forums for Diablo 3 are full of b-!@#$% who make potty jokes, joke about body parts, do nothing but offer unconstructive feedback or make terroristic/real-life threats against other gamers and employees. There are some legitimate gripes on the forums however- but it is recommended that you do not go there. Over 90% of the topics in general discussion are hate, off topic, or unconstructive.

Legendries and set bonuses are poor. This ties into the RNG generator, but the legendries and set bonuses in this game feel underpowered.

One thing I HATE in any video game is respawn rewinds. This is where you get X distance to a place, die, then have to run back all over again. This is inexcusable and received a hefty penalty. I should be placed nearby where I died, OR the checkpoints need to be redone. They are some of the most poorly designed parts of the game.

On that note, respawn timers are progressive. Some argue that they shouldn’t exist PERIOD, but I feel the progressive timing is wrong, annoying, and should remain around 10-15 seconds maximum.

That was a lot of negatives, but there are still a lot of positives with this game. 
For many games we expect a patch to fix issues, however Blizzard is putting developmental resources into making sure the game has bugs fixed and additions made. With that said, without spoiling the story, there is room for an expansion, and I eagerly anticipate it. The story was excellent, even for someone like me who is new to the series. If you want to catch up on previous lore, journals and writing exist in the game which provide a lot of context to the current events. As for cheaters and botters, Blizzard is taking advantage of the DRM in place to ban them. Another plus blizzard offers to players is the authenticator system which will assist in protecting accounts from hackers.

The level of skill customization for this game is excellent. I can change runes in and out to suit the situation in addition to ability changes for different acts or boss fights. The game is extremely challenging at higher levels and provides a good challenge with the correct gear. Kills, combos and encounters are incredibly satisfying. The game world isn’t necessarily immersive, but you feel like you are progressing in a story that fits in a world that is affected by the horrors of hell.

Replayabiliy in this game is excellent. I have tons of fun in my play group of buddies, but like world of warcraft, in diablo 3 public games people don’t talk very much. I was pleased to run the game on full graphics settings, but also happy that blizzard designed options for those running less than top performance computers. The game is incredibly addicting and a lot of fun to play. For a casual gamer, I expect that the game will bring anywhere from 100-400 hours of enjoyment, which is king compared to the industry standard of $60 for a video game and 20-30 hours of gameplay.

For the value, Diablo may be money well spent.
The auction house has its downsides, but it sure has some nifty features. I would like to search by more criteria in the future, but you can limit buyouts in order to find gear priced at what you want it to be. The pooled commodities are also excellent, saving on resource and server space while making a “get in, get out with the good” option a reality. For all of the really expensive stuff on the AH, there are some deals to be had, if you are willing to look.

For my final opinion on the matter- if this were a model kit I would unfortunately give it one thumbs down.

HOWEVER, at the end of the day- when you are looking for an incredibly fun experience with friends and good replay value for a game that will keep you occupied, Diablo 3 may deliver, if you can get over some of the negatives. Again, blizzard is constantly updating and patching the game, taking user feedback into account to improve the game. I originally gave the game, at release, a score of 85. With 1.0.3 changes, I would score this game at an 82. Any game over an 80 is worth picking up, and given that Blizzard is updating the game with multiple patches, at the minimum wait a couple of months or wait until the console version. I approve of the game, but it’s just edging in there with the score.

Diablo 3 Builds

Monk
_____
Group support: Hell and Above [55]

Witch Doctor
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Group Support: Witch Doctor [49]

Demon Hunter
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Balanced Group  [60]
Balanced Group [25]

6/12 Hotfixes and Upcoming 1.03 Patch

One nice thing about Diablo 3 is that although it is not an MMORPG, Blizzard continues to update and patch the game.

On June 12, Blizzard made some changes to Diablo 3.

• Monks can no longer infinite stack damage buffs from combination strike.
• Monster damage increase is gone in co-op games. Health and sub-labels will still scale, but not the attack value.
• Pot break farming nerfed (gold amount decreased from pots)
• No more resplendant chests in the underbridge
• Ban hammer party to thousands of botters and cheaters

There were some other fixes, but those are ones of importance. Here are the upcoming notes on 1.0.3:

• Ilvl introduction to gear.
• Smoothing grade of Act I inferno to Act II inferno.
• New drop rates for iLvl 61-63
• Repair costs significantly increased
• Guaranteed rares on bosses lowered while you have five stacks of nephalem valor to 1 per boss (with a chance to get many).
• All champion and rare packs will drop a bonus guaranteed rare item with five stacks of NV.
• Nerf damage/health of Inferno a2,a3,a4.
• Attack speed nerf (option 2 is diminishing returns)
• Tier 2-8 gem costs drastically reduced

so let's talk about some of the stuff. You can read it here if you would like the source information. Players were complaining that you couldn't tell the difference between a blue or a yellow, and that blues were more powerful than some yellows, sometimes the blue at a lower level requirement than a higher level req yellow. To fix the issue and potentially stop the complaining, Blizzard is introducing an item level system, much like it works in world of warcraft. It is sort of like a gear level, and I am pretty sure it will be independent of level requirements.

A legitimate complaint about Inferno, the hardest difficulty, is that Act II is like getting run over by a truck. Blizzard agrees, and they are smoothing out the experience. For 1.0.3, attack and health values for inferno will be reduced to make them slightly more manageable.

New iLvl 60-63 drop rates:

	Hell 3/4	Inferno 1	Inferno 2	Inferno 3/4
61	9%	18%	19%	24%
62	2%	8%	12%	16%
63	0%	2%	4%	8%

 

 

Meaning that if you want to go to the AH to get your gear you can do so- or you can farm for it and these are your chances, I am assuming off of champions, elites or bosses. Remember- once you get to Inferno 3/4, you can farm for 61-62 stuff and make a decent profit. There are five characters in this game, and many people will want to max them all out.

 

 

I spend about 350,000 gold a month in repair bills in Hell. With new considerations, those costs would jump four to six times up to 1.4mil-2.1mil a month. It's OK for this reason: it is a larger gold sink, making gold more valueable, thus, I make more money from the RMAH. I make around 5.4mil a month in Hell, looking for more in Inferno.

 

 

Attack speed, which people have been calling on for a nerf, will be affected in 1.0.3 once they figure out what to do with it, likely nerfing the bonuses of all items, including ones already in the game. Sorry folks, no grandfathered items.

 

 

Gems will be cheaper to craft. This is great if you want to sell them- but I still have more gems than I know what to do with in my bank. Hopefully crafting will be cheaper than plucking the thing out of my socket.

Blizzard Throttles Game Input Limits

6/12 @ 10:00 PM PDT: After looking into several player reports, we believe the game creation limit may not be working exactly as intended. When working properly, players should rarely see it, even in fairly normal "farming" conditions or after reasonable amounts of character swapping.
The rate at which players are reporting to hit the limit is currently too high, so we've decided to shut off the limitations until we can take a better look at things tomorrow.

---------

We've recently added a limit to the number of games a player can create within a certain amount of time. Players who hit this limit will see the error: "Input limit reached. Please wait to perform more actions." After receiving this error, you will need to wait approximately 10 to 15 minutes before creating any additional games.

This change was made to help reduce server strain and improve overall game stability, and we'll continue to monitor the situation and make additional improvements as necessary. We're currently working to find a solution that allows most players who are playing normally to create games without encountering this error, but will still limit some of the more extreme cases of rapid game creation. We appreciate your patience as we make these adjustments.


Thank you!
 
_______________________________
 
Throttling game creation will stop people from pot farming the crypts in addition to other easy avenues of gold making, such as loot goblin runs. This will have an impact on gold, and it will be positive for the seller. Personally, I am not sure how much gold will be affected, but the price will increase due to the throttling here.

Blizzard *Purges* Wave 1 of Botters

We recently issued a round of account suspensions and bans to several thousand Diablo® III players who were in violation of the Battle.net® Terms of Use for cheating and/or using botting or hacking programs while playing. In addition to undermining the spirit of fair play that’s essential to everyone’s enjoyment of the game, botting, hacking, and other such exploitive behavior can contribute to stability and performance issues with the Battle.net service. As always, maintaining a stable, safe, and fun online-gaming experience for legitimate players is a top priority for us, and we'll be continuing to keep watch on Battle.net and take action as needed.

RGN Presents- Barbarian Lvl 35 Build, Diablo 3 [Episode 24b]

Diablo III- My Monk Lvl 30 Build

Caution: The video provided shows game play from the first boss fight. This is the only spoiler shown.

Introduction
When I first heard about Diablo III and the free beta weekend, I decided to give dungeon crawlers a try. The only prior experience I have to this is playing a game called Dungeon Keeper. I was thoroughly impressed with the Beta, and before starting I knew I wanted to play a Monk. All of the other classes are fun in their own regards, but Monk was "my thing".

This Guide is for my build at level 30. I have already beaten the game, and I won't spoil anything for you outside of game play for the first boss fight (in the video). Monk is a versatile melee class that shares an innate 30% damage reduction along with barbarians. To use world of warcraft terms, a monk is like a blending of a warrior and a paladin. Monks combine protection and healing with awesome combo attacks.

Your Monk build may vary as you play the game. Sometimes you will need AOE strikes to down packs of enemies, and sometimes, like in the provided video, you need single target, high damage attacks against foes like bosses. The primary fuel for the Monk is spirit. As you attack an enemy, you will build up this fuel for use with special attacks. Be warned that it is easy to drain this pool quickly, but there are modifiers to increase your regeneration and/or overall spirit.

Build Main Attacks
For main attacks with the left mouse button, combos build additional spiritual energy, but possibly at the cost of single target acquisition. For pack attacks, I prefer to use crippling wave or deadly reach with the trident rune on.

Build Secondary Attacks
For secondary attacks, I prefer to use the ability Wave of Light. This is an ability that calls down a massive bell that deals holy damage to enemies in a line. With rune modifications, you can have the bell spawn on top of your character and emit energy in all directions. I use this rune modification to damage massive packs, and get rid of the weaker guys. This helps in the damage mitigation department. Before Wave of Light, I used Lashing Tail Kick.

Focus Attack
A combination of moves I like to do are to use Cyclone Strike in combination with Wave of Light. This requires a total of 125 spirit, so use it sparingly on huge packs. Cyclone strike will pull all nearby enemies towards you to a point. With the implosion rune, you increase the pull distance to 34 yards. Once this is done, you can use Wave of Light (with the multi-directional rune) to effectively erradicate weak enemies and damage stronger ones. It's one of my favorite combinations, and it is intensely satisfying. Before Cyclone Strike, and sometimes instead of, I will use 7-sided-strike, which is good for a small AOE attack and for faster moving Monk builds.

Defensive
Before Breath of Heaven I used the blinding technique to blind my enemies. I prefer the ability to heal, and it has become indispensable in tough fights. In multiplayer games, I have saved peoples asses on tough fights with this ability, and there is a passive ability that, when you heal an ally, you and your ally get a damage bonus.

Techniques
Sweeping Wind, AKA "the blender". Sweeping Wind creates a vortex around your Monk and deals damage to any enemies that get within the vortex. If you crit, the vortex grows stronger. You can use Cyclone Strike and then Sweeping Wind, costing a total of 125 spirit. it's the same as my other favorite attack, but Sweeping Wind will continually renew itself every single time it hits something. This is good for pack to pack killing, huge pack killings, and damaging small fries while hitting a boss.

Mantras
Mantras are minor buffs applied for roughly 3-5 minutes. You can use a passive skill, which I use, to extend the Mantra length seven minutes. When it is up, you will need to apply it again. I use Mantra of Conviction, which deals damage to anyone who gets close to me. It's "sort of" like an additional sweeping wind. There are also mantras to increase health regeneration; take your pick here.

Passive Skills
Chant of Resonance increases my mantra time to 10 minutes. It's a convenience. Seize the initiative increases my armor by 100% of my dexterity- this is nice because Monks stack dexterity, and I am not moving at lightning speeds with this build to avoid attacks. Finally, I use transcendence- which provides me additional health every single time I spend spirit.

It's a fun build, I recommend it- and I also recommend any comments/suggestions/improvements.