D3 15th of May, you gonna play?

[Kendoki]

Round 2, Act 2

[kagemoth]

If sum of you are having issues with getting gear for act 2 , this is for you! This is in my humble opinion the best farming plan for getting into the next act without ripping out your hair in frustration.

You start by selecting the quest The Cursed Hold. Upon entering the game you go to Cemetary of the Forsaken. There are 3 crypts there , each with low lvl elites(Or the possibility of them) and a chance on an elite mob outside. This equated to a quick 2-4 stacks of Nephilem buff. As soon as you kill an elite pack TP and go to next crypt. Do not explore the rest of the crypt.

After finishing the Cemetary then TP to Halls of Agony level 2. Do not explore all , kill shit in your way ofc but if you find the way down RIGHT infront of you then you take it. When you get out there is a chance of finding a quest giver , if he is there then take the quest. It will tell you to kill a quy at teh end of the walkway. If you are ranged you can take advantage to get another stack(Not sure meelee can do this) When you engage in meelee he is a scripted event BUT if you shoot him from a distance he charges you instead of running away , making his elite buddies at the back become considered as a seperate pack to the event. They wont drop you loot , but they will give you a stack if you havent got 5 yet.

Then come the jails. The Jails have between 1-3 Special packs in them and the Jailer of King Leoric. He is a scripted event boss that will normally drop 3-5 Yellows. Very good. Now head down into the Level 3 and make your way to the butcher. As with the Halls of Agony do not clear all , just find the way down and take it(clear shit in your way ofc). Finish on butcher 3-5 Yellows. GG!!!

In The halls of agony and lvl 3 try to head north or in a northern direction , the way out of HoA and Level 3 are all in a northern direction. They cannot spawn in a southern direction. This part might confuse sum of you but i cba to draw a sketch of how it looks!

Gl hf grinding gears.

Edit: Forgot to mention. In the Cemetary of the Forsaken ,one of the tombs have a chance to spawn "Development Hell" , a tomb filled with the Diablo 3 Dovelopers and Jay Wilson as a scripted Boss mob. If you want you can clear it to him for the funs but it is a waste of time imo since it is only Jay Wilson in there and he doesn't give a nephalim buff.

[Starbrow]

Right, so I finally got my casual ass through normal with my barbarian! As for the difficulty of it all, that isn't terribly relevant since normal isn't supposed to be super challenging. While I died only once (double champion pack in act III, freeze/vortex) and one-shotted all the bosses, making it feel a bit trivial at times, the experience looks to be quite different when you haven't played a ton of D2 + end-game WoW since my girlfriend dies a LOT more often :P Being used to not standing in the fire and guessing that black/green/blinking/glowing stuff on the ground is going to mean bad news probably helps immensely.

As for the storyline:
[spoiler]I recall others talking a bit about it on TS, but the writing in this game was a bit disappointing. It was cool to have Tyrael be part of the story in such a huge way, but act III and IV had some pretty unsurprising plots.

I'm thinking of the constant "Oh you raised your catapults! That will make no difference to my invasion of your keep!" (the attacks are held at bay) - "You destroying our siege engines will not slow us down!" (keep is now no longer under siege) "Destroying the Sin Hearts won't make a difference!" (suddenly we can get to Azmodan and kill him) and so on. Repeat all of the above in act IV, only faster and with Hell Rifts instead of siege engines. The last act also felt waaaaay short and felt like a place they could have done a LOT more with. I mean, it's the high heavens for gods sake (no pun intended). Fighting Imperius instead of him just getting owned by the Crystal Arch could have been really cool.

Act II had a bit more cool twists and turns along the way, although I guess most people would have guessed that the child emperor was Belial himself.

In general I liked acts I/II a lot more than III/IV.[/spoiler]

In general, I loved the story-tomes that dropped throughout the game that told you more about the lore behind various things while you could keep smashing demons. The monster lore is also a cool addition.

About mobs and bosses:
[spoiler]Something that I'm surprised that no one is talking more about is how this game is basically a complete reuse of D2. Goat-men, Fallen, Quill Beasts, Diablos abilities, killing the siege engines outside Bastion Keep, the Demonesses that shoot red shit, faffing about in the sewers of the desert city etc. I can't decide whether I think it was a good thing or not, but it did make me smile in recognition several times, so I guess that was good :D[/spoiler]

From trawling the AH a bit for upgrades, it seems that the crafting is utterly trivial at lower levels since everything is super cheap on the AH, and guarantees you upgrades rather than have you roll shit. Does this change when you get to 60? Right now, it feels as if I might as well save the gold I could pump into my blacksmith, and just buy new upgrades for 200g each every few levels.

[Goza]

While I died only once [...] the experience looks to be quite different when you haven't played a ton of D2 + end-game WoW

I've prob died ~5 times, and usually it was some random *splash* within a second, and I didn't even notice where it came from. Maybe lag, or a lucky mob crit (if that exists), I don't know. Anyway very random and wtf.

From trawling the AH a bit for upgrades, it seems that the crafting is utterly trivial at lower levels since everything is super cheap on the AH, and guarantees you upgrades rather than have you roll shit.

I'm quite disappointed with the item system. The game throws loot at you like there is no tomorrow. OK, so apparently the game is all about loot, but it's annoying that every 30 minutes my inventory is refilled with blues and yellows, and due to the strange random itemization where apparently blues can be better than legendaries (a legendary dropped yesterday for my WH, and it's quite "meh"), I have to manually check every item whether it's awesome or crap ~ twice an hour.

Due to the flood of loot I also see no point in using the AH system. I'm curious as how the real money AH will work out for Blizz, as I can't see a huge demand for its usage.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

i agree with most of your points and I did mention the D2 reuse thing.
I must say as wizard I died on most bosses before I cjanged to bosskill spec.

[Gaeios(Graxlos)]

if you want gold for training bs and jc, you get much more gold from ah than from loot vendoring and quests.

[Goza]

if you want gold for training bs and jc, you get much more gold from ah than from loot vendoring and quests.

I don't know, I have a very hard time selling good items on the AH. I'm already dumping them (prices 300g for good blues up to 1000g for good rares), but I sell ~1 item per day.

[Yoica]

Normal wasn't very difficult, but I'd probably say it is harder than D2 normal. Nightmare is were it starts for the more experienced players and Hell was pretty hard. Considerably harder than D2 hell.

I've been selling stuff since mid-nightmare on AH for 10-40k. Generally selling 2-3 items a day. If you aren't going to using the AH it's best to just vendor the blue+ items instead of d/eing them.

As for the re-use of mobs I think that is a good thing and it makes sense since you're still fighting in the same areas.

[Hugman]

Not sure why you are moaning about re-using mobs. They were in both D1 and D2, and do fit with the context, its not like they are being lazy, they just rein-visioned the mobs for D3.

Also, just finished normal, and working my way through Nightmare. I really love the odd and dangerous combinations that elites can get, jailer/mortar, shielding/fast bloody wasp things from act 2, which occasionally throw a curveball in the mix.

Monks are the business, and the fact that the dodge so much, (and seems to me, to be able to dodge special boss attacks)makes bosses pretty easy, even for normal. The fact that I can go and stand in a patch of fire, and dodge half of the hits it does me, is pretty funny. The dodging special attacks seems a little strong, maybe broken for pvp.

[Sintrael]

Aye you can dodge pretty much anything as a monk, its nice indeed.

You cant dodge fire/desecrate/plague tho, if u turn on ur health numbers u'll see that fire doesnt actually tick, it drains, u just get notified by damage numbers as a tick so ur not spammed with little numbers.

Just to warn you, late game monk you have to go tank, no two ways about it. I do soggy noodle dps as a result and just tank stuff, s'not very fun :<

[Sintrael]

Also, who cares if its broken for pvp? :p

[Pluug]

http://www.own3d.tv/Daerkiss/watch/641533

This looks funny build

[Abyiss]

managing to hold my own a bit better now... but walling, invicible, arcane, molten chains are still kicking my ass XDDD

[kagemoth]

You are a Barb right Abyiss? You should have a look at what Noxiouz is doing. Holy fuck it stomps.

[Sintrael]

it does, but he has to wait for his 2 min cooldown b4 he can attack anything, and then if it runs out b4 they die he gets squashed.

He really does kill the shit out of stuff tho, s'impressive.