Diablo 3 Single Player Petition

Hey guys its Spartacus here and with the servers down again for more server maintenance  I want to write about something that has been bothering me since launch. Well actually a few things that have been bothering me, and that is the lack of a non-internet connected single/lan experience with my Diablo 3 game.  Now many of you are going to say things like "Well it said internet connection required on the box bro" and yes we know that, but doesn't mean that its right or that we the consumers should just accept that and move on.  The Diablo franchise has been around now for 16 years and before most people had reliable internet in their homes,  but they could still play the game that they purchased. If they were lucky enough to have an internet connection they could connect to B-Net and play over the internet with their friends/ total strangers.  Then Diablo 2 came out offering players the same options to play either single player or multiplayer via internet or Lan.  This gave players tons of options on how they could play their favorite game.

This is the start up screen we should expect in Diablo 3

I mean we all paid $60 for a game in which we are all being forced to deal with MMO style server maintenance and down times. Blizzard say's its so they can control the hackers and the dupers and the pirates. That is their problem not ours, and they have now made it all of our problems instead of figuring out a way to deter such behavior.  I'll share one of my favorite experiences I had with Diablo 2 and tell you why it was and will probably still be my go to game for some good fun either solo or with my friends. I was in the Army and was deployed to Iraq, now during this time we had none or maybe very very slow internet and even less time to enjoy it. But with a bit of networking ingenuity and a few laptops my platoon mates and I were battling the evil forces of the Prime Evils.  An experience that unless something is done will never happen with Diablo 3. With Win7 and Diablo 2 having compatibility issues making it hard to run and to network together this experience might be lost forever.  It was a successful strategy for the first 2 games that made this series what it is now and what gave it the fan base it has today, why leave it.  Because of the real money auction house.....trust me I would give that up in a heart beat for a Single player/Lan client.  We are the consumers, this is just as much our baby as it is Blizzard's.  If you feel like I do and like many others do please head to http://www.change.org/petitions/blizzard-entertainment-diablo-3-offline-single-player-patch and sign the petition. It may do nothing but there are enough of us paying customers that feel like Diablo 3 should go back to the structure that made it the franchise that it is today, maybe just maybe Blizzard will listen.

-As always comment, rate, and hate.  Spartacus signing off...

Pretty in pink...

Sup all, server is down so I am postin! Talkin about my Lovely armor as I work on the Pink'd achievement. 

Pink'd (10 Points)Kill the following enemies while wearing head, shoulder, feet, leg, hand, and torso equipment colored with Lovely Dye:
Skeleton King
Queen Araneae
The Butcher
Maghda
Zoltun Kulle
Belial
Ghom
Cydaea
Azmodan
Siegbreaker Assault Beast
Diablo

 Wanted to talk about elective mode today. If you do not know what elective mode is have no fear, for I am going to tell..you..about it. First off to use elective mode you must go to options -> gameplay and find the box labeled elective mode, then click it. 

The short and now of elective mode is it lets you use any skill in any skill slot without restriction. For example if you wanted Wrath of The Berserker, Earthquake and Call of the Ancients on the same skill bar you can do that (not that I would recommend it). This allows you much more customization in your skill builds really allowing you to focus on whatever play style fits you best until you hit inferno and have to use the same build as pretty much everyone else ^_^. 

With that said here is a fun video of us doin a tank n spank on Belial in hell mode. 

-Halfaddict

Did Diablo III live up to your expectations?

Because honestly for me it did not even come close. Do not get me wrong, I am still playing and smashing my face against inferno *but* it just feels like something is missing. 

The game is lacking something it's predecessors had, it just does not FEEL like Diablo. It feels like World of Warcraft and that makes me a sad panda. From the direction of the art, the level 60 cap, the tiered gear types, the need for full DR building to survive, and much more Diablo III feels to me like a watered down WoW action RPG. 

Just stop and take a look at how people are winning in Diablo III. Kite, shoot, kite and repeat until winning. I recently saw a video of a barbarian who's entire strategy revolved around weapon throw and fury generating  shouts and attacks. Probably because he got instagibbed for not having the right gear (sound familiar?). 

Diablo III Barbarian.

The auction house literally removes what made Diablo, well...Diablo. In Diablo 1 and 2 it was all about finding and trading for gear. SO far in Diablo III it has been about finding an effective farming route and grinding my face on it to get gold to buy chromatic items on the auction house to survive act 1 inferno (until Blizzard hotfixes whatever method you were using).

Now before you Blizzard fanboys jump on me I want you to understand that I know I can "just not use the auction house". But that does not change the fact that it is there and breaking the game. The real money auction house (RMAH) is not out yet, I personally feel it can do no good for the players and worlds of good for Blizzard but it has yet to go live so we will not know until then. 

The short and now of it, my expectations were take all the good stuff from D2 and add it to the new game.But in reality they scrapped everything about D2 sans the Barbarian and made a dumbed down WoW arpg. 

-Halfaddict

Inferno Mode....wait did that zombie just kill me?

 Hey guy, Spartacus here giving you some more hint and tricks for playing your Diablo 3 Barbarian!

Been a while since the last post cause of the holiday weekend but I'm back and got a bunch of goodies for ya!

INFERNO MODE (a.k.a Die-a-lot mode)

Well finally made it to inferno mode and for those of you that have not been just know your going to die, and a lot at that.  But don't be discouraged as more and more people are making it to inferno mode and figuring out how to survive and even farm they are bringing back goodies and posting them on the auction house. But be warned yer gonna spend some gold to get that gear.  Unfortunately the AH market is extremely inflated and prices have only been going up as more and more people figure out what stats you are gonna need to survive Inferno mode.  What stats does my barb need to survive inferno mode, you might be asking yourself. Don't worry I'll let ya know. 

My current gear and stats

Above is a screen shot of my current gear and stats (unbuffed).  With this gear I have been chopping my way through Act 1 Inferno and even been able to farm King Leoric. As you will notice just about every piece of my gear has + All Res on it.  As should all of yours if you want to be successful in Inferno.  As a barb you get into the shit and standing toe to toe with the evils of inferno mode is tough, so you have to be tougher. + All Res and Vitality are gonna be your main stats. You just have to have them.  If you find yourself having problems in inferno mode hit the auction house and look for Chromatic whatever of Valor.  These are gonna be your building blocks for your inferno gear.  But Spartacus those are blues? Why would i want to replace my rares for blues?  Well, the answer is simply because it works.  As most know itemization is poor to say the least in this game and barb gear is some of the most expensive on the AH so your going to be spending some gold to outfit your barb.  But Chromatic + of Valor gear is relatively cheap so go out and grab you some trust me it will make life easier. But I would recommend against getting a whole set of that kind of gear mostly because you need to be well rounded to be able to have a chance in inferno.  To start farming Act 1 Inferno I would suggest having at least 400-500 unbuffed res, 30k HP, and at least 5k armor.  This is a good start defense-wise.  Once you get your defenses up to that point then you need to start getting offense up to snuff. I paid about 500k for the axe that I am using and it is completely worth it. The best way to find you a good choppa is to go to the AH look at all 1 hand/2 hand weapons (depending on your play style) I would never pay more than 500k for a weapon so put that down as your max buyout price and just hit search.  Then find your self a good weapon at a price you are willing to pay. But have it doing at least 700+ DPS.  I like holy and cold damage on my weapons so I try to look for that as well. It seems very few enemies are res to holy damage (go figure demons aren't resistant to holy damage???)  and cold damage for the snare.  But figure out what works best for you and grab that. Once you have a good choppa then its time to look at strength. I would say you need to have at least 900 strength.  You want to hit about 9000 dps, this will allow you to chop through the enemies fast, because yes the elite packs in inferno have rage timers.  If you end up taking to long to kill a pack of enemies they will enrage, and if you couldn't beat them before that you most likely are not going to be able to beat them after they start raging on you. Some other stats that I like are Intel, Life Steal, Life Per Sec, AS, and Move Speed.  These are all gravy stats but if you can find some armor that has your all res and vitality plus a few of these gravy stats then all the better.  Also remember that Intel raises your res by 10%.  (100 intel = 10 to your res) The ratio isn't the greatest since I've seen pieces of armor with +80 to all res (the equivalent of 800 Intel) but should you be short on gold or having issues finding +all res gear in your price range intel gear is a viable alternative to get you going on act 1 inferno. Just know that you will have to eventually get the all res gear. 

Get to choppin!

So you have your gear and your ready to start choppin.  You start inferno mode and you start questing. You get outside the gates and you go to that first cellar. You go inside ready for a fight, inside you see a rare zombie. Haha you charge into battle....dead. Not just dead but body flying through the air bouncing off the walls dead. This was my first experience in inferno mode. This zombie was magma, plagued, vampiric, shielded. I smashed my face against him till he raged on me.  I was mad, who wouldn't be I had spent hundreds of thousands of gold on my gear. I had spent hours play testing different builds till i found the best one that worked for me and this stupid zombie right outside the gates is beating me down like a little barb welp. Well the fact is that it's inferno mode and your a barb, there will be fights you just won't be able to win solo. If you can avoid them then do that. Run by them get to the next level of the dungeon skip that side dungeon even leave the game and go back in.  Do what you have to, there is no shame in it.  Your fellow barbs understand. Trust me once you get to 60 and get to inferno, then the game actually starts. Normal-Hell are just the warm up acts. You will be replacing your rares with blues and you are going to die. 

Well that's all for me in this post. I'm gonna try to get some videos up later of inferno mode and some elite pack fights so look forward to that!

And always comment, rate, hate! :p

Introducing Spartacus219, the Deeps.

GF Gear

DPS Gear

Hey fellow Diablo III barbs! I am Spartacus219 and  I'm the other half of the   Bash  Brothers. I play as a DPS Frenzy Barb. To the   left and right you can see what my two sets of gear look like one is my Gold/MF gear (Left) and my current DPS gear (Right). I'm just going to make a introduction post today, telling ya how I play the Barbarian class and imho the most fun class to play!

                                                                    Da Deeps Gear!

Above is a quick screen shot of what my DPS gear currently looks like. Def not a finished set but has gotten me to Act 2 of Hell with very little problem (will post a video of me soloing the Butcher in hell with this gear soon).  Stats that I have currently been looking for is AS%, Crit Chance, Life Steal, Life on hit, Strength, and Vitality.  But seeing as of late that resistances are a must have in Inferno, I am going to start adding All Res to that list.  As you can see if you click the image above my stats look pretty good (minus the resistances). And for the life steal on my details is normally 10.3% but I had my GF skills on when I took that picture and didn't have Bloodthirst equiped. I use Axe's as my weapon after play testing many different weapon set ups. Remember if your going to dual wield weapons always get 2 weapons that have the same AS this will maximize your damage out put. But with axes I found the damage vs. AS to be the best also axes give you crit when equiped with weapon master passive and I love crits!

                                                                        Da GF Gear!

Mmmmm tasty gold

Above is a image of my GF gear that I swicth out when doing Azmodan Runs in nightmare (Guess what we got a video of our Azmodan runs up check it out!). As you can see with this gear on I have 121% GF.  Which is really good when you start getting your 60 buff for GF/MF.   The only thing I did to find this gear is to look for gear that has GF and Strength and Vitality.  Grabbed up what I could afford at the time which was about 86,000 gold.  This gear has already paid for itself multiple times over and was well worth the investment.  Eventually I will replace this stuff with a better set for Hell mode runs and will be adding things like All Res and Vitality to the list of things to look for.

                                                                          Da Skillz

                                                          

Above are my skills that I use when I am doing my Azmodan runs for gold.  I now equip Maniac Rune on my Frenzy (didn't have it at the time of the screen shot).  Its pretty straight forward DPS and mostly turns you into a left clicker.  Once you get Frenzy up to 5 stacks and full Fury you really start putting out some damage.  Besides that its really straight forward do damage.

These are my skills for DPS and my go to build for Hell mode.  I use WC with Impunity since my res are pretty sad. WW with Volcanic Eruption as my fury dump.  Revenge with Provocation is pretty much my heal skill, I would like to use the heal with smite since I find smite to be easier to use because you can use it while WW without breaking the animation but the heal on it is not very good from what i have experienced and revenge with the added proc becomes important as your heal and does just so much damage specially when you spec in some crit.  I use Wrath of the Berserker with Thrive on Chaos. I am still play testing this skill but from what I have found out about it so far is that if you have full fury you are no longer gaining fury so you are no longer increasing the duration.  This is why it is important to have a fury dump for when you hit max fury.  This is also why I do not use berserker rage with this build because you do not want to have max fury but somewhere in the mid like 50 or so.  Like I said I am still play testing this so I will get back to you guys on this once I figure out more about it.  My passives are Nerves of Steel, Weapon Master, and Superstition. I like crit and use axes so Weapon Master is a good deal.  Nerves of Steel gives me armor based on my Vit which is always good because you will then have 2 stats giving you more armor. As I stated in my gear section my res are pretty low so I use Superstition to cut the edge off of some of that elemental and magical damage in Hell mode.


That is pretty much it for me, its a long post but I wanted to make sure I covered the basics.  You can hit me up on BNet (when it's up lol) @ Spartacus219#1631.

And remember Comment, Rate, Hate.

And as an added bonus that video I talked about with me and Halfaddict doing a fast Azmodan run!

I was reading the Barbarian forums and a user named Aaress was interested in what current 60 barbs are using. Clearly I cannot speak for everyone but here is my current setup in Act II Hell. 

Some of these items still have a lvl req in the 20's, Diablo III itemization is poor to say the least. Many of these items have stats just as good if not better than 60 gear, my rings for example. Mainly I am focusing on armor and resists so I can absorb lots of damage and keep the attention of my foes. 

My normal tanking build has threatening shout with demoralize when I am in a public game. But throw weapon with ricochet has been a great help against the wasps in act II. 

Hope this helps you Aaress.

-Halfaddict.

Gold Find Gear

This is a picture of me in my Gold find gear. (Naturally colored gold)

This is the gold find gear I managed to pick up in the auction house for roughly 150,000 gold. My search parameters were simply gold find and strength with a goal of killing enemies as quickly as possible. This set got me 98% gold find and a 14 yard pick up radius, not too shabby. 

All in all I think it was a great investment as I mentioned before this set has already paid for itself twice over, and as an added bonus I will never really need to buy another set again as this is more than enough power for the current runs. 

Here I would like to talk about my current build and the logic behind it. I chose to find the biggest two hander I could and rock bash with pulverize to hit hard with aoe damage I can hit anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 with a single blow. Whirlwind is just gravy, I really do not use it, use whatever you like. I pack sprint for the luxury of the speed for the group to complete runs quicker. Revenge is the bread and butter here, huge damage, aoe and a heal to boot. I use weapon throw to snare mobs who try to kite me (succubus) works like a charm and is cheap on fury so we can sprint.  Earthquake is my boss melter, if we face a tough elite it handles them quickly, Azmodan just melts under its damage especially with path of fire extending the range. Nerves of steel for much needed armor, weapon master for 10% crit and Ruthless to improve those crits by 50%

Questions or comments? Post them below!

If you want to get in on my runs message me @ Halfaddict#1178

-Halfaddict