Bottle Loot, Brew Valor, Stopper Fail: Potion Suggestions

From the official Diablo 3 Game Guide webpage - "Potions are unique draughts – carefully distilled magic liquids, natural remedies, or a combination of the two. When consumed, they can heal wounds or provide valuable effects."

Not so much on that last bit, maybe. Potions have become Diablo 3's equivalent of elevator muzak - it's necessary, it's there, you use it, but no one really notices it. Combat life recovery is so ubiquitous now that, while not yet obsoleting potions, renders the need to shop at your local merchant a rare occurrence. You'll usually pick up what you need while grinding normally, while that 30 second cooldown makes sure that you rarely burn through a stack. If you're playing at a Monster Level that's tuned to your gear and playstyle, this will never happen.

So am I complaining about the little red bottle? Not really - I'm complaining about how it's become mere background noise, needed but unnoticed. Supply will always outstrip demand, and with only one flavor of potion to choose from, it's as bland as cardboard. What I will suggest isn't a change to potions themselves, but how they're used, and possibly how to make them more interesting.

I don't care if he was in Harry Potter, he'll always be Hans f@$%ing Gruber to me

A Chug Down Memory Lane - Back in Diablo I, potions came in three main flavors - red, blue, and yellow; one for health, one for mana, and one for both (there were also stat elixirs, but they weren't spammable consumables). When Diablo II came along, they expanded this to include different sizes, potions to restore stamina, potions to cure poison and freeze, and potions you could throw for damage. You could even dip into the Horadric Cube to transmute Full Rejuvs, the undisputed king of potions, healer of ills and savior of hardcores.

In Diablo 3, however, this posed an interesting problem - only the Witch Doctor used mana, while the other classes had their own resource bars. Furthermore, Blizzard had moved away from the potion spamming system of old ARPGs, and instituted the cooldown-based system they had first introduced in World Of Warcraft. This meant that the blue potion would go, and with it the need for Rejuvenation potions as well.

What does this mean for you, my fellow loot grinder? Potions are basically a non-class based cooldown button, the final 'ohshit' button of recourse. And while it does the job and does it well, especially in conjunction with +Health Globes, it's nevertheless a single kind of potion (the biggest you can equip) that heals, and does nothing but heal. With button space at a premium in Diablo 3 (6 skills in total), I imagine that a few tweaks to potion usage would make it a button worthy of more than a moment's thought.

Before I go on, let me clarify - most of the ideas I will post assumes the use of currently available Diablo 3 resources. I have no suggestions to do with the Mystic, as there's a much better post out there for that, and no changing the cooldown system in favor of a spammable (and oh so archaic) quaffing system. With that in mind, let me hit the main points.

There was a time when dealing in potions was a lucrative trade

Skill Interaction - There's a number of skills in D3 that interact with Health Globes: Pound of Flesh, Vengeance, Power Hungry, and of course, the Witch Doctor staple Gruesome Feast. All of these depend on  picking up a Health Globe to trigger their effects. However, imagine if these skills would also proc on potion use. This allows Wizards and Demon Hunters to use their potion cooldown as a resource refresh. Witch Doctors could spend a potion to extend their Feast stacks for those crucial seconds until they can drop a Health Globe. Barbarians would get much, much more out of potion usage with a 100% improvement in healing. This would also be logical since potions are already linked to health globes with the +Health Globes modifier - it wouldn't take much of a stretch to make potions trigger the same effects health globes do.

Why stop with those passives, though? Potions should also affect pets, healing them for same amount it heals you. Again, since picking up a health globe or drinking from a health well fully heals pets and followers, it's not terribly illogical for potions to heal them as well. Not realistic, but not terribly illogical, either. This helps Demon Hunters to keep their pets alive (a serious problem currently), and provides some decent bang for the buck with pet heavy Witch Doctors.

This legendary potion was deemed far too OP to be included in the finished game

Item Interaction - Apart from the mentioned skill interactions, another possibility is having gear properties affect potion usage, beyond the traditional +Health Globe healing modifier. This could either be some kind of new affix to be introduced in Loot 2.0, or maybe unique properties on Legendary gear. A very good equipment slot to look at for this would be the belt slot.

There's precedent for this kind of thing - in Diablo 2, your belt affected the maximum number of potions you could hotkey. While this specific mechanic is obsolete, since potions have a dedicated hotkey slot, you can still argue for belts adding effects to potions. Why not? Right now, belts are one of the most unspectacular item slots - rare belts have no real dps potential, making the Witching Hour (and it's poor cousins Hellcat and Inna's) BiS by a million light years. You could potentially let belts have an affix that comes into play for a few second after quaffing a potion. A sample affix could be "Slow On Hit", "Fear On Hit", or even "X Life On Hit" for 10 seconds after drinking a potion. While there probably shouldn't be any direct DPS increases, the remaining possibilities for extra potion effects remain near limitless.

Lezard's 411 - The simplified potion system of Diablo 3 has changed potion usage, in most ways for the better. There's much less inventory management involved, for one, since there's no need to track seperate potion type for life and resource (much less for thawing, poison removal, stamina, etc). The unfortunate side effect of this, however, is a drastic reduction in the role of potions. I'm not arguing for potions to add DPS, Crit, or AS like in other actions rpgs, but I feel there are ways for them to generate effects more suitable to Quality Of Life improvements, rather than direct damage increases. With the interesting ideas being put forth by the devs for the RoS expansion, perhaps it's time to take a look again at what else potions can do for the game.

It ain't over till the fat goat dings!

Less Than Legendary has been on hiatus for a month or so due to internet issues and general RL - but I'm back for 1.08 with more posts and madness coming soon!

The Case For Buffing Life Per Second: An Analysis Of Sustain Options For The Discerning Devilkiller

A while back in a previous post I made, I argued that one of the particular runes for the Familiar spell was largely useless. This rune was Vigoron, which at level 60 gives you 310 Life Per Second. Now, 310 LPS is pretty good as regen goes - the maximum LPS on any non legendary slot is 340 (according to D3MaxStats), which means Vigoron comes close to providing a max roll for this particular stat. And yet, Vigoron is still as useless as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, by virtue of LPS being said man's missing leg.

In an early blue post for Diablo 3 (I can't find the exact thread, but I'd be grateful to whoever can supply the link), the devs touted LPS as one of the four major sustain options (the others being life steal, life on hit, and health globes; before the advent of Archon builds, life after kill was seen more as a minor leveling/farming quality-of-life advantage). It was supposedly a major cornerstone of Monk gameplay, as well as Witch Doctors to a lesser degree, and was advertised as being useful for all classes. Nearly eight patches later, we now all know better.

Missing The Goal: Life per second started out as a humble, yet useful affix called Replenish Life in Diablo 2. Oddly enough, in those days when everyone and their follower had life steal, Replenish Life still had its place. The average run through Harrogath could see you chugging down entire stacks worth of potions, and buying those pots was a significant gold sink. Replenish Life allowed you to ease the fiscal damage of profligate potion use and ensured you started each fight relatively close to a full hp orb. Nobody really stacked it, but it was a good stat to have, and you didn't lose anything by having it on you.

CHUG THAT HEALING POTION, FRANK!

Now, fast forward over 10 years later. Potions now have a 30 second cooldown, and you'll find more of then in the course of a run than you can ever consume. Monster density and run efficiency means that LPS is significantly devalued as a between-fight heal; you simply don't want to spend any time not killing anything. LPS also takes up an affix slot that could easily be something more worthwhile - even in a shoulder slot, with no direct dps stats, the 'perfect roll' of mainstat, mainstat + vit, all res, +armor means that 4 out of 6 mods have already been consumed. For the last two, pickup radius, +life%, and bonus to health globes are all much better choices, and even mfind/gfind sounds pretty good if you're below Paragon 100. And this is on the most versatile armor slot - can you seriously imagine giving up LoH on jewelry or +crit chance on gloves for LPS? Didn't think so.

A World With More Options: Okay, so the whole healing-between-fights thing has gone the way of the dinosaurs.  Well, what about LPS in combat? Why use the other options when LPS can roll on every item slot except weapons? Well, why eat chopped liver when you can have Kobe beef?

Referring again to D3MaxStats, the absolute maximum LPS you can ever have with the current patch is 5217. This assumes max rolls on every slot and a max roll on a Sky Splitter (don't get me wrong, it's a great weapon, but not everyone will want or be able to use it). This also means that you gave up potential stats on the other slots - for example, an optimal rare (non class-specific) helm will have mainstat, vit, crit, armor, all res, and a socket. And we haven't even started talking about the Helm of Command, Storm Crow, or god forbid, a Mempo. In other words, you gave up either DPS or EHP for that couple hundred hp worth of regen. If you could argue that it was worth it, I wouldn't be here telling you how bad it is. Let's see how the other life sustain sources stack up against it.

Clearly regrets stacking LPS against Fire chained/Molten packs

Life Steal - The sustain of choice for two-hander barbs, bell monks, non-CMWW wizards, and a lot of heavy, slow hitting builds. Devalued by difficulty level, it nevertheless scales directly with your damage output, meaning the better your gear is, the better it gets. At 100k DPS (which is entry level into the big leagues) and with good crit damage modifiers, this adds up to significant life recovery. 1.5% life steal, which is the average for a 1-handed weapon, will still heal for 1,500 in Inferno if you get a 500k crit. And you can still multiply that for area targets. Life Steal tends to jack up a weapon's price by a lot - since it can only roll on weapons unless you're a barb - but by the same token, once you get a good weapon with life steal, that purchase will last you a long time.

Life On Hit - A popular option, this has been a staple of the most popular builds in D3; WW barbs, CMWW wizards, witch doctors with Rain of Toads, and two-weapon monks of all stripes. Another expensive stat, this rolls only on jewelry (and legendary pieces like the Storm Crow and Jousting Mail). This skill is limited by the proc coefficient of the spells you're using - with the wrong skills, it's dead weight. With the right skills, it renders you nearly immortal. It maxes out at over 4100 LoH with legendaries, realistically capping at 2876 with rares. While on paper, this number is greatly lower than the maximum possible LPS, in practice this easily overtakes it depending on the number of targets, cooldown/attack speed, and the skill's proc coefficient. In fact, a popular guide for wizard gearing indicates that 500 LoH should be enough for endgame needs, depending on the rest of the gear. Since LoH caps out at nearly 500 on rings (and nearly 1000 on amulets), this is easy to get provided you're willing to spend a good deal on a single jewelry piece.

Health Globes - While rarely geared for specifically (Gruesome Feast witch doctors and Pound of Flesh barbs come to mind), this mechanic particular to Diablo 3 is one of the most reliable options for healing between fights, and sometimes in mid fight too. Globes heal a percentage of your max health, meaning that it scales with your health pool. All monsters have a chance to drop it, and elite packs can drop it multiple times. While not as strong in terms of pure sustain as the previous options, it's easy to use provided you can survive between health globe drops, and it's dead easy to gear for. A single bonus  affix caps out at almost 13000(!) extra life, and this applies to potions as well, which is just GREAT. It doesn't significantly increase the price of gear, and one affix somewhere on your set is good enough to be noticeable without negatively impacting your DPS or EHP.

Life After Kill - One of the least used recovery options, this affix is nevertheless useful to note in high speed farming runs at low MP. Archon wizards benefit greatly by it, as their main mechanic involves fast killing, and Rend Barbarians can also make use of this. Like Bonus Health To Globes, this affix doesn't usually increase a piece's cost, and one should be enough somewhere on your set. It caps out at 2878 life per piece, which is pretty good by itself. While killing large amounts of white trash (or Illusionist packs), this pretty much negates the need for any other kind of healing on lower difficulties.

(Note that there are other niche options for recovery not mentioned here. For example, monks have Life Per Spirit Spent and some barbarian pieces have Life Per Fury spent. These are too class specific to be included in this discussion.)

The first two options completely outclass LPS for combat life recovery, while Life After Kill is clearly superior for post-fight recovery. Health globes are somewhere in the middle, healing for a static amount relative to life pool that can be used both in combat and out of it. All of them reward aggressive gameplay and high DPS. Compare that to LPS, which is a completely static amount regardless of the player's actions, and which heals for an insignificant amount in comparison, and you'll understand why it's not a very impressive stat.

The 411: As it is, LPS is currently a very underwhelming affix that could use some improvement to be a competitive recovery option. Even in combination with certain skills (Mantra of Healing or the aforementioned Vigoron rune), it's still not very good. Worst of all, those skills are subpar options that have much better analogues; Mantra of Conviction and the Sparkflint rune come to mind.

Another little known disadvantage of life regen is that it ruins the upholstery

It's true that LPS is still an important factor in a tiny number of builds. The biggest one that comes to mind are glass wizards specs, which rely on the Force Armor rune, small life pools and large EHP values. To a lesser extent, witch doctors with Blood Ritual and/or Fierce Loyalty benefit from stacking LPS. Still, this is far too small a sample size to justify the existent of LPS in the current state of D3.

In my opinion, LPS needs to be buffed, and bad. I'll go out on a limb and say that LPS on gear should be DOUBLED. By doing so, a player needs less pieces of gear with smaller rolls, making it easier and more practical to stack LPS to a useful amount. I would argue that there's no real harm if said player chooses to go ahead and stack it on all his gear pieces; as I've already pointed out, all this does is negatively impact his overall DPS and EHP. 

Skills that affect LPS should be tweaked on a case by case basis - Galvanizing Ward and Vigoron could be doubled with little harm, I would think. However, skills like Blood Ritual or Mantra of Healing (which is percentage based or affects the whole party) could be kept as is. Or maybe the opposite could be applied - keep LPS on gear the same while greatly increasing the amount skills recover. This in turn could promote build diversity, effectively transferring the burden of EHP to the skills, allowing the player to gear more offensively instead. In any case, Life Per Second is a stat that needs watching and improving, and hopefully we can make this case to the devs in an upcoming patch.

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE: Multiplayer Improvements On The Way For 1.08

A little late, but a blue post is up concerning some needed updates to co-op play. My personal favorite - Archon duration extending on assists and not just direct kills.

Unlike other people, I read this in a Chaos Space Marine's voice...

CURSE YOU, ISP!

Currently spending my time on the DiabloFans forums because my stupid ISP is giving me hell.

I'm not saying ancient aliens did it, but...

LEARN TO READ: Because Quitting Halfway Could Kill You (Or At Least Make You Open To Humiliation)

Another brilliant example of a forum poster who lives by the adage TL;DR.

Wizards and the Conjuration School: Why It Sucks And Rocks At The Same Time

If you've ever played a wizard to 60 and above in D3, there's probably 3 spells that have made a near-permanent home in your skill slots. To be exact, these would be Magic Weapon, Familiar (the Sparkflint one to be exact), and an Armor Spell (of any type). The benefits of these three spells are incredible - increased dps for two to five minutes, or some other kind of defensive advantage. All it takes is 25 AP at one pop, and you're good for the next 120 seconds or so. No wonder most people use it.

How do I know that most people use it, you ask? A quick look at the skills used by the top 500 Heroscore players (according to DiabloProgress) shows you the breakdowns. While this obviously doesn't cover every single D3 player, seeing the skills chosen by the top 500 is at least indicative of what skills players trend to. Magic Weapon is at the top of the pack with a whopping 73% usage, with an Armor spell (Energy Armor) in fourth, closely followed by the Familiar spell. Breaking this down further, we see that Blood Magic and Force Weapon are the most used runes for MW, Sparkflint the ONLY rune of choice for Familiar, and Pinpoint Barrier the overwhelming winner in the Energy Armor category.

"The prosecution would like to submit the following evidence..."

In a side note, Storm Armor makes a healthy showing at number 8 in the list. Ice Armor is number 20, however, showing that most people care about the dps gains provided by the other Armor spells. The prevailing Wizard dogma is "kill it before it kills you", and apparently even the incredible 12% melee damage reduction isn't enough to interest many players in it (As a personal disclaimer, this is one of my personal favorite armor spells, as it's saved me more times than I can count and is a cheap way to trigger Cold-Blooded).

With all these spells providing a good duration of free dps, it's clear why many people would use them, probably all at the same time. All three spells are near mandatory for Archon farming specs, while even CMWW and SNS builds carry at least 1 Armor spell each. One could, if I may, argue that they're almost too good.

You tell 'em, brother!

And that brings me to the next point - why they suck. One is that there's almost no reason not to pack them - common wisdom would say that, if you pack 1 signature spell, 1 AP spender, and 1 ohcrap button of your choice, that leaves 3 slots for MW, Familiar, and an Armor spell. In fact, before Monster Power, I had all three spells for nearly every one of my builds. In other words, they worsen diversity because apart from sacrificing a slot, there's no other downside to using them. They'll mostly be on, they only take a second and a nominal AP cost, they're basically 3 passive slots you swapped for active slots. Which leads me to the next reason they suck - they're BORING.

The Conjuration school has rough equivalents with a couple of the other classes, that is the Barbarian Tactics and the Monk mantras. Every barb has a shout, usually Battle Rage, although a lot of people use War Cry as well (and Threatening Shout is at least represented on DiabloProgress as well at number 16). And every monk uses a Mantra of some kind. But what makes them different and more interesting than the Conjuration school?

In the case of the Barb, using the shouts is a significant decision. War Cry and Threatening Shout restore Fury and have cooldowns, meaning it's better to save casting them when you need them rather than just refreshing them each time the cd is up (especially in the case of a party). While Battle Rage has no cooldown, it costs 20 Fury, usually a significant sum since it actually takes effort to gain Fury. In the case of monks, Mantras have a bonus effect each time it is cast, which is also a significant decision since Spirit is an equally precious resource (We all know there's really only one Mantra worth casting... maybe a second if you're a two-handed weapon monk... but that's a different discussion).

If you've played a Wizard, then you know AP is a dime a dozen. We get ten points of it a SECOND just by standing around and scratching our heads. And we haven't even begun to talk about AP on crit items or Astral Presence. The Conjuration skills are such no brainers that I end up casting them by absent-minded mistake even when I'm playing different classes.

Ok, then, so what can be done about this state of affairs? As a matter of fact, we have a couple of options.

HELL TO PAY: There needs to be a significant consequence to use the Conjuration spells. I'm not saying nerf them to the ground (unless we want another wave of wizards to ragequit en masse right behind the melee demon hunters), but rather that they incur a cost that would at least influence the user's choices. Let's look at Energy Armor - it lowers the maximum AP by 20 in all runes except one, and yet it's still the number 4 spell on the DiabloProgress list. This means that despite the drawback, people are still willing to use it. Why not do something similar to the other spells, then? If you consider that the Conjuration spells last a long time, wouldn't it make sense that they're a constant drain on a Wizard's resources? 

Even Gandalf knew running out of AP was a bad thing

I'm proposing that each Conjuration spell cast, apart from its AP cost, reduces maximum Arcane Power by 5. Force Armor would reduce it by 25 instead, considering how desired it is. What this means is that, if you used all three Conjuration spells at the same time, your total AP is reduced by 15 (or thereabouts, again assuming you're not using Force Armor). Or maybe each Conjuration spell could, instead, reduce Arcane Power GENERATION by 1 point each, affecting both AP regen and AP on crit. This would make choosing such spells an actual choice, instead of a no-brainer.

GIV 'UM SUM FLASH, BOYZ: But wait - doesn't the above idea just nerf the Conjuration spells to the ground? Whatever happened to making them more interesting? Well, we can do that too - for example, with the Armor spells, why not make them have an effect when they're cast?

But wait - isn't that just a cheap knockoff of the monk Mantras? Sure it would be... if the effect was a buff. We all know from Blizzard's lore overview that Wizards are supposed to be rebellious, flamboyant, and lacking in finesee... in game terms, pure hoses of demon-crunching Dee Pee Ess. So make the Armor cast effect reflect that - when casting an Armor spell, it releases a large area effect wave of X% weapon damage of the corresponding element (ice, lightning, and arcane damage depending on the Armor spell). The damage should not be comparable to actual AP spenders, but rather, give you an incentive to refresh your Armor spell in the middle of combat instead of out of it. Furthermore, the cast effect would be able to proc the corresponding passives (Cold Blooded, Temporal Flux, and Paralysis, which badly needs another source of lightning damage).

ME AND MY LITTLE FRIEND: Familiar these days is pretty much a single rune spell. Sparkflint is just that damn good - no one really cares about Vigoron's bonus hp regen (which is the red headed stepchild of life regain anyway) or Cannoneer's AOE effect. That 12 percent bonus, no-questions-asked boost to dps just makes Sparkflint the only choice. But then what do we do? Nerfing Sparkflint is just asking for trouble and forum flames. So... here's a thought... why not BUFF the other runes?

Some familiars have ALL the luck

A simple fix would involve looking at WHY Sparkflint is so good - that 12% bonus dps. Why not give a small amount of that to the baseline Familiar effect, say, a 5% dps bonus? If Arcanot gave you bonus 2 AP regen a second AND a 5% damage increase, wouldn't you start looking at it some more? Sparkflint would still be the best choice for raw dps, but the other familiar runes would then offer flexibility without being a dps loss. One would imagine this makes them a LOT more attractive.

I GOT THE MAGIC STICK: Magic Weapon suffers from the same problem as the Armor spells - once cast, it just sits there and adds to your dps. Even worse, its rune diversity suffers because there's only real 2 real choices for the rune; Blood Magic and Force Weapon. The reason behind this isn't even because the other runes are a loss of dps - it's because they can't proc anything. Electrify can't even proc Paralysis, which is downright silly, while Venom not only has zero proc coefficient, it uses an element that isn't supported by any Wizard passive and just feels downright out of place. Conduit, on the other hand, gives much too little AP to make it worth using.

It was foretold that one day, devs who could buff the magic weapon runes might reveal themselves

Apart from allowing it to proc and buffing some of the effects, there are other ways to make Magic Weapon more interesting. Does anyone remember the Sorceress' Enchant spell from Diablo 2? What if the secondary effects from the Magic Weapon spell (lifesteal, knockback, DoT, resource gain, aoe lightning) applied to your ENTIRE party? It might require some numbers tweaking (granting an entire party 1.5% lifesteal might turn out to be too good), but doing this would actually give the Wizard some co-op viability, instead of just being the dps glass cannon.

There should be a ton of ideas out there on how to make the Conjuration school more interesting. I'm not saying my suggestions are the best ones, but I hope they're a start. Maybe this'll get people thinking about concrete, positive proposals for these spells.

THE STATE OF PLAY: Whatever happened to the Shielded Crusader?

Whatever did happen to shields? I remember in the pre-Monster Power patches, a good sacred shield with mainstat, vit, ARes and crit would fetch MILLIONS on the open market. Everybody needed one - even decked out CMWW wizards would discreetly stash a board in their bags, just in case they ran across something seriously life threatening.

"Look at teh shield wearing noob LAWL"

Now? Sword and board is basically a thing of the past, gone the way of the dodo, dial-up internet, and Dennis Rodman. Except probably in high level Hardcore play, there's just no call for using a shield anymore. How did we get to this state of affairs?

MOAR PEW PEW, LESS QQ: The advent of increased drop rates was one of the factors in lowering the popularity of the shield. Back in Ye Olde Daeys of the early Diablo 3 patches, the shield represented the best option for survivability and possibly increased damage output. In those days, dropping a quiver or a mojo that actually had the correct mainstat AND vit was the equivalent of winning 4 numbers at the Powerball, never mind having it drop with crit and a useful skill mod. Furthermore, all such offhand items were class restricted, meaning your fresh 60 witch doctor could drop a Tal Rasha's orb and do nothing but weep or sell it at the AH. On the other hand, EVERYONE can use a shield, and those dropped everywhere, like roaches in an episode of Billy The Exterminator. 

Better drop rates put paid to the glory days of the shield. A bottom-of-the-barrel Dead Man's Legacy has  MINIMUM guaranteed stats of 170 Dex AND Vit, not to mention the free hate regen, 9 crit minimum and skill mod. At the time of this writing, that particular quiver would cost you, oh, 20k gold. To look anything like that, a shield would probably have to use 3 mods (mainstat, vit, and a mainstat+vit roll) to get there, and roll near perfect +crit. It can get a skill mod, but it's highly unlikely the skill will match the mainstat, and it can't even roll hate regen. And I haven't even started talking about, say, a Thing of the Deep or a Triumvirate, both of which are similar options for their respective classes.

According to D3MaxStats, rare shields can only roll 2 offensive stats - crit chance and bonus damage vs. elites. The rest of its mod table is filled with all sorts of defensive affixes, not to mention clogged up with such great options like Thorns and bonus exp. On the other hand, a random rare source or mojo will come with a damage bonus, which is a huge boost to your dps when paired with a crit mod. It can also roll bonus damage vs. elites, as well as some indirect damage aids like AP on crit and Max AP. A quiver, on the other hand, replaces the bonus damage with IAS, which amounts to the same thing on your sheet. With that in mind, you can begin to see why shields generally languish in the dusty back shelf of the AH.

Well put, señor Gold Hat

DIE LESS, NOOB: The other side of the coin that flattened shields is the changed gameplay of Diablo 3. This portion can be summed up in three factors - Monster Power, lower death penalties, and efficiency.

Efficiency is the new buzzword that defines much of the farming attitude in D3 nowadays. Before MP, it was an achievement to just be able to kill an elite in act 2, much less manage to survive a series of them. Nowadays, it's not IF you can kill them, it's how fast you can kill them. Shields have little place in such playstyles, especially in solo games. You've got no business doing the Alkaizer run if you need a shield to just get through the first 5 Neph stacks - better to grab as much dps and movespeed as you can and plow through everything. Monster Power ties into efficiency; if a particular MP setting is too hard to survive without a shield, you're better off just lowering the MP until you can pull it off with a real dps gear set. Despite the increased Exp and loot bonuses of the higher settings, it's generally agreed that faster killing earns better rewards in the long run than stubborn slogging through elites via high defense.

Lowered penalties for dying is the third factor - one of the big reasons for keeping a shield on circa 1.03 and below was that dying was just. A pain. In the neck. One careless mistake with elites could cost you all the gold you've earned on the run, not to mention having to fight the pack again at full hit points, not to mention the longer resurrection durations each time you took a dirt nap. The incentive to just not die was all-consuming. Now, that's all gone, and while that's a good thing in my opinion, it's helped to render the humble shield relegation to the vendor and salvage bin.

Yeah, I'd pay 100m for one of THOSE shields

So what are shields for nowadays? I've seen and heard of them used mostly on Hardcore, as well as Softcore Uber boss runs. Certainly in party boss runs, there's less incentive for sacrificing everything in exchange for hard dps, and it pays to persuade the barbarian or monk to strap on a shield. Having one party member, preferably a melee (with the inherent 30% melee damage reduction) have better survivability is a good idea against Ubers. This allows the other members to focus on dealing damage, and allows the shield user to serve as a hedge against accidents (read - running into Rakanoth's slice teleport). Basically, the shield using character is more likely to survive, and thus be able to raise any team mates that have fallen during the fight.

Still, this is a rather niche role, and let's face it - most Diablo 3 players couldn't care less about such tactics and just want to faceroll, especially if they're playing barbs to begin with. A possible solution would be to let shields roll another offensive stat at a smaller amount; hopefully this would close the damage gap from something like a 50% dps loss to something like a 15% - 20% loss, making it more attractive to players and promoting better build and gear diversity. Again, who knows - patches can change things drastically, and we may yet see shields come back to the forefront of gearing.

Holy Hellacious Batarangs, Batman!

At the end of my usual grind of runs, I decided to give the wizard a rest and took the demon hunter out for a spin. As usual, I had a bunch of odd ideas percolating in my mind; I'd just dropped a Nat's chestpiece with -Hatred to Impale. Now, Impale isn't my favorite skill in the world - it's basically a single target knockoff of Elemental Arrow with 250% the cost and only 170% of the damage - but I figured, whatever, might be more fun to use with some of that awful Hatred knocked off the cost. 

Short answer - it still blows hard for farming, and I probably wasn't going to try it against Ubers. So, here I was, after barely clearing Arreat Crater 2 with a pair of death repair bills to my name, and there was no way in hell I was going to go through the rest of the run with this sad excuse for a skill. So, I putzed around in town for a minute while Genie was selling off her rares, and since I was experimenting anyway, I gave a sigh, and slotted in Chakram into my right click.

At first I thought Chakram was like this...

I'm sure that every demon hunter who's hit 60 at this point picked up Chakram at level 12 and tried it. Heck, maybe they even gave it a second chance with each new rune they picked up. And I'm equally sure that after 5 minutes, they gave up on its inaccuracy and lack of range, and put Elemental Arrow/Multishot/Spike Trap back on. You could be standing two yards away from a Fallen, and the damn shuriken would just dodge him. Chakram was just AWFUL, and a waste of Hate.

So, here I am in Keep Depths 2, half-asleep, and just spamming Chakram: Twin Chakrams until I ran out of hatred... well, hey. I wasn't running out of hatred. Well, HEY... the damn things were critting for 200k EACH. Hell, they were actually HITTING something. Hmm...

... and then I realized it was like this!

I've come to the conclusion that Chakram is one of those skills that is completely worthless when you first pick it up. The key phrase here is, 'when you first pick it up'. At that point, demon hunters just don't have the IAS, the crit chance/crit damage, the passive bonus hate regen, much less the raw dps to make Chakram worth it.

Well, how do you make Chakram worth it? Well, what turns people off from it? The whole wonky way it moves is the main issue, since it's likely to whiff (and you really don't want to spend Hatred on a move that might not even hit). So, what's the solution? Flood the frigging map with Chakrams. It's one of those skills that really shines in a farm run, since it clears white mob groups really quickly, and deals enough base damage to be practical against elite packs. As long as you have at least 1 point of passive Hatred regen from a quiver or something, it'll drain your red bar real slow. If you pack in a Bat Companion and Shadow Power: Night Bane, you can pretty much use it as your left click.

"Buy a cloak with reduced Chakram Hatred cost, n00b."

But why use Chakram to begin with? Well, let's put it up against every demon hunter's bread and butter skill, the Elemental Arrow. They both have equal Hatred costs (10), while unruned Chakram deals 15% more weapon damage than the baseline Elemental Arrow. 15% isn't enough to move people away from things like Ball Lightning, however, since that skill barely requires any aiming. However, it's the Chakram runes that really matter here, and there are two standouts that every demon hunter should look at.

Obviously, some Chakram runes are better than others

Twin Chakrams: This fires a pair of Chakram, each one doing 114% weapon damage. Their path can best be described as a double helix kinda thing - at certain points during its flight, the pair will crisscross with each other. Monsters smack in the middle will take damage from BOTH Chakram, and both will always crit at the same time (I'm not one hundred percent sure on this, but during the whole run, each time a crisscross hit got a critical, it was always both Chakrams that got it). It takes a little getting used to positioning yourself to get the double hit, but it's not hard and it's worth it, since that works out to 228% weapon damage. To give you perspective, that's 3% more than the damage of a Cluster Arrow for a FIFTH of the hatred cost.
Razor Disk: This one is my personal favorite. Unlike the rest of the Chakram variants, this one has a predictable, consistent initial flight path, meaning that it goes in a straight line until the point where you clicked, upon which it begins to spiral. If you're used to the other Hatred spenders, this is the easiest rune to transition to Chakram with. You'll just need to get used to clicking right on or slightly behind the target. The initial flight is FAST, on par with Cluster Arrow, and the spiral flight path rips apart packed groups.

This demon hunter chose... poorly

Serpentine/Boomerang Runes: While both runes have a very impressive looking 230% damage modifier, these are some of the most unwieldy, awkward skills in the entire game. Serpentine is so slow, you will probably never hit anything that moves faster (or smaller) than a Demonic Tremor. The worst part about it is that most of the Serpentine chakram follow the same flight path, meaning that if you miss one, you'll miss ALL of them. Boomerang is a little easier to work with, but is gimped by its greatly reduced range (around 1/3 of the screen). It's not the fastest rune either, meaning that you'll easily get closed into melee while casting it, which you really don't want as a demon hunter.

Shuriken Cloud: The way this rune works is very different from the others; it lasts for 2 minutes and only affects nearby enemies. I don't consider this rune a true hatred spender, and I classify it differently from the other four mentioned above. Supposedly, this rune is used in melee dh builds, which I've never tried, so I'll defer discussion of this rune for another time.

In conclusion, Chakram is a decent alternative to Elemental Arrow as a Hatred spender. Give it a shot, get used to the unusual flight paths, and you might be pleasantly surprised. Oh, and don't forget... MAKE THEM FEAR THE NIGHT! -coughs-

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE: Dyes for legendaries have not been forgotten

Blizzard apparently remembered their promise some time back about looking into dyeing legendary gear, and we've got a blue post to confirm it's on its way.

No more hot purple Tal Rasha's for me, I hope!

Nonconventional Builds and the 10 Million Gold Barbarian

"We can rebuild him. We have the technology." - The Six Million Dollar Man

"We can rebuild her. We have the auction house." - Lezard talking about Genie's barbarian

It started out as a random question with no real thought behind it.

If I remember things right, it was the fourth-umpteenth Raoha run of the day, somewhere between the waypoint of Rakkis Crossing and Fields of Slaughter. It may have had something to do with the fire-chained Fallen Mongrel champions that nearly tore us apart. Or maybe it was the third Immortal King's boots we dropped on that run. Whatever it was, I absently asked my partner while spamming Blizzard, "How come you don't play your barb anymore?"

I could hear the frown on Genie's face over Skype - she started off her Diablo 3 career as a monk during the horrible days of the pre-1.04 patch, and eventually leveled a 60 of every other class. She had fun as a barb during the first few levels of paragon - it was her first time packing a heavy two hander, and she started tripping out every time she saw a 100k crit - but it quickly wore thin with the next dozen deaths. Her gear wasn't good enough to sustain decent life steal, much less build as a WW barb, and she'd read and heard how expensive it was to 'decently gear' a barbarian.

I thought about that for a bit as we kept farming. Granted, if you wanted a Mempo, a Witching Hour, and a Lacuni's with crit, str, and vit right out of the gate, you were gonna pay through the nose for it. But I've dropped a fair share of mediocre IK pieces and while those reliably sold out, they didn't sell for all that much - a couple of million each, tops. As for weapons, if you wanted to dual wield, well, sure you were going to shell out a ton. But again, the WW barb spec was off the table, and she preferred the novelty of two handed hammers and axes anyway.

Ok, I thought, I might be able to help her shop for gear at a decent budget. But what about the spec, though? I couldn't think of anything that would be helpful except for a Rend: Bloodlust-based barbarian, which would help cover the sustain issue. But while she thought Rend was okay, she wasn't a fan of it, and again, she wanted to see the big yellow crits. Then I remembered the spec I was trying out with her Witch Doctor; while there are few barbs out there who like relying on health globes, I was doing okay on mp4-5ish with crap tanking gear. Hell, I thought then, this just might work.

"Ten million gold," I said right then. "If you can spare ten mil, I can fix your barb."

It took some persuading against a healthy dose of skepticism (she knew that you could barely buy a decent crit/str/vit Lacuni for 10m) but after a couple of minutes of browsing the auction house, I was able to point out some okay deals. A few more minutes later, the deed was done.

For an easy 10 million, you too can be the proud owner of this Immortal King showcase!

We decided on completing the IK set (minus the hammer, which I personally think could use some vitality by default) because each piece gave good value considering the gold spent. The IK chest piece alone pretty much packs all the basics you need, plus 3 sockets guaranteed. The 2 set bonus makes up for any piece with lower than desired ARes (in this case, the Triumph), while the 3 set bonus is just candy. The 5 set Fury gen bonus is supposed to be somewhat buggy, but it works most of the time from what we've seen. Of course, the Skorn will consume most of your budget, but it's well worth it. Incidentally, I remembered that we could have gotten a slightly weaker one for 3-point-something mil, but since we were still well within budget we figured to get the best one we could.

The end result was spectacular - I still remember her delighted laugh when the first 1m HotA crit landed. Between her life steal and the ridiculous number of health globes that drop, her life points don't seesaw as dramatically anymore (600k+ ehp also helps). Now she plays her barbarian a LOT more than she used to - in fact, we took her barb for a spin against MP5 Ubers with no problem. Not bad for a 10m budget.

THE STATE OF PLAY: HOW CASUAL CAPITALISM WORKS

There's a lot of talk on forums and websites about how hard it is to get 'decent gear', or for that matter, the money for the gear. You look around for your Best In Slot offerings, and a half baked Mempo Of Twilight   with barely any crit runs you up to several hundred MILLION in gold. People start spending days trying to snipe thousand-gold bids that some drunk guy mistakenly posted after his last frat party, fail, and start crying on the forums about how the auction house has ruined Diablo 3.

I'm sorry, people, but it ain't that hard.

So I have spent an hour or so in a single day browsing the AH, but just because I like seeing what's on sale for any given item I've been thinking about. I'm not even talking about endgame gear like a Witching Hour or a rare quinfecta ring; just random things I'd like to try builds with, like a Dawn for a stunlock demon hunter, or a Last Breath for a CC-heavy witch doctor idea I've been having. I've got a decent feel for the market, but I've spent nowhere near enough time on it to be an expert. That's because I didn't feel like I needed to.

Now, I've heard a LOT of complaining about how playing the AH has become a necessity - I've never understood that. You don't like the AH, then don't use it. Personally, I'm happy that there's a place where I can drop good gear that I don't need. No more spamming the chat rooms in Bnet a la D2, no more of the tense circling or the click-trade-and-run tricks scammers used to pull. Praying to the gods for the EXACT drop you need isn't exactly the best way to get your gearset completed. It took my werewolf druid SEVEN years of playing before I finally dropped my BiS socketed Windhammer. If I have to pay 500 million to save myself seven years, then I'm all for it. Instead of seeing the AH as a hindrance, use it to your advantage. Take a couple minutes between runs to price check on what you're selling or what you're seeking. Don't have enough gold? Keep farming. You could spend hours glued to the screen for that perfect deal, but then don't come complaining that you don't get to actually play enough.

First Post!

Welcome to Less Than Legendary, a blog by a casual player for casual players, where I'll post my various musings, rants, tips, and ideas for all aspects of Diablo 3.