Diablo III news and guides

2013-05-21T13:57:00.001-07:00

Combined Farm Route that allows you to obtain the most legendaries, demonic essences and experience per hour. In addition, the document has data(exp/hour, group exp/hour, mobs killed per hour, SS of starting points) that will allow you to make your own farm routes.

TLDR: VoA -> Desolate Sands -> Dahlgur Oasis -> Eastern Channel -> Western Channel

Result: 25+ Demonics/Hour, 6+ Legendaries(got 21 hour;RNG), 160m+ Exp Hour

Data: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eDYucvOpSUUsf_O0NsYgOo6zGZmFJZkyzdiBSYyae8c/edit

Video:

Happy Hunting

Blizzard Donates Money Made from Dupe to a Good Cause

2013-05-16T10:08:00.002-07:00

After the Diablo 3 gold dupe that broke out after the 1.08 patch went live, Blizzard responded by locking down the Auction House and banning players who had executed the exploit to dupe. Now, however, after Blizzard has identified who duped the gold and banned them, they were stuck with the players’ auctions that had previously been posted, and needed something to do with all of the money they now had sitting around.

Blizzards plan of action, however, is clever; rather than cause an outrage by many in keeping the money made, Blizzard has said “We'll be donating all proceeds from auctions conducted by the suspended or banned players—including all of THEIR sale proceeds that we intercepted as well as our transaction fee—to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals."

While the economy in Diablo 3 may still take a big hit due to all of the gold that was duped, even players who were banned for using the exploit can console themselves in knowing that at the very least the money they would have made is being donated to a good cause. While the exact amount of money made has not been announced yet, it could be a sizeable amount.

Let us know, were you banned due to this dupe? If so, how do you feel about what Blizzard is planning to use the money you may have earned, and finally, do you think they handled the situation properly or could they have dealt with it differently? ...

One thing I've always wanted. Purely for aesthetics/badassery

2013-05-15T14:07:00.001-07:00

It's always bugged me that the lobby only shows your currently chosen character so my idea is similar to what it looks like when you group up with friends in the lobby. I think your menu should include all your characters standing there looking like a team of badasses.

As you choose a different hero, that hero moves to the front of the pack.

Yeah, probably not on Blizz's radar, but I think it adds to the grind if you can see all your characters in their glory. Maybe not all ten, but maybe your 5-6 most recently played characters?

Suggested Stats (DPS, EHP) for MPlvls

2013-05-14T13:43:00.001-07:00

Since public games are incredibly popular and beneficial to go to now, I thought it'd be handy to have a general idea of what people should be gearing towards for each monster power. Especially since people will join MP10 with too low DPS (including myself!) without knowing that they're a huge hindrance to the group.

You can already see multiple posts with people complaining about teammates slowing the group down because of deaths or low DPS.

All

kill MOST elite packs under 30 seconds (disputed: see comments)
kill trash under 3-5 seconds
deaths average 0.25 or less per elite pack

Barbarian

MP10: 650k EHP (55k HP for act 1 HoA), 200k DPS (170k solo)

Wizard

Critical Mass Build
Wiki Guide
MP5: 2.307 aps, 40% crit chance, 50k dps 400+ life on hit, 20+ APoC 3500 armor, 500 all resist, 35k hp
MP7: 2.501 aps, 45% crit chance, 75k dps 800+ life on hit, 20+ APoC 4000 armor, 550 all resist, 35k hp
MP8+ with 2.501 aps and highest DPS: 2.501 aps, 55% crit chance (Frost Nova: Deep Freeze will also be a big help), 150k+ dps 800+ life on hit, 20+ APoC 5000 armor, 700 all resist, 45k+ hp
MP8+ with 2.73 aps and decent DPS: 2.73 aps, 50-55% crit chance, 125k+ dps 800+ life on hit, 20 APoC 5000 armor, 700 all resist, 40k+ hp
MP8+ with 3.01 aps and lower DPS: 3.01 aps, 50%+ crit chance, 75k+ dps 800+ life on hit, 20 APoC 4500 armor, 650 all resist, 35k+ hp
MP10 ubers with decent dps and a solid freeze: 2.73 or 3.01 aps, 55%+ crit chance, 100k+ dps 800+ life on hit, 20 APoC 5500+ armor, 700+ all resist, 40k+ hp
SNS Build

Build Guide

MP10 138k DPS, EHP 340k

Monk

Backlash Build
D3Up Guide

MP10: 500k EHP, 200k DPS (150k for soloing)

Demon Hunter
Grenades Build
Wiki Guide
MP 8 SOLO, MP 10 GROUP: 225k EHP, 200k DPS (full stats)

Bola/Spike Build
MP10: ~320k EHP, 340k unbuffed DPS (full stats)
Witch Doctor
MP10: 370k EHP, 160k DPS

Dupe takes the Diablo 3 Auction House offline

2013-05-09T10:24:00.002-07:00

Ever since the Diablo 3 launch people have been searching for (and finding) dupes. The Diablo 3 1.0.8 patch released yesterday brought us another dupe exploit allowing many users, as stated on a Battle.net forum post, to make billions, and for certain users, trillions of gold. We're not entirely sure how much gold was duped, but we do know the exploit was real and that the real money auction house was/is down as a result.

"After the release of Patch 1.0.8 this morning, we found that some players were exploiting a bug that enabled them to duplicate gold through the Auction House," Diablo 3 Community Manager Lylirra explained. "We're working on fixing the bug right now, and bringing the Auction Houses offline helps us troubleshoot in a more stable environment while preventing further exploiting."

A fix has been found for the issue and Blizzard is currently testing that fix. They've announced that despite recieving a lot of requests for a rollback, they won't actually do one. "We've been able to successfully identify players who duplicated gold by using this specific bug, and are focusing on these accounts to make corrections. While this is a time-consuming and very detailed process, we believe it's the most appropriate choice given the circumstances," she wrote. "We know that some of you may disagree, but we feel that performing a full roll back would impact the community in an even greater way, as it would require significant downtime as well as revert the progress legitimate players have made since patch 1.0.8 was released this morning."

When we asked our sources at Blizzard what would happen to the exploiters, they were unable to tell us. We assume a lot of people are going to be banned, but they might have already made their money from the dupe. The only thing we've been able to learn is that they're in the process of "reviewing the accounts involved and taking appropriate actions, including temporary locks, suspensions, and/or bans."

Legendary item uniqueness and its link to build diversity

2013-05-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday during Diablo discussions we brought up a few topics related to item and build diversity that I wanted to expand upon using an example. The concepts that we were speaking of were:

Legendaries that have specific affixes not available on rares
Legendary procs/properties that scale with various stats
Legendary procs/properties that synergize with specific skills
Legendaries that are designed to encourage certain play styles and builds
Legendaries leading to gear polarization/different prioritization of stats

In an ideal world I think that if someone was playing a build that you never saw before and you took a look at their armory, your first thought should be “What is this guy/girl smoking?”; however, after looking through their gear choices, the synergy and scaling between their gear, skills and procs and after doing some runs with them this person that they actually have a badass build that is on par with the cookie cutter build you’ve been playing all along. Achieving this is obviously not a simple task and requires a lot of balancing.

Sample build: This example is purely an illustrative one that is obviously not completely balanced, but demonstrates the concepts and their importance.

Bloodbeam WD (After finishing writing this I realize the damage output is probably a bit too high…)

First glance on stats from gear when unbuffed:

2500 int, 1000 str, 1000 dex, 45% ias, no crit stats, 400 all res (including base int), 3000 armor, 50k HP, 500 DPS 11% IAS 3% lifesteal dagger socketed with... A TOPAZ to hit 20k thorns (going to introduce thorns legendary so that this number isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds with current standards).

First glance at their skill setup:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZUYXd!gTY!ZaabYb

At this point if you never saw this before you should be thinking “Um……”

However, the WD has a few unique legendaries on him that have some interesting text associated with them:

Legendary WD Helm: +2000 thorns and “Blood spilled returns to haunt your foes” (or something less lame sounding)

Legendary offhand: +3000 thorns damage and “Offense is the best defense” (again not the coolest sounding thing…)

Legendary belt: “Chance to unleash the Angel’s wrath to punish the weak” (I’m a scientist alright! Get off my back about flavor text!)

Legendary glove: +25% damage to holy skills

So let’s look at the first unique item ability:

“Blood spilled returns to haunt your foes”
Creates an AoE damage circle (similar to SW on monks) around you and your pets that can proc whenever you are hit, this can stack up to 3 times and will last 5 seconds, damage dealt is holy damage. The animation would be similar to SW but with droplets of blood spinning around you.

The base proc rate is 5%, but scales up to 80% based on the total amount of strength you have and hitting 99% max of 80% asymptotically at 2000 str. At 1000 str the proc rate would be ~55%.

The base radius of the circle is 8 yards, but scales up to 20 yards based on the total amount of dexterity you have hitting 99% max of 20 yards asymptotically at 2000 dex. At 1000 dex the radius would be ~16 yards.

The base damage normally scales off of thorns damage doing 33, 66 and 100% depending on stacks; however, for every 500 int the scaling in increased 1 fold. So unbuffed 2500 int would be 5 more; 5 + 1 (base) = 6x scaling coefficient on 20k thorns = 120k DPS, but fully buffed (4430 int) we now have a 9.86x scaling coefficient meaning 197k DPS.

Then throw on the fact that because we went with Fierce loyalty, your pets also have thorns damage and will also do 120-197k DPS in their swirly majiggers. And on top of that we’ll be doing an extra 25% damage from these sources because of the legendary glove we got, so you and your 3 zombie dogs will be doing: 150/246k DPS in a 16 yard radius around you when you’re at full stacks. This will allow you to just plow through trash while having all 4 of you converge on a pack of elites to get overlap of these circles leads to almost 1M DPS.

“Offense is the best defense”
Simple ability here: For every 1000 points of thorns damage you receive 20 all res and 200 armor.

So now that 20k thorns gives us a bonus of 400 all res and 4000 armor, so our total mitigation is 400 + 400 + 1930*0.1 = 993 all res fully buffed, and 3000 + 4000 = 7000 armor OR when using haunt, 10000 armor. Take into account the fact that you could use jungle fortitude and get your dogs to tank 10% for you, all of sudden you’re able to get away with just 3% LS.

“Chance to unleash Angel’s wrath to punish the weak”
This proc is a chain lightning like ability that is checked every time you attack, but the animation is a white/yellow beam type thing that deals holy damage.

The base proc rate is 5%. This value is also increased by up to 80% depending on the amount of dex you have topping out at 2000 similar to before. With 1000 dex we’d get 55% proc rate.

The number of targets that it jumps to (cannot jump to the same target consecutively) is determined by user’s strength. Base rate is 2, but increases up to a maximum of 10 depending on strength using diminishing returns. Let’s say that with 1000 str we hit 7 targets with a 50% chance to jump to an 8th.

Finally the damage of the proc is determined by the base value and has a 2 multipliers based on the degree of slow on the mob and the user’s Int. The first multiplier can be increased by up to a bonus 500% depending on the amount of slow on the mob. With 80% slow you would get a 4x multiplier, with 92% slow (poison darts and one of the other slows) you would get a 4.6x multiplier. The int multiplier would be similar to before where every 500 int adds 100% damage. So if the base was 5000 dmg, we would have: 5000 * (1+4.6) * (1+2500 or 4430/500) = 168k or 276k damage PER target. Finally let’s not forget that we get an extra 25% bonus damage since its holy so we do a total of 210k or 345k damage each time.

Now you see why this WD stacked 45% IAS on a 1.67 APS weapon to get 2.42 attacks/s. At the 55% proc rate you’d be launching 1.33 of these beams/sec on average which would decimate elites whenever you encountered them. Poison dart is also one of the best choices here since its fast, long range, costs little mana and provides a 100% chance of slowing (although slow spiders could still be viable).

Now that we’ve gone over what a potential build would be like let’s analyze how it fulfills the concepts mentioned earlier:

Legendaries that have specific affixes not available on rares
3 of the legendaries here have very unique procs/abilities on them that you could make an entire build around alone. The last +25% bonus to holy is like the WKL where despite the sheet DPS loss, depending on your skills used you can get a large DPS gain.

Legendary procs/properties that scale with various stats
We made the proc rates and utility of the spell here scale off of non-primary stats and thorns. Normally a WD would really only consider getting Str for the purpose of Armor, otherwise they’d ignore non-primary stats. Thorns in this build increases both the offensive power and defensive power of it.

Legendary procs/properties that synergize with specific skills
Here we have the swirly AoE DPS that works wonderfully with pets once they have the fierce loyalty passive. Furthermore, we have synergy between the multitude of slows that the WD possesses and holy chain lightning proc.

Legendaries that are designed to encourage certain play styles and builds
This kind of setup makes pets extremely strong since they actually do damage with stats that you can control! Furthermore, it rewards playing a bit more ranged since slowing the enemies now provides increased damage output as well as utility.

Legendaries leading to gear polarization/different prioritization of stats
The stats sought after by this build are completely different than the normal bears build that focuses on Crit stats and Int and only overlaps with 0CD ZDs really in the department of IAS. We’re going for as much thorns when gearing for this build while picking up a lot of non-primary attributes in addition to getting Int.

One last point about these items that I wanted to make is that in order to balance it out and get the items out faster, I believe that Blizz needs to use the PTR and players more. When these items are designed and you feel confident with them, make an announcement and put them on the PTR. Let the players try it out and see if they can break the game with the item. Depending on how over/underwhelming the builds that emerge from it, adjust the procs and damage accordingly. The main point is that you don’t have to wait till you finished ALL of the items and test them all the PTR all at once. I think it would be much better is players could be more focused on certain elements rather than getting a smorgasbord of changes thrown at them.

I want to end by saying this is in reality only half of the equation. The larger paradigm for determining what builds succeed and fail is dependent on both the player side as well as the environment side and I’ll make a post about the latter variable on a later date.

So for those who managed to make it this far down the wall of text I’m wondering what you guys think of these concepts as the fundamental building blocks for how legendaries should be designed in the future and/or even examples of how these could be applied.

Itemization and item customization, how will they change Diablo 3? Your thoughts!

2013-05-02T13:28:00.003-07:00

So it appears the next big changes coming to Diablo 3 will be both itemization and the ability to customize items. I think both of these ideas are going to really improve peoples desire to play this game, and I think it will bring back a lot of players. Actually being able to find gear for your player while playing the game, rather than spending time in the AH trying to find an upgrade, is what we have all been waiting for. This all sounds great, but what will it change?

First off, if item drops are going to be better and more geared towards the character you are playing, isn't that going to be enough for to get people moving in the right direction? Anyone who has spent hundreds of hours playing this game knows that actually getting an upgrade from a drop is very rare. More often, we are hoping to get an upgrade for someone else that will sell for a significant amount of gold. We then head to the AH with our new found riches and hope someone else has found an upgrade for us. That doesn't seem right, so should be thankful for the AH? No. The AH is the reason top tier items are only available to the top 5% of the Diablo 3 population, and most of them are bought out by bots then placed on the RMAH.

So now legendary items will roll stats based on the monster it dropped from. This is another great idea. This opens up the possibility for more items being useable, and gets away from the cookie cutter item builds that have developed. Hopefully it will also allow more skills to come into play. My concern here is that they will reduce the drop rate of the legendary items to not flood the market.

Item customization might be the biggest game changer of them all. The general feeling is that any customization to an item will automatically bind it to your account. This is going to make those items one step away from being OP, to being completely OP. For example, let's say you have an Echoing Fury that is 1250+ DPS, 150+ main stat, .24+ AS, 2.7%+ LS and 90+ CD, how much more valuable does that item become with a socket? This is just one example. And since these customizations become account bound, how valuable do these items become prior to customizing? I have a feeling more items will be sold via third party sites (d2jsp) to exceed the 2B cap placed on the AH. This brings up the question: what will it cost/take to customize an item? Obviously gold, Demonic Essence, gems and possibly brimstones will all be required. Does it scale with item level, or maybe some sort of item score (think diablo progress)?

And with all that being said, how does the game get rebalanced after all these changes? Everything mentioned above is going to make gearing up your character go from several months to a couple of weeks, once the AH has been restocked. Will it be possible to gear up a character that one shots everything in MP10? Does an endless dungeon that gets more difficult the further you go down become the new end game? If so, that essentially creates a ladder system for Diablo 3, something that a lot of players want to see.

These are just some of my thoughts and ideas based on the information I have read in blue posts and what not. Let me know what you think!

[Monk][Video]If any of you high end guys are bored of the same old grind, give this a try. Run MP7/MP8 using a LpSS build.

2013-04-29T13:03:00.001-07:00

If you are tired of the same old grind and looking for something to keep you on your toes, try running a LpSS build. Ive never used LpSS so I figured, "eh -why not". Turns out, its actually pretty fun.

It is by no means efficient but I was able to farm pretty successfully on MP7 and took out Ghom on MP8 (see video). Sadly, my EHP for this build is in the toilet at 397K - LpSS Monk so that limits its usefulness but I kind of like the play style and the need to think about what Im doing - especially against RD packs!

I am always looking for ways to improve my current game-play so if you guys have any suggestions on what could improve this build, Id love to hear them :)

Video:

In case you are wondering, the LpSS gear cost a combined total of 20M

Just swapped to a new Inna's and equipped one of the rings from my standard build. That bumped my AR up by ~80 and my DPS by about 30K. Just facetanked MP9 Ghom!! d3up link has been updated!

Two ideas that would make me excited as hell to keep playing Diablo 3

2013-04-28T05:11:00.000-07:00

I must admit I play more SWTOR these days, but here are some input on what would make me want to play more Diablo 3:

Once your jeweler learns the cut, he will be able to use an "Insatiable Gem" to socket an "Insatiable Void" into an item.

"Insatiable Gems" drop randomly in the world. As you feed materials into the gem, it slowly grows in power. The materials that you feed into the gem determine how it will grow. For example, placing green gems will grow it in dexterity, yellow gems will grow it in intellect. Placing gold into the insatiable gem will increase it's gold find, grey items will increase armor. White items will increase it's pickup radius. Blue and yellow items will increase its magic find, and feeding in legendary items has unknown effects. Unfortunately, it is not possible to tell how much an insatiable gem has grown in power before it is attached to an item.

You can continue to feed items into an unsocketed Insatiable Gem indefinitely. At any time you may seek out your jeweler and have him attach an insatiable gem onto an item, and it will imbue that item with increased stats based on the types and quantities of items that have been fed into the gem. Once attached, the gem creates an "insatiable void" on the item - and you can continue to feed items into the void to add stats to the gear (at a slightly lower rate of return than before it was attached.) HOWEVER, attaching the gem to an item prevents you from selling or trading that item to another player. The gem can never be removed.

Chaos Orbs

We all get into ruts sometimes, and need a reason to mix things up. Chaos Orbs are meant to break you out of your rut by giving you a reason to try a different playstyle, without requiring you to buy an entirely different set of gear or play a different class.

Chaos Orbs drop randomly from mobs, and alter the behavior of your spells or provide a new passive ability. Chaos Orbs cannot be traded or sold, and are ethereal - meaning they will dissappear over time. Orbs will drop with a random duration between 2 and 4 hours of playtime. There are 2 types of orbs: Universal, and Class-specific. You can only equip 1 of each type at a time, and in addition to your equipped orbs you may only carry 1 of each type. (Example: You have 2 orbs equipped and 2 in inventory, no new orbs will drop for you.) Class-specific orbs will only drop for the class you are currently playing.

Some examples of Chaos Orbs:

Universal:

10% chance to cast a duplicate spell that uses a random rune variant
Your crit chance is increased by 10% of your critical hit damage
Killing an enemy increases your run speed by 1% for 5 seconds (Can exceed cap) but damage you take is increased by your run speed.
Access to abilities from other classes
Magic find reduced to 0, gold find increased by double your magic find.
All attacks do AoE damage equal to double your pickup radius.
Gain 50% of thorns damage as healing

Wizard:

Meteor strikes land instantly
Each cast of Magic Missile also casts Arcane Torrent: Death Blossom
Ray of Frost now penetrates all targets

Barbarian:

Frenzy now hits all targets within 10 yards
Weapon throw no longer costs fury, instead generates 2 fury
Call of the Ancients: Summoned Ancients now last until killed (they inherit your baseline armor, resist, and HP)

Monk:

Attack speed of Crippling Wave increased by 100%
While Sweeping Wind is active, each enemy you kill adds 1 second to the duration of Sweeping Wind
Lashing Tail Kick: Hand of Ytar & Spinning Flame Kick no longer have a spirit cost

Demon Hunter:

Your Rapid Fire can now be channelled while moving
Entangling Shot has a 10% chance to activate Fan of Knives: Crippling Razors at the impact site
Bola shot now detonates instantly upon impact
All hatred generating attacks have damage increased by 250%, but now cost half the hatred they would normally generate

Witch Doctor:

Toads generated by Plague of Toads persist for 10 seconds, up 50 active
Travel speed and damage of Spirit Barrage increased by 100%
While Angry Chicken is active, each enemy you kill adds 1 second to the duration of Angry Chicken

When a chaos orb expires, you receive the buff "Lawful", increasing damage, armor, and resistances by 10%. Lasts until you equip a new chaos orb.

In order to equip a Chaos Orb, you will need to complete a quest by obtaining a chaotic organ from each Act end-boss: The Butcher, Belial, Azmodan, and Diablo. These are a 100% drop chance at MP1 and above. This will inscribe you with a band of chaos, adding two new inventory slots where you can place Chaos Orbs.

Each time you die while a Chaos Orb is equipped, you lose 20 minutes from its remaining duration.
Chance for Chaos Orbs to drop fluctuates based on what you have out of 4, at increments of 25%. (If you have 4 of 4, 0% chance to drop. If you have 2 equipped but none in inventory, +50% chance. If you have none equipped or in inventory, +100% chance.
As you feed your insatiable gem, you CAN see the quality as it grows from grey, white, blue, yellow...legendary? in color.

Itemizing a monk from the ground up

2013-04-27T13:06:00.001-07:00

I've been away from the game for such a long time (almost pre 1.04)

and I've recently decided to get back to the game again, I feel that I've gotten myself stuck into a corner when itemizing my monk previously (basically whenever I found a better dps upgrade, it ruined my EHP horribly, or vice versa)

I also need to re-think my itemization choices regarding resists (is there any particular resist that comes cheaper than others overall?

is it better to get both ALL RESIST + single resist on each slot, or is it possible to achieve better results using only single resists combined with OWE and aiming for high values, in order to free some of the item budget for better stats ?

I don't want to gradually go through phases of itemization and gear progressions or "tiers", I would prefer to know what's the preferred ideal combination of stats / and the values I should be looking for per each slot, and aim to target these high/maximum values for each slot on a per slot basis instead of upgrading each slot just a little bit.

sorry for rambling on, but what I'm trying to say is a little bit unformulated in my mind.

Here is a profile, to get an idea about what I was building before.

I have no clue what the maximum values for each roll on each slot is, and what is the most optimal combination of special stats that would be beneficial if you are min/maxing (I saw that there's a SOJ legendary now that adds % dmg to elites?)

TL/DR what is the best in slot item build for monks (not in item name wise, but stat value wise per slot, within the maximum rolls and combination of rolls allowed by the game)

Will my item sell? An AH guide.

2013-04-24T12:35:00.001-07:00

I have noticed that over the past couple of weeks many people have been unsure of what will sell in the auction house. In response to this I refered them to this outdated google doc (credit goes to kolchin04 for creating this) that had values back from 1.0.5.

I figured that it was probably time to update it, so this was my result.

Any feedback would be great, and I will incorporate anything that any of you all think is missing.

Hope this helps you guys out, and Happy Hunting.

EDIT: I changed some stuff for rings, amulets and gloves. Also for offhands and quivers legendaries are the only right choice anymore so I changed the sheet to display that. Thank you to SirDoug and vexagon for these suggestions.

EDIT 2: In regards to pricing: Search similar and then decide which stats are the most important and then get rid of the rest. After that drop the values by 15% and undercut the lowest price by 10% and make that your buyout.

EDIT 3: Added a few notes about one handers and skill specific skills.

EDIT 4: exaltedgod made it a downloadable document.https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwqTmhq1er0wUWdEZUExTkhjLTA/edit?usp=sharing

Earth Day Shop Hop!

2013-04-19T13:45:00.004-07:00

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A Paragon Incentive System that encourages making Alts, and leveling up existing strong heroes.

2013-04-15T13:17:00.001-07:00

Presenting this idea to Blizzard, free to be modified according to their balancing tenets:

Here's a Paragon Incentive System that encourages making Alts, and leveling up existing strong heroes:

The Paragon Levels of your Alts are added up, and translates to bonus %experience to the current character you're playing.

For example, let's say I have:

Demon Hunter @ Paragon 100
Wizard @ Paragon 73
Barbarian @ Paragon 8

Total Paragon = 100+73+8 = 181. Let's say the formula is: 10% of the Total Paragon is the bonus experience for playing.

Then a create a new Witch Doctor. When I play this, I have 18.1% bonus experience (additive)

If I continue playing Barb, the computation becomes 100+73 = 173 (we didn't include the Barb's Paragon itself). Barb's XP bonus is 17.3%

Advantages:

Rewards the time investment you've put in leveling up your characters.
The more you play, the easier it becomes to level up.
Lesser need to use Ruby on Helm / Cain's Set / Leoric's Signet -- opens up more gearing options.

Bash - Punish needs a buff icon

2013-04-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Punish rune creates a faint yellow glow beneath your character's feet that is impossible to see while fighting a pack of mobs. There is no buff so you don't know how many stacks you have or how close it is to falling off.

Also it would be nice if it was changed to increase your damage by 24% instead of skills. It would be nice to see my sheet damage go up. Skills is essentially the same thing; the only thing that I think skills does not include is the white normal attack that is used in place of a fury-spender skill when you don't have enough fury.

Edit: Punish does affect your sheet damage so I was wrong about that.

And could we maybe get around to removing the knockback altogether? Having an Echoing Fury fearing the mob and Bash knocking them back is quite maddening.

Diablo Fan Film Teaser

2013-04-11T12:40:00.001-07:00

Looks great! Though, it's in french so you already know he will surrender.

This fan film (teaser), which was inspired by the Diablo novels, was lead by a team sharing the same passion for Diablo. It was not sponsored by any production company and was completely financed by its director .

PTR 1.0.8 Servers Soon UP!!!

2013-04-08T13:21:00.001-07:00

Blizzard have just put the new PTR Build files for Patch 1.0.8

You can already download them:

http://dist.blizzard.com.edgesuite.net/d3-pod/public-test/Global/10485.direct/Data_D3/PC/MPQs/base/d3-update-base-15926.MPQ

http://dist.blizzard.com.edgesuite.net/d3-pod/public-test/Global/10485.direct/Data_D3/PC/MPQs/enUS/d3-update-enUS-15926.MPQ

http://dist.blizzard.com.edgesuite.net/d3-pod/public-test/Global/10485.direct/Updates/d3-0-15926-Win-final.MPQ

Sadly I can't say what is inside, except that I have notice the Elite, Rare, Goblin Alert Thingy... Also Identify all items.

Secret of Exploding Palm in Group, MP10 Ghom/Rakanoth speed-kill in 14s!

2013-04-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to reveal the secret (or the truth) behind Exploding Palm in group, have you ever wonder whether exploding palm explosion stacks with each other when multiple player uses it? How about the exploding damage you do at the end in group? Here you go:

The exploding damage does stacks with each other but it's not stack based on solo player exploding damage (a lot of people think so, included me before), the exploding damage is calculated based on the total HP when you are playing in group but the secret is exploding palm losses it's efficiency when you are playing with multiple players.

The exploding palm explosive do 50% flat damage from the max HP when you are playing in solo, it then goes down to 30% of total HP when you play in 2 man group, in three man it goes down to 15% and finally in 4 man group, you drop down to only 10%. So if there are 4 people in the group, I apply exploding palm and the explosive damage will only be 10%, but this is stack-able, if all 4 of us apply exploding palm then you get 40% explosive damage.

You can take a look at this table for all the details and also the actual exploding damage you do when you do MP10 Ghom/Rakanoth Ubers.

The Uber build explosive damage is close to the max explosive damage you could do if you fully buff yourself.

A video explanation done during a stream:
http://www.twitch.tv/invisuk/c/2128759

The exploding palm is also buff-able, but I will not go into detail here, if you want, you can read a SP guide here:http://www.diablofans.com/topic/90173-inviss-monk-end-game-speed-palm-build-for-high-mp/

Lastly, just to demonstrate Exploding Palm can be powerful even in 4 man group if you know how to buff yourself for max exploding damage, here is a video of a guy doing single 126m explosive damage at the end. Ghom/Rakanoth speed-kill in just 14s! http://www.twitch.tv/invisuk/c/212455
8

[Monks]Introducing, the Monk "Toolbox"...

2013-03-31T11:41:00.002-07:00

Hello Monks,

What we have here is a basically a merging of Meto’s Monk Spreadsheet and my TR spirit calculator and my Damage Mitigation Tools. Meto has been gracious enough to let me make some updates to his sheet and incorporate my additions.

So what is new in this edition:

A 3rd generator has been added to the Combination Strike buffs
Fixed Transgressions AS bonus value
Added a Damage Mitigation Calculator
Added a TR Passive Spirit Calculator.

Maybe I should give a basic rundown of what the spreadsheet actually does, in case you are unfamiliar with it. Metos sheet is built around the “cookie cutter” monk build…FoT/SW. It will show you the breakdown of the damage you get from FoT, from SW and from the Cyclones. The summary sheet within the spreadsheet will take all your inputs and output:

DPS
EHP
ETDPS
Combat Spirit Regeneration
Life regeneration stat
Etc…

...it is basically d3up on steroids :)

The file has a “How to use” tab but I just want to say that the first thing I would do, after entering your DPS, EHP and Life Regen stats is to zero out all buffs (with the possible exception of STI) and make sure that what is displayed matches d3up. Ex:

Keep in mind that there may be some slight differences between the spreadsheet and whats displayed on d3up but it should be VERY close.

Some may wonder why I am calling this the “Monk Toolbox”. I just figured that since it has several “tools” in it now, that “toolbox” was an appropriate name. At its heart it remains Metos spreadsheet, I just added some tools to help all Monks. My initial thought process is discussed more here

Ok then, here is the "toolbox"

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Oh, btw, you will have to d/l it for it to work

EDIT: This is the link to the variant that accounts for the hidden average damage affix on some jewelry items

Enable Monster Power needs removed...hopefully next patch.

2013-03-31T11:39:00.002-07:00

I've explained to at least 10 people this week alone, what Monster Power is and how to enable it. The worst one was this WD who had pretty decent gear and paragon lvl 4. It's almost embarrassing because here's a player that's playing through the game and is at a disadvantage because they missed a patch note. At this point, there's no reason to not have it enabled...just remove the option.

Have a tooltip that when you click Monster Power or hover over it, explains briefly about what it does. I hope a dev/cm sees this and is able to do something. Seems a lot of people are coming back and 100% clueless about MP, Paragon, Keys, new crafting etc etc.

added image to WD asking in trade not sure what MP was after we were talking about key runs etc.

Monk: Mantra of Evasions: Backlash ... somethings you may not know but probably should.

2013-03-25T14:37:00.002-07:00

I just wanted to take a moment to discuss a skill that most Monks are familiar with to some extent – Mantra of Evasion’s: Backlash. This is one of those skills that some of us used when we were coming up in the ranks. I say some because it became available at lvl 50, 15 levels after its more popular cousin – MoC: Overawe. As you know, Overawe has been a gold standard among Monks for a long time. So much so that Backlash is rarely seen in builds anymore. I am going to try to change that.

So what do we know about Backlash? Well, the tool tip says it’s associated with dodge and that successfully dodging an incoming attack results in a chance to create a burst of flame dealing 35% weapons damage. Pretty strait forward – a nice little skill but not much utility, or is there?

The tool tip is correct in that you do get a flame equal to 35% of weapons damage. What it fails to mention is that 35% is based on an attack speed of “1”. If you increase AS that percentage also increases. For example, at an AS of 2.4 that percentage is 84. Ok, that’s gem #1. Gem #2 is the fact that when Backlash procs, it also procs LS. So how do you know when Backlash procs? You can see an orange ring radiate out from under your Monk. Gem #3 deals with the fact that Backlash can also crit. I know, it sounds bizarre but it’s the truth. Now, the difference between a “backlash crit” and a “normal crit” is the fact that Backlash uses your weapons damage as the base value. A normal crit will use your stat sheet as the base value. To make sure I wasn’t seeing things, I had previously set game play options as such:

Options:

I made a short video in which I went into MP1 and sought out a RD pack. The goal was to capture those crits and to see if backlash could handle a MP1 RD pack on its own. I basically just sat there. Now my Templar was with me so it is logical to assume that he was doing a little bit of damage as well. FYI, my Templar does a whopping 388 points of damage so it’s safe to say that his contribution was negligible.

Templar:

Backlash Video:

As you can clearly see, backlash procs LS and it can crit. It is for these reasons that I have started using it on my MP10 runs in Keeps 2 and CoTA. We can talk more about that if you’d like but the true purpose of this post is to bring Backlash out of the darkness and maybe back into some specialized builds. It may not seem like Backlash has a place in MP10 but when it comes to dense packs /areas it outperforms Overawe in my opinion.

I got 99 problems, but a Frostburn Gauntlet aint one.. (plvl100)

2013-03-24T15:09:00.003-07:00

I know it's nothing new, and i'm probably late to the plvl100 party. But i thought i'd share my plvl100 screenshot. This was harder than it looks to pull off.

All the frostburns i got on the way to 100. Not including the ones i brimstoned.

Why save them, rather than brimstone them all? It started as a joke with my friends. I had one who always raged over everything that went wrong. it was hilarious to drop it on him every elite we killed and hear him rage over skype lol. Now time to brimstone..

INVIS's Monk End Game [Speed Palm Build] for High MP

2013-03-21T14:25:00.000-07:00

Below is a guide from INVIS:

Hi Everyone INVIS here,

I would like to introduce my proudest creation so far, the Speed Palm (SP) build. I have been playing with this build for a long time, this is also the build I uses for most of my legendary competition. I have done a few builds before and this is by far my most favorite one. There are a lot of advantages in this build and many tips you can improve and practice on. Allow me to go through the details here (Video Version at the end):

Introduction of the build
Skills Explanation
Gear Explanation
Using the Build Correctly
Tips and practice steps
Summary

---------------Introduction of the Build---------------

The core element of this build is the exploding palm, the exploding palm has been buffed to 50% in this patch, and it's what I consider to be the most powerful skills for high MP. (Even with 30% in 1.06, it was still a very powerful skill) The exploding damage scales with the monster HP and on high MP for example MP10, it's very powerful. 90% of the time, the explosion from 1 elite will take out the entire pack. So what we are trying to do here is to maximize our single DPS damage and kill 1 monster quickly for it to explode.

The beauty of this build is the consistence DPS you will be doing, you will want to let the mobs to surround you, and keep hitting them until one explode. Unlike the wave of light, which has knockback, this build is all very stable and controllable. Remember consistence DPS also means you will have safer life steal, as long as you are able to keep hitting them, you will always get life steal back.

---------------Skills Explanation---------------

These are the skills I use: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aSVUkY!TgV!acaZac

Fist of Thunder- Thunderclap The most powerful generator and the dash is also very useful for locking your main target.

Sweeping Wind- Cyclone The most powerful Sweeping Wind and one of your main DPS output.

Exploding Palm- The Flesh is Weak The core element of this build, since we want to knock one single target down quickly, the flesh is weak will add additional 12% damage to the target. Also exploding damage will be the key.

Way of the Hundred Fists- Blazing Fists The more practical second generator, compare to deadly reach- foresight, the cool down of wave of hundred fists sync nicely with mantra and will only be around 2% dps decrease from deadly reach (yes I have tested it). There are also the increase attack speed benefit for your spirits and cyclone, and also movement speed bonus. It's more difficult to have 100% up time with deadly reach since you don't have the buff icon like the wave of hundred fists so you kind of need to remember to apply it yourself. My suggestion will be to go with way of the hundred fists to form the additional 8% combination strike bonus.

Mantra of Conviction- Overawe The most powerful mantra to maximize your DPS.

Blinding Flash- Faith in the Light The unity and DPS boost in this build, in order to successfully make all monster group together and explode, blind is a very useful tool. Not to mention it also boost your DPS by 30% for 3s, but 3s is usually what it takes to determine how successful your exploding palm is. I have also tested the Breath of Heaven- Blazing Wrath and it does about 3% more DPS compare to Blind, but with the use of Beacon of Ytar, the blind then become more powerful than the Blazing Wrath.

Near Death Experience I use NDE offensively. When you know you still have NDE ready, you tend to go more aggressive and that means faster farming. Also with the reflect pack, without NDE, you will die if you apply exploding palm on them. That is right, it just take 1 explosion to kill you. With NDE, it means that if there are only 2 reflect elite left, you can then apply exploding palm on them, even if they explode, the NDE will save trigger and save you. However you cannot do that when there are 3 elites left, basically if they all explode, the first explosion will trigger the NDE, the second one will kill you. So unless you have NDE, don't ever apply exploding palm on reflect pack. Here is a fun video i did when I level up to Para 100, You can see the effect of exploding palm with reflect.

Combination Strike This passive will boost your DPS a lot, you don't need 2 generator for this to kick in, one generator means 8%, 2 generator is 16%...so on. We are maximizing our DPS here so combination is a must. We will then have 16% from this passive, plus the wave of hundred fists attack speed bonus which is around 15% dps increase, that's already a 30% DPS increase here.

Beacon of Ytar This passive is useful when you have blind, some people may think having this passive only for blind is a waste, i thought so too before I actually tested it and it turns out to be a very useful passive. It not only gives you more DPS, it also gives you more chance to use blind as a tool for example in keep 2, you can use blind to stop the exploding mobs.

The above skills are my preference, some of you may not have enough EHP to take out all defensive passive, some variation you can consider here, you can use breath of heaven for a bit more survival, you can take out NDE and use STI for armor, you can take out beacon of Ytar for OWE if you need it. What I think you should keep is the combination strike because it's such a huge DPS boost and more DPS means more life steals.

---------------Gear Explanation---------------

Since the whole point of this build is allow the exploding palm to take out most of the mobs after the explosion, you do not want any monster running around with fear, so I would suggest you not to use an Echoing Fury, in fact Echoing Fury is just not a very good weapon to use with exploding palm. Instead I would suggest you to choose a rare weapon plus WKL, or just 2 rare weapon. You do need decent amount of EHP for this build to work, if you will die easily when all the mobs and elites surround you, then your gear may not be enough and this is not a budget build, this is intended to end game gear.

---------------Using the Build Correctly---------------

So the orders of you poping each skills is important, I am going to explain three cases:

Blue Elite Pack: * Go into the battle with your mantra ready * Punch a few times with your fist of thunder to gain 8% combination strike DPS buff * Punch a few times with your way of hundred fist for the additional 8% and also the attack speed bonus * Apply exploding palm on hopefully all of them (it's ok if you only manage to apply on 1~2, as long as you apply one and concentrate your DPS on him) * Keep hitting with your fist of thunder * Refresh your way of hundred fists and mantra * Choose your target (usually the one with the lowest HP left) and press blind to burst your DPS on him and make him explode, with my DPS, they are usually dead by now, if this guy still alive, repeat back to second step and keep hitting. Make sure you always have exploding palm on the guy that is about to die.

Champion Yellow Pack: * Go into the battle with your mantra ready * Punch a few times with your fist of thunder to gain 8% combination strike DPS buff * Punch a few times with your way of hundred fist for the additional 8% and also the attack speed bonus * Apply exploding palm on the main champion and also on as many minions you can, don't hit the champion at all, hit the minion instead * Keep hitting with your fist of thunder to the lowest HP minion * Refresh your way of hundred fists and mantra * Choose your target (usually the one with the lowest HP left) and press blind to burst your DPS on him and make him explode, sometimes killing just one minion will be enough to kill the champion, if not it's going to knock down a lot of HP to the champion and if there is more minions left, go back to step 2 and repeat, if not, just kill the champion with his remaining HP.

A Group of White Monster: * Go into the battle with your mantra ready * Punch a few times with your fist of thunder to gain 8% combination strike DPS buff * Punch a few times with your way of hundred fist for the additional 8% and also the attack speed bonus * Apply exploding palm on some of them, choose the one that is almost dead or the one that has more HP, usually the bigger the monster the more HP they have. * Keep hitting with your fist of thunder * Refresh your way of hundred fists and mantra * Choose your target (usually the one with the lowest HP left) and press blind to burst your DPS on him and make him explode. Around 50% of the DPS will come from your normal attack including cyclones, the rest will be done by your exploding palm explosion damage.

---------------Tips and Practice Steps---------------

This is one of the most advance build and it does take some practices to get it correct, please see below for some tips and practice steps you can take to unleash the power of SP build:

Choose your key binding carefully, do not put way of the hundred fists on your right mouse click, this is bad since having need to click your right click mouse every 3s will become very painful after a few hours play, it's much easier to have this on your keyboard.
Always have the way of hundred fists close the mantra, remember you need to press your mantra and combination strike together every 3s so you don't want to waste 500ms by putting them apart.
Practice pressing the way of hundred fists and mantra together every 3~4s without looking at the buff icon. You need to get used to this to have your max DPS output at all time.
Practice the the use of exploding palm, don't waste a lot of spirits since you can apply exploding palm on the same guys multiple times but it's no use. Find a place with frequent elites pack, go in the battle and apply 3 exploding palm on 3 different target, don't panic and be precise .
Get your timing right, remember exploding palm lasts for 9s, so if you are going to take longer to kill, make sure you reapply on the guy you are doing your main focus DPS on.
When you have your exploding palm all set and applied, press wave of hundred fists and mantra again to make sure you have max DPS, then apply blind to burst all your damage on the guy you are trying to kill, during this 3s blind duration, just hold left click so you don't waste any time doing other stuffs.
Understanding the mechanic of exploding palm, this is for advance user, but please read it also as it's a hidden power of exploding palm, the skill description says it does 50% of the target max HP as explosion, there is actually a way to buff this explosive to 100%. Have you ever wonder what the exploding palm SOJ does? Now Let me know you, that does NOTHING! it's the bleeding damage it crease, BUT the damage against elite actually apply to exploding palm explosive. So you get the additional 30% there if you are using SOJ, and also your mantra gives a bonus too, plus putting exploding palm- the flesh is weak also add bonus, at the end, if you can make sure you press your mantra at the very last second when one is about to explode, then you can buff you exploding damage to 100%. Don't believe me? Or want to see how I can one shot mp10 ubers? Here is a video :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maHqt65aLKA That's the reason why when you meet a champion yellow pack, you also want to apply the exploding palm on the main guy, so the explosion will do additional damage to him.
There is a movement speed bonus from the wave of hundred fists, when you are almost done with a pack or a group of white monsters, remember to apply the way of hundred fists to gain that additional movement speed bonus. It is hard and very advance but if you can remember to do that, it will make the speed palm build even more powerful. And yes, it does boost your movement speed over the cap.

---------------Summary---------------

I hope I have covered most of the points, this is a long guide and I will keep updating more info to it when needed. Below you can also find a video version of the guide:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXlcsFpQqNo
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9WxWJE5W0I

If you have any more questions or you want to see more of the build in actions (if I am playing with this build), stop by my channel and ask. http://www.twitch.tv/invisuk Thank you for the reading this and see you guys around!

Wizard: Meteor is getting pretty popular again. Here is my take on it.

2013-03-20T11:47:00.002-07:00

Skills and why I chose them

Meteor - Liquefy
Good damage dealer on impact and with a high critchance the 8 second pools are able to deal more damage over all than molten impact and generate a lot more procs for all the other skills.

Energy Twister - Wicked Wind
Starter motor for the meteors, low dmg high LoH to leech back up or against reflect.

Frost Nova - Deep Freeze
Deep freeze is an insane damage boost to the build. It lets more meteors crit, this leads to a lot more procs from the 8 second pools. And those procs generate more shocking aspect hits.

And the 3 standard choices from shocknadoshards:

Diamond Skin - Diamond Shards
Nice EHP boost and damage dealer all in one package, what's not to like?

Storm Armor - Shocking Aspect
We all know and love Shocking Aspect from the standard shocknado build. And surprisingly it works just as well here.

Explosive Blast - Chain Reaction
Lots of procs and good damage.

Passives: CM - Cold blooded - Conflagration. No surprises here.

Here is how it looks like in action
(If you don't have a Monk Pet yet... get one now :-D)

Liquefy Procrate
I was really surprised how many procs Liquefy is able to generate. I thought the pools only do something like 1 or 2 hits per second, with a pretty poor coefficient. It felt like a lot more.

Has anyone here more info on this?

Demon Hunter MP10 GUIDE with well under 200k dps

2013-03-19T13:31:00.002-07:00

See, it's non-traditional builds like this that give me hope for this game. Great guide.

I recently started using a very similar build for mp10 but I was using tinkerer and grenadier instead of cluster and cull the weak. I found that spamming spike trap is much faster at taking down the mobs than anything else. I was also switching custom engineering for archery at times giving me double the amount of spike traps, but I haven't tested this enough to conclude on anything.

Great video, I'm glad there are more people out there noticing the diversity of the DH. Though, I do believe we deserve some skill buffs :)

[GUIDE] Tips for Multiboxing in Diablo 3

2013-03-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a comprehensive youtube video with details on how to multibox correctly. The best part is that you don't have to read it! I read the steps outloud so this should make it much more enjoyable I hope. The video contains tips and tricks for multiboxing in game such as how to combat certain affix's, how to sync your characters, movement speed, along with attack speed. There is other details in the video too.