Hardcore Discussion

[Roranora]

Can definitely be extended, yeah. It's tight for now though, so get good at moving around tightly and together but yet quickly as it's beneficial.

[Oxyminus]

I like that the buff makes us keep mindful as moving in a group. It's certainly important when you're in Torment or higher.

Did a few runs last night, nothing special. Except Blood Shard lady gave me chantodo's source. Though honestly I would have preferred a Triumverate....First World Diablo Gambling Problems...

[aurik]

Buff radius is about 2 screens. Seems ok to me, just people have to not run off.

PS. It looks like we're getting an exp bonus weekend--live in EU now! Probably going to level a few characters to 70 if that is the case.

[Oxyminus]

This seems like it's on topic of group buff radius...

Yesterday Fireal and I were cruising through a T1 rift, all trash mobs, boring.

BOOM

2-3 packs, multiple of them with waller, frozen, vortex, arcane...NASTY shit

I kept trying to get away to stun bubble them and get some breathing room but they kept trapping us and all of my defensive cooldowns (diamond skin, teleport, clang potion that lets you walk through walls) all down, UA popped and I had red screen and somehow tele came up and I sprang the fuck out of there and found a health pool. I run back and I see Fireal's health bar is way too low, he's kiting like a madman as well. I finish off some of the fuckheads following me, and Fireal does the same.

Both men live, not a clang was had. Best fight I've ever been in. Wanted a cigarette, and I don't even smoke.

[Fireal]

Yeah that was some off-the-wall crazy shit. The most boring Rift ever until that point, even went through the first 37% of the thing without a pack. Then the shit hit the fan. I really have no idea of how either of us lived through that. I had under 10% health, no UA and no potion, and my only escape was to kite in a semi-circle into uncharted terrain, where I encountered a gagillion ranged A5 blue archer things and another pack. I told Bagels after, it was like watching my character die in slow motion since I outrun everything with 25% movement but I had nowhere to go. Somehow made it long enough to refresh pot cooldown then I was ok. Anxiety just thinking about it :D

[Arximiro]

You guys need some homing pads! They feel like they were made for HC. Also nice if you are standing in a shitty situation and forced to eat some arcane beams as they come around you can just hit T.

[Oxyminus]

I'd love to find one of those. Or it would be great if the slow effect on slow time would make arcane beams move slower so I could easily walk around them =/

But damn, still, can't get over that fight. The fact that either one of us, forget both of us, survived, was amazing!

[Roranora]

You have homing pads too Arx? Jesus, play with some people and give us your drops.

[Meph]

I have 3 :/ lv 16 34 60

[aurik]

Watch out for those barbed lurker octopus fuckers. They have some sort of reflect or poison or something that was making me take shitloads of damage even in Master.

[Arximiro]

If you were ever on french I would play with you

[Roranora]

OH DON'T YOU EVEN

i am on so much

i am on so much i'm on right now in like 10min

[Jer]

Mostly played softcore before, ended up getting my hc to 70 earlier. Will be gearing that up for a while, Rikon#1843 if I could get an invite

[Roranora]

Adding you

[Roranora]

who knows where/which mob for specific legendary crafting mats? I want to make more swords. Tsunami blades are np, but I don't recall where I got the griswold whatchamadoo. I answer in my post in subsequent edits. :<


Griswold's Scribblings

^ page says, •Where to farm: Act I, Worthan Chapel Cellar, Bookshelves.

But I dunno 'bout all that. I wanna hunt and kill, not so much rustle shelves. Although, Arebaut showed me gizmo farming can be pretty solid in 2.0 / RoS. He's found a few nice legendaries.


OOOH. Khasim Outpost nearby bag/box thing. That's it.

[Jer]

http://www.diablofans.com/forums/dia...drop-locations

It's the site I use, although it doesn't have that as being a mob drop either, just the various bookshelves/packs.

[aurik]

Just a huge data dump on my thoughts on current gearing...

After seeing tons of rares and the occasional plain legendary, I've done a bit of research into what stats you generally want on each armor slot for WD (a bunch of this info probably applies to Wizard / in general as well)

In general, the stats you want are:

OFFENSIVE:
- Primary stat
- Crit Chance
- Crit Damage
- Attack Speed
- %Skill
- %Element

DEFENSIVE:
- Vit
- Armor
- All Resist
- %Life

MISC:
- sockets (2 in pants / 3 in chest)

---------------------

"Armor" slots:
Head [660-759]
Chest [660-759]
Pants [660-759]
Shoulder [586-674]
Boots [513-590]
Gloves [513-590]
Belt [440-506]
Bracers [366-421]

Each of these slots rolls a default amount of armor, ranges given in square brackets after the slot. A character with all middle-of-the-road armor values, no +armor or +str, and 0 paragon points will have about 4700 armor (including 77 from base strength).

Legendary items don't seem to have higher base armor rolls.

---------------------

Primary Stat
Head [525-625]
Amulet [525-625]
Gloves [525-625]
Weapon [525-625]
Offhand [525-625]
Chest [350-415]
Pants [350-415]
Shoulder [350-415]
Boots [350-415]
Belt [350-415]
Bracers [350-415]
Ring (x2) [350-415]

There are 8 slots which give 350-415 and 5 slots that give 525-625. If we assume 400 & 600 stat averages in these slots, that gives 3200 + 3000 = 6200 int (plus 77 base int to help make the 400/600 average).

Note that Legendary Items have higher stat ranges. The 350-415 bracket gets promoted to 416-500; the 525-625 range gets promoted to 625-700.

---------------------

All Resist:

All Resist is in general the best defensive stat until you have a *lot* of All Resist (1250+), and then it becomes competitive with armor. Every slot gives 86-90 All Resist. Legendaries roll 91-100 instead.

Because of ~6200 int, you have 620 all-resist. In addition, each slot that does not have all-resist on it can roll 110-130 single-resist as a secondary (Legendary: 120-140).

Body and pants sockets should in general be filled with diamonds. Why? Because each socket is about 70 All-Resist (assuming Flawless Imperial Diamond = 9 Marquis); the equivalent topaz is 160 stat. Comparing primary-rolled stats, you generally get up to 90 all-resist versus up to 415 primary stats. So unless you don't need AR *at all*, getting AR from a socket is more efficient than getting it from a primary.

Assuming you have 5 sockets in body and pants, that is 350 additional all-resist from sockets, bringing us up to 970 base.

---------------------

Vit / % Life

Vit is a trap. While you definitely want enough life to survive burst damage, VIT does not scale with scalar healing such as LOH / LPS / LPK. There are lots of items that will show you toughness gains due to high vit / life%, but you'll actually perform better by taking items with defense (armor / resist) as you will make your healing more effective.

Some amount of VIT *is* good--it may give you the buffer necessary to disconnect and live (though the truth is that no amount of vit will really save you from this), and it does scale with abilities which work based on your life total (ie, Blood Ritual gives life per second based on your total life pool), but generally getting resistance is more important unless the amount of extra life is overwhelming.

In general, you probably want vit on *most* of your pieces. However, in some slots, there are too many good possible affixes and vit is usually the first one you should discard.

Gloves / Amulet / Ring x2 / Weapon / Offhand / Helm are pieces that you may avoid vit in order to access high damage primaries--notice that most of these are the 525+stat items. If you avoid vit in every one of these slots, you will have 6 x 400 = 2400 vit. In reality you probably don't want to avoid it everywhere, and will end up at around 3500 vit.

With 3500 vit, 10 life% is equivalent to 350 vit. Generally, if you have a %vit roll you'll want it to be above 13% (~455 vit) or else it is worse than taking +vit, particularly since you'll probably be running Amethyst in helm for 21% extra vit--meaning a roll of 400 is actually ~484 vit.

However, in general, you probably want to get to around 400-450k life total to avoid dying to burst damage, and then focus on damage reduction rather than life inflation.

For reference, rare life% range [legendary range]
Chest 8-14% [10-15%]
Amulet 12-16% [14-18%]
Helm 8-14% [10-15%]
Ring 6-12% [10-15%]
Shoulder 8-14%[10-15%]
Belt [8-14%] / [10-15%]

---------------------

Must-have affixes

Certain slots roll affixes that are just so strong (overbudget for a single primary affix) they are effectively must-have. Those slots:

Weapon Socket - 120% Crit Damage
Helm Socket - 21% life
Amulet - 10-15 element% [15-20%]
Bracer - 10-15 element% [15-20%]
Chest 3-socket - 210 AR
Pants 2-socket - 140 AR

Helm %skill - 8-15% [10-15%]
Belt %skill - 8-15% [10-15%]
Chest %skill - 8-15% [10-15%]
Shoulder %skill - 8-15% [10-15%]
Boot %skill - 8-15% [10-15%]
Offhand %skill - 8-15% [10-15%]

For the %skill slots, it's possible that none of the skills in the slot are skills that you use -- for example, shoulders/belts will not roll a skill that I use on my current WD build. In those slots, you should generally revert to defensive stats. Otherwise, %skill on your main spenders is very strong. %skill on your builders can also be solid, but generally not as strong depending on the duration on your build phase.

Assuming you aren't running a bizarre multi-elemental spec, Element% is stupidly strong, even though it does not show up on your sheet. You definitely want this stat on bracer/amulet.

---------------------

Should I look for Armor or All-Resist?

The answer is generally going to be All-Resist even for int-based classes. There is a point where the amount of bonus armor that can roll on an item does eclipse the value obtained by rolling All-Resist, but it is difficult to get to that point--and even once there, it is much easier to roll high all-resist than it is to roll high armor due to the width of the stat range for high armor values.

Here's the possible bonus armor by slot:
Head 340-545
Chest 340-545
Pants 340-545
Amulet 340-545
Belt 340-364
Shoulder 340-364
Ring 340-364
Gloves 340-364
Bracers 340-364
Boots 340-364

340-364 ranges get rolled up to 373-397 on legendaries; 340-545 rolls up to 373-595.

Note that the head/amulet/chest/pants have a higher top-end--these are the same items that have higher stat ranges on primary stats. However, gloves do not.

We can calculate the effective mitigation of X armor as X / (R + N + X); N = 50 * level = 3500, R = current armor. Given the math laid out earlier that a no-bonus-armor character has 4700 armor, 350 armor is effectively

350 / (350 + 4700 + 3500) = 0.0409

At what amount of all-resist do we need to be before 86 (minimum roll) all-resist is worse than this?

We can calculate that the same way:

X / (R + N + X) = 0.0409; N = 5 * level = 350, R = all resist, X = incremental value
86 / (350 + 86 + R) = 0.0409
R =~ 1666.

So at 1666 all-resist, minimum roll all-resist is about equal to a low-budget item's average armor roll. Given the assumption of base AR value = 970, it's pretty safe to say that taking AR is almost always right--we would need to pick up 700 AR from gear (~8 slots) before taking armor is approximately equal.

Paragon points affects this calculation somewhat. If you were to add all 50 points into armor% defensive, your armor value is inflated by 25%. So our assumption o 4700 base armor actually becomes 5875. Additionally, bonus armor is also increased by 25%.

So our effective mitigation given by a +350 armor roll is actually
350*1.25 / (350*1.25 + 3500 + 5875) = 0.0446

And the all-resist cross-over point is
86 / (350 + 86 + R) = 0.0446
R ~= 1492

So a deeply built paragon character will have a bit more interest in armor.

This is more reachable if we are talking about high-buget item armor rolls (head/chest/pants/amulet). These can be rolled upwards of 500 armor. 500 armor with max paragon points:
625 / (625 + 3500 + 5875) = .0625

All-resist cross-over point:
86 / (350 + 86 + R) = 940--we are already at this point!

The conclusion here is that max armor paragon-pointed characters should take armor in slots where the roll can be in excess of 500. As a practical matter, you don't want armor on your helm or amulet (other mods are much stronger there), so there's probably only 2 slots (chest / pants) where this is relevant.

Also, chances are you will have at least one other slot where there is nothing great to take and you will prefer armor as well--leading to a higher base armor value than 5875, leading to a higher cross-over point.

---------------------

Offense

There are definitely certain slots that disproportionately drive your damage output. One of the best defenses is to kill things fast, so it's generally better to increase damage rather than go completely tank in every slot.

The slots to pay attention to for damage are:
Amulet (element%, CC 7-10 [8-10], CD 51-100, Attack Speed 5-6 [5-7])
- Given that you want primary stat and element%, you will generally want CC / CD, CC / AS, CD / AS as your other 2 stats.

Bracers (element%, CC 4.5-6)
- With primary stat as the 3rd, your 4th stat should be AR/VIT

Gloves (CC 7-10, CD 26-50, AS 5-6 [5-7])
- With primary stat as the 3rd, you can go with trifecta (AS) or AR/VIT as the 4th

Rings (CC 4.5-6, CD 26-50, AS 5-6 [5-7])
- With primary stat as the 3rd, you can go with trifecta (AS) or AR/VIT as the 4th

Helm (CC 4.5-6)
- With primary stat, socket, CC as 3 stats. 4th can be skill% or AR/VIT.

Offhand (CC 7-10 [8-10], %skill)
- With primary stat and %skill

That leaves the following armor slots:
Chest [stat + sockets]
Pants [stat + sockets]
Belt [stat]
Boots [stat]
Shoulder [stat]

Generally, up to 2 items will roll %skill--you should try to get this for your main damage spell. The other 4 slots you should go for double defensive (AR + VIT, or Armor+Vit in chest/pants) or triple defensive (AR + armor + Vit/%Life).

---------------------

OK, that's a lot of words. What exactly am I looking for in a rare?

Given that the mystic can re-roll up to one stat, this is a lot more complicated than it used to be.

First, vendor/salvage anything that doesn't have 4 primaries. They're junk.

Then, identify what slots you want to get your %skill / %ele from. Look for high% on that skill/element, and high primary stat. Stuff like 15% skill/ele and 400+ int on a rare is a pretty sweet start. It can be very difficult to roll into %skill / %ele. Even assuming you roll a high number, there's only a 25% chance that the proper skill / ele will be chosen.

On other slots, look for AR + VIT or AR + armor.

One key here is AR -- items with AR can't generally have a secondary resist, and items with secondary resist cannot reroll AR. As AR is generally more favorable than armor, this is a useful thing to watch out for.

Another key is that it is easy to roll a reasonable amount of AR or 3 sockets but hard to get high armor. So if you see a chest/pant item with 500+ bonus armor, (actually I look for total armor value 1200+ now) that is a hard thing to reroll into, so it could make for a better base item to roll from.

So for example, on a chest slot where you don't get %skill, you want to look for something that is 400+int, 500+armor, and then either 3 sockets or 400+ vit / AR. Alternatively, you might find 3 sock, high base armor, VIT/AR, and reroll the 4th stat into int. What isn't great is if you find everything but the armor--it can be tough to roll not only the armor but also a high enough number in the range.

---------------------

Target stats:

6200+ Int
620 base all-res + 400 from ~5 slots of all-res + 350 from 5 sockets
3500+ Vit * 1.21 (helm gem) or more
CC 35+ (Base 5%, 34.5-48 from other slots)
CD 350+ (Base 100%, 120 from weapon socket, 125-250 from other slots)
4700 (base) + 1000 (bonus) armor
20-30% element bonus
20-30% skill bonus for spender
Weapon Damage: >2k

[Roranora]

hound and creature ~

..and Kormac and some dudes not doing so hot and some other peoples. And wiz :D

[Chrius]

Much appreciated aurik, gonna give that another read tonight when looking at my WD

[aurik]

Some good changes in today's build: crafting set items reduced the gem from a 10m gold gem to a free gem, and drop rate for clang mats increased 3x.

This should make gearing new characters really easy through crafting once you have a good stable of plans.