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[Neonivek]

What early skills and runes (from guest-pass/beta) do people still use late into the game in the full version?

Next to none of them really. The exceptions come from utility.

The issue is they often give really great benefits to moves later in the game.

[LASD]

What early skills and runes (from guest-pass/beta) do people still use late into the game in the full version?

Next to none of them really. The exceptions come from utility.

The issue is they often give really great benefits to moves later in the game.

I beg to differ, I'm still using Dire Bats, Unbreakable Grasp and Soul Harvest at level 50. (And Spiritual Attunement, but that's barely Beta as a level 13 skill) and those make me hit like a truck. Crit bats are around 6000 damage in Act 1 Hell, for 30 yards, so the full damage from one bat can get to over 50 000.


I also found my first skill enhancing item. A Naga Mask that gave bonus crit chance to Acid Cloud.

P.S. Pillar of Zombies might not be the optimal skill, but it's probably the funniest thing in the game. Diablo never saw it coming.

[pilgrimboy]

My experience must be different but I die a lot.

[forsaken1111]

What early skills and runes (from guest-pass/beta) do people still use late into the game in the full version?

Next to none of them really. The exceptions come from utility.

The issue is they often give really great benefits to moves later in the game.

My wizard in Nightmare is still using some of the earlier runes. Electrocute (15) + Chain Lightning (22) for one, Frost Nova (4) + Cold Snap (18) for another. Heck I still use Wave of Force + Impactful Wave (9/15) for crowd control. Aoe damage + push + 2 second stun + 60% slow? Awesome. And only a 13 second cooldown with evocation passive.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UiYdOm!abX!aZZaaa

My current setup for nightmare. It is working because I have excellent crowd control spells. Between that and the enchantress's confusion and such, I can usually keep the bad guys at bay long enough to kill them.

[Vel]

What early skills and runes (from guest-pass/beta) do people still use late into the game in the full version?

Next to none of them really. The exceptions come from utility.

The issue is they often give really great benefits to moves later in the game.

My wizard in Nightmare is still using some of the earlier runes. Electrocute (15) + Chain Lightning (22) for one, Frost Nova (4) + Cold Snap (18) for another. Heck I still use Wave of Force + Impactful Wave (9/15) for crowd control. Aoe damage + push + 2 second stun + 60% slow? Awesome. And only a 13 second cooldown with evocation passive.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UiYdOm!abX!aZZaaa

My current setup for nightmare. It is working because I have excellent crowd control spells. Between that and the enchantress's confusion and such, I can usually keep the bad guys at bay long enough to kill them.

Nightmare isn't late in the game though, to be honest.

[forsaken1111]

True, but its as far as I've gotten. /shrug

[IronyOwl]

It's also late enough to have most or all of your raw abilities. Different runes, passives, and playstyles can still change things, but if you're still using something in Nightmare it's probably passed most of the "is anything else obviously better under all circumstances" test.

[Lord Snow]

My current setup for nightmare. It is working because I have excellent crowd control spells. Between that and the enchantress's confusion and such, I can usually keep the bad guys at bay long enough to kill them.

Exactly my issue with diablo 3.

I want to kill stuff, but literally everything i do on my sorc requires at least 2 means of crowd control/defense. Sometimes 1 cast (15 sec cds, remember!) isnt even enough to kill a group. It feels like so much work for so little gain on normal monsters. And then there's the champions etc... which take forever to kill and seem to have marginally better drops.

[forsaken1111]

My current setup for nightmare. It is working because I have excellent crowd control spells. Between that and the enchantress's confusion and such, I can usually keep the bad guys at bay long enough to kill them.

Exactly my issue with diablo 3.

I want to kill stuff, but literally everything i do on my sorc requires at least 2 means of crowd control/defense. Sometimes 1 cast (15 sec cds, remember!) isnt even enough to kill a group. It feels like so much work for so little gain on normal monsters. And then there's the champions etc... which take forever to kill and seem to have marginally better drops.

Your problem with Diablo 3 is that it takes some effort and skill to play?

[Lord Snow]

My current setup for nightmare. It is working because I have excellent crowd control spells. Between that and the enchantress's confusion and such, I can usually keep the bad guys at bay long enough to kill them.

Exactly my issue with diablo 3.

I want to kill stuff, but literally everything i do on my sorc requires at least 2 means of crowd control/defense. Sometimes 1 cast (15 sec cds, remember!) isnt even enough to kill a group. It feels like so much work for so little gain on normal monsters. And then there's the champions etc... which take forever to kill and seem to have marginally better drops.

Your problem with Diablo 3 is that it takes some effort and skill to play?

I don't feel challenged by it at all, it has 6 buttons + positioning for gods sake. And to make matters worse, each button has only 1 purpose its good for, and the use is strongly limited by very low ressources and some high cooldowns.
It's not getting me into a flow, and so doesn't feel rewarding enough.

Skill loadouts change drastically by act 2 nightmare or you will be dying a lot. The game is set up so that you have to change equipment, stat and skill focus every couple of acts. Not to mention they keep adjusting things behind the scenes so it messes with your theorycraft.

I'm already playing a mobility/defense set. I found it impossible to make a real glass cannon, there's just not enough damage there even with int-focused gear running the enchant weapon + the floaty fairy with damage rune.
Archon is fun, but i just run out of monsters and then its on at least 1minute of cooldown. And you lose all utility spells for it.


On a related note, do hirelings eventually become useful or are they forever stuck doing like 1/60 of the PCs damage?
My templar literally has 12 dps while i'm at 900... and he's equipped.

[hemmingjay]

Skill loadouts change drastically by act 2 nightmare or you will be dying a lot. The game is set up so that you have to change equipment, stat and skill focus every couple of acts. Not to mention they keep adjusting things behind the scenes so it messes with your theorycraft.

It's one of the things that D3 does well, it has subtle challenge escalation so that if you aren't paying attention you will suddenly be outclassed.

On a separate note I got hacked last week and they gutted one of my characters, but not all. I have a authenticator so it leads me to believe that the guy at forbes is right and they used a session key to access my last played character. This left me in Hell with no equipment and no gold. I have been struggling to gear up, which has left me broke and tired. I finally got some gear(still broke) and now Blizz gets back to me and says they can rollback my char to a week ago and replace the gear, but all progress since then will be undone. Grrrrr, I told them to forget it.

[IronyOwl]

On a related note, do hirelings eventually become useful or are they forever stuck doing like 1/60 of the PCs damage?
My templar literally has 12 dps while i'm at 900... and he's equipped.

Haven't played enough to properly answer this, but I will say that every little bit helps, that hireling abilities are probably more important than their autoattack damage, and that templar probably wouldn't be my first choice for raw DPS.

Skill loadouts change drastically by act 2 nightmare or you will be dying a lot. The game is set up so that you have to change equipment, stat and skill focus every couple of acts. Not to mention they keep adjusting things behind the scenes so it messes with your theorycraft.

Not so far. :I

Also, freezing boss + nearby sand wasps is not cool. Neither are desecrating arcane enchanted sand wasp champions. As a monk, at least.

On a separate note I got hacked last week and they gutted one of my characters, but not all. I have a authenticator so it leads me to believe that the guy at forbes is right and they used a session key to access my last played character. This left me in Hell with no equipment and no gold. I have been struggling to gear up, which has left me broke and tired. I finally got some gear(still broke) and now Blizz gets back to me and says they can rollback my char to a week ago and replace the gear, but all progress since then will be undone. Grrrrr, I told them to forget it.

I have nothing polite to say about this. "We fucked up in every sense of the word, here's our halfassed offer to fix things."

[forsaken1111]

I'm already playing a mobility/defense set. I found it impossible to make a real glass cannon, there's just not enough damage there even with int-focused gear running the enchant weapon + the floaty fairy with damage rune.

My glass cannon build which has worked okay in Nightmare, just the usual glass cannon issues. It does obliterate things fairly quickly, but with everything running my wizard is up to 870 damage on the inventory screen. Again I'm only level 37 and in Nightmare so YMMV later on in the game.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#UZSjOm!XYW!aZZaaa

Keep the 2 buffs up for a nice damage boost. Energy armor absorption helps restore more arcane power, as does astral presence. Glass cannon obviously gives you a nice damage boost as well. and cold blooded works well with ray of frost/frost nova to do even more damage. Electrify is nice for picking at groups. When you're about to run out of AP, pop frost nova and back away.

[Darkmere]

I'm still using soul harvest in inferno, don't know much about the other classes.

Followers aren't supposed to be there to match your DPS; that's specifically what Blizz wanted to avoid. Templar is good for defensive things like stuns, heals, and intervene. Scoundrel does the most flat damage, and he buffs your crit stats as well. Enchantress does a bit of damage but also has debuffs and some crowd control attached.

Also, glass cannons are THE go-to setup for most of inferno, as far as I've seen. My WD took a couple of defensive skills and sank the rest into damage/mana control, and is generally effective against everything. I don't think I'd like it for long-term play (I made a WD first because I wanted to be a support caster, but as it is now everything revolves around me faking being a wizard), but I'm okay with it for now.

I'm mostly satisfied with the game as a release, but there's going to be issues down the road if some things aren't addressed fairly soon. D2 changed a bunch over the years, despite some spells still being broken and unusable. I just hope the revenue stream they will have with RMAH keeps them motivated to work on the game until it's long-term viable.

[Briggsy16]

Hemmingjay that is absolutely useless. You'd assume they could do it similar to WoW and send the items to your stash or something. Ridiculous that is.