6 hours today at Paragon 60 and Torment Level 5 and nothing. I get jack shit in this game.

Also you can add me and stuff. Lukage#1610

For anyone coming back to the game after a long hiatus (or if you're a new) this is a fantastic short guide to what's up:

Diablo III Welcome Back Guide - Wowhead News

Wow, you are the unluckiest bastard in the world. There's an internal timer in the game that after a set amount of time (~2 hours) if you're actively playing and haven't gotten any legendaries it starts slowly increasing the odds of you getting one until one drops. That's honestly nuts. I'm in the GAF clan, and everytime someone in the clan ID's a legendary/set drop the game broadcasts it in the clan chat (which you can disable, but it's fun seeing what people got) and that thing is going off all the time with people getting stuff. I've gotten in maybe around 15-20 hours since the patch went up and I've gotten at least that many legendaries, if not more.

I already had pretty high end (but not top or god tier) stuff on my DH, but I've already found two upgrades I'm using:

http://i.imgur.com/WaqBWIv.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/poDSLlU.jpg

Also found a bunch of stuff that wasn't quite upgrades that I gave to alts, and I found the new Nat boots, which once I can get one more piece of them will be an upgrade with the new 2-set bonus on it.

Honestly this game is fantastic now. Literally everyone I know who is coming back to is in love with it, this is the game that should have launched in 2012. Still a couple of things I'm not super thrilled about (mostly how extremely restrictive trading is) but it's fun to play, you can actually make builds around specific gear, and the addition of clans and communities is awesome. Since the game auto broadcasts found legendaries to clanmates, now everyone in the GAF chat harshly rates people's drops, and a lot of people are getting help and partying up using it. Good times.

I've just been playing around on the PS3 version lately. I get as many drops in that version than I did with the PC version: which is not at all. The AH closes in a couple of weeks. Shame I can't find something that will sell.

Anyone getting Reaper of Souls? I may try and get it when they release Diablo on PS4 as I believe I read something the next gen versions will have the expansion included too.

Change of events: shit dropped for me.

Got plans for the Seven Sins shoulders and rolled good ones the first try. And found a sweet helm too!

With the 2.0.1 patch, this game went from being slightly tedious to HOLY SHIT I HAVE TO STOP AND KILL EVERYTHING BECAUSE I NEED TO UPGRADE MY SHIT. The difficulty scale (which felt appropriate before) is now tied to a much better loot drop rate, and I've seen a dozen or so legendaries in maybe ten hours of play. At level 57 though, it seems the upgrades aren't dropping as often, and now I find myself generally stopping only for elites and champions. I had the difficulty up to expert, but it was slowing me down and I wasn't seeing the kinds of drops I would've expected for that level, despite the increased difficulty, so I have it back to hard again. I may increase it again as I get into the 60s.

+50% XP from now until RoS launches just got hotfixed in GO GO GO

So you taught the plans to your blacksmith for the Seven Sins?

OMG Daravon I started playing my mage again, and this morning someone dropped a chantodo's thingy. That's my first super-thingy in ever, I think. I was so excited. But I guess with +50% exp, now would be the time to play all the other classes.

Yeah, I played for a while with Term tonight, and in ~3 hours he want from Paragon 44 to 51 or so, it's crazy.

so, verdict? Reaper of Dongs made it more fun to play? Or did it just raise the soft cap until you don't get any good drops and you stop playing?

For me, it was both. I was pleased with all the loot I was getting until I got to level 70, then the good drops stopped dropping. The loot really starts coming on higher Torment difficulties, but since I haven't been able to bring my Wizard up to a decent enough DPS to go past Torment I by myself, I tried starting a Monk to spice things up. Nope. I haven't played in two weeks, and once Watch Dogs comes out it'll be a while before I get back into it.

It's my GotY at this point. You hit a gear wall, but it takes a LOT of time and effort to hit. I'm at like ~200 hours since RoS came out, mostly been playing DH and still haven't hit it, there's multiple pieces I'm missing. Adventure Mode is so good and game-changing that I literally can't imagine playing vanilla D3 at this point. It still has some minor issues, but this is the game it should have been at launch, and overall this is probably the best loot game of all time. The public turnaround on the game has been hilarious to watch.

Damn ok this didnt help me at all lol... You can get it quite cheap like 20 bucks from the net so i might get it anyway. Got bored of Dark souls 2 already.

I will agree that the experience between vanilla D3 and post-RoS is night and day. They've trimmed 90% of the bullshit out of the game, and it's more worth the purchase now than it was three-plus months ago.

Also agree re: improvements. I had a ton of fun with it, but then travel + work + school + Dark Souls 2 have left me no time to play in quite a while. I honestly wasn't quite sure what I was going to do once I got that ring, but it was a fun goal to pursue and adventure mode definitely kept it fresh.

What I'm really thinking is not the ultimate gear wall it's the level where you are at that position where you don't get an upgrade for days. Because it was at that point I quit d3, the effort wasn't just worth it. hopefully adventure mode keeps it fun.

+100% legendary drops and double rift fragments going on right now everyone!

Was talking about this last night with Term, Monk general gearing advice:

-First for any Monk build check this fantastic guide for gearing and what stats you want to prioritize in what slots over on Reddit. It's spot-on, I actually know the guy who wrote it (he's super active over there and on GAF). Maybe surprisingly the reddit board for Diablo 3 and the class-specific reddits are actually pretty useful usually.

tl;dr version here of what specific items you probably want in what slots as a Lightning Monk, I go into way more detail below as to why.

Ring 1: Ring of Royal Grandeur
Ring 2: Stone of Jordan
Amulet: No clear standout, ideally probably a well-rolled Haunt of Vaxo?
Helm: Andariel's Visage or Eye of the Storm
Shoulders: Aughilds (crafted set)
Chest: Aughilds (crafted set)
Belt: Thundergod's Vigor, Witching Hour, Hellcat Waistguard, Harrington's
Pants: Ashearas (crafted set)
Boots: Ashearas (crafted set)
Bracers: Aughilds (only if you don't have 2 Aughild pieces elsewhere), otherwise Reaper's Wraps, Ancient Parthan Defenders, Strongarm Bracers
Gloves: Ashearas if you want the 4-set bonus or don't have Ashearas in one of the other 2 slots, otherwise really any gloves work here for Lightning.
Weapons: In rough/debatable order, the best 1h weapons for lightning monks are Shard of Hate, Odyn Son, Thunderfury, Won Khim Lau


WALL OF TEXT

Rings: For virtually every single class and build with a couple of very very specific exceptions (WD Big Dog build only thing coming to mind actually) you always want a Ring of Royal Grandeur + a Stone of Jordan with the element % that you're stacking. The Ring of Royal Grandeur ONLY drops from Act 1 bounty bags, and is super unique in that it reduces the number of items required for set bonuses by 1. You have to have at least 2 items in the set equipped (ex. you can't get a 2-set bonus by equipping only 1 item) but this makes it BiS for everyone because that is incredibly useful/broken since everyone will have sets going of some kind, and this lets you either complete 2 set bonuses altogether or complete 1 set and gives you more gear freedom in the other slots. The ring will also always drop with your primary stat as well as 5-7% IAS with 2 random primary affixes and 1 secondary affix. Absolute worse case even if you can a shit roll you can roll CC or CHD on it to make it at least usable, and because of how good the bonus is it's worth it. That said

For the second slot you pretty much want a Stone of Jordan with your element %. They come with up to 20% elemental damage, your primary stat, 25-30% more elite damage, one random primary and one random secondary roll. The elemental % is big, but combined with the elite % it's ridiculous; you will lose sheet DPS, but given that elites are the only thing in the game that are actually relevant that will actually kill you/take more than 2 seconds to kill you can't beat this. Even better if for the one random primary roll if you can get CC or CHD on there.


Amulet: As long as you've got the right stats on the amulet there's no clear standout winner here. The closest is probably the Haunt of Vaxo, which summons clones when you stun enemies, and the clones are surprisingly useful. Good runner-ups are the Moonlight Ward (which has a crazy good proc), or any of the amulets that make you immune to arcane, fire, cold etc.


Helm: Ideally either an Andariel's Visage or Eye of the Storm. Overall Andariel's is slightly better since a good roll will be lightning %, IAS %, CC% and Dex. This is one of the few helms that can roll IAS%, and additionally the poison nova proc on it is actually really good and goes off all the time. Eye of the Storm is a very close second, it doesn't roll the IAS% but always rolls Lightning % and can roll up to 30% which is one of the very few items that breaks the usual 20% cap, then you can roll either Vit/socket/AR for your "free" slot, or ideally go all dps and roll Lashing Tail Kick % there.

Armor: Lumping most of these together. To be quite frank one of the reasons why Monks don't compete dps-wise at highest difficulties right now is their 2 new sets are fucking awful, to the point that Blizzard has specifically said in 2.1 Monks are getting a complete overhaul, and both of their sets (along with a few others in the game) are getting buffs/overhauls that will be made retroactive. So if you get any of those pieces hold onto them, but for right now they're garbage. So while most classes/builds will go for specific sets, Monks don't do that here, which opens up an interesting if not boring alternative for crafted sets combined with the Ring of Royal Grandeur. Specifically there are two sets that almost all Monks will craft to get the full set bonuses from that are extremely good:

-Ashearas Vestments. 2-set bonus is +100 AR / 3-set bonus +20% Life / 4-set bonus is your followers will come to your aid.
-Aughild's Power. 2-set bonus is 7% reduced damage from both melee and ranged attacks / 3-set bonus is both 15% reduced damage from elites and you do 15% more damage to elites

The set bonuses are very very good. Also by crafting Monks get the additional benefit of specifically aiming to get their OWE resist as a secondary property. Unlike vanilla you can't get both All Resist AND an individual resist (arcane, lightning, etc) on the same item with a couple of specific legendary exceptions. However while All Resist can only roll up to 100 on any item, secondary individual resists can usually roll up to 160. In theory this means you want to aim for OWE resist since you'll ultimately get more, but can make it a nightmare to craft specific items and replace items.

With the slots that can be crafted with the above plans, most folks will craft Aughild Shoulders and Chest, and Ashearas pants and boots. You can additionally craft Asheara gloves and Aughild bracers if needed, or if you want the 4-set bonus on the Ahearas which is nice, but I don't consider necessary. There's not a whole lot in the way of specific gloves for lightning monks so that's a free ashearas slot usually if needed, but there are specific bracers that are good so usually you want to try to avoid needing to put Aughilds in that slot unless you really need to.

It's also worth noting that the legendary materials you need to craft the Ashearas items are pretty easy to get, and the ones for the Aughilds are a pain in the goddamn ass. I still don't have Aughilds crafted on my Monk yet because of that, but Ashearas should be a relatively easy go.

Bracers: If you're not running an Aughild's bracer, BiS bracers for lightning Monk are probably either Reaper's Wraps (crafted), Ancient Parthan Defenders (you take 10% less damage for each enemy stunned, which you do a lot), Strongarm Bracers (for the knockup damage, mostly if you're using Deadly Reach Scattered Blows or something similar)

Belt: There's multiple good options here; probably the easiest one and maybe overall the best is the Thundergod's Vigor. It's a unique belt in that it will always roll lightning damage, 160-200 Lightning resist, and also has proc where you emit lightning that damages enemies when you get hit or dodge. It's also unique in that it's one of the very few (maybe only?) items that can roll both All Resist and a secondary resist since the secondary lightning resist is guaranteed. They also seem to drop pretty often. So you can get up to 15% Lightning Damage, 500 Dex, 500 Vit, 100 AR AND 200 Lightning Resist + the proc. Assuming you're running OWE with lightning Resist, that's up to 300 AR in one slot.

Alternatively you also have the Witching Hour which I believe is actually the rarest item in the game, but also is a total bitch. It's guaranteed to roll both Attack Speed and Crit Damage so for pure sheet DPS nothing comes close to this belt. That said it can roll shit on both of those, then the 2 other rolls are completely random. In theory if you got one with dex, Vit/AR and good IAS/CHD rolls it's best in slot unless you need the OWE lightning resist on the Thundergod's, but this belt is so rare AND it needs solid rolls, so that may not be realistic. Other solid runner-up belts are the Hellcat Waistguard (which rolls attack speed and Elite damage) and the Harrington's Waistguard; Harrington's is unique in that it rolls pretty standard rolls but the proc on it where you do 100-110% more damage after opening a chest counts as ANYthing in the game you interact with; corpses, etc. So in levels with interactables anything counts, and it basically straight doubles your DPS, with the caveat that's somewhat inconsistent.


Weapons: Multiple options. Roughly in order of the best first:
-Shard of Hate; the proc ability on it is crazy good, it's BiS for multiple classes/builds.
-Odyn Son: the lightning proc on it is really really good, and the weapon also rolls + lightning % damage.
-Thunderfury: Very good proc, just not quite as good as the Odyn Son.
-Won Khim Lau: No special proc, but rolls up to 25% lightning damage which is great.

Other than that, just take the highest dps 1-handed weapons you can get. Remember that weapons always HAVE to have a socket; the 130% crit damage you get from a Flawless Royal Emerald in your weapon literally makes weapons. The best Shard of Hate in the world without a socket wouldn't compare to a decent yellow weapon with a socket.

This has been quite fun, been leveling my Crusader as a break from my Barb and wiz.
Add me if anyone wants to play sum. I got 100+ keys by doing nothing and if anyone wants to carry me in higher Torments i glady open rifts (or just play regular torment with me)
zip#2103

So it's not so much a game as a spreadsheet simulator then? :)

^ downloading ASAP

At endgame it can be, kinda how these games go.

The console version comes out in August, we should play!

Perfect summary Sailor, really. There have been some complaints about the underwhelmingliness of the monk. But OWA makes him still OP, that is if you get the right items. I'm trying to build a CDR Monk, the transition from normal to cooldown built will/can get tough though, because I actually like big numbers.^^ A CDR built will make everything more even, which is favourable when the action needs to be held up constantly. However in my experience the monster density in most areas follow a 5-10s CD so you only need damage in such an interval. Well this is basically the principe of any time spent with skills ready but no monster in sight is time wasted.^^

PSA: Base game and RoS are both $20 each this week at Best Buy. Also the huge new content/balance patch 2.1 which also includes Ladders (aka Seasons) is 99% going to hit on Tuesday.

The game is enormously different it was in vanilla, and even from RoS launch to now it's been vastly improved. Easily the best loot game out at this point, and even people who rightly shit on vanilla D3 admit at this point the game has finally surpassed D2 and it's the best game of it's kind out there. Highly recommend folks who have any interest in these kind of games to grab it! I plan on going in pretty hard on the game when ladders hit until Destiny comes out, and I can help anyone out if you need guidance or someone to play with or whatever.