Patch 2.3

[Ellay]

Le Sigh, it's going to bring me back in. So many massive good changes and the ability now to really get unique builds going.

Excited. It'll be a while till it comes, but I see it being quite promising.

[Devile]

Yeah, seems to be a good patch, but again, they need to address itemization which has been the main problem since Vanilla. Sure they keep adding new sets and changing legendaries, but this is not fixing the problem cause they just replace top builds for another top build. New sets make the older ones obsolete because they are not competitive anymore. If they add more sets, they need to buff the older ones so they are balanced. Nobody uses Firebirds now for Wizards cause Tal Rasha's and Delsere's are way better.

The Cube will add a lot of fun, assuming they add it as they mentioned: 3 legendary passives, 1 per weapon, armor, jewelry. That's crazy. It adds a lot of combinations. Also the Hellfire event will be changed and it will be a LOT easier to farm and the amulet will roll with socket by default.

A lot of big changes coming. I just hope they finally fix the core issues and not just add the usual 1-2 months hype and then we all get bored and stop playing.

[Yelgis]

I am mostly concerned about how they plan to change CC. Whatever they decide could make multiboxing much harder or impossible. So waiting for more details about that.I am really excited about what the cube will bring as well as the changes to hellfire farming and new torment levels. All in all it looks to be some good stuff.

[Devile]

Why impossible? Sure CC makes life easier but to the point that without it we are doomed? Naaa, dont think so. As long as we can have high damage and toughness we should be ok. Sure, we won't be hitting top10 on leaderboards but that's the case right now with CC where we can't even do 60 while regular parties are doing 70s. PermaCC from WD was completely broken and we knew that. I posted my Tiki build long long time ago, fearing I would be banned or it would be hotfixed cause it was stupid. We all knew it was going to be fixed eventually since it made the game too easy.

As long as we can leverage more synergies, I think we will do just fine.

[Ellay]

Watching PTR streams it seems decent but at the same time it's not as amazing as I was initially expecting. Unsure.

[Yelgis]

I've played PTR and it will bring me back. If I multibox S4, I plan to do 4 Crusaders or 4 WW Barbs. With the CC changes classes with toughness will be more important if you want to do harder content. If you are just speed farming low to mid GR's or TX, Wizard or Monk would probably work too. Plan to stay far away from DH and WD this season as the new WD sets are trash unless they tweak them on PTR and the DH didn't really get anything new that would make them better for multiboxing.

With the Saders, I would run the new Hammer build (I've cleared GR 57 so far on PTR with one solo) and with the cube you can get the zodiac ring on them and keep up Akarat's, Steel Skin and Laws permanently with a modest 45-50% CDR. Cubed Hexing Pants also add a nice bit of damage to the spec. With 4 Laws the group buffing should be pretty good. I am thinking running the critical damage, armor bonus, wings of angel for sure and the 4th law I am still debating on. It will probably be either Promise of Faith (25% less damage from all non-Physical sources) or Decaying Strength (up to 60% dmg reduction debuff on mobs).I really like the Hammerdin set minus Fallen Sword (this skill really needs a shorter animation for me to want to use it).

Barbs would be able to run Wastes 6 with BK weapons. The only issue with barbs is that only Warcry really stacks so they don't benefit as much from party buffing as Saders do. They do get to keep up Ignore Pain Mob rule with only 33% CDR in round robin though, so that means a multibox team of barbs would be able to use a differnt belt than the one that increase IP duration.

Both the Barbs and the Saders should have good movement speed. Barbs will move faster because of WW and sprint if you want it and Saders will have Wings of Angels for 50% speed and the ability to walkthrough mobs.

The big issue I see with playing multi in season 4 is the need to pickup crafting mats. From my time on PTR death's breath seemed to be the most precious resource of them all. I was always short on them because all the cube recipes take them in multiples. In the past I would just pickup crafting mats occasionally because it wasn't worth swapping through all my characters each pack and I would only swap for legendaries. Now you will need to stop a lot more to pick them up.

[Devile]

So far I think I'll stick to Barbs for exp and general farming. And not because they can be tougher but because they can clear the map without stopping faster than any other class (low GR). They can go thru mobs and clear the whole map fast, also have perma immunity. Condemn Crusaders and Tempest Rush monks are the other 2 options but they are weaker compared to Barbs. I can clear GR38 in less than 2.5 mins. With patch 2.3, that's around 5 more levels which is ok. I don't like much the Hammerdin build cause u have to stop to attack and that kinda beats the purpose of multiboxing exp build. For solo or group play, for sure, but not for exp. For higher GR I'm not sure yet but monks seem pretty OP right now. Still this is PTR and they will nerf/buff a lot of thing before going live.

The cube added quite a few new options for us. Really looking forward to this new patch.

PS: With Barbs and Sage set, doing T6, I get a TON of death breaths really fast. Like 30-50 per rift or so. Several hundreds in a few hours. Tho its extremely boring cause u need to stop to loot after every single elite kill.

[Yelgis]

Yea the stopping an looting is what would bug me Deville.

Also with the Saders you don't really stop to dps. You use hexing pants and keep spamming hammers while moving forwards. Not as fast as barbs for sure but when mobs aren't around you can use steed. That along with the movement speed from Wings of Angels makes the sader team really fast as well.

[Devile]

Mmmm ... last time I checked, Hammers had attack animation. Did they change it? Nop, just tested Blessed Hammer and it still has attack animation so best case scenario, u stutter step which is very stressing IMO, not to mention u need to have same attack speed across your party to reduce dsync which will happen regardless cause of all the stop/move actions. I like more WW, Condemn or TR which are very smooth. Hammerdin is nice, brings a lot of D2 memories, but I dont like it much for multiboxing, at least not how it has been implemented with Falling Sword and that LOOOOOOOONG attack animation. If they wanted to resemble in some way the Enigma runeword + Hammers, they kinda failed there.

[Yelgis]

Yea I don't even use Fallen Sword on my hammerdin due to the crappy animation. You do have to stop to cast hammer, but cast speed is really fast thanks to the new 1h flail and stutter stepping with Sader's using Hammer is much easier than doing it with ranged classes. You don't really need to kite with the Sader so you just hold force move and mash the hammer key. That is all the stutter stepping needed. Pretty easy to play so I wouldn't dismiss them outright. You don't need a single bit of attack speed on gear with the build (not that it hurts but other dps stats are just as good if not better) so keeping them all at the same speed should be okay.

I will give you the fact that Barbs, Condem and Tempest Rush are much smoother, but out of those three only the Barb is competitve now since TR and Condemn don't really have the boosts that Hammerdin and WW Barbs have with sets currently.

[Devile]

Been checking Hammerdins and damage seems very underwhelming. Barbs are doing 60+ and Saders are doing 50s. If I go with Saders on S4, I'll prolly stick with Roland's and Shield Bash with ORotZ, Leoric and Blood Brother or Maximus on cube for higher DPS and perma Akarats Champion. So Barbs seem to be in a much much better place than Saders, at least on the current PTR version. Wizards are fucked with the CC nerf so not trying that again.

[Yelgis]

I was clearing GR 57 solo on my Hammerdin Devile. They are lower than barb and monk currently on the ptr for sure, but not that far below. Most all classes have a spec that can do low to mid 60's currently.

[Devile]

I'll most likely start S4 with Saders since I see no point on doing that with Barbs. No decent S4 legendaries for Barbs and mines are all geared up already, might as well play non season with them. I really hope they add more DPS to Saders cause they are lacking in that department. Latest patch datamine shows some love, but lets see how they end up in live. Also they need to fix the whole Falling Sword thing which is so slow and clunky, basically useless. Either fix the animation or ditch the whole thing and replace it with something better.

[Devile]

I'm seriously considering starting S4 with WDs. The Helltooth set + Gargantuan looks very good. Most my chars have pretty much all items but WDs. I'm missing a ton of items and S4 seems like a good reason to start fresh and give WDs another try. The one thing that makes me doubt is AI which hasn't changed much. Pets are still dumb and multiboxing makes it 4 times worse. Prolly mix things and have 2 melee and 2 ranged. Not sure yet. Hope they buff the class a little more.

[joes]

Duh, apparently I'll have to come back. With all new features I want to try WW barbs, as my previous experience with them (in 2.1) was quite subpar.

[Devile]

Barb's are in a VERY good place right now, even with the last nerfs, they are still doing amazingly good. My barbs will hit paragon 800+ when S3 ends and they are fully geared, missing just a couple ancient items. No reason to play them on S4 since there's no exclusive legendary worth using.

Most likely will go with Crusaders on S4. WDs dont have exclusive legendaries and they seem to still suck because of horrible pet IA. The garg build with Broken Promises does insane damage, but what's the point if the dumb gargs wont hit shit cause of all fetishes. I wanted to stack 4 BBVs for insane damage but for that to happen you need SMK and Fetishes. Too many fetishes and your gargs wont be efficient at all. Solo or just having 1 more WD sounds good, but with 4? Was thinking about mixing 2 WDs with Gargs and 2 with Carnevil but then this "fixed" Carnevil lag making only 5 fetishes shoot darts and the rest go melee which fucks up your gargs.

Sucks that THE class that should excel at multiboxing is prolly the worst.

[Zartok]

Barb's are in a VERY good place right now, even with the last nerfs, they are still doing amazingly good. My barbs will hit paragon 800+ when S3 ends and they are fully geared, missing just a couple ancient items. No reason to play them on S4 since there's no exclusive legendary worth using.

Most likely will go with Crusaders on S4. WDs dont have exclusive legendaries and they seem to still suck because of horrible pet IA. The garg build with Broken Promises does insane damage, but what's the point if the dumb gargs wont hit shit cause of all fetishes. I wanted to stack 4 BBVs for insane damage but for that to happen you need SMK and Fetishes. Too many fetishes and your gargs wont be efficient at all. Solo or just having 1 more WD sounds good, but with 4? Was thinking about mixing 2 WDs with Gargs and 2 with Carnevil but then this "fixed" Carnevil lag making only 5 fetishes shoot darts and the rest go melee which fucks up your gargs.

Sucks that THE class that should excel at multiboxing is prolly the worst.

How are the barbs in grift, and are they dsyncing a lot? I'm thinking about starting 3-4 barbs next season since I havent tried multiboxing barbs before.

[Devile]

With WW, u rarely dsync. Only situations I dsync is with Nightmarish and sometimes Waller affixes. Also with the speed Pylon which makes very hard to control in close maps. Rarely happens to me, mostly is very smooth gameplay.

[Devile]

Well, guess I'm not gonna play WDs Garg build :/


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C26p_Xma6KU

Hitboxes bugs and retarded AI.

[Cmoidudu]

Hello here, I might start playing again, however I haven't even read the patch notes yet.

So I loaded my 3x Wizards and 1x WD... Some comments...

- Normal Rifts, Torment VI to VIII is a joke, legendaries are dropping like crazy, don't ignore chests (the small ones) they can drop at least as many legendaries as elites LOL.

- Normal Rift Torment X is where everything doesn't die instantly. I even had to drink a potion a couple of time... it *seems* that legendaries have a better chance to be ancient. Or I was lucky.

- I had a couple of "Lost connection" to server, it's not a proper time to play Hardcore, beware. Got an "error 26" too (from Diablo, not IsBoxer), whatever that is.

- I'm fighting pigs most of the time. I don't know if that WD abilty was buffed, but still, pigs everywhere LOL.

[Cmoidudu]

Ok so for now I'm playing my "old" team with 3x Meteor Wizards and a zDPs WD.

As for the 3 extra passives...

- Weapons : 3x Furnaces for the DPs, I don't know what can compete with that, and Utakapa-what's-its-name-again for the WD (zombie dogs absorbs life, and since I already summon zombie dogs every 2 seconds)...
- Jewelry : 4x Royal Grandeur. Of course.
- Armor : I hesitated but finaly I went for 4x Leoric. With that, I can still make almost half a level of XP from a level 50 GR (I'm in the early 700's), quite easy with the 2.3 extra passives.

Torment X Normal Rifts drop a lot of legandaries, GRs are very good for XP, Horadric stuff is boring but I need the components so...

Also, the lead character should equip the bracers that pops elites from pylons. I got packs of goblins twice this way, and I even got a portal from one of the packs. I don't know how much money each character got from goblin vault in Torment X, but that was a lot for sure ;)