Yeah, but if you don't have full stacks of the level 60 buff, he has about a 5% chance to drop any rares at all, and effectively 0 of more than one. With full stacks bosses consistently drop 2-3 rares plus ~7 blues. They specifically designed the game so that playing big chunks of it gives more drops than farming bosses this time.
[Gaming] Diablo 3 : Ser Farm-A-Lot
- Thread starter Jay
- Start date
So... I really want to like Slow Time, but it seems... basically useless? It feels like it's supposed to become better if you're a more skilled player, but I can't imagine preferring it to other defensive skills, except for some highly specialized fights. Am I just wrong? Is anyone using it effectively?
My brother gets almost no use out of it (both of us are late Nightmare, me on a Barb). He seems to be using Mirror Image/Archon/Hydra/Frost Nova for the most part. Venom Hydra is stupid good for clearing groups, especially since you can drop it on the other side of a closed door.
Edit: Actually I haven't seen him Archon in awhile, it's possible he's been using Diamond Skin or whatever it's called instead.
I think once we're on Hell it might be more useful, especially in early game as we'll both need to upgrade gear and such. For right now, at least, we crank out enough damage that it ends up wasting his AP over doing more DPS. We're about to head into Arreat Crater, so it might end up helping there (chasing down Succubi especially).
Necronic
Staff member
That's true and not true at the same time. For weapons, legendary and set pieces are trash. Complete trash. If you can't get a weapon that does 7-800 plus base dmg you will have a hard time in inferno, and almost none of the legendaries hit those numbers.
For armor, on the other hand, set items and legendaries are essential. The reason is that they often have stats that you normally would not find in other items, and the stats they have are exceptional. An example of this is Tal Rasha's chestpiece. It gives a +attack speed bonus, and afaik is the only chest piece that does that. It also has at least +50 resist all and exceptionally high armor.
Another example is Zun's boots (journey maybe?). They are also +attack speed. Then there are the set bonuses. Some of them are complete trash (Tal Rasha's for instance), and some of them are amazing. It's not uncommon to find a set w/ 2 piece bonus of +50 resist all.
Also, glad to see we have another player in inferno. The group I play with has been farming the butcher pretty heavily to gear up. We have a pretty solid system:
Set your quest to "The Cursed Hold"
1) Highland crossing, kill 2-3 blues in the fields. Find the Cave of the Moon Clan. Should have 2 more blues in there. Go kill them, second floor has a yellow chest. Make sure you have 5 stacks before you open.
2) Switch to gold find/MF gear if you have it
3) Damp Cellar (area before the first waypoint). Often has a treasure goblin.
4) Cemetary of the Forsaken. Blitz through this. Should be 5 elites and one quest that should earn you a ton of gold.
5) Switch back to regular gear.
6) Go kill the warden. 2-3 rares
7) Go kill the butcher. 2-3 rares
Rinse and repeat. An afternoon of this will earn you a massive amount of rares (a few of which will be valuable) and gold. Now, if you think that's lame/cheesy, the dudes I'm playing with have also figured out how to farm Inferno Ponies (as in the highest end area in the game.)
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Another note for inferno is that you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO get your resists and armor up. I am rocking around 400 resists and 4k armor, and I've just started seriously gearing. Life on hit is also incredibly important. Most of the peopel that are complaining about inferno just have lousy gear, or have focused all of their gearing towards DPS instead of defense. Offensively you will be fine with about 20-30k dps (ignore the 50k + builds, you will die constantly). Some fights take longer, but you'll beat them. Defensively you want your overall damage mitigation (resist * armor) up to ~90% (~65 on both). Your health should be ~20-40k at least. Right now my vitality is wayyyyy too low for A2 (27k life), but I'm hoping to bring it up soon.
Right now I can solo the butcher, and he isn't able to one shot me. Act 2 is exponentially worse, but I'm pretty sure I'll be ok on it once I get my resists and life up more. In fairness I have been playing with a gold find gem in my helm. I should probably switch that out....
People just need to accept that inferno will require a LOT of time to get geared for. The AH is your friend, and until you get well geared for inferno, gold find is also your friend.
For armor, on the other hand, set items and legendaries are essential. The reason is that they often have stats that you normally would not find in other items, and the stats they have are exceptional. An example of this is Tal Rasha's chestpiece. It gives a +attack speed bonus, and afaik is the only chest piece that does that. It also has at least +50 resist all and exceptionally high armor.
Another example is Zun's boots (journey maybe?). They are also +attack speed. Then there are the set bonuses. Some of them are complete trash (Tal Rasha's for instance), and some of them are amazing. It's not uncommon to find a set w/ 2 piece bonus of +50 resist all.
Also, glad to see we have another player in inferno. The group I play with has been farming the butcher pretty heavily to gear up. We have a pretty solid system:
Set your quest to "The Cursed Hold"
1) Highland crossing, kill 2-3 blues in the fields. Find the Cave of the Moon Clan. Should have 2 more blues in there. Go kill them, second floor has a yellow chest. Make sure you have 5 stacks before you open.
2) Switch to gold find/MF gear if you have it
3) Damp Cellar (area before the first waypoint). Often has a treasure goblin.
4) Cemetary of the Forsaken. Blitz through this. Should be 5 elites and one quest that should earn you a ton of gold.
5) Switch back to regular gear.
6) Go kill the warden. 2-3 rares
7) Go kill the butcher. 2-3 rares
Rinse and repeat. An afternoon of this will earn you a massive amount of rares (a few of which will be valuable) and gold. Now, if you think that's lame/cheesy, the dudes I'm playing with have also figured out how to farm Inferno Ponies (as in the highest end area in the game.)
---------------------
Another note for inferno is that you ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO get your resists and armor up. I am rocking around 400 resists and 4k armor, and I've just started seriously gearing. Life on hit is also incredibly important. Most of the peopel that are complaining about inferno just have lousy gear, or have focused all of their gearing towards DPS instead of defense. Offensively you will be fine with about 20-30k dps (ignore the 50k + builds, you will die constantly). Some fights take longer, but you'll beat them. Defensively you want your overall damage mitigation (resist * armor) up to ~90% (~65 on both). Your health should be ~20-40k at least. Right now my vitality is wayyyyy too low for A2 (27k life), but I'm hoping to bring it up soon.
Right now I can solo the butcher, and he isn't able to one shot me. Act 2 is exponentially worse, but I'm pretty sure I'll be ok on it once I get my resists and life up more. In fairness I have been playing with a gold find gem in my helm. I should probably switch that out....
People just need to accept that inferno will require a LOT of time to get geared for. The AH is your friend, and until you get well geared for inferno, gold find is also your friend.
I have a DH friend who's just cleared Zolton Kulle on Inferno, and he would echo pretty much everything Necronic said there. Resists are crazy important (keep an eye out for +all resist, it's amazing), and you want high DPS on your weapon moreso than stats. Use the rest of your armor to get what you need there, the only way you're going to see 900+ dps weapons are from rare/blues with high rolls on +damage.
Docseverin #1191
Necronic
Staff member
Grinding gear = The diablo franchise at its core.
Have you ever played a diablo game?
I had this issue a few times in Nightmare, going into Act 3 without even breaking 9k, but I hit the AH for like two items and cranked my hp over 12k by the time I hit the Crater (closing in on 14k with my hp bonus shout). DPS is doing alright, the downside being I have to be careful of running in with a 2h instead of a sword/board sometimes.
I don't remember what class you're playing (I'm on a Barb), but seriously you're going to be fine. I started act 2 with maybe 4-5k and made it to 8k or so by the end of it, and then like I said above I'm floating around 12-14k with my shout up. Hit the AH for Vit/primary stat searches if you really feel like you're behind and you don't find much good stuff. I tend to put a max buyout of about 10-12k on my searches so the non-buyout and stupid high prices get filtered out. I found some crazy good stuff for 5-6k gold.
This is something that's confused the heck out of me ever since I started playing games with auction houses. Why the heck don't people put buyouts on their auctions? Do you really expect me to sit around and wait 2 days before continuing on from whatever point I'm at in the game, just so I can buy your item? Hell no - I'm going to go buy someone's item that has a buyout that I can get right-the-hell-now.
AH gear is a saviour. Set a reasonable max buyout for what you want and you can usually get something for reasonably cheap. My Hell 53 Demon Hunter has about 24k hp.
Simple: Because no one knows how much it's worth. We don't have large, comprehensive guides that tell you how much something is worth yet, so everyone is just trying to get the most they can.
GasBandit
Staff member
Hell, I wondered that even back in WoW. A level 20 item on a 7 day auction with no buyout? You expect me to NOT LEVEL for 7 days?!
My thing about no buyouts is mainly that it's silly to wait more than an hour or two. By the time I might win this item I have the chance of either finding better or (depending on the level) having outleveled its usefulness.
Couple things.
First, re: max health targets. Keep in mind that your stats go up as you level, and that accounts for a good amount of hp growth. Beyond that, you can find stupidly cheap things on the AH that, while they're not perfectly itemized, can be a huge upgrade from the crap you find.
Second, re: Necronic's grind path. Awesome. The only thing I've added to it is a check for the Watch Tower dungeon on the west side of the Northern Highlands. Consistently has 3+ bosses and a resplendent chest, plus sometimes a treasure goblin. Plus a lot of corpses and loose stones and stuff, and it's a small 2-level dungeon. Amazing when it's up.
First, re: max health targets. Keep in mind that your stats go up as you level, and that accounts for a good amount of hp growth. Beyond that, you can find stupidly cheap things on the AH that, while they're not perfectly itemized, can be a huge upgrade from the crap you find.
Second, re: Necronic's grind path. Awesome. The only thing I've added to it is a check for the Watch Tower dungeon on the west side of the Northern Highlands. Consistently has 3+ bosses and a resplendent chest, plus sometimes a treasure goblin. Plus a lot of corpses and loose stones and stuff, and it's a small 2-level dungeon. Amazing when it's up.
I don't know where you're getting that. Yeah, some people have complained about it being simplistic and stuff, but the skill-system is pretty amazing once you actually experience it. Also if enrage timers make a game WoW then I guess you're right, but there's more to the game then that.
Dave
Staff member
Some stuff is ridiculously expensive. Like 20 million gold expensive. And that was for a level 43 legendary that I would have replaced in one or two levels.
The trick is, sell all the golds you find. Set the bar really low like 10k buyout. Sit back and watch the money roll in.
Try to gauge your buyouts on the item's level, too. Like a level 20 item isn't going to sell for 12k, but it'd be gone in a heartbeat for 6-8k I wager. Plus with how much cash you make in Nightmare+ it's not like you're gonna worry much about shortchanging yourself on a sale.
The point is repairing stuff. And offloading blues and yellows that are AH-unworthy. Also, dyes!I wonder what the point of the NPC merchants is, at all. Garbage can, apparently. Buying something good from them is pretty useless - it'll be cheaper on the AH.
That said, whoo, I'm level 10 closing in on the Skeleton King(yes, in Normal, on my first character. So sue me)
Eh, salvage the lot. Haven't repaired anything at all yet, no need at my level
Dyes....Egh. Still don't see the point.
I have to say, so far, it's far too MMOey to keep my attention. I like it and I'll play for a while, but I really can't see myself playing this for the literally thousands of hours I've sunk into DII. Finding a unique once every 50 hours, on average? Way to kill any excitement us non-twinking single player characters might have for them. Crap with servers being down, etc etc... Really, in every other aspect things have been changed to allow the RMAH to work and/or to keep things going for people in the long run.
People who want to grind for gear have plenty of other games. In DII you ground (?) for levels and to try out new builds/characters. Respeccing for free means I can't think of a single reason ever to level a second characte of the same class... I'll finish the game on normal and I'll probably replay it again at some point, but so far TLII seems to be more in line with what I wanted. Oh well. Yet another IP I love where I'm no longer the target demographic (see also: Warcraft, Command and Conquer,...)
Dyes....Egh. Still don't see the point.
I have to say, so far, it's far too MMOey to keep my attention. I like it and I'll play for a while, but I really can't see myself playing this for the literally thousands of hours I've sunk into DII. Finding a unique once every 50 hours, on average? Way to kill any excitement us non-twinking single player characters might have for them. Crap with servers being down, etc etc... Really, in every other aspect things have been changed to allow the RMAH to work and/or to keep things going for people in the long run.
People who want to grind for gear have plenty of other games. In DII you ground (?) for levels and to try out new builds/characters. Respeccing for free means I can't think of a single reason ever to level a second characte of the same class... I'll finish the game on normal and I'll probably replay it again at some point, but so far TLII seems to be more in line with what I wanted. Oh well. Yet another IP I love where I'm no longer the target demographic (see also: Warcraft, Command and Conquer,...)