Diablo IV

But will the resistances do something

Blizzard: Hypes up Season of Blood and the 1.2.0 patch.

Also Blizzard: Releases patch, servers are down because of what looks like a compatibility issue.

Only reason I can think of to allow gear with lower levels than the player character to continue dropping would be if they still allowed players to trade or sell gear with one another or sell them at a decent value to vendors. Diablo IV still allows that... right?

Haha, you're funny

Something I've learned is that the required level for equipping an item is only tangentially related to its power. Each item can randomly roll as normal, Sacred (in World Tier III-IV), or Ancestral (in World Tier IV). This sets the base range of its Item Power stat. The level of the monster (quest, event) that drops the item then modifies the Item Power.

Normal items cap at level 44, Sacred items cap at level 60, and Ancestral items cap at level 80, but Ancestrals can continue getting bonus Item Power all the way up to level 100.

Item power determines the base properties of the item (damage for weapons, armor for armor, and resistances for jewelry) and the ranges of affixes. Completely making this up, an IP 600 item might roll 3-5% for +Critical Strike Chance, while IP 800 might roll 4-8%.

The inherent randomness of all of these systems means that as your gear becomes optimized over time there is an increasingly small chance of getting an upgrade to drop that has compatible affixes that all roll within a range high enough to be of value. It's a system crafted by someone who has a sharp eye for to how to dangle treats in front of players to keep them hooked to the grind.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 18th 2023 at 8:44:08 AM

At least for me it had the complete opposite effect. The odds of an upgrade became so low I stopped playing

Can't tell if the patch fixed that, but I am enjoying the gem fix and horses working properly.

Also, the vampire version of helltides feel a lot more fun than regular helltides? The fact you don't lose your shit when they vanish removes a lot of the time pressure. You don't get this "Oh there's only 10 min left, I won't participate coz there's not enough time to get enough shit so its a waste of my time"

But they gotta introduce something for all the keys you get? I have 40 of them and there's just not enough chest to use them on.

Yes, the alternative is that people give up. But this patch raises the max Item Power for Ancestral items enough that I'm finding a sudden inrush of upgrades.

I have only played in the Eternal Realm so far because I'm trying to get my Sorcerer to level 100. Then I'll reroll into Seasonal.

Curious. I heard about the math failure. Is something happening with the dev team as that seems a really easy mistake not to fix ?

It seemed to be a deliberate decision.

God knows why. The Devs seem to have this horror at players getting "too powerful", it comes up a lot in the dev streams (and they admitted they needed to break that habit in the apology stream to the patch that pissed off everyone), so I think the low item power cap was designed both as a way to make the item grind longer, and some weird belief they need to limit player power.

Edited by Ghilz on Oct 18th 2023 at 10:10:30 AM

No I meant the advertising thing which fails 8th grade math. Or is that the Same thing ?

Advertising thing?

Here. The trailer featured these equations before it got taken down

There are a lot of variables in player power.

• Diablo IV really rewards players for dialing in a build, considering how punishing it is to respec and maintain multiple gear sets.
• There needs to be enough build variety (and parity between builds) for players to not feel like they've nerfed themselves if they pick, say, Frost Sorcerer and it turns out to be shit.
• Upgrading gear is one of the primary grinds in the game, aside from leveling and the Paragon tree, and especially after capping those.
• Maxing out your power too quickly is just as bad as too slowly in terms of player frustration and retention.

Finding a middle ground between these variables is extremely difficult, made worse because the game has so many overlapping systems and not nearly enough data to help players make good decisions. (1.2.0 improves this a little.)

What's funny about itemization in Diablo IV is that it feels to me like the kind of thing that other games would absolutely bake into their cash shop: pay money for guaranteed max rolls on an item or something like that. Since Blizzard chose (wisely) not to do that, there's a huge gap.

Diablo IV is now available on Steam.

I finally dinged 100 on my Sorcerer on the Eternal Realm. Wasn't so bad after the nerf. I spent some time rearranging my Paragon boards to max out the Rare nodes; some hard choices were made but I think I'm happy with the results.

Something I discovered is that even though Seasonal legendary affixes are no longer available to imprint gear with, any gear you already have with such affixes will continue to work in the Eternal Realm. That was a nice find.

I tried Uber Lilith at 97 and got squashed into the floorboards. Guess I can give her another shot now that I'm better optimized.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 18th 2023 at 11:51:09 AM

I miss when item mods were just simply "+10% base damage" or "+10% increased attack speed" instead of "+10% damage to stunned non-elites with skills that use weapons that you didn't use for your previous attack every tuesday and friday on odd days of the month from 4:00 to 7:00"

I know. Blizzard seems to have added complexity to item affixes largely for the sake of making it harder to tell if any given piece of gear is an upgrade. But it gets easier as you understand the underlying systems.

• Primary attribute (e.g. Intellect for Sorcerers) and All Stats are always good.
  • With non-primary attributes, check your Paragon nodes. All of them have criteria for bonus effects. As long as your non-primary stats are up to the required levels to activate those bonuses, you have enough.
• Resistances are only valuable up to the cap (check your character stats panel). They're useless in excess of the cap except against dungeon monsters with the Resistance Breakers affix.
• Damage affixes stack additively. Thus, if you have +50% critical strike damage and +70% Vulnerable damage (above the base multipliers), and you critically strike a Vulnerable mob, you get +120% damage on that attack.
  • The primary exception is +Damage as a raw stat, which stacks multiplicatively.
  • Bonuses for damage types and effects that you don't use in your build (e.g., damage over time on a Marksman Rogue, cold on a Shock Sorcerer) are useless. Avoid or replace them via enchantment.
• Health is valuable for survival but also increases Overpower damage. If you are using an Overpower-based build, you want to stack it.
• Movement speed is valuable for nearly all builds.
• I don't have any good information on the relative value of skill ranks vs. other affixes. Getting +3 ranks of Glass Cannon on a Sorcerer is a flat 18% damage bonus, so I'm not replacing that any time soon.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 22nd 2023 at 12:00:51 PM

First Expansion announced, expected late 2024

We're going back to the jungles of Kundarast.

That sounded like Mephisto. Which means we're probably going to have to kill Neyrelle.

those are Mephisto and Neyrelle's voices yes.

What's he doing back in the jungle place?

We'll find out.

They also confirmed the expansion will include a new class not based on any of the classes from the previous games.

Are we finally getting... a Bard?!

That'd not fit the description.

Oh. Then I lost interest.