btw, on the subject of wizards, there doesn't seem to be as many people playing wizards as the other classes...

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's just the vibe I get from reading the forums ans such.

Maybe I'm just not far enough into the game but how in the world are you people getting 3500 DPS? I'm in Act III with a Lvl 26-ish wizard and I think I'm a little over 100 dps right now.

Oh, and there was a patch released today:

Diablo III Patch Notes
Diablo III Patch 1.0.2 - v.1.0.2.9749

Classes
Monk
Active Skills
Serenity
Skill Rune - Tranquility
Duration of immunity granted to nearby allies from crowd control effects reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second

Bug Fixes
For a full list of documented game and service bugs, please review the Known Issues sticky located in the Bug Report forum.
General
Players should no longer receive an "Error 14009" when logging in
The "Select a Hero" menu will now also display the difficulty level for each character
Several speed improvements have been made to the streaming downloader

Achievements
All players in a party should now receive "Till Death Do Us Part" even if they don’t have Haedrig Eamon as their active follower

Acts
Act IV
Witch Doctors should no longer receive an error if they kill a Shadow Clone with a Damage-Over-Time (DoT) skill after it's launched a Firebomb but before it's reached its target

Auction House
The auction log in the Completed tab will now display a player's activity (bids, buyouts, sales, etc) in the proper order
When placing a new bid over a previous bid on the same auction, players will now be provided with the correct warning message: "Raising your maximum bid on an Auction you are already winning raises your current bid to just above your previous maximum bid. Are you sure you want to continue?"
Players will now receive an error message if they attempt to purchase an item after the 50 item limit has been reached in the Completed tab

The "Physical Damage" Preferred Stats option for rings has been renamed to "Bonus Minimum Physical Damage"
The "All Damage" Preferred Stats option for weapons and armor has been removed and replaced with bonuses of specific damage types

Items which have been purchased from a vendor and equipped by the player can now be sold on the Auction House
Listing items on the Auction House from a different character than the one currently selected should no longer cause item display issues

Battle.net
The public chat list will now sort alphabetically

Classes
Witch Doctor
Spirit Vessel (Passive) no longer clears debuffs when using waypoints or changing equipment

Stats all across the board (player and monster) start to increase exponentially in the higher difficulties. You'll eventually see weapons with base DPS over a thousand multiplied by 1000% from your primary stat.

If you read D3 boards, I've found most are all already in Hell/Inferno difficulties. No way you should be comparing yourself to them. You'll eventually get there. What I'm more concerned about it figuring out if my character at its current level is up to snuff. It's hard to gauge how much HP I should have or how much damage I should be doing.

played a lot over the weekend with like-level friends (30-35ish) and everyone was doing way more damage than my barbarian. I think that is ok since I was mainly the tank and was pretty good at it. I just can't tell if maybe I should gear more for damage than HP.

flint, I was just thinking to myself that it would be really useful to benchmark one's stats. I have a 53 monk near the end of Act1/hell and sometimes I seem right on, sometimes I feel way underpowered.

That being said, a fortuitous ancient sword drop helped make a ton of difference.

@Flint: Your gear is bad. Go to the AH and buy all new gear. It doesn't have to be the best gear, but you want stuff with as much of your primary stat as possible + vitality. For the helmet, get a socketed one and put the best topaz you can find in it. This should cost you no more than 25k.

Then get the highest DPS preferred weapon you can find with a socket and your primary stat. Throw the best ruby you have in that socket.

Your damage will most likely double as well as your hp.

If you feel like you aren't as powerful as could or should be, take a trip to the auction house and upgrade your weapon and maybe 1-2 of your worst armor pieces. In the weapon just look for straight DPS until you're in hell difficulty.

FYI, there's no reason to spend more than 5k on any individual item until you reach level 50 (or maybe even higher). People will sell good enough stuff for cheap.

Yeah, as a 54 barb that only played solo or with a wiz that seemed to only slow things down, I will say that a good weapon will make or break you. I have a real aversion to the ah and much prefer to find my own, but I broke down 2x to buy a better weapon in A3 nm and NM. I was really dissapointed that the only weapons I was finding were 10 lvls or so below me.
In A1 hell, finding a same lvl 2hnder with a little str, +100 actual weapon dps, a socket and the rest meh was more exciting than the legendary I found in a1 NM. It returned my hope.

quote:

---

I have a real aversion to the ah and much prefer to find my own

---

You and me both. It's more fun. Then again, not getting my ass kicked is also fun. I guess its time to spend some of that 200K i have sitting around into the AH.

The only benchmark I have to offer is asking "are you killing most mobs before they kill you?" and "if you are killing mobs are you able to stand your ground or do you have to cheese/kite them to death?"

If you answered yes to the first question and you can stand your ground, you are properly geared (or overgeared for your progression). If you are getting owned left and right, time to go shopping.

"kite them"?

quote:

---

"kite them"?

---

It means running from the mob while using slows and stuns, and still doing damage.

Yeah slow/stun them to keep them off you or try to separate one by runnin around. My well worn routine for packs is ground stomp, revenge or WW or cleave, "I am badly hurt", jump away and then run around till ground stomp cool down is up/health regen and repeat.

quote:

---

If you read D3 boards, I've found most are all already in Hell/Inferno difficulties.

---

Actually, quite the opposite:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6018173

quote:

---

-On average players have created 3 characters each
-80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30
-1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty

---

The numbers you see on the forums are skewed because only a certain % of people actually use the forums, and it's usually your more hardcore players.

****SPOILER**********





















Still not sure what to think of Whimsyshire. Part of me laughed my butt off, part of me thought "Really Blizz...I mean really?!!", and the last part had a photo-epileptic seizure. Only did the Hell difficulty, and it was somewhat painful. I have the plans for Inferno, but still working on the gold.













************END SPOILER*************

gems are only going to require two in order to combine? dammit!

I didn't even realize there would be a PVP patch...that should be awesome.

quote:

---

quote:

---

If you read D3 boards, I've found most are all already in Hell/Inferno difficulties.

---

Actually, quite the opposite:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6018173

quote:

---

-On average players have created 3 characters each
-80% of characters are between levels 1 and 30
-1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty

---

The numbers you see on the forums are skewed because only a certain % of people actually use the forums, and it's usually your more hardcore players.

---

That said, 1.9% of characters is different than 1.9% of players. I have 4 characters, but only one has unlocked inferno.

True, but taking into account that it's about 3 characters per account on average, you're looking at about 5%.

too much freakin' maintenance today

STILL??? IM ALMOST HOME

uni stick around ill post up my tag soon

arrrgggghhh!

Servers are down again to investigate the loggin in issues. Updates will probably be here:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5235711958

those forums are hilarious. so many freakin' babies.

i read one post where some guy was pissed because he maxed his character level in 40 hours, logged another 60 hours, and was starting to get bored

i can't remember the last time i logged triple-digit hours of entertainment on something i spent a one-time 60 dollars on

im in

rebelionel#1137

Damn you error 37

auction house is STILL screwing up for me, ugh

The downtime on this single player game is out of control! I want my monthly sub money back..

oh wait...

I think I just lost a bunch of stuff at the auction house. It let me list the items but didn't show them. Hopefully they'll be back.

Same, fuzz

It's a shame cause the core gameplay of d3 is great but these server issues are really souring the experience lately

I call bullcrap!

It took two days (straight) of downloading and updating drivers and patches, but I finally walked into town with my DH last night. Will probably try to play tonight and see if my connection holds up. Even if I do, I'll never freakin' max out. I should probably actually finish the last few quests of D2, huh? It's only been 12 years.

Dinged 55 last night and upgraded my fist weapons from 150 dps apiece to 330 apiece. DPS soard from a little over 2k to the mid 6k range.

My favorite farming spot so far is Leoric mansion on hell difficulty. Zone in at the waypoint and backtrack through the mansion and then kill everything on the outside on the other side from the checkpoint. Every run I did I was guaranteed to find at least one chest and at least one (sometimes 3-4) packs of elites. Good xp, good loot.

The cursed hold or whatever it is right after Leoric's Manner where you free the prisoners is an awesome place to kill a couple elites and fight a mini-boss. Helps get your valor stacked up on your way to the Butcher. The bump in difficulty between acts in Inferno is pretty drastic IMO, so I've done this section a couple times trying to farm some gear that'll make me viable in Act II. Found some decent finds so far, trying to abstain from buying on the Auction House.

yeah start on the 2nd to last quest in act 1, go to halls of agony level 2 and you can end up with 3-4 stacks for the jailor and 5 stacks for the butcher. Don't start on the last quest because you will be forced to skip the jailor but farm all of the same stuff. The jailor actually drops a large amount of items too.

Earlier when I mentioned most people are in Hell/Inferno levels, I meant that while looking on the message boards for information for MY level, all the posts were for more end game info.

Thanks for all the suggestions on looking at the AH to up my DPS. I'm not actually over-concerned about my lack of damage at the moment. The only baddie I have difficulty with are the boss spinning dudes. Had a real hard time last night against a pack of 3. Otherwise, I have plenty of HP and DPS to mow through packs well enough.

My post earlier really is figuring out how to compare my barb with another at the same level. I can't tell if I'm the best I can be at my level but I do know that I'm equipped well enough for now.