D3 Marathon - Day 7

On day 7 I'm becoming even more comfortable with my Monk. At the end of the day he is level 44, with about 1.1K DPS and 7K+ health. This may not seem enough but I can explain.

I was playing with this Demon Hunter who was lower level than me. I asked what his DPS was. Mine was 900 at the time and I was feeling pretty good about it. He surprised me when he said 1600. But then he said that he spent a bunch of gold on the Auction House buying upgrades. Fair enough.

Regardless of DPS, the Monk feels just right. I run a defensive build, with a lot of passive and active healing and it seems to work very well so far. I will detail the build shortly.

Here's my Monk, at level 44, with his new polearm. I gave up a shield for now, but I'd like to take one up again, for the extra armor. Also, I prefer a faster weapon, but this 2-hander was very cheap on the Auction House and it gave me a very nice DPS and health boost.

Also notice that I changed my banner. Yeah, ok, banners are not so bad after all.

I'm tempted to play with some armor dyes but I realize it would be a waste of gold right now so I'm putting it off until much later, after the RMAH is released.

Build and skills
I love how my build evolves slowly from one day to the next. Today I'm using a slightly different build than on day 6.

Grinding build @ level 44 (available at 39).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aZXfQj21aYaaaaaaaaab!ZYX!ZaaZab
The main highlight is that I replaced Crippling Wave (regretfully) with Fists of Thunder runed with Lightning Flash. The reason is twofold: first, it generates more Spirit; second, it increases my Dodge by 16% as long as I'm hitting stuff with Fists of Thunder.
The other thing is that I replaced the Water Ally rune for Mystic Ally with Air Ally. While the little dude seems to do slightly less damage, occasionally he gives me a huge Spirit boost thanks to the rune.

The main reason for these changes is that I kept finding myself starved of Spirit. I need a build which could generate lots of Spirit, especially since spending Spirit also heals me thanks to the Transcendence passive. This build is an improvement but still not perfect. If you have any suggestions on how to improve my Spirit generation even further, I'd be grateful.

Boss build @ level 44 (available at 39).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#UZXgQj21aYaaaaaaaaab!ZYX!ZaZaab
The boss build remains almost unchanged, except for the Mystic Ally rune. The other minor change is that I'm now using Breath of Heaven with Circle of Life instead of Circle of Scorn, for even more healing. Truth be told, I'm not even sure this last change is warranted. With this build I'm not taking enough damage from act bosses to make the extra healing mandatory.

I can see myself later on replacing Mystic Ally with Inner Sanctuary runes with Safe Haven or Consecration or Circle of Protection. So many choices. This would make for the ultimate tank.

Auction House
Speaking of the Auction House, I have become a convert. Not that I wasn't before, but I didn't expect I would end up searching actively for upgrades. I decided to upgrade some lousy pieces of equipment I had and in short order bought, for a total of 6K gold, 3 rare pieces which boosted my DPS by over 100, as well as my health and other stats. Was it worth it? Hell yeah! I can make 6K in less than 5 minutes on Nightmare.

The polearm/pike thing you see in the screenshot was also purchased for 6K gold and this alone improved my DPS by an additional 200.

I have also discovered an easy method to search for the best deals on the AH, but I will have to write a standalone article on the subject. UPDATE: never mind. Great minds think alike. Meldora posted the exact same thing, along with a video showing how it's done, on d3artisans.

A friend from Europe has also mentioned he was using the AH for upgrades. I'm telling you, if you want to rely solely on items you find on your own, that's fine. But in Nightmare things are getting hairy and you might suffer greatly for it. My friend's Wizard has 2K DPS and 12K health at level 47 but still struggles in Nightmare Act 3. Now, this is very subjective because, in comparison, my Monk has a bit over half his stats but he doesn't have a lot of problems, also in Act 3 Nightmare.

Auction House bugs
The AH might be great for finding item upgrades but it suffers from some serious bugs, currently. First, there's a major bug that prevents you from selling high(er) level gems. This is especially true of Perfect Square and Radiant Square gems. Basically you post the gem on the AH but other players can't buy it. I don't even think they will see it, even if it is the lowest priced. There's an elaborate trick involved that seems to fix this issue but such workarounds are ridiculous and shouldn't be needed at all. Damn you Blizzard, fix this right now!

Apart from that, I got some serious errors when trying to purchase some Tomes of Secrets. These are reagents for crafting some higher level gems. I spent over 20 minutes trying to buy 6 lousy Tomes. After placing the buy order I waited for several minutes while the order was "processed". Then, each time I got an error that my request failed. Problem was, the gold was deducted from my account. In the end, I found that I had purchased 2 stacks of 6 Tomes each, instead of just 1 stack, but there was a lot of gold missing (about 100K or so). Each time I clicked "Buy" my gold seems to have disappeared into a black hole of some sort.

It is possible that I will get a refund of all that gold. Last night when I went to bed I didn't see it, but I'm hoping today, after their damn maintenance, I will.

So yeah, be very careful when buying certain commodities. If you get a very long delay when placing an order and then an error message, stop buying.

Crafting
I managed to sink a couple hundred thousand gold in leveling my Jewelcrafter. My intentions were good. Studying the gem prices on the Auction House it became clear that I could make a profit by crafting the highest level gems available so far in the game. Currently these are Radiant Square Rubies. Well, Rubies seem to be the most profitable.

There were two problems with this strategy. First, I lost all that gold trying to buy Tomes of Secrets. Second, no one can buy the first gem I crafted because I forgot that the trick I linked above involved exactly 2 gems. So now I have 2 choices: take a loss and use the gem myself on my Monk's weapon (which would give him yet another DPS boost), or risk crafting a second gem. In the meantime, prices may drop even further, nullifying any profits.

I'll see how it goes after the game is back online. But the outlook is grim. I don't understand why it's so hard for them to fix these serious AH issues. I can't even imagine if shit like this happens with the RMAH. Either way, this is inexcusable. Gold will translate very shortly into real money. So if the system eats my gold, it is essentially eating my hard-earned cash.

Items and farming
In Nightmare Act 2 you will start seeing Perfect gems drop. In Act 3 you will see Radiant gems.

I did a tally of how much gold I can "farm" in an hour and it comes to about 50K per hour in Nightmare Act 2. 30K are from picking up gold and vendoring blue/rare items. The rest are from the value of gems and pages of crafting which I find in an hour and sell on the AH. Not too shabby. I'm sure that amount would be even more if I focused exclusively on farming, but now's not the time. Gotta get to 60 first.

While killing stuff in Act 2, my Monk found this really nice 117.6 DPS bow, the first weapon with more than 100 DPS. He, of course, passed it on to the Demon Hunter whereupon the latter's DPS rocketed up to about 1600. And by the way, these are exactly the stats I'm looking for in a DH item: Dex and Vit. This bow has plenty of both.

Another Scoundrel piece of wisdom
In closing I will leave you with another lol moment, courtesy of the Scoundrel follower.

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Primer on Diablo 3's skill slots

Diablo 3 is different that the previous games in the series in many ways. One of them is the way skills can be accessed in combat. Due to the way the skill system works (you gain new skills automatically and for free as you level up), Blizzard wanted to limit skill spamming and to prevent people from facing every potential situation by simply having easy access to a large and diverse pool of skills.

To this end they implemented the current skill-swapping and skill slot system.

In Diablo 3 you are limited to a maximum of 6 skills that you can use in combat. The limitation is artificial and is given by the available skill slots. You get 2 slots for your two mouse buttons (left and right) and 4 additional slots (by default assigned to the keys 1-4). In the beta, only 2 of the latter are available, for a total of 4 active skills. That's because additional slots are unlocked at higher levels.

In addition to the 6 active skills you can also assign 3 passive skills. Once again, these passive slots are enabled progressively as you level.

There's also a special slot which is exclusive to healing potions. By default this is accessed by the "Q" key.

You can easily determine at which levels these slots become available by visiting the skill calculator for any class. If you don't feel like going there, here's the breakdown:

Active Skills
Level 1: left mouse button
Level 2: right mouse button
Level 4: "1" key
Level 9: "2" key
Level 14: "3" key
Level 19: "4" key

Passive Skills
Level 10
Level 20
Level 30

You can, of course, change the default key assignments for the active skills if you wish. As you can see, by level 30 you will have access to all the possible slots. There's no simple coincidence that at level 30 you will also be finishing the game in Normal difficulty. When you move on to Nightmare you should be able to juggle all 6 active skills as well as all 3 passives.

Skills can be swapped into these slots anytime you wish, whether in town or outside. There's a catch though. In town skills that have been freshly swapped can be used immediately, while outside town the fresh skill will have a 30 second cooldown. That's not a big deal at all, considering that you can use your other skills in the meantime. An additional limitation is that skills which are on cooldown (some cooldowns are several minutes in length) cannot be swapped until the cooldown is over.

When Blizzard recently overhauled the skill system, they also came up with a new interface for assigning those skills (and skill runes), as well as the concept of Guided vs Elective Mode. I will admit that this interface isn't the most intuitive. A lot of people have stated that it needs work and I agree. For what it's worth, I've gotten used to it and it doesn't bother me terribly.

Blizzard breaks down skills into different types. Each class has primary, secondary and Defensive skills. Typically, primary skills (left mouse) are resource generators, while secondary skills (right mouse) are resource spenders. This means that (depending on the situation of course) you can open with your secondary skill for a big nuke and when your resource is depleted you can switch to the primary skill to replenish said resource. The Defensive category ("1" key) is just that: skills that help you survive.


The next 3 skill types ("2", "3" and "4" keys) vary for each class individually. For example, the Barbarian has Might, Tactics and Rage categories, while the Demon Hunter has Hunting, Devices and Archery.

The game starts with Guided Mode as default. What this means is that when a new skill slot becomes available, you will only be presented with skills that match the related category. For example you can only assign primary skills to the left button, secondary skills to the right button, Defensive skills to the "1" key and so on.

While many people were at first horrified by this so-called "nanny mode", I will admit that it isn't as bad as it seems. First of all, if you so wish, you can choose to enable Elective Mode (Options > Gameplay > Interface) which allows you to assign any skill to any slot you wish. Second, if you start a new class you haven't played before, or if you're just getting the hang of the game, Guided Mode is a very decent tool for teaching you the ropes.

With Guided Mode, you will learn which skills generate resources, which consume them, which are defensive and which can help you in other ways. Mixing skills together from the start could prove confusing and might even drive people away from classes such as the Demon Hunter which uses 2 resources.

I urge everyone who starts playing Diablo 3 to skip Elective Mode for a while and simply let the game guide you. Once you get the hang of it, you will know when the time is right to assign your own skills. I finished the beta with all 5 classes and only then did I try Elective Mode on one of them.

This is it for my primer on Diablo 3's skill slots. If there's anything I have missed, please feel free to drop me a comment.

Disclaimer: This article is written partly in response to Diablo 3 Gold Guide's April blogging carnival. I say "partly" because I am planning to tie this into a series of future articles.

The problem with Diablo 3's skills

Over the past few days I've been thinking about which classes I will play when Diablo 3 ships, what builds they will have and what equipment they'll wear. I realized that there are some major issues with the way skills and equipment interact. I am stumped at this point and if anyone can clear a few points for me, I'd be grateful.

Compared to other RPGs and even Diablo 2, Diablo 3's skills are independent of equipment. There are no weapon/armor specializations. Whether you are a Barb with a bow, 1H sword, 2H axe or spear, your character will have access to the same skills and spells. This, to me, feels weird.

In a way, it greatly simplifies the skill system because you won't have to spend countless hours agonizing about whether to pick an axe build or a sword build. On the other hand, certain aspects of this system are very confusing to me.

Take the Barbarian, Monk or Witch Doctor. They can equip either one of the following:
- 1H weapon + shield
- 2H weapon
- dual-wield 1H weapons

Most offensive spells and skills are based on weapon damage. Here are my questions:

How the hell is damage calculated for 2H weapon vs dual-wield 1H weapons? I'm sure this has been explained at some point by the devs but I missed it. It should be fairly obvious, yet I don't know what the answer is.

In which situations is it preferable to wear a 1H weapon + shield instead of 2H weapon or dual-wielding? Since skill damage is derived from weapon DPS, it is obvious that equipping a shield would greatly gimp your overall damage. In addition, there doesn't seem to be any advantage to wearing a shield, except for a little bit of extra mitigation, which is probably insignificant, thanks to the fact that there are no skills which enhance your shield abilities or give you any incentive to equip a shield.

Considering the above point, why are shields even in the game?

If spells and skills are based on weapon damage, won't a spellcaster pick the hugest 2H weapon she can find? Are we going to see Wizards running around with massive 2H axes? Blizzard mentioned at some point that there will be advantages to equipping two items instead of one but this whole thing feels like lazy design to me, not to mention that for some classes it simply doesn't make any sense to base their spell damage on weapon damage. I'm looking at you, spellcasters.

Playing Path of Exile made me realize what huge difference there is between that game and Diablo 3. In Path of Exile you can create a build specifically for 1H sword + shield, or 1H mace + shield, or 2H axe or dual-wield maces, just to give a few examples. I'm not a big fan of pigeonholing a character into using only certain types of weapons, but I do wish there was an advantage to using a certain type of gear combo compared to another, based on the skills you are using.

My final word is that shields seem useless to me and I will probably go with the highest DPS weapon combo I can find, but I'm still not satisfied with the way things are. I wish they'd done it a different way.