Thursday, December 19, 2013

Diablo 3 - No More Magic Find?

Diablo 3 - No More Magic Find?

Travis Day at Blizzard recently announced that magic find is essentially being removed from Diablo 3.

No more magic find in Diablo 3. Well, almost no more magic find. Blizzard is trying to phase out magic find as much as possible. MF is being removed as an affix from gear. Blizzard is also changing how MF interacts with different item qualities. MF will apply 100% of its benefit to Blue items, 30% to Yellow items, and 10% to Legendary and Set items. This means someone with 300% MF will end up finding roughly 30% more Legendary and Set items than someone with 0%.



Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Diablo 3 - Preparing for Reaper of Souls Expansion


Are you going to play Diablo 3 - Reaper of Souls? If so, are you doing anything now in advance of the release? In this video we talk about some general recommendations to prepare for the up coming changes to Diablo 3.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Diablo 3 - Fastest Act 1 Paragon Farming Route

Farming paragon experience in Diablo 3 is all about finding the right monster power, spec, and route. That is if you want to get through the levels quickly. In this video we take a look at a simple, quick, effective paragon experience farming route for Act 1.


Friday, September 27, 2013

Diablo 3 - Lifesteal Nerf

Diablo 3 - Lifesteal Nerf

It seems that Blizzard is really pushing to find a good solution to replace the current lifesteal mechanics in Diablo 3. As it stands now most characters are geared to 100,000 DPS or better. At these damage numbers, life steal is just too powerful.

Many heroes die today due to lag, disconnects, or high spike damage - which in some cases has to be a big enough spike to one shot someone. This is largely due to life steal healing for much more life in a very short period of time on account of very high damage out put, and increased monster density on higher monster powers of Inferno.

Check out the video for more information on this. Links back to the pages that are shown in the video are available on the YouTube watch page where this video is being hosted. Read the source pages if you want to get a broader picture of what has been stated to draw your own conclusions.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Diablo 3 - Loot 2.0 - Response to Kripparrian's Loot Future



Kripparrian, a fairly popular gamer on YouTube, likes to speak his mind quite a bit. And he should - that's what freedom of speech is all about, right?

Unfortunately what he said recently in regards to an up coming patch to Diablo 3 is highly misinformed. He hasn't even played the game in something like 6 months or more, and clearly doesn't even stay up to date with the current state of the game. Yet he just milks his subscribers for cheap views and easy money.

Check out this video to see what I think of his comments regarding the up coming loot 2.0 changes, and for a link to Kripparrian's video on the subject as well. The link to Kripp's video is within my YouTube video's description. You will probably have to view the video on YouTube to access this information.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Diablo 3 - Archon Wizard Gear


Diablo 3 archon wizard gear shown in this video which provides about 150K DPS - 155K as shown in video on a paragon level 40 character - which cost well under 10 million gold. The total spend here was just shy of 8,700,000.

The current cost of gold on the RMAH on America's server is less than $1.50 per 50,000,000 gold. Between this video and an earlier video on how to gear a critical mass freeze wizard for under 10 million, you could probably spend $5.00 and gear all 5 hero classes in at least one play style, maybe even two.

Check out the video.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Diablo 3 - Stone of Jordan




In Diablo 3, some people like to use a stone of jordan for certain specific purposes. Tempest Rush monks like them as they are a good source of additional spirit regeneration. Sometimes people will use these rings to help reduce the cool down timer on a certain skill, or to improve the damage of a skill.

Another somewhat common use is to switch over to an SOJ for elite fights. If you already have a very large amount of DPS output, it can be beneficial to take a sheet DPS hit in exchange for up to 30% extra damage against elites while you're fighting elites.

Check out the video to learn a bit more about the Stone of Jordan.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Diablo 3 - Black Weapon Damage Explained


What is black weapon damage in Diablo 3? Black weapon damage is physical damage, or weapons that do not have any elemental damage attached to them. Learn what items can boost your DPS when using a black weapon in this video.

Diablo 3 - Ruby or Emerald?



Should you use a ruby or an emerald in your socketed weapon? It depends on your stats.. offense and defense. Also depends on how much critical hit chance and critical hit damage you currently have. Generally speaking you want a 10:1 ratio for critical hit damage:critical hit chance. In other words, if you have 50% critical hit chance, you will want to have about 500% critical hit damage ideally.


Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Diablo 3 - Act 3 Key Farming Route


Here we take a look at a Diablo 3 Act 3 Key farming route. Getting a few stacks of nephalem valor before venturing off into the Stonefort is usually a pretty good idea - after all you do need a full 5 stack for any chance of a key dropping from the key wardens.

Watch the video to learn more.

Monday, July 29, 2013

Diablo 3 - RMAH Gold Prices Change Again! July 29th, 2013


Blizzard released information today stating that stacks of gold for sale on the real money auction house (RMAH) are going from 10,000,000 to 50,000,000. Seeing as how a stack of 10,000,000 gold generally sells for about $0.25 USD, and you have to spend a minimum of $1.00 per transaction, this means that you had to purchase 40,000,000 gold at a time for about $1.00 minimum.

After the scheduled maintenance on July 30th, 2013, all new auctions for gold will be stacks of 50,000,000 and will likely sell for the usual $0.25. Since you will still have to spend a minimum of $1.00 per transaction, this means you're going to be able to pick up 200,000,000 gold for about $1.00 USD! This means $10.00 gets you 2,000,000,000 - that's two BILLION gold.

This change will probably be a good thing for new players - people who have little to no gear, as much low end gear is difficult to sell lately and the prices are rock bottom. This also puts a lot of cash into the hands of players who want to use their demonic essences to craft their bind on account (BoA) items. By the same token if you don't already have 100K+ DPS, and unless you're playing hardcore or strictly self found only you have little excuse to be under 100K at this point, you should be able to spend $1.00 and easily break that 100K DPS barrier. With a little research on YouTube and a bit of patience on the auction house you'll be able to easily farm MP5 for demonic essences.

Check out the video to learn more - and see the video description on YouTube for a link to the post Blizzard made on the Diablo 3 forums.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Diablo 3 - Act 2 Key Farming



Wonder how to farm keys in Act 2? Vault of the Assassins (VOTA) can help with that! Get your stacks quick and easy, and then head out to start farming your keys in the Dahlgur Oasis. If you're not sure what this is, watch the video to find out.

An added bonus here is that this is one of the best, if not the best, areas to farm Demonic Essences as well. So, really, you're going to be farming Demonic Essences as well as your Act 2 key to make your Infernal Machines, which you'll need to go after Ubers for your Hellfire ring components. Weeeee!

Watch it now!

Friday, July 26, 2013

Andariels Visage



Have you ever considered an Andariels Visage for your #Diablo3 gear setup? If you're on a budget, you just might want to shop around for one. They are a great source of cheap damage. Yeah.. they aren't a crit Mempo of Twilight - but what is? Other than a crit Mempo of Twilight, of course!

Watch this short video for more insights on the Andariel's Visage now!

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Diablo 3 HOTA Buld


Check out how a Barbarian in Diablo 3 can smash through most of the content in Act 1 Inferno with less than 170K unbuffed DPS in this video.

This build uses overpower and hota along with the typical whirlwind abilities. Watch the video to learn more.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Diablo 3 - How to Level 1 - 60 Fast!



Check out this video to see how quick and easy it really is to power level your friend's new character all the way to 60!

You do not have to have a Leoric's Signet. You do not need to hunt down a Cain's set. You do not even need to bother trolling the auction house for various bonus experience items, or any other items for that matter. Watch the video to see proof of how easy this can really be.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Diablo 3 Won Khim Lau Damage



Before spending a lot of gold on your monk weapons, check out this video if you're planning to use a dual wield sweeping wind cyclone build. Here you will learn a bit about the how and why people like to use a Won Khim Lau.

Don't feel like you have to have a Won Khim Lau. For a build like this they really are great, and sometimes you can even find a pretty good deal on one. However it is often times much easier, and much cheaper, to find a simple rare weapon instead at a lower price. Watch the video to learn more.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Diablo 3 Act 3 Paragon Farming Route!


Looking for an act 3 paragon farming route? Watch this video! This is essentially the Alkaizer farming route, but if you've never heard of that, you might want to watch the video. If you have then you can really just skip this as you won't learn much of anything new.

This route isn't as popular as it once was because of experience nerfs to some of the monsters, as well as the fact that a lot of people got really tired of farming Act 3 for so long. Now with increased monster density in other acts, people will farm Act 1 quite frequently. As well the monsters tend to get more and more difficult the further you progress into the game which just means that the monsters are also typically easier to kill in Act 1.

D3 Act 1 Paragon Farming


If you want to see a pretty good farming route for getting your paragon levels up in Act 1, check out this video!

It is common to start in The Festering Woods for a quick and easy 2 - 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor. From there you could go to The Cemetery of the Forsaken, or simply start in the cemetery. Once in the cemetery you will want to check the outside area for an elite or champion pack assuming you're on a low enough monster power to efficiently take them down. After that you will want to proceed into the various crypts.

After the cemetery, head south through the gates into The Weeping Hollow. The Weeping Hollow is a very popular destination for all kinds of farming ever since Blizzard increased monster density. The Fields of Misery is also a great place to farm and is usually the next destination. You will also have a chance to get an Act 1 key while in he Fields of Misery.

I like to include Leorics Manor as well as there are usually about 70 mobs inside that you should be able to clear within a minute or so.

After that you could head down to Halls of Agony level 2, rush over to the Highland Passage and on into The Cursed Hold. Clear a bunch of mobs in the Cursed Hold, town portal, leave game, resume game and start it all over again.

D3 Paragon Leveling - Find Your Monster Power!



What monster power should you be farming paragon experience at? Well, that depends! It will depend on whether you are in a multiplayer game and if so how well you and the other players are geared.

Paragon leveling is all about speed; primarily killing speed and travel speed. You want to test an area to see how high you can set the monster power to while still being able to one shot the weak or normal white mobs. Note that some of these trash mobs will have a good chunk of health - you're looking for the normal, every day, run-of-the-mill trash mobs.. Not super weak, like the scorpions in Act 3, and not the tougher Savage Beasts or Trees in Act 1. Just the normal mobs.

Once you find the monster power that you are able to one shot stuff at, do a few tests runs through your favorite map. Take note of how much paragon experience you have before you start the run so you can see how much you have gained. Take note of the time as well or use a stop watch so you can keep an accurate track of how long it takes you to do the run.

After you do this a few times, you will want to lower the monster power 1 level and run through the same route on the same map that you just tested. As you do this you will want to keep track of your paragon experience gained and the time it took.

Take the average of time spent to paragon experience earned for 2 or 3 different monster powers, after you have found how high you can go while still being able to pretty much one shot the regular trash mobs. Then you will know what monster power you should be farming with your current gear, build, and class in that patch version.

Salvaging and Selling Crafting Materials



A look at the auction house regarding selling crafting materials that you have salvaged from your new player gold and essence farming runs.

Be careful what unit price you post your items at as there is no 5 minute grace period for this auction postings. If your prices are very low, you will sell out everything you posted to the auction house instantly. On the flip side, you can also post your items at a higher price and just let it ride for a while until inventory runs low and only higher priced materials are available.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Wizard Build - Fastest Paragon Leveling Wizard Build - Diablo 3



Learn about the archon wizard build in the embedded video above. For a wizard this is currently the fastest build to level paragon experience solo in patch 1.08. You could use either this build, a critical mass freeze wizard build, perhaps a black ice build or some other with a specific premade multiplayer game. Public games are just too random and unreliable. Often you will go into an MP5 or MP6 public game and at least one person in the game with you will have 40 - 70K dps which just isn't enough for them to pull their own weight. Another problem is that often people will disagree about what farming routes to take.

If you're into Diablo 3 and your D3 Wizard, I suggest you get to grinding out those paragon levels quick. Blizzard is talking about nerfing Barbarian's Wrath of the Berserker, as well as Wizard's Archon and Critical Mass Freeze builds. It may be a few months before that happens, but unless you play 10+ hours a day odds are fairly good that you'll want to get in your exp now before it is too late!


Thursday, July 11, 2013

How to Gear a CM Freeze Wiz in 1.08 for Cheap!!



If you want to get a really good idea of how you can gear a critical mass freeze wizard, which can actually survive if you take a hit in MP10, for less than 10,000,000 gold you should watch this video.

The idea comes from Zisspire and some friends who claimed that they couldn't replicate the same build for anywhere near the 22,000,000 gold shown in Ziss's video. Well.. I did it for about 9,358,000. A little less life and less damage, however also 70 paragon levels lower, less than half as much gold spent, and done by me, a casual gamer. =)

Check it out!

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Diablo 3 Gold Farming


If you are a new player and want to learn how to farm gold you will want to check this video. This is really a guide for how to farm gold and demonic essences, though with an emphasis on gold farming.

This is really better for people who are new, don't have much going for themselves in game yet, and cannot or will not use the real money auction house. Unfortunately with the state of the economy in Diablo 3, especially after the patch 1.08 gold dupe fiasco which Blizzard refused to address, a few million gold per hour really isn't going to do a whole lot for you.

For those of you who are purists, or who have whatever other reasons to not buy gold or items, this is something you should really watch.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Wizard Paragon Experience Farming

You might wonder what is better to level your paragon levels as a wizard:

Critical Mass/Freeze?

Archon?

Kiting build?

This is a simple answer. You want to build your wizard out as an archon wizard with the highest DPS you can afford. From there you will want to test to see what monster power you can do really fast runs with. For instance in Act 1 the regular skeletons, meaning not the ones with shields or two handed executioners axes and certainly not elites or champions, should die pretty much immediately when you hit them.

Whatever monster power you are able to insta-gib the regular mobs on is the monster power you're most likely going to want to do your paragon experience farming at. Don't be afraid to play with the monster power, going up 1 level or even down 1 level, just to be sure you have the most efficient monster power for your current character abilities.

Make a note of how much paragon experience you have, how much you need for the next level, and what level you currently are.. just in case. From there I suggest you head into Act 1 and then out to the Weeping Hollow and clear the map. Don't feel like you have to hunt down and kill every single last monster, as that will often lead to wasting time which in turn leads to less than the fastest leveling. After you've done this a number of times on various monster powers you will know which MP level is going to give you the most experience per hour. Now you just have to do the runs to increase your paragon level!

Don't feel like you have to do full act clears. In fact this is usually not going to be efficient. Also don't play the game in story mode. Don't just start act 1, quest 1, and then play all the way through to the butcher, and then continuing on into act 2, and so on. You can if that's what you want to do, but we're talking about grinding out paragon levels here and nothing else.

Diablo 3 125K MP10 Monk using Sweeping Wind and Exploding Palm



Check out how someone with barely over 120K DPS can farm trash mobs in MP10 pretty quickly and easily. This monk build works great!

Now if only Blizzard were to do something about the horrible synergy that Demon Hunters suffer..

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Diablo 3 Monk Sweeping Wind Build


A quick look at the sweeping wind monk build in Diablo 3 patch 1.08. This build works better while dual wielding weapons because this gives you more attacks per second. More attacks also means more chances for critical hits. Critical hits give Sweeping Wind: Cyclone a chance to produce a lightning tornado, or cyclone, which are the blue whirlwind/tornadoes. These tornadoes do 26% weapon damage.

Sweeping Wind itself also does 60% weapon damage while at a 3 stack. The stacks build based on critical hits. Critical hits are key in Diablo 3 for so many reasons, and this is just one example.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Diablo 3 - Infernal Machine Act 1 Key of Destruction Farming


If you are looking to farm act 1 keys to make your infernal machine you should check out this video. Probably the fastest way to get this done is going to be to grab some friends to form a multiplayer game. Public games can work too but sometimes finding people that are geared appropriately and are on the same page as you can be tough.

Head over to The Festering Woods to get your 3 - 5 stacks there. The Crypt of the Ancients and The Warriors Rest are always present on The Festering Woods map, as well you can always find either events or wandering champ/elite packs outside in the woods. Once you've done that, if you don't already have your 5 stacks of nephalem valor (NV) which will be required to have a chance at a key drop, head over to Leoric's Manor. You can count on getting 1 - 3 stacks between Leorics Manor and Leorics Manor Courtyard. These are small, fast maps to get to and clear.

If you're really unlucky and still don't have your 5 stack, head to the Cemetery. Sometimes you can find a pack outside around the waypoint port in. If not, simply head into a crypt as there are always packs in the crypts. Alternatively you could also go straight to the Fields of Misery where Odeg the Keywarden can be found.

If you do go to the Fields of Misery before you have 5 NV stacks, make sure you find pack(s) to finish off your 5 stack before you kill Odeg. Don't worry if you run into the keywarden too early. Just run away. You don't have to kill it before you have a 5 stack.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Diablo 3 - How to Farm MP10 with less than 200K DPS and Without Spending Huge Amounts of Money



Want to know how to farm MP10 on the cheap? Before you watch the video, and perhaps you have guessed already by looking closely at the thumbnail, but this is a barbarian video. I tend to agree that barbarians are fairly easy to play in the current incarnation of Diablo 3, but I won't get into that here.

This is a video demonstrating my barbarian who has about 156K dps while not accounting for brawler, battle rage, wrath or even follower buffs. I believe "fully buffed", with the current setup, I reach somewhere around 323K DPS. This barbarian does have a lifesteal skorn but it is less than a miraculous skorn, only has around 1300 something DPS, and less than perfect lifesteal. As stated in the video and in the video's description you would probably want to drop down to MP7 - MP9, testing as you go for speed and efficiency, to make better paragon experience gains per hour. Still, if you really want to farm trash mobs in MP10, you can do it without having to have some amazing, over the top, ridiculously geared character.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Diablo 3 Act 1 Paragon Farming MP10



Proof that you do not have to have 200K+ DPS to farm MP10. You do, however, need very high DPS to farm MP10 efficiently! In this video you see a ~157K DPS Whirlwind Barbarian earn close to 7,000,000 experience in about 7 minutes.

Given the DPS doing this on a lower monster power, such as MP7 or 8, would probably be a much better choice. Kill speed is a major factor when you want to farm legendaries or experience. I normally just run MP5, however after this run I think I will start doing Weeping Hollow runs as shown in the video on MP7 instead.

How to Make Gold in Diablo 3

Probably the best way to make gold in Diablo 3 is to sell unidentified legendaries and set items. These are the orangish brown items and green items which sometimes drop. Some of these items can roll very good stats and are highly sought after when they do roll well, whereas others are typically considered to be pretty subpar and not many people really want them.

Some items to hold onto or even buy from others, if they are cheap enough, would include:

-Manticore (legendary 2 handed crossbow)
-Ceremonial Knife (set item - will be Manajuma's Carving Knife)
-Gory Fetch (set item that looks like a chicken)
-Skorn (legendary 2 handed axe)
-The Witching hour (legendary belt)
-Echoing Fury (legendary 1 handed mace)
-Chantodo's Will (set item - wand)
-Calamity (legendary 1 handed crossbow)
-Won Khim Lau (legendary 1 handed fist weapon)
-The Butcher's Sickle (legendary 1 handed axe)
-Mempo of Twilight (legendary head armor)
-Chantodo's Force (set item - wizard source, off hand item)
-Ice Climbers (legendary boots)
-Natalya's Reflection (set item - ring)
Natalya's Bloody Footprints (set item - boots)


This is not an exhaustive list and pricing isn't included here. However there are some forum threads, YouTube videos, blog posts, and so forth where you can get some of this information. If you play on European servers you might want to check out this thread: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/7195039570 which more or less just links to this spreadsheet on Google Doc's EU UNID prices here.

For those of you who play on America servers you might find this thread for America region UNID prices handy.

This will of course have a bit of a learning curve and you will end up having to put a bit of time into the game to learn the markets, keep up to date with the markets, find legitimate buyers, and so on.

Tip: DO NOT click & drag items or gold into trade windows in game. There are people who will close the trade window on purpose and you will end up dropping whatever is on your mouse that you are dragging. They will then pick up whatever you dropped, disconnect from the game, and leave you high and dry. This is just one of several scams some people will try to pull. If you are trying to trade with someone and the trade window keeps closing, just drop the deadbeat and try the next trader - because this one is trying to rip you off.

Also keep a very close eye on the amount of gold, as some people will try to drop a zero or two at the last moment before the trade goes through. At this time there is no word from Blizzard regarding fixing either of these issues.

Once you start to learn the market value for various items this will make working the auction house more feasible. However you should not spend more than an hour a day at most in the auction house, unless you have a huge pile of gold, know the markets, and are making a minimum of around 50 million gold profit per flip. Otherwise you are really pretty much just wasting your time. You could go clean your neighbors gutters for $10.00 and just buy around 400,000,000 gold and call it a day.

Another handy method once you have gold to work with, maybe have some buyers, and have a good idea of  the going prices for various items is to simply try to buy UNID legendary and set items in trade channels or even from people in various forums online. For instance if you can buy an unidentified (UNID) Witching Hour for 500K, or maybe even 2 million or so, and then sell that item to an UNID buyer for 5 million, that is a great profit - and you won't even have to share your profits with Blizzard!

This is probably the best way to make gold in Diablo3 legitimately and still actually play the game.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013



This monk build is another bells build. This time around the build and gear is somewhat more optimized for running bells. There are several ways to run bell and tempest rush builds, among others, and this is just another iteration of the monk bell build.

Here you drop sweeping wind as it is a huge drain on your spirit pool anyway, unless you have a really awesome Inna's 4 piece set and other equipment which still keeps your DPS pretty high (~120K dps or better).

Monday, June 24, 2013

Diablo 3 Critical Mass Freeze Wizard patch 1.08


Diablo 3's cookie cutter critical mass freeze wizard for patch 1.08. Here you will learn what the critical mass freeze wizard spec is all about and how to use it. This is a very gear dependent build which relies a lot on arcane power on crit, item attack speed, life on hit and critical hit chance. To make this build even more powerful, like most any build, you will also want to stack armor to 4000 or higher unbuffed, 40K or more hit points, and 500 all resist or better.

This wizard is pretty glass-cannon with the current gear, but with a little practice and a bit of luck you will not die very much as long as you keep it on a proper monster power level. If you have similar gear and the same spec as that shown in the video and try to do MP10 by yourself you will almost certainly die a bit too often to make it very effective.

Diablo 3 Monk Bell Build 1.08


One way to run a Monk Bell build in Diablo 3 patch 1.08. However what would probably be even better would be to switch out serenity or sweeping wind for dashing strike with quicksilver rune.

Without tempest rush or thunderclap rune for fists of thunder, mobility may sometimes be an issue - especially for the mobs that like to kite, or knock you back + snare, and so forth. Dashing strike with the quicksilver rune only costs 10 spirit and you will have a 250 spirit pool with the exalted soul passive.

There are certainly more efficient ways to setup your bell monk build, both skills and equipment, which will be coming soon. However if your gear is a bit lacking, you want to support your group a bit more via Serenity, or if you are having problems surviving this might be a good build for you in the interim.