njenabnit wrote:just finished my second playthrough (inferno) with my now level 50 demon hunter. did the second half of it completely solo and all that diablo dropped was a crappy dex+int dagger and some terrible boots. I'm hitting pretty hard now.
I think you meant you did your second playthrough of Hell, not inferno.
To those playing, and haven't hit Act 2 Inferno yet, get ready to cease to have fun with the game. You need ridiculous gear that doesn't drop in Act 1, you need to use one of 2-3 specs, and even then unless you are using exploits/glitches, will die CONSTANTLY. Basically you are *required* to be get extremely lucky, 9-10 times (for each gear slot) or save your gold and buy what you need off the AH.
As far as the hacking concerns go, there have been a few but confirmed "hacked" accounts that had authenticators, but regardless, the amount of "my virus scans found nothing" posts from people without auth's are ridiculously high, implying that there is a flaw in blizz's system allowing either some kind of "spoofing" (which they first said was "impossible" but have now backtracked on) or simply brute forcing the login screen (which had no timeout or lockout after failed attempts, something I believe being patched today in 1.0.3 ).
The game is simply NOT fun in inferno. Farming the higher acts is a tedious activity of constant kiting (even as melee 0_o ) and constant dying. WHITE mobs one or two shot; the hitboxes on projectiles are either ridiculously huge or the constant high latency of the servers (not me) has me detected on top of them instead of the 3 player lengths away I appear on screen (I have 23% runspeed, max is 25%); and some elites have literally impossible combinations (invulnerable minions, jailer, vortex, desecrated for example).
The game revolves around
needing to use the AH to progress, or to grind in an order of magnitude well beyond reasonable levels (hundreds of hours for one piece of gear). And the scaling from Hell to just Inferno Act 1 is massive. From an average of 150dps weapons to an average of 500dps weapons. From A1 to A2 you need either stupid high dps (700+ weapon + equivalent gear) or insanely high defensive stats (700+ resists, 50k+ health, 4k+ armor) and even with you die...so much.
There are plenty of people on the forums claiming this isn't true, that the difficulty is fine. These are the people that exploited (now fixed) glitches / specs and were able to get that insane A4 inferno gear, and have full access to the ripe pickings, putting a monopoly on the AH and being the few people able to farm for more and more. Those few that have progressed without sinister methods have gotten extremely lucky with drops or bought their way up to that level.
Loot simply too random. Take the chances of getting a "good" weapon:
-Random roll to get an item at all
-Random roll for it to be Rare in quality
-Random roll for it to be level 59/60
-Random roll for it's base weapon dps
-Random roll to get a % damage modifier
-Random roll for that % damage to be above 30%
-Random roll to get an added damage modifier
-Random roll for that added damage modifier to be >300
And that isn't even factoring in other stats that players "need" on their weapons, such as life leech, extra crit, or base stats. If each one of those random rolls are 1/10 (some are higher, some lower), you're looking at (my statistics knowledge probably failing me), a 1 in 10 million chance.
Edit: Read the patch notes / preview for 1.0.3. If everything they claim is true, then inferno should be exactly what it should be. Drop rates are reasonable and attainable in earlier acts (still random upon random upon random) but they higher ilevels actually drop. Monster damage is going to be tuned down, more specs will be viable.
Sometimes I think a lot of this is planned from the start, to see how far they can force players to use the AH, and it just so happens they went too far, and are now stepping back. I fear the RMAH will still cause problems for the game as a whole....especially given how bugged / hacky the game is. Think about it like this...even if you don't use it, a lot of people will. And a lot of people are idiots. And those people will be hacked. And those people will call customer service. And the dev team will need to patch stuff. And all of those resources being used for fixing the RMAH issues (which have a real monetary influence associated, giving them preference) will pull away from development on the ACTUAL gameplay, on ACTUAL bugs, on ACTUAL customer service. No matter what, the RMAH will effect YOU, the player.