You’re nuts. If you really think that 11 rares in an hour and a half run of an act is what I should expect. I expect more than 1 63 yellow to drop in that amount of time. I probably killed 15 elites or more after I had my 5 NV. Every pack should drop at least 1 yellow guaranteed when you have 5NV regardless of your overall MF.
I thought that was the case already?
And small sample size, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think they’ve improved the drop chances for legendaries in this patch. Since the patch, I’ve found two (compared to I think four, in all the time before that), and one of them was even immediately useful to the character who found it. I haven’t found a set item or a jewel plan yet either, but then, I didn’t find either of those before the patch, either, so it’s still possible their chances have been improved, too.
Oh, I forgot, to add insult to injury I killed 2 treasure goblins during that run and no yellows from either.
I average probably 2.25 yellows per elite pack at 5 NV.
If you did 11 rares in 1.5 hours, your kill speed is too low to be efficient and you’d be better off in act 2. I think to be considered efficient you should be doing at least 20-25 rares per hour, 35 being better. ilvl 63 in act 3 is 8%, so if you do 35 rares/hour, you’d expect 2 or 3 lvl 63 items, which I think is about right.
the drop rate for ilvl 60+ is doubled when you go from act 2 to act 3, so theoretically if it takes you twice as long to kill in act 3, you’d be about the same as in act 2 for those items. However, there are sub levl 60+ items that can drop that are still very useful, like jewelry. For that reason, unless your kill speed is pretty high, act 2 is more efficient, IMO.
You guarantee get 1 rare per boss pack after 5 stacks, and I think the majority of the time I’ll get more than 1 if i’m at 5 stacks, with 4 being the most I’ve seen.
I have maybe 250-300 hours logged, I’ve found one jeweler plan, and 1 6 prop armor plan. A handful of legendaries pre-1.04, and none so far after.
It is not the drop rate that is the problem. It is the shitty stats on all dropped items. This forces you to use the auction house, which is what Blizzard wants.
I don’t want to go back to Act 2. I’ve spent countless hours there not getting drops worth a shit with 280+mf so I can’t buy the gear I need to mow down Act 3. I played Act 3 fair and square with a normally geared toon and got absolutely nothing out of it. That is fucked up and needs to be fixed. You shouldn’t have to be a hardcore grinder for days at a time in order to get a single upgrade to your equipment.
FYI I’ve only got 28kdps on my barb unbuffed.
The entire concept of magic find sounds ridiculous to me.
Otara
People seem to have this bizarre idea that the auction house is a source of items, when of course it isn’t. Killing monsters is a source for items. The blacksmith is a source of items. Vendors are a source of items. But every single item in the auction house came from one of those other sources. The fact that the auction house exists is proof that someone is finding good stuff.
Bots, mostly.
My Barb has less DPS than that, around 24k and I run act 3 no problem. What build are you using? I found that around 7k armor, 800ish all resist, 1200 LoH, and a decent block shield makes me pretty durable using double tornado (I still die occasionally, but most times I’m surprised when that happens). I think the LoH is the most important since when fighting I’m getting healed constantly.
Unfortunately without some kind of passive healing the monsters do too much damage most of the time. Before I found (yes found!) that weapon, I was running a revenge tank build and doing fine, just slower. Most boss packs now take less than 30 seconds to kill, unless they are extra health or they run away.
I went from wiping constantly on Ghom to finishing act 3 and 4 in a couple hours after the patch with one upgrade (830 DPS +300 LOH to 900 DPS 900 LOH).
I’m probably done with the game. At least until I get bored with Orcs Must Die 2 and finally play Portal 2.
I got wiped out by the huge hit that commodities took post-patch, lost a few million gold (I’ve never been a big high roller). But I still need to upgrade my monk’s weapon(s) to hack it in Hell. Guess I’ll camp in the auction house for a while this week…
I’m nowhere near the endgame, but tried things out again after the patch - the increased drop rate is somewhat more satisfying.
Question: Will the followers that I don’t use ever get to level 60? My DH is lvl 60(2), but the scoundrel and enchantress are both at 59 with empty exp bars. I have some lvl 60+ stuff I found that I want to put on them just to see how it affects their dmg, but I can’t yet.
Will I have to play with them for a while? Or will it just happen at some point?
Followers you don’t use don’t earn XP. But when you level u p, they get levelled up - to one level below you.
So if you want them at sixty, you’ll have to drag them out until they earn the XP.
Meanwhile, my monk beat Inferno Diablo the other night. But even though he went in with a full 5 stacks of NV, he didn’t gain any benefit from them… Because the fight took 40 minutes, and it all wore off before the end. Next time I do him, I’m definitely partying with someone with some real DPS (my monk’s is OVER NINE THOUSAND, but only just).
9000dps for diablo? You’re glad there is no enrage timer for him 
Do monks just face tank him? I have no experience with a monk - they seem like watered down barbs to me.
Well, I had to step out of those fireballs that he throws down onto the floor, but yeah, other than that, it pretty much was just vis-a-vis. And actually, I sort of thought there was an enrage timer: Certainly he was throwing a lot more of those fireballs in the latter part of the fight than at the beginning.
And actually, I view barbs about the same way you view monks: Monks have a temporary invulnerability skill, and a get-out-of-death-free skill, and multiple ways to boost dodge, the rarest (and thus most valuable) form of mitigation, and a skill that hugely boosts resists, and skills that decrease the enemy damage and attack rate, and an indefinite-duration companion that increases our life total and can steal aggro, none of which a barb has. About the only thing that barbarians have that monks don’t, when it comes to tanking, is heals that scale with life total.
Dodge is all or nothing. With a barb, you can boost armor and resists more than any other class to actually mitigate the damage, rather than avoid it. Barbs have incredible burst damage and can move in and out of fights better (charge is like dashing strike) with both charge and leap. One with everything is great for resist stacking, but doesn’t compare to warcry. Of course it’s preference, but it seems like everything a monk can do, barbs can do better, except dodge. I think the monk skills may be flashier too, which is pretty cool.