Where you have to destroy the ballistas and trebuchet?
This is what I have been doing in inferno:
- YouTube!
But then they nerfed the gold drop amount, so I switched to MF. I think they also nerfed the spawn rate.
Ooh, thanks for pointing out Arcane Torrent, I hadn’t noticed the Disruption glyph. I had been running an arcane build already, and while I was sad to get rid of Arcane Orb (Celestial), I feel like I’m running around less.
Ditto for jewelry and follower items that are ilvl 60 (clvl requirement 59) as they smash into the same mats.
Although, with the increase in drop rates for lvl 60+ items the price for exquisite essences has fallen from 2000 to around 1300 and will probably keep dropping.
This is true, but it should also be accompanied by a drop in prices altogether as decent items become more common. It doesn’t seem to be clear yet whether this is offset by the inflating effects of gold farming. The economy is a bit of a mess, so it is hard to see what direction we are really heading in
Strange. Two days ago I sold 100 essences for c. 1900g a pop.
I’m not sure that’s really relevant, though. One is seldom faced with a meaningful choice between auctioning an item and salvaging it, since if it’s worth auctioning at all, it’s probably worth more than the cost of the essences. But with the price of essences dropping that low, it might get to the point where you’d have an inferno-level item that you’re getting rid of that you still won’t salvage, because the vendors will give you more than that, and the vendor prices aren’t influenced by the human economy.
Blizzard had a pretty good track record of releasing an expansion one year after the original game; I think HotS is the first time that hasn’t happened (coming up on two years now in July). I’d guess HotS for Christmas and the first Diablo 3 expansion next summer or next Christmas, but it’s impossible to say.
IIRC Blizzard has said they intended to do two expansions for Diablo 3, and that there would be no level cap increase ala WoW.
According to their leaked product slate they originally planned the next Diablo xpac for 2nd quarter 2013…but given that they missed their original release date for D3 by half a year, an Xmas 2013 date is as good a guess as any.
I don’t think you are looking at the key issue here. The question is not the decision to vend or salvage some individual item in isolation. What matters is the decision players make to either buy an item on the AH or craft it themselves. People buy essences because they think at a certain price per input, the cost of crafting a good item is somehow less than the cost of buying an item of like quality on the AH. So when drop rates go up, the supply of salvageable lvl 60+ goes up and at the same time, the rarity of high quality gear goes down. The price of essences has to drop. But this is not a bad thing as long as the costs of crafting and buying are more or less in equilibrium. Eventually it may well be that the gains from vendoring a lvl 60+ or selling the essence are about the same. This is fine in theory, because it would have to mean that good gear is relatively cheap on the AH.
ETA: The prices of vendors almost certainly are influenced by the human economy. Blizzard can change them at any time to help the economy equilibrate.
Yep thats it. Oh and i mis-typed about gold find. I’m getting roughly around 75-100k per run with constant 5 neph valor stacks. I guess I could do more with gold find gear but can’t do that without major sacrifices. I can’t do inferno too well atm, so this is my favorite spot to raise cash.
The Siegebreaker quest is also very good for drumming up cash. There is a lot of trash close together to melt, and killing the Siegebreaker himself is always good for some blues and yellows.
So, what do I have to do to not die from the very first bug or elite pack I find in A2 Inferno? Our little group wrecks everything in A1, but we are so frustrated by A2 because we can’t survive at all. And this is post-nerf? Yikes.
When wearing our barb’s shout I have around 400-500 resists to all and around 30k hp with 44% dodge. What do I need to improve?
Or is it just that no one can take out a pack of Arcane, Desecration, Jailer, Fast Wasps?
A2 is just a bitch, no question about it. Lacuni, Wasps, and Vipers are challenging enough to begin with, and Inferno just makes it worse. Honestly, I spent a lot of time tinkering with my build and gear to make it through A2 and I died a hell of a lot. I barely squeaked by pre-nerf and have not gone back. Frustration seems to be inevitable.
The Wasp champ affixes you describe are horrendous. You and your group might want to consider parking that one instead of trying to kill it.
How are you dying? Are you getting one-shotted or do you run out of steam a few seconds after a battle starts? What is your character sheet dps versus how hard you actually hit? Do you have numbers turned on? What proportion of your health pool is returned per second either via life per hit, life regen, or life steal? Does everyone in your group have a cc-negating skill available (e.g., Mirror Image, Teleport, Furious Charge, Vault, etc)? Getting jailed in a desecration and arcane sentried area will kill anyone who doesn’t have a way out. Aside from unlucky champs, what mobs are especially lethal?
Yeah, those were the champs that we encountered. Only they weren’t fast (whoops) they were illusionists. Ugh.
I’m looking at my details, and I think perhaps I need to get some more life steal and loh. I don’t have much, so I’m probably not returning nearly enough to my pool from hitting things. I guess I was focusing on dodge instead of life-gain. Should I go for life on hit, then?
I can’t really give you a straight answer without knowing more about the rest of your build and tactics. Life regen, life on hit, and life steal work very differently and which one is best depends on how you play. But if you are getting one-shotted frequently, then we have to deal with that first. Assuming that the problem is staying power, then I have some more questions.
- Do you use a 2h, dual wield, or 1h + offhand?
- Do you spam lots of fast attacks or make fewer, harder-hitting ones?
- Do you use largely AoE skills with low life return coefficients or single-target skills with high coefficients?
- Do you crit a lot and/or very hard?
- Do you kite? Just champs or champs and trash?
Firstly, I’m a monk. I don’t think I mentioned it, and that was dumb of me.
- 1h + shield.
- I use crippling wave as my main attack because it slows, deals good damage, and deals that damage to everything within 17 yards. My secondary is the bell that does 285% damage, and I usually have sweeping wind as well, for extra damage all around me.
- Yeah, largely AoE stuff.
- I seem to crit a lot. I only have about 15% crit chance, but those crits happen a lot due to the way that monks do damage.
- I kite champs. I don’t have to kite trash in A1 inferno.
Ok. Crippling Wave has either 35% or 50% scaling in Inferno depending on your rune, which is totally adequate for life on hit. Find a decent 2-socketed weapon and pop in a pair of Star Amethysts for 600 life on hit for starters. You can also get shields with life per hit. I suspect you will see a real difference if you collect 1k or so. If you are kiting champs, then you will also want to collect some life regen. I am not sure what the magic number should be for you, but you should be able to accumulate 500 or so without sacrificing too much. If champs aren’t 1-shotting you, then the issue is staying up long enough to kill them and evading CC. Getting enough DPS to mow down champs without investing in defense and life return is not easy, and it works better if you are farming late game inferno and getting sick drops consistently. It’s not a great strategy coming into A2. So keep making incremental improvements to life return without sacrificing too much armor or resists, and at some point, you will see that you are just staying alive longer.
I’m not doing the theory-crafting research in D3 that I did in, say, WoW. What does “35% or 50% scaling” mean? If you don’t want to write a description, then just drop me a link to a place where I can find a good theory-crafting community.
You said to find a wep with a couple of slots in it, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a weapon with two sockets, and there aren’t any in the AH right now. Do these things exist? If I find one, should I take it even though it’s weak in other areas? I suppose what I’m asking is how much loh is worth compared to other skills. I had been valuing dex over everything else because it pumps my damage and dodge, but maybe it’s not worth it if I get crushed when I don’t dodge. 
Whoops, forgot to add my build: Here is is.