^^^Spoilers

I might have missed a few points, but I was under the impression that it was human souls he was absorbing into the Black Soulstone to give it power, which is why he was marching on Westmarch (and dropping bombs on it in the end to speed up the process).

And I thought it was only Nephalem who were the offspring of Demons and Angels.
In the end, I was hoping for some sort of better reason for Malthael acting his way. As it stood, the only connection it had with the main story was that it reused the Black Soulstone.

[Edited on March 27, 2014 at 5:53 PM. Reason : ]

3/27/2014 5:52:39 PM

found this ammy today (with shitty affixes) - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/halcyons-ascent

lmao at the deadmau5 icon and reference.

3/27/2014 11:02:39 PM

I've always loved Blizzard's sense of humor

3/28/2014 8:01:27 AM

A good explanation of what does and doesn't go into calculating the damage tooltip: http://www.diablofans.com/news/47999-understanding-the-truth-behind-the-damage-tooltip

Here is a breakdown on all the possible skill and elemental bonuses by slot: http://www.diablofans.com/news/48001-skill-and-elemental-bonuses-by-slot

tl;dr: if there is an orange diamond next to the item stat, it's not calculated in the damage tooltip

3/28/2014 9:34:49 AM

All mortals (except Tyrael; hence Malthael sparing him in the opening cinematic since he was purely angelic) are half angel half demon.

Humans are descendents of the Nephalem who's powers have waned.

We play an actual Nephalem; not a descendent.

The eradication of humankind was a byproduct of Malthael wanting to end the eternal conflict and rid creation of all demonic presence.

Thank god the gameplay is good.

I have no idea why, in the opening cinematic, the angel of wisdom is taking the souls of the horadrim before he has the soul stone. Probably because Metzen.

[Edited on March 28, 2014 at 9:57 AM. Reason : *]

3/28/2014 9:55:16 AM

just went up against Urzael with a full group for the first time

holy fuck 826 million health

3/28/2014 12:48:54 PM

both my wiz and dh are over 650k profile deeps now dh over 1mil ingmae with archery and steady aim ... wiz at 952k

3/28/2014 5:21:13 PM

oh and if you have a DH ... the bounty legendary helm + cindercoat is completely fucking retarded ... you can fire 11 Loaded for Bear cluster arrows before you have to reload....

ELEVEN ... I have a 2500 dps 1h xbow and i still crit for 15+mil with loaded for bear ... The world will burn if I ever get a 2800+dps 2h Xbow

3/28/2014 7:55:14 PM

bounty legendary helm?

3/28/2014 7:55:53 PM

if you complete all 5 bounties in an act you get a special bag.


each act has 4-5 legendaries that have a chance to only drop from that acts bounty bags (act 4 can drop all act 1,2,3,5 legendaries)

there's lists on reddit specifying which items drop from which acts. There is a helm that lowers resource cost by 30% ... couple that with the 30% from cindercoat and ~10% from paragon.....

pretty awesome. Check my dh's helm if you have me on friends

3/28/2014 8:29:04 PM

Are they difficulty dependent?

3/28/2014 10:00:22 PM

nope. burn through normals for caches.

more importantly, and do this now before it gets nerfed !!! Run normal bounties with a group of 4. Have 1 person take each quest till all 5 acts are done (to get all 5 bags) then go to each area you didn't personally clear. Open every chest and nook on the way since there are 4 people ni the game.

If I'm doing a bounty in act 1 and a person in my game kills a rare pack in act 5 and it drops me a legendary. I STILL GET THAT LEGENDARY. You can go back after you've done the bounties, zone into a zone and press tab to see stars on the maps (be careful on bounties that require going into caves, should obv check them out.)

last night we did probably ... 10 sets of 5 bounties. so 10 full games for 50 caches. I got 12 legendaries from the caches and 4 legendaries from other people getting me drops. 16 legendaries in probably ... 2.5 hours to do all 10 games. takes about 14-15 minutes to do a normal game if you're all focused and spec for it.

3/28/2014 10:21:19 PM

what's your name on there?

3/28/2014 11:16:42 PM

oh and btw ... i guess blizz decided not to nerf this on normal, instead they buffed the shit out of t1+ drop rates, and legendary drop rates from gambling blood shards.

good for blizzard.


lobsterzilla#1339

3/28/2014 11:45:11 PM

I am Lokken#1551

Also is there anything to stop you from collecting a shitton of bloodshards on normal and hopping into a torment game to gamble? I can't think of a way for them to stop you.

[Edited on March 29, 2014 at 9:19 AM. Reason : *]

3/29/2014 9:17:29 AM

Quote :

"There is a helm that lowers resource cost by 30%"

This just dropped for me, first Act that I cleared of bounties.

I feel like Blizz should add a bonus for clearing all bounties across all 5 acts.

3/29/2014 10:21:04 AM

No there isn't liken. And there was a big bag in beta... Guess blizzard took it out

3/29/2014 2:41:06 PM

So I reinstalled D3 and loaded up the old DH. Was using some grenade/LoH uberbuild at the time I left that could facetank anything and never die (seems it hasnt changed much), loaded up Act4, went and killed Diablo on Master or Expert (whatever the one before Torment is) with no troubles, and in 10 minutes had 2 legendary drops, a 12xx dps 1h xbow and some gloves.

Is the expansion worth getting and do legendarys really drop that often? I had only seen 1 in 200+ hours of playing when it came out, and to have 2 in 10 minutes seems a bit much.

3/30/2014 8:54:33 AM

yes the expansion is worth it

and legendaries drop much more often now. don't expect 2 every 10 minutes though

3/30/2014 11:15:35 AM

^^ rng is exactly that my friend.

general legendary rate is around 1-2 an hour.

3/30/2014 5:05:34 PM

First main boss kills (Diablo/Malthael?) drop a guaranteed legendary. When I came back at 60 and killed Diablo again, he dropped 2 legendaries. When I killed Malthael for the first time, he also dropped 2 legendaries.

3/30/2014 5:22:11 PM

yeah the auto legendary moved from diablo to malthael after the xpac came now. now you can reset quest and do a ful play through to get an auto legendary, but it hardly seems worth it.

3/30/2014 5:38:47 PM

I hear the Crusader gets kind of weak at high levels, which is a shame because I've been having a blast between level 23-28. Encounters with large groups are all kinds of fun.

First use Shield Glare with Uncertainty rune to turn the enemy group against each other
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a96/The_mango55/Screenshot014_zpsebbc8e1d.jpg

Then smash the densest cluster with Falling Sword
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a96/The_mango55/Screenshot015_zps0dc917f0.jpg

Then mop up with Nightmare rune Steed Charge
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a96/The_mango55/Screenshot016_zpsef61ac61.jpg

3/31/2014 12:42:07 AM

yeah that's not remotely true ....

crusaders crush ... the problem is crusaders are new and the general population is fucking lost without a cookie cutter spec to follow. My friend has the 2h flail that doubles bombardment .... and we delete champ packs on t2 ... not like we kill them, they get evaporated... when I pop wolf howl his meteors criit for 60-66mil, and he drops two of them. his shield beam thing crits for 15-19mil.

crusaders can do bananas damage, yes they are a tad cooldown reliant, but even between cooldowns lightning hammers do very good damage.

that coupled with being a pain in the ass to kill and crusaders are quite good.

I'll link his profile when i get on tomorrow


or more importantly ... characters with good gear rape ... characters with shitty gear ... get shit on. New crusaders who don't know how to gear and aren't used to their classes are getting merc'd.

crusaders are exactly the same. they're definitely behind the ranged glasses, but they are probably better than warriors, and definitely better than monks

3/31/2014 1:13:04 AM

played way too much this weekend, now my wizard is doing 1.1 mil dps buffed. shit is hilarious.

on the otherhand though, barbs are severely underpowered

3/31/2014 1:31:06 AM

yeah im right in that ball park like 1.1-1.4mil ... people complaining that loot isn't dropping enough is batty to me ...

also people haven't completely forgotten d3 vanilla... when the game dropped you hit the lottery if you found a 1k dps 1hr ... then as people found gear items continually got better and better.

im a firm believer that the best most eilte gear just hasn't been found yet because the roll chance on it is low enough.

3/31/2014 2:57:33 AM

Dinged 70 on my Crusader this weekend then started going back and working on my WD.

Statement above about Crusaders wrecking, but being cooldown dependent is very true. I'm trolling the internet looking for a solid build that matches my playstyle, I prefer to get close up in the middle of everything rather than go a more ranged approach.

3/31/2014 8:29:13 AM

i dont play a ton, so im just happy to slowly progress. super tanky barb slowly going up dps wise. ive tripled up to about 180k dps which works fine in very low torment levels (though takes forever to kill anything). one day ill actually do some dmg lol.

3/31/2014 10:59:19 AM

the crusader is fine at higher levels.

people just have a hard time balancing out how to play them.

they don't get the 30% damage reduction that barbs/monks get, so i believe they're not intended to be in the midst of the fight (regardless of what the skill kit leads you to believe)

I switch between using justice/hammer throw (the swirly one) for multi targets
and using slash/sweeping blow for single targets.

I'm sitting at around 800k dps and 11.5mil toughness in a group and can hold my own in the middle of a fight, but I'm not sure its meant to be for long.

[Edited on March 31, 2014 at 11:51 AM. Reason : .]

3/31/2014 11:50:55 AM

well no class is meant to just stand in the middle of ground affixes ... but with 11.5 mil toughness you should be able to basically stand in t1 and go toe to toe with pretty much anything under t3

4/1/2014 8:39:00 PM

Yeah i have meh gear bur 12 or so mil toughness. Unless you get 3 or more affixes at the same time it isnt an issue in t1

4/1/2014 11:14:34 PM

only time i'm struggling is with waller, jailer, and rave makers. not enough mechanics to escape that many controllers

4/2/2014 9:01:11 AM

decided to buy the expansion with my blizzard cash, but didn't have enough, so added the difference. now have to wait 1-3 days for the charge to "clear". sigh.

took my old barbarian out for a spin last night though... i do like the new loot system, got two legendary drops in 2 hours of playing, ha.

4/2/2014 9:19:22 AM

I really, really, really love the mystic.

it's so nice to beable to turn something that otherwise would have been worthless into something amazing.

like my two xbows or my wiz ammy would have immediately gotten sharded without the mystic.

4/2/2014 3:12:09 PM

yeah the mystic has been crazy awesome. one funny thing i did was take a 2h sword i had used previously on my wizard, reforged the int to str, and now it works great on my barb till i can craft some decent hallowed protectors

4/2/2014 4:35:21 PM

Mystic is helpful although can get frustrating rerolling and getting bad luck.

I've been playing some this week since I was off of work. If I could find a decent bow that would be helpful, but I got a cindercoat which I didn't realize was that good until a few days ago and that is pretty huge for DH right now.

4/3/2014 8:06:52 AM

Man, I'm having a rough time farming for new gear since I bumped to T1 on my WD...everything seems to be a lateral move.

300k dmg
2.3mil def

4/3/2014 8:21:45 AM

I've got my WD to about 477k in damage, 5mil in toughness, but I've also hit a wall. Really haven't had many "upgrades" drop in the last 2 days. I get the feeling that I'm looking for set items to drop, or I need to craft my own set/legendary items to keep improving my gear.

4/3/2014 8:39:08 AM

Finding upgrades hard to get as well. 800k/2.3 on my DH.

Mostly yellows is what I'm running to get the fire damage and CA damage bonuses using the mystic often to get the yellows to be as good as possible. Mystic has saved my ability to upgrade and now it is just about finding some better legendary items or slightly better yellows.

4/3/2014 9:33:52 AM

Does the blood shards lady have a chance to give you a legendary? Or is it just yellows on down?

4/3/2014 11:21:35 AM

you can, they are just rare. i got a legendary source after spending about 1100 shards.

4/3/2014 12:07:27 PM

I've never seen a legendary...I've actually never seen a piece that upgrades what I currently had equipped.

Making Blood Shards essentially useless.

4/3/2014 12:16:17 PM

I've gotten good rings from shards(yellow) that I then used the mystic on and were good upgrades.

Also today got a decent legendary belt upgrade.

Spent a lot to get 1 legendary. I do think it's worth spending on the rings that seemed best.

4/3/2014 12:39:20 PM

So much fun although progress definitely slowed down vs those first few days of it raining upgrades. I'm honestly thinking of double dipping on the next gen console version. Local co-op seems like it would be amazing.

[Edited on April 3, 2014 at 1:04 PM. Reason : :]

4/3/2014 1:04:47 PM

I've seen two legendaries from gambling with shards. My guess is that it is like rolling for a single drop from an elite. The upside is that if you are searching for THAT ONE item, you can continually roll drops for that particular gear slot (helm, for instance). So you have better chances of getting what you want since you are only rolling that slot.

4/3/2014 6:28:39 PM

Both my characters are over 1.5m dps and I consistently find at least 1 upgrade a day. Just gotta look at stuff carefully, or be lucky

4/3/2014 8:11:22 PM

Started a barb for shiggles last night. After about 4 hours of play I'm already at 46 from just running Adventure Mode. So awesome.

4/4/2014 8:17:16 AM

Blizz confirmed that gambling with shards and caches you get for clearing bounties will not drop Torment-only Legendaries.

They've also buffed the Legendary drop rate in Nephalem Rifts by 25%.

4/4/2014 8:57:41 AM

Well time to use those 200ish fragments I have.

4/4/2014 9:28:17 AM

Yep, time to start Riftin'

4/4/2014 9:45:27 AM