The epicness of a fresh diablo experience

[Bane]

I got "Bane" for hero name Dunno if names no longer need to be unique, but it's prolly the first time that name haven't been already taken, hehe..

Level 10 so far and hunting for sword shards. Playing solo to not get teh first time experience ruined by stressed out teenagers rushing through the quests. The gaming is really fun and with a pretty balanced difficulty level. Maybe a tad to easy, but perhaps it's just the barb who is overpowered early on.

The barb is fun to play. Going with a rage-generating skill which sweeps and hits multiple enemies, pared with a cold-attack weapon it keeps emenies locked down, and using stomp (exactly like the skill in like WC3 and such) when crowded and a spear for hunting down enemies who keep fleeing.

The allies are useless though. Tried to give my pala mercenary the biggest dmg weap I could find, but he ended up doing like ~2 dps :-/ His dmg seems to be bugged, so prolly want to replace him with an archer or something later on.

Well, so far I like it alot. Even played it on americas without much lag, so thinking I actually will be able to play with you guys, heh.. Who could ever ahve thought that dream come true?

All doubters, don't doubt anymore - the game is good enough, so play it!

[shiram]

Broke down and bought it yesterday, installed this morning, will try to play tonight.
What are all the cool kids using to talk over the net for games these days?
I need to buy a mic too...

[Mikeyrat]

The only name that needs to be unique now is the battletag, which has a random number attached to the name you chose for that. You're listed, apparently, as battletag####-Bane so it is unique and you don't need to worry about character names etc any more. Cool huh. If you are partied with someone, and put up character nameplates, it shows just your battletag name without the number above your head, not your actual character name... so those character names may only be for your reference lol. So, Skit's chars are going to show up as "Chmr" or some such to other players, regardless what he named them.

[Bane]

Aaah ok, thanks for info Mikey! Kinda boring though Luckily I set my battletag for my normal alias nowadays.

Shir: Haha, great! I have no idea what to use for talking though. Been off the MP-scene for ages, but I guess teamtalk still exist?

[shiram]

Heh i have never used voice chat for games, back in my days we just typed : SOJ 4 SHAKO.

[Genie]

Stone 2.0 uses a ventrilo server thats still up and running. If you guys wanna use it, im sure it would be fine.

[Crow]

Stone 2.0 uses a ventrilo server thats still up and running. If you guys wanna use it, im sure it would be fine.

Its more of Stone 4.0 at this point...

1.0 was when I left F-F before everyone else came over and started the guild during the holo farming craze with Babycakes, Matti, Raggy and the rest of the D2 converts until the move to Naboo, 2.0 was the merger with LoG and the dynamic change and 3.0 was post CU until the end. 4.0 would be the SWTOR version in its current form.

Stone history lesson over.

The D2 history lesson is much harder to explain where everyone came from but one guy brought us all together. Anyone heard if Phreek is playing?

[Bane]

The D2 history lesson is much harder to explain where everyone came from but one guy brought us all together. Anyone heard if Phreek is playing?

Haven't seen it, but he did start that thread "what's up nerds" fairly recently.

edit: Just realized it was like 8 months ago that thread was started, heh.. So the answer is no, dunno if he's gonna play.

[StormCrow]

game is pretty fun, i am enjoying it quite a bit. Theres some things i definitely don't like (story retcons and general cliches and retardedness) but playing the game is a lot of fun and I'm progressing pretty solidly.

Got into inferno, cleared act1 kind of stuck on act2 since my stats are not quite up to par yet.

If your a barb try out Wrathquake it's goddamn retarded vs champ packs and uniques.

I'm enjoying it a lot, but i hope the pvp patch is soon, i'm sure in a month i'll be bored of farming Inferno so i'll need some motivation

[Hylandor]

Anyone playing Hardcore? Flint and I will be focusing there.

[Skitril]

Haven't really played other classes as the feel of the barb is just right. Everything sounds powerful and it's metal as hell just jumping into something and smashing it in the face, and sometimes when you gib stuff the bodies fly up into your monitor, never get tired of that!

A shame as it's a very equipment dependant class and Blizzard seems to have overtuned Inferno so melee have a pretty hard time.
eg Almost all the lifesteal skills are useless in Inferno due to the 80% leech reduction

And I loved the builds up until Act 1 inferno then it became pretty annoying

There's some "must take" skills such as Ignore Pain and Warcry

Hopefully addressed in a balance patch soon

Stormcrow is right, Wrath of the Berserker + Earthquake = Nuclear Bomb mode

[StormCrow]

i'm actually not using ignore pain, i've found it's not 100% necessary. Been using Furious Charge + Heal, Warcry +resists, Wrath + dmg, quake + highest rune, and frenzy sidearm and revenge + procs

i can get down some elite packs in act2 but its slow going and i come close to death a lot.

act1 i can faceroll with one hand and almost never come close to dying unless its a pack with shielding or invulnerable minions and i can usually clean those up as well.

barbs and monks have it super tough in inferno (even with natural -30% damage taken) mobs in act2 can hit me for half my 40k or so hp easily, and it's a bitch with all the little wasp bastards.

farming butcher makes me some good money, i'd say about a million a day or more selling drops.

but i spend it all on upgrades. Unfortunately not rings/amulets, because to buy a good one with str/vit/allres costs about 5million gold minimum and i just don't like spending more than 500k on a single item. eventually i'll save up and get some good ones (or maybe find 2x obsidian rings of the zodiac [lold1]).

hit me up if any of ya'll need some advice or whatever Sturm#1641

[shiram]

I tried Wizard and Witch Doctor, and both really seem equi dependent, as spell damage is tied to your weapon dmg, kinda lame really.
Also money and crafting seem important, though I'm only lvl 33 on my highest Char.

[StormCrow]

crafting is actually useless right now, the cost to level it vs what you get is super shitty, apparently in a patch or 2 they will lower the costs significantly so i'd hold off, its a large moneysink with no real benefit unless you get super lucky with a inferno quality plan drop, and even then, still might not be worth it cause you can sell those for a lot.

all classes are gear dependant, but wizards are probably the least. You do need a high damage weapon but its not as bad as melee. Barbs/Monks need basically every piece to have str or dex/vit/res all to be good past act 1 inferno

the ranged classes can get around that shit a lot easier.

I should level up my witchdoctor or a demon hunter for faceroll loots =/

[shiram]

I just use crafting to get some decent stuff for my low level char now, as my Witch Doctor unlocked some of the crafting stuff.
Also started using the auction house as well, but I am a long ways away from the uber stuff.

[Skitril]

Boo, get home from work, have some dinner... log on for 5minutes to check the AH... "battlenet maintainence has started" BOO!!!

Storm, I'm running quite a similar spec right now as I am farming Inferno butcher too. I play with 400+ ms so I find ignore pain is great as sometimes I desync quite easily and find my barb is standing on an acid pool or in a desecration instead of 1/2 a screen away.

Got frenzy/sidearm + revenge with 30% rune on my mouse
Ignore Pain/leech
Furious Charge+Dreadnaught as well (I love the charge! it's never left my bars since I got it. Charge + Cooldown reduction rune = NM mode cleared. Massive packs = Huge smiles as you gloriously smash them into goo
WotB + Insanity
Warcry + resist rune

Ruthless + Weapons Master + Pound of Flesh (somehow I have +6000 health from globes on gear and this has saved my ass soooo many times, what a mad talent) as passives

With 150 MF gear and decent DPS (17k), plenty to roll Jailer/Butcher in Solo games or help people through the act in a co-op game for waypoints (can only carry 1 person else the mobs scale too quick). I actually like exploring all the different caves too, and the good thing is that the Neph Valor buff rewards you for this!

Act 2 is a totally different story. I actually went throwbarb for a bit to get through the first part of the act (Hooray for making throwbarbs viable! I thought it made things a LOT more bearable and kills the wasps in a couple hits as well!), then used a kind of knockback build with bash/seismic slam for knockbacks combined with ground stomp, has worked very well so far especially in the sewers where there is often no room at all to kite, and been making decent progress, I was in the middle of getting Zoltan Kulle's body I think.

I have also used WoTB + EQ combo for burning down boss packs and I think I might try farming Madga in Inferno with this method provided that I don't die often to the champion packs.

The annoying thing is sometimes in inferno the game is a little really cheap. Oh yea lets put a stairtrap of invisible snake guys with invulnerable minions, vortex, frozen and arcane right next to the waypoint of the sewers! So you can't run away and get blown up in seconds, sooooo cheap!!! And lifeleech is so nerfed on Inferno, which is pretty sad (2 good 1 handers with healthsteal, 3% lifeleech passive, lifeleech belt, running frenzy in middle of hell mode was quite fun!)

I saw some guy in the official Bnet forums make a build about a WW barb so looking foward to that eventually with some gear ,
As well as near-infinite WoTB mode which looks hilariously fun and I can't wait to try it out when servers are back up.

[StormCrow]

lifesteal%'s are total shit in inferno you only get 20% of your total lifesteal cause of the scaling, life on hit on the other hand is good, i've got to about 1000 on hit and it helps tremendously

getting close to killing belial its just such a long goddamn act for sure, and it has a lot of the most goddamn annoying mobs in the game farming magda is easy but sometimes you get screwed on packs and cant farm up a 5/5 stack without going back before kasim outpost

EDIT just killed Inferno Belial, that fight is not easy.

[Bane]

Wow, you guys are sooo far ahead of me, heh.. Still in normal, still leveling my smith, heh.. Guess I'll stop sinking money in there now after reading what you'll said

PLayed a little on america yesterday when europe was down. I added all of your accounts some time ago, but only Eblocher was there on the friends list. Weird.