PSA: Diablo III Open Beta WeekendFollow

The blacksmith feels a lot like the stereotypical WoW profession. You can't make anything useful for yourself while leveling, and it's basically a gold sink for much of the game. The jeweler I'm liking though. Upgrades pay off with immediate stat increases, and adding old jewels to items you throw up on the AH seems to help them get noticed. Since, you know, if someone is searching for a piece with at least 70 dex, that +30 dex gem is a nice boost, plus a "free gem" takes some of the sting out of buying it.

The blacksmith materials though, yeah, what a waste. The long blackout on selling crafting materials on the AH was enough to get me in the habit of sending everything to the vendor, and I haven't really felt the need to change back. Although, it did seem that the costs of some of the crafted items were a bit lower after this last patch? I'm assuming it was in the notes somewhere? Either that or I'm just dreaming...

That sounds familiar. I've made 1 item with the blacksmith I've used while leveling, a yellow helm when I was like in the 20s or something. Okay, actually I made 5 before I got one with the stats I wanted, another 1 went on the AH for half of what it cost to make it, and the remaining 3 were vendor trash. Like 10,000g down the drain.

But ya, so much easier to set filters for something like rare, belt, intellect > 50, under 1000g, and get upgrades every level for a fraction of the cost of making an item.

I haven't leveled a SC character in a while, but I use the Smithy while leveling on HC for sure, but usually for gloves, bracers, shoulders, and belts only. Boots, I need movement speed. Legs, body, helm and weapons I need sockets, and it's just easier to get those on the AH than trying to craft and get them. Maybe if there's nothing on the AH I'll craft them, but at least helm and weapons have to have sockets for me. High level gems while leveling are just too awesome to pass up. Red gem for huge EXP boost in the helm, and either red or purple gems in weapons for huge damage boost or LoH. Throw a Star Amethyst in a level 15 weapon and you can basically tank through anything. Of course, a Star Ruby will let you one-shot just about everything.

What they really should have used the BS for is as a mechanic to remove items from the economy, and I don't mean through salvaging crappy drops. Make the BS have the ability to enhance an item at a decent gold cost and at the expense of making the item bound (to the character would be preferable than to the account). Have it let you pick an affix category and have a minimum value that isn't completely garbage. Or, if the minimum value is crappy, have it let you repeatedly overwrite the bonus affix until you get something you want. The most important part to me is allowing the player to choose the affix they want to add. Of course, if Blizzard were to implement this, you wouldn't be able to pick it, but I'd still take that over nothing. Similarly, let Shen enhance rings and amulets.

Edited, Jun 23rd 2012 10:43am by Spoonless

They nerfed gold drops across the board in a lot of popular hell farming places. I've become pretty sick of how they're handling this game. Everything is just a knee-jerk reaction with zero consideration for the consequences. The dev team is pathetic.

I'll dabble into hardcore a little bit, but for the most part I'm done with this game. If this game gets any worse I'll have to tie it with ffxiv. I'll come back when d3 2.0 comes out I guess, lol.

Edited, Jun 27th 2012 7:14pm by Deadgye

I haven't made any huge sales in the initial volatility, but I've sold enough small things (and one $25) that I can pay for one of the new tires my car needs with it.

Source for D3 being the cause? The sites I can pull up suggests that shareholders in Vivendi have been pushing for changes in the company for a while, and just ousted the CEO because he was resisting it. A shift away from console/PC game companies and towards social media ones, that kind of thing.

I feel like I read about this sale a couple weeks back, but don't feel like digging for where I saw it. Either way, while odd to think they wanna sell off a cash cow like Blizz and its relationship to WoW, I think it speaks more of Vivendi's ******* up with other ventures if that seems like the only real way out of hot water.

More or less. Spend 60 bucks on a game that was just a huge let down. I am over it now, I plugged Skyrim back in. =D, get my feel back for the release of Dawngaurd or w/e.