Leveling with the Patch 2.0 systems

Going to try and keep this short but as the title says, it’s about leveling.

As expected, where the new systems shine is basically starting over from scratch.  I’m leveling the same character class on both the PTR.  I’m also not performing any form of short cutting (except the utilization of Paragon points on the PTR) since the whole rationale is to see what kind of gear upgrades drop, what kind of upgrades the vendors offer, and what kind of luck I have with crafting.

The key advantage I have on the PTR side of things is that I have 100 Paragon points to spend compared to the closed beta where I have none.  And this makes a huge difference because it does provide for a certain amount of twinking without gear (like I poured my points into movement, vitality, and other toughness/healing categories).  That has allowed me to level a bit faster on the PTR (where I’m as of this posting, level 20 in Act I; around 3/4th of the way through it) compared to being level 17 on closed beta at the same spot (plus my closed beta character is much weaker).

Part of the difference in level is that I can play my PTR low level at Expert (whereas I am playing on Hard on the closed beta).  However, at level 20, I’m already noticing that it is now taking me longer to kill stuff on Expert as I haven’t gotten a damage related upgrade in awhile.  Thus I’ll probably need to lower that to Hard.  Why level on both PTR and closed beta when it’s basically the same server?  Leveling on closed beta will of course allow me to play to level 70 and unlock Torment while doing the same on the vanilla PTR client will allow me to be level capped at 60, and allow me a direct comparison to my level 60 characters with legacy gear.  This will give me a better baseline to determine whether my decision to re-roll from scratch (once the patch does go live before the expansion) is going to be the correct one, as opposed to try and upgrading based on my legacy gear (or using a combination of such items).

The commonality is how the loot system works.  While not all drops are class specific (like I’m getting crusader flails and shield drops playing a wizard), the class specific ones are a combination of non-upgrades, sidegrades, and pure upgrades.  Rewards from quests have all been class specific (source, wand, wizard hat) and have all been very nice upgrades so far.  And as I expected, I’m spending far less time looking at a weapons damage or the armor number (this is something we all were conditioned to do on live while leveling), and looking at the green percentage numbers as well as the item affixes instead.  It’s this particular aspect while will become far more important when ones character is at a higher level.

Visiting vendors is also a lot more rewarding now because they actually sell stuff that represents upgrades.  Like I was able to purchase boots with movement speed on them (rare quality ones as well). For slots that were still empty, the game also eventually gave me something (like one of my quest rewards was a bracer with intelligence and vitality).  While the impression I’m giving may make it seem like I’m being handed stuff on a platter, it so far hasn’t been that way.  You still have to play and explore (doing all events, popping barrels/pots/corpses in order to increase those chances).

Crafting has also been rewarding because I ended up being able to craft rare shoulders/belt/boots at level 13ish.  I had to craft at least 2 boots in order to roll movement speed since I didn’t want to lose the ones I had on my blues (the one I purchased off a vendor).  The biggest issue with low level crafting is the need for Common Debris.  Over on the PTR, I had managed to build up a nice inventory while testing out my high level character.  But the amounts I picked up while leveling was abysmally low (by this, I mean both Common Debris as a drop, and white items that salvage down into it).  And because the drop rate has been turned down, even finding white/gray loot isn’t as easy (thus over on my closed beta character, low level crafting is right now a case of famine).  Yes, I know one can just create a level 1 and buy white stuff off a vendor to salvage; but this doesn’t address the actual drop rate of such items or maybe making some blue items also have the possibility of breaking down into Common Debris.  Regardless, burning through crafting materials will be trivial so their acquisition rates have to be adjusted accordingly so that it’s at least a bit more balanced.

With that said, it’s nice having to now pickup this stuff (I always felt that all drops should be usable in some form).  On the flipside though, is the increased time sink that is involved with salvaging items.  I know they got rid of the Nephalem Cube during Diablo III’s development; that allowed the player to salvage items while out in the game world rather than having to return to town.  Why was it removed?  Like the Cauldron of Jordan (which allowed you to sell stuff that you put into it), these systems were deemed as being “too convenient”.  Thus they were removed to give the player a reason to go back to town to perform those tasks.  This effectively served as a time sink since each town portal takes 10 seconds, and then you have to manually perform those tasks in town.  I’d advocate for the re-implementation of the Nephalem Cube so that I perform this salvaging on the go, but know that any such proposal, would have to be made more compelling beyond just that singular ability (and I have no ideas right now).

Legendaries do drop but I can’t say at this time if its much worse than compared to live right now.  What’s nice is they’ve all been upgrades so far (low level legendaries on live were always one of those hit by a very small margin, or miss by a mile and totally useless even at a low level sort of deal).  This part needs more data from further leveling though, and I have a ways to go yet.

The real point of this is that gearing a character from scratch using the new systems is probably going to result in a better experience once the character hits a higher level.  The newer loot rolls certain affixes which just don’t exist on legacy gear (and on the flipside, doesn’t roll other ones as frequently and/or with lower ranges like for critical damage, attack speed, and critical hit chance).  For example, I’ve found weapons and jewelry with 10% cooldown reduction at level 17ish.  That’s huge for later in the game if I’m able to stack several of those items.

But the new loot system is sort of like piecing together pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.  Leveling from scratch this way allows finding more of these pieces from an early stage, and taking advantage of the systems smart drop  capabilities, increasing the likelihood of upgrades that build upon the pieces that you currently have.  For higher level characters with high end legacy gear, it’s not that easy for the new system to perform this function on certain pieces of gear unless you willingly sacrifice a large percentage of damage and/or toughness temporarily to allow the system to begin working for you.  My opinion though is that the new systems don’t work as well in totally re-gearing a high level character with legacy gear when it comes to how it synergizes with the changes in class skills (more of an emphasis in resource and cooldown reductions for example).  And this is why I’m test leveling from scratch because I want to see what my PTR leveled character will look like compared to my main, and how much more it’s play experience will change/feel.

December 17 Update:

My PTR character is now level 40 while my closed beta character is at level 32.  The biggest difference was having access to my previous bunch of gems and Demonic Essences which is now used for crafting (the gold costs are lower BUT my other account had no gold on it; so it’s only been from what I’ve made from playing).  Thus I was able to socket a Flawless Star Ruby into my then level 21 weapon and I already had a couple of star topaz/amethyst stashed which I socketed into my chests/pants.  This allowed to me kick the difficulty up to Master until I hit level 36 (mobs started to get hard again so I dropped it back down to expert).  I’m not trading any gems over to my other account though as I want to see how each character will turn out when they both hit 60.

December 18 Update:

Note: two affixes on elites begin appearing around level 28, and at around level 49, elites have a mix of two and three affixes.

I completed Act IV on the PTR at level 47 and on the closed beta at 40.  In both cases, this means lots of grinding left. And this is where the expansion has a huge advantage once Adventure Mode is unlocked.  Leveling actually goes by much quicker by doing bounties and rifts compared to leveling in campaign mode (but I don’t have adventure mode unlocked yet, and I’m not going to play through the Act V campaign; I’ll just have someone get me a waypoint to the end of the act to unlock it).  In the meantime, I’m probably going to try hitting the cursed chest event areas and see how it goes.

One thing I do notice is how differently my PTR leveled character is comparing to my main softcore character that was copied over.  Main stat and vitality wise, I’m already at 2200 intelligence and 1400 vitality at level 50.  With gems socketed, my health pool is already at 40k, all resist at 400 due to some legendary items and socketed diamonds.  It’s a key reason why I wanted to test leveling from scratch because of the way the loot system works when it comes to upgrades; and one of the biggest differences is the amount of main stat and vitality that loot 2.0 items provides from low levels, and scale as you level up.

I also expect that once I hit level 60, I’m going to have to grind a lot in order to get my damage levels up to where it will be able to tackle Master difficulty (which is completely trivialized by the mostly auction house geared characters that were copied over).  I’m currently sitting at 10k sheet damage at level 50 on the PTR (ballpark, this is nearly the same as when I was using a 760 dps reduced level weapon on live when I hardcore leveling) while I’m sitting at 3k at level 40 on the closed beta (which is well ahead of the curve compared to current live even when using a 260 dps Hamburger).

Overall, I like how there is no need to play through the story line several times.  However, the leveling curve seems a bit off at the moment on the campaign unless you stack exp gear (something I didn’t do); where I have to grind out another 20 levels on my closed beta character to unlock Master.  Thus there are definitely benefits already having max level characters.  For now, I’m just going to focus on hitting 60 on the PTR as I’m curious on what it will look like in terms of the numbers.

December 21 Update:

Note: at around level 57, elites have a mix of three and four affixes.

I’m currently at level 58 on the PTR.  Basically, leveling has been a bit on the slow side (since I’m not able to play for hours on end, plus I’m also documenting issues) as I haven’t been abusing several high density areas (Cemetery of the Forsaken for example is just packed with skeletons now where it fairly easy to just do that over and over again to get to 60), and have just been running various acts (basically looking for bugs in the process) on Expert difficulty.  Main stats wise, I’m now at nearly 2900 intelligence and 2100 vitality, 21k damage, and 87k health.  Thus yes, this answers my question as to what I plan to do once the patch goes live, pre-expansion; that it is best to re-level from scratch in order to let the loot system work for your character from low to level cap as a means of obtaining key pieces of loot 2.0 gear as opposed to try upgrading/enchanting all legacy items.

The above also reveals a flaw in the Paragon 2.0 system; there’s a point where core stats for main stat/vitality becomes useless as it makes more sense to put points into class resource (and maybe movement speed if it’s not available on gear); it’s useful at the start for twinking a low level, and will only make sense when someone is maxed out on all the rest of the stats whenever they reach P800).  The amount of main stat and vitality one gets from loot 2.0 gear makes the small amount you get from Paragon points pretty meaningless.

One can also see the same for other marginal gains for other stuff like cooldown reduction for example.  The choices in each category just aren’t meaningful because while the idea seems good, the implementation is flawed with the round robin setup AND the very marginal gains that one gets with their points being split in this manner.  The solution is also not to nerf the ranges that roll on loot 2.0 items because it then defeats part of the purpose of loot 2.0.  All this does is it just exposes the underlying design flaws which they tried to hide by inflating the numbers on items.

I’m not saying the legendary effects aren’t game changing; they do help to promote build diversity.  But without the stat inflation + focus on skill cooldown reduction + resource reduction as one means to take the focus off of trifecta (attack speed, critical hit damage, critical hit chance), those legendary effects won’t be much better than the current ones on the live server.  And like everything else, allowing huge percentage numbers on these (cooldown reduction, resource reduction, attack speed, critical damage, crit chance) creates a whole new set of problems (which is why the marginal gains when it comes to Paragon points – which itself, makes the whole aspect of progression feel somewhat unrewarding again).  Sure, its a small bonus which is better than nothing, but it just feels like so little return/gain for all that experience to gain one Paragon level, and 5 points to spend on a category.

Anyway, I’m running a fire build (Wave of Force Heat Wave, Scorch Orb, and Mammoth Hydra) since I found some Magefists.  My other key legendary is a Haunt of Vaxo amulet which dropped after killing Diablo back at level 47 (this is the amulet that summons shadow clones whenever an enemy is stunned).  I’ve switched to Electrocute Lightning Blast along with Paralysis and those shadow clones proc like crazy.  How viable those shadow clones will be at max level is yet to be determined since as mentioned, my damage level once I hit 60, is looking to be pretty bad.  And from the time I was playing my main, the average damage on most weapons that were dropping was around 700; I don’t believe I saw a single 1k damage weapon.  Makes sense since PTR is capped at level 60; most of the juicier upgrades are going to be in that 63-65 range where the numbers really begin to inflate over legacy levels as a way of handling the power creep that will occur when progressing towards level 70.

December 22 Update:

Finally hit level 60 and continued playing through on Master difficulty; killing white mobs weren’t that much of a problem, but elite packs were unsurprisingly much slower going.  I did get two immediate upgrades (weapon and source) that took me from 21k to 25k.  I lowered the difficulty to Expert and found that it is a bit too easy.  Thus as I mentioned somewhere up top, vanilla Diablo III should have more granular settings for Master difficulty (but as I also mentioned, I do understand the upsell agenda to push players to the expansion if they want that added difficulty).

One interesting note is the huge health pool inflation (I’m now currently at 104k).  My armor though is pretty bad (1.8k) at the moment so it is going to be interesting to see how the loot system will rectify this.  There is the temptation to use a few pieces of legacy items (like just my archon wand gives me a 104% damage increase as would my Tal Rasha chest which would give me huge damage, toughness, and healing increases), but doing so will short circuit the loot 2.0 system.  Thus I’m just going to continue playing my PTR character for now to farm better gear within the constraints of the level cap, and resume closed beta leveling later.

As far as the drop rate (quantity) goes, I personally feel that rares are at a good place.  I also noticed that they’ve increased the quantity of common debris,  exquisite essences, and tears.  White and blue items are also easily gotten (though I can see the materials also very easy to burn through when it comes to crafting higher level items including legendaries; like I could only make 4 Singularities since it would chew up the common debris and exquisite essences that I had).  The drop rate of demonic essences though are like famine right now.  I’ve managed to burn through 3/4 of what I had and have a feeling that this is one of the things that I’ll need to specifically farm for when the patch goes live.

Legendaries are a completely different matter.  I know that during F&F, it was turned up, and they’ve now turned it down for closed beta.  Majority of my legendaries were from the first guaranteed drop when killing a main boss (I got one from the Butcher, one from Belial, one from Azmodan, one from Rakanoth, and one from Diablo).  Outside of that, only 4 were dropped from mobs (3 of them before level 30).  Out of all the boss drops, the only one I’m still using is the Haunt of Vaxo.  I personally feel they are going to need to turn this drop rate up just a little so that it doesn’t turn into another release-1.0.3 sort of situation.

As I haven’t played my main account on live now since October, I’m debating whether I should resume farming again (as opposed to spending too much time testing the PTR and closed beta).  Farming specifically for actual gear (mostly obsoleted except maybe for rings and amulets) isn’t the objective; it would primarily be for materials given the way blues and rares (even DE’s) drop now on the live server compared to patch 2.0.1 (which they’ve already mentioned, there would be less quantity in order to focus on quality + targeted drops).  As for Paragon levels, I don’t really care since even with 100 points, the current setup (as mentioned in the December 21 update) feels like a marginal bonus at best when letting the loot system work for you from scratch.

December 26 Update:

Played for just a short bit and got a decent weapon and armor upgrade that brought the damage level up to 34k and armor to 2.5k (3200 int and 2200 vitality).  Only 4 slots have level 60 items (crafted shoulders, crafted bracer, boots, and offhand source).  The rest are between level 46 and 56 (Magefist is level 53 and Haunt of Vaxo is level 46; my only legendaries equipped).  This is a far cry from how I’d be geared on a level 60 pre-2.0.1.  Besides my damage level and armor, my eHP stats are basically far better considering this is only a character with 10 hours of actual play time on it (this should give an idea of how quick solo leveling is; and it will be much faster in Adventure Mode).

December 28 Update:

I played my main level 60 wizard for a short bit and got a loot 2.0 version of the Tal Rasha’s Allegiance amulet and Oculus source; the amulet turned out to be an upgrade over my legacy one.  Seeing at least one upgrade was good enough to tell me there is still the possibility for some legendary/set items to see upgrades over their legacy versions.  And with that, I’ve decided to stop playing on the PTR and closed beta for the next few weeks (until they do a new patch with significant changes) so that I can farm Demonic Essences and rares for salvaging.  I basically burned through almost all of the crafting material that I had brought in, and with the current drop rates, want to build up an inventory on the live server.  True, they could still make changes to crafting requirements and drop rate of raw crafting materials; I just want to make sure I have enough so that I can supplement pre-level 60 drops, with crafted items.