|
unkkz great thread here was a great inspiration for me to start playing hardcore, but it's a bit outdated, so I thought I'd make a bit of an updated beginner's guide to hardcore and why it might appeal to you as a softcore player. I was a longtime softcore player, had a paragon 50 DH and paragon 43 barb, made 25 hellfire rings, etc etc... but I simply got bored of getting nothing to sell and started hardcore, three weeks later I have never looked back. Some of the reasons to play hardcore are still the same, so I'll reiterate them and edit in new ones as well.
#1 - The economy.
Probably the #1 reason to me. I have gear worth 250m+ and 50m in the bank at paragon 39 having never run MF gear or anything. The economy is much fresher because everyone is dying and making new characters, as long as you have the right combinations, there is always a demand for mediocre mid-level gear as everyone is dying and making new characters all the time. Most of my money is made off sales in the 1-5m range, and it's easy for someone to start and just make a few million gold with some starter a3 mp0 gear (you'll have 30k dps which may feel slow coming from softcore, but the amount of stuff that is worth selling makes a huge difference). There also is not always the availability of godly gear, not every high end character looks the same because there might not exist more than one 6% crit mempo on the server, and the highest dps char has something like 260k dps unbuffed.
#2 - Character progression and accomplishment
It's a great feeling to hit 60 for the first time, and if you still enjoy leveling, I definitely recommend leveling it yourself for the first time. If you don't, I'm willing to powerlevel a group of TLers with my archon wizard. Even past level 60, every paragon is one level you didn't die, one piece of gear that you worked for. There is a much bigger feeling of accomplishment.
#3 - The community and playing for the journey
This one is hard to understand til you've really played hardcore, but you come to appreciate the game and the people around you much more by playing hardcore, rather than your gear and the number of gold you have. I regularly see hardcore players donating eachother gold and items found in their farming when they know they'll help out their friends - everyone will die in the end anyway, so you just have to enjoy sharing the game experience with everyone around you. If I find a strength crit mempo, my first thought is no longer "omg I'm so rich now!", it's "maybe my barb buddy could use this!" Coming from softcore you might have a much bigger attachment to your own stuff, but if you let that go, you'll just have a much more relaxed communal experience.
#4 - A new challenge, something fresh to try
If you're like me and played softcore for months on end, you eventually wonder why you're still playing and what else there is to accomplish. HC can be a new challenge, a chance to try a new class, a new playstyle, and make new friends. This alone was enough to get me to try HC.
HC isn't for everyone. You will inevitably die (even if you have godly gear you'll disconnect someday) and that is a fact you must accept. It is a challenge that requires patience and careful attention. On the flip side, it feels a lot more rewarding and satisfying.
Again, I'd be willing to powerlevel any TLers who just want a fast level 60 in hardcore, but I think it's definitely worth the experience to level the first time. (Either way, if you wanna play HC, add/msg me Pokebunny#1967!)
Alright Pokebunny, you've convinced me... now what class should I pick?
It depends on what you want. Common choices include:
- The class you play in softcore, because you know it best: If you really like your softcore character, go for it, but I personally recommend against this. You'll have the chance to try out everything when you die, so you might as well go with something new!
- What you think will be the "best" class (usually barb): only if you really want to. People have a common misconception that hardcore is just about being really tanky and snoring everything to death, but current inferno is honestly not that difficult and you have some room to try some cool stuff. I recommend just trying a class you always thought looked cool.
A general rundown of the classes, from "best" to "worst":
#1 - Witch Doctor. Softcore players are almost always surprised when I say this, and honestly it doesn't make total sense to me, but it is indeed true. Witch Doctors have the lowest gear requirement for progression, as pets and careful play can keep you safe even with fairly low AR, and you don't get hit all that much. You also have spirit vessel. Once you have decent defenses, you can play aggressive and farm very fast even with 40-50k DPS (trust me, I've seen it a lot) using spirit walk / grave injustice / bears or acid cloud. Overall witch doctor is the easiest starter class.
#2 - Barbarian. Probably what people expected to be #1 is still a powerhouse in HC. WW is viable at decent gear levels for speed farming, and the vast availability of defensive skills and especially sustain make barb a great choice. Revenge and rend: bloodlust are excellent at both dealing damage and keeping you alive, war cry is great for party survivability, and WotB is a great emergency button against those scary frozen packs.
#3 - Monk. Similar to barb except with slightly less solid defense, monks need a bit more sustain and defense innately, but OWE also makes gearing substantially easier for an inferno starter character.
#4 - Wizard. With Diamond Skin, Prismatic Armor, and Teleport, Wizards can hold their own defensively, but they don't really have any great farming builds until you have gear good enough to safely do archon and you have to play really carefully until then. Overall, expect a long period of feeling like your character kinda sucks when you play wizard.
#5 - Demon Hunter. A bit better now with boar, perfectionist, and nice sentries, DH is still the most difficult to start with in HC. Similar to wizard in the sense that they do have some decent defensive skills but they do need to play very carefully, the biggest difference from wiz is that DH has no new great build once you get good enough gear like archon or CM for wizards. Still, it is a fun class and you'll always be on your toes.
Gear
Always start with too much defense, and progress to gain damage as you feel more comfortable with your character. Softcore players are always tempted to cut defensive corners and like to complain about having 30k DPS, but trust me, you want a good handle on your character and make sure you know what you're doing before you drop defense. Melee classes start with shields. Inferno is now easy enough that ranged classes can use their respective offhands.
... Okay, basically I've now realized I'm repeating a lot of unkkz thread, so feel free to ask me questions 
|
If anything this post inspired me to play Diablo III for the first time in 3 months. Thanks man.
|
Any particular areas or mobs that you should be especially wary of?
|
a2 - wasp things if you're melee. also one of the kulle chambers has fallen maniacs
a3 - keeps 2 fallen maniacs (especially when they hide behind doors and the glow doesn't show up). phase beasts are also sort of a bitch depending on the affixes they roll
a4 - keywarden and armadons
when i was beating inferno on my barb, those were pretty much the only areas i was extra cautious. lost my first 60 barb to molten/extra health/teleport/vortex (srsly, wtf is that) phase beasts 'cause i got greedy and progressed forward without wotb. no escaping from that 
http://i.imgur.com/2yV9p.jpg
edit: i was also too caught up in the moment dumb to just leap forward and jump in the portal LOL. pausing to analyze a situation is for chumps
|
So do you still play selffound HC or what?
Should add a lot more content to the OP because the old one was fine as is, kind of redundant
|
I would play it if it was like d2lod... with pk/pvp.
Else it's kinda pointless to me playing hc, especially how laggy bnet is.
|
On December 15 2012 16:26 wooozy wrote:a2 - wasp things if you're melee. also one of the kulle chambers has fallen maniacs a3 - keeps 2 fallen maniacs (especially when they hide behind doors and the glow doesn't show up). phase beasts are also sort of a bitch depending on the affixes they roll a4 - keywarden and armadons when i was beating inferno on my barb, those were pretty much the only areas i was extra cautious. lost my first 60 barb to molten/extra health/teleport/vortex (srsly, wtf is that) phase beasts 'cause i got greedy and progressed forward without wotb. no escaping from that http://i.imgur.com/2yV9p.jpgedit: i was also too caught up in the moment dumb to just leap forward and jump in the portal LOL. pausing to analyze a situation is for chumps
to add to the list:
a1: cathedral level 1, right after adria's hut, after you drop down, there is no way back up. If you bump into an elite pack it's either them or you.
a2: stinging winds, the black rock ledger ship spawns banelings. One of my friends forgot about this and learned the hard way XD
|
really nice read!
I started SC but only finished it on normal and realized HC would be more fun 
I never regret that! But unfortunately I died on lvl 42/50/52/56/58 because of some dumb mistakes ...
At least not because of lag
Next try is first time sorc letss see how its going :D
I think everyone should try out HC! If u wanna play EU with me add me: keltor#2903
|
One of my RL friends is TradeWind, atm he is lvl 98 paragon Wizard, like 2nd wiz world at that level and he told me to start playing HC but I wont ever touch it simply because the internet in my country is crap and get too many disconnects. I will probably end dying in a disc.
|
Think I might try out HC this Xmas break, my interest definitely went down after beating the campaign the 1st time on normal. Re-rolled 3 different characters and beat it, still not overly enthralled with the game. Hopefully switching to a mode where my character's life is on the line could re-instill my interest in the franchise.
|
On December 15 2012 16:09 Sindriss wrote:
Any particular areas or mobs that you should be especially wary of?
A2 keywarden for ranged classes, A4 keywarden for melee classes
Just skip keep 2 in inferno unless you can shoot through every doorway before you break it
Be careful in confined spaces (i.e a waller arcane pack in the bridge stores can be really dangerous)
|
On December 15 2012 17:58 nRoot wrote:
So do you still play selffound HC or what?
Should add a lot more content to the OP because the old one was fine as is, kind of redundant
I do not mostly, I do have a couple self found characters though.
|
On December 15 2012 22:49 ffswowsucks wrote:
One of my RL friends is TradeWind, atm he is lvl 98 paragon Wizard, like 2nd wiz world at that level and he told me to start playing HC but I wont ever touch it simply because the internet in my country is crap and get too many disconnects. I will probably end dying in a disc.
Oh wow ya Tradewind's stuff is crazy good, I'm a wizard myself so I've checked out his and Diamond's (character name YOLO on dprog) characters quite a few times.
|
I've started a selffound mp10 hardcore challenge with a friend and it's soo fun. We're taking it super slow and we're just like lvl ~30 or something but as soon as we hit nightmare it's probably gonna be really really tough.
I'm playing a barb and he's playing a wizard, anyone has any advice on what kind of gear should I focus? I'm always in doubt if I should prioritize dps over hp due to how tough mobs are, in some way more dps = more survival(kill them before they kill you!)
Anyways, great thread. I hope we get challenges like PoE has. Something like weekly/monthly tournaments where the point is to get to the highest level in hardcore or something. Diablo 3 really lacks in this :[
|
I don't think DH is the hardest class in HC. I've got a para 26 DH and para 9 or 10 monk, and I've come closer to dying on my monk. Being at range all the time is much easier to play in my opinion. Saying that though, I think getting to 60 as a DH is pretty hard compared to other classes I've played.
|
On December 16 2012 02:07 Andr3 wrote:
I'm always in doubt if I should prioritize dps over hp due to how tough mobs are, in some way more dps = more survival(kill them before they kill you!)
In my opinion, you can never go wrong with more EHP.
My Self-Found HC Demon Hunter (Inferno A1)
As you can see, I have ridiculously low dps for someone in inferno (Less than 3k, you serious brah?). Even though fights (especially with elites) take ages, I'm close to unkillable. With 54k life and high life regen (~1.6k per second w/ all buffs + skills), I'm not getting anywhere close to dying. I can kite dual elite packs for 15 minutes without dying no problem at all. Of course, once the enrage timers get into play you won't be able to progress before upgrading your dps, but even then you should be on the safe side. It is HC after all..
So, in my opinion never prioritize dps, but if your EHP is already far more than enough and you can get a nice dps boost by only taking a little hit to your EHP, it may be worth it. (For example, I certainly wouldn't mind dropping a few thousand hp for multiplying my dps.. haha.)
|
WD is at level 37 now and will hopefully be my first level 60 HC-char. Works surprisingly well until now and I even feel pretty safe with spirit walk and spirit vessel.
|
if they ever change the fact that your character stays in the game if you have a dc, while alt+f4 breaks the connection immediately, i will think about it again. And get used to pressing alt+f4 when i'm waiting for the server to react.
but i tried it and yes, it's pretty interesting, because knowing that death is punishment makes the game really more tense. Just dont play a glass cannon.
On December 16 2012 02:07 Andr3 wrote:
I've started a selffound mp10 hardcore challenge with a friend and it's soo fun. We're taking it super slow and we're just like lvl ~30 or something but as soon as we hit nightmare it's probably gonna be really really tough.
I'm playing a barb and he's playing a wizard, anyone has any advice on what kind of gear should I focus? I'm always in doubt if I should prioritize dps over hp due to how tough mobs are, in some way more dps = more survival(kill them before they kill you!)
Anyways, great thread. I hope we get challenges like PoE has. Something like weekly/monthly tournaments where the point is to get to the highest level in hardcore or something. Diablo 3 really lacks in this :[
As the melee-char always more ehp, you will take a lot of damage. Probably as a hc-char in general always more ehp. At a certain point switching to more lifeleech and more damage will surely become viable, yet expensive.
|
On December 16 2012 17:47 haffy wrote:
I don't think DH is the hardest class in HC. I've got a para 26 DH and para 9 or 10 monk, and I've come closer to dying on my monk. Being at range all the time is much easier to play in my opinion. Saying that though, I think getting to 60 as a DH is pretty hard compared to other classes I've played.
I haven't personally played DH, but I've played wiz and seen some DHs. You have to pay much more attention / be more aware... also DH has no way to get out of wallers except leech/smokescreen and pray they live long enough. Basically, with DH you have to be very situationally aware and have fast reactions because you can go down very quickly.
|
What class would you recommend someone who random disconnects atleast twice a day?
....
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
