EPT
A Guide to a Changing Sanctuary
Preface:
Hey Team Liquid! In the last few months the Diablo forums here have been pretty dead, with maybe a post every other week, but with the new patch and RoS coming out soon it seems like everyone who had given up on the game has decided to come back or at least see what has changed. That’s why I made this guide. The game has been so overhauled in so short a time that I thought it would help to have a compendium-like resource where everyone can find all the information they might need in one place. The guide is not yet completed but it is very close and with RoS just a few days away I wanted to go ahead and post it. This guide is intended to have as much information as possible on all the changes that have occurred since patch 2.0.1 and what will change with Reaper of Souls.
There are a few goals I have for this guide. The first is that I will do my best to keep this guide updated at all times. The second is in the random tactics section, I would like to have a community made list of tips and tricks. The last one is that once RoS is out and everyone has fiddled around with more builds, I want to convert the second post in this thread to a class builds section, with skill calculator links and short write-ups about the builds with options for slight variations for things like replacing a defensive slot for something else if a character wouldn't need more defense. I don't want to steal all of the posts from the class discussions, but merely create a directory of builds that doesn't exist anywhere else here on TL where anyone can contribute to. More on that after RoS is in full swing. Without further ado, welcome to the guide!
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/monk/PvZ_guide/hr_list_indent.jpg)
Contents
- Overview of Game Changes ....................................................................................................................................................
Keywardens .................................................................................................................................................................................
Uber Bosses and Hellfire Rings .............................................................................................................................................
Crafting and Loot 2.0 .................................................................................................................................................................
The Mystic ....................................................................................................................................................................................
Enchanting ............................................................................................................................................................................
Transmogrification ..............................................................................................................................................................
Paragon 2.0 ..................................................................................................................................................................................
Power Leveling .............................................................................................................................................................................
Pools of Reflection .....................................................................................................................................................................
Nephalem Globes .......................................................................................................................................................................
Adventure Mode ..........................................................................................................................................................................
Bounties ................................................................................................................................................................................
Nephalem Rifts ....................................................................................................................................................................
Blood Shards, Gambling, and Horadric Caches ........................................................................................................
Elemental Damge and Skill Bonuses ...................................................................................................................................
Random Tactics, Tricks, and Tips .........................................................................................................................................
FAQ .................................................................................................................................................................................................
Useful Links ..................................................................................................................................................................................
Overview of Changes in patch 2.0.1 and RoS
Changed in patch 2.0.1
- Nephalem Valor is gone completely. You no longer have to rely on having 5 stacks before getting a key drop, or getting rares from elites.
- Loot 2.0 (smart drops) - Less loot drops, but what does drop will be of a much higher quality than before, with every drop being a much higher chance at an upgrade.
- Crafting - Crafted items also roll better stats and generally have smart drops. If you have average gear crafting will be almost guaranteed to net an upgrade within the first few crafts, and with a lot of crafts or some luck can be going on best in slot items.
- Paragon 2.0 - Paragon levels are now shared between all of your characters. For each level, your characters can put points in stats like critical hit, all resist, and movement speed.
- Class skill changes - Most skills have had at least one rune changed, if not completely redesigned.
- Auction house is gone. As of March 18th, the auction house is permanently down. Anything still in your completed tab can be claimed before June 24th.
- BoA legendaries and crafting mats - Legendary and set drops are now all bind on account, and so are all new crafting materials and lots of crafted items.
- Difficulty scaling and monster power change - Normal, Nightmare, Hell, and Inferno are gone, as well as monster power, and monsters' levels now scale based off of your level. There are new difficulties in place instead of monster power.
- Pools of Reflection - Golden healing wells that give an experience boost.
- Nephalem Glory Globes - Golden health globes that give a small power boost when picked up for a short time.
- Some bosses had their fights changed, mainly Azmodan, Maghda, Siegebreaker, and Iskatu.
- Cursed Chests and Shrine events - When you activate one it starts a mini-event which spawns a lot of enemies. Killing 100 enemies in 1 minute for a chest or beating all 5 waves in the time limit for a shrine will award a bonus resplendent chest.
- Clans and Communities have been added - Finally added to the game, these add much needed social aspects to Diablo. Search for Team Liquid clans on any server and request an invite to join.
- The waypoint list is now a waypoint map - It takes some getting used to before you can find where you want to go, but it might be better.
Changed in RoS
- New keys, Infernal Machines, Ubers, and a level 70 Hellfire - Keys and Uber bosses will all be scaled up to 70 (but the level 60 ones will still exist), and there will be a new Hellfire Ring.
- Crusader - The new class in RoS, uses strength as a main stat and likes shields.
- Adventure mode - A new game mode where there are no quests and every zone is open and you can move freely from act to act doing events called bounties.
- Bounties - When you play a game in Adventure mode, there will be 5 events in each act called bounties that are random events. They are a completely random objective that awards experience, gold, and Blood Shards, which are used for gambling.
- Nephalem Rifts - After doing bounties, you can get a keystone that opens a portal into a randomly generated Rift, with a randomly generated combination of enemies. After killing a certain amount of enemies a boss appears and once killed you will be awarded with a Greater Horadric Cache, which contains a large amount of loot.
- Gambling - After playing in Adventure mode, you will be able to gamble on items with Blood Shards, which will give you an unidentified item type of your choice that will have a chance to be a legendary.
- The Mystic - After finding her in early act 5, she will enchant and transmogrify items for you, for a fee of course.
- Enchanting - The Mystic can enchant items for you, specifically change one stat into another so you can craft the perfect item you want.
- Transmogrification - The Mystic will be able to visually transform your items so you can make your character look however you want.
Keywardens
- There will be new key wardens and uber bosses in RoS, and a new level 70 version of the Hellfire Ring. To get the new keys, you will have to be level 70. For level 60s, you can still kill the keywardens and get the level 60 keys. A level 70 cannot find any level 60 keys, but can still do the level 60 ubers. Since the removal of Nephalem Valor, you no longer need to kill 5 elite packs before the keywarden to get a key drop. All you need to do is kill them whenever you find them. With the removal of monster power, the new difficulty drop rates are a lot different. You must be on at least Torment I to have a chance of a key drop.
The chances are as follows:
- Torment I: 25%
Torment II: 28%
Torment III: 33%
Torment IV: 38%
Torment V: 43%
Torment VI: 50%
The level 60 keys are:
- Key of Destruction: Drops from Odeg the Keywarden found in the Fields of Misery in act 1
Key of Hate: Drops from Sokahr the Keywarden in Dahlgur Oasis in act 2
Key of Terror: Drops from Xah'Rith the Keywarden in Stonefort act 3
Infernal Machine Plans: Drops from Nekarat the Keywarden in the Silver Spire level 1 act 4
In addition, once you have acquired the plans for machines from the act 4 keywarden, he will then drop a random key when you kill him. The chance for the plans to drop are the same as the keys, and once you teach the blacksmith the plan, it can be found under the weapons page. There is only one type of Infernal Machine, which takes one of each type of key to make.
Level 70 key gathering follows the same drop rate and uses the same keywardens, but with different keys. There is a new set of plans that will need to be collected to unlock them at the blacksmmith.
The level 70 keys are:
- Key of Bones: Drops from Odeg the Keywarden found in the Fields of Misery in act 1
Key of Gluttony: Drops from Sokahr the Keywarden in Dahlgur Oasis in act 2
Key of War: Drops from Xah'Rith the Keywarden in Stonefort act 3
Key of Evil: Drops from Nekarat the Keywarden in the Silver Spire level 1 act 4
Instead of one type of machine, there are four at level 70. Each machine takes one of each type of key to make.
- The Infernal Machine of Bones
The Infernal Machine of Gluttony
The Infernal Machine of War
The Infernal Machine of Evil
Uber Bosses and the Hellfire Ring
- After making at least one Infernal Machine, you can start killing the uber bosses. Start quest number 10, Return to New Tristram in act 1. Just to the North of the main area is a merchant Tashun the Miner and a healer Brother Malachi. Behind Malachi is a door that can be destroyed by holding down shift to use your primary attack on the door. This will destroy it and open the way to the Heretic's Abode. Once inside you may activate your Infernal Machines, which will create a random portal for the level 60 ubers, and a specific portal for the level 70 ubers. The uber bosses in the portals have the same chance to drop their organs as the keywardens do depending on what torment level you are on. There are 3 organs for level 60 ubers, and 4 organs for level 70 ubers that can drop, with each only dropping from its designated portal.
Level 60:
- The Realm of Discord - King Leoric and Maghda. Drops the Writhing Spine.
The Realm of Chaos - Ghom and Rakanoth. Drops the Devil's Fang.
The Realm of Turmoil - Siege Breaker and Zoltun Kulle. Drops the Vengeful Eye.
Level 70:
- Infernal Machine of Bones -> Realm of Discord - Leoric and Maghda. Drops the Leoric’s Regret.
Infernal Machine of War -> Realm of Turmoil - Siegebreaker and Zoltan Kulle. Drops the Idol of Terror.
Infernal Machine of Gluttony -> Realm of Chaos - Rakanoth and Ghom. Drops the Vial of Putridness.
Infernal Machine of Evil -> Realm of Fright - + Show Spoiler [This reveals the new uber level] +
Diablo, who also summons other bosses.
After gathering each of the organs, Squirt the Peddler in act 2 sells the plans for Hellfire Rings. The level 60 version has a different recipe for each stat, but the level 70 one was designed with the new smart crafting system in place, and so only has one. With smart crafting, you are pretty much guaranteed to roll the crafting character's main stat as one of the rolls, so be sure that you are making a ring on the character that you want to have the main stat of (in other words don't try to make a strength ring, even on the level 60 version, on a demon hunter or you will have a ring with a high dex roll for your strength character, wasting a roll). The level 60 version has a 35% bonus to experience effect and a chance to shoot a fireball on attack. The level 70 version has a 45% bonus to experience and a chance to cast a ring of fire on attack. Both rings have no level requirement and are account bound, so they are great for leveling new characters. The rings are unique equipped, so you cannot have a level 60 and 70 on at the same time.
Crafting and Loot 2.0
- Starting with patch 2.0.1, the entire loot system has been redesigned. If you have played any Diablo on the console you have already gotten a taste of this. The main idea is that when you are playing a character, the items that drop for you are now tuned to be useful for that character. This is called smart drops. For example if you are playing a Demon Hunter, you cannot find a quiver that has strength on it, and it will have a very high chance to roll with dexterity. The most annoying type of item was one that rolled with pickup radius, gold find, healing potion bonus, and ignore durability loss which was a complete waste of a drop. The solution was to separate the primary and secondary affixes into different categories so they could not compete with each other. All of the previously mentioned affixes for example are secondary, and affixes such as strength, armor, critical hit, and sockets are primary. For a list of what affixes are which, see here.
These changes cut down on all of the useless drops everyone got all the time before that were instantly recognizable as trash you wouldn’t even give to your follower. Before Loot 2.0, the loot philosophy was to just throw bad rares all over the place and eventually one will be good. This did not work because everyone quickly became tired of going through full inventory after full inventory of garbage that left people disoriented believing that the only good way to get an item was to just buy it on the auction house. Under the new system, rares drop less, but the overall quality has been increased. The ranges of stat rolls have also been reduced, as in a dexterity roll cannot be 1-200 anymore, but will be more like 100-200, lessening the amount of items that roll with a stat that is so low it almost doesn’t count but still takes a property slot.
All crafting materials have been condensed into 2 tiers: levels 1-60 and levels 61-70. This lowered the amount of stash space needed to keep all the previous different types of crafting materials and made it easier to craft lower level items. Normal items (white and gray) also now salvage for a new type of materials, and rares no longer give magic (blue) quality materials as well. All of the new materials are also BoA. This means that everyone must pick up all items, even blues and whites, in order to craft. The approximate range for materials gained per item salvaged is up to 10 per common item, up to 4 per magic item, and only 1 per rare and legendary item. Demonic Essence (1-60) and Death’s Breath (61-70) only drop from elite and rare enemies.
The drop rates for both Demonic Essence and Death's Breath scale with difficulty:
- Normal - 15%
Hard - 18%
Expert - 21%
Master - 25%
Torment 1 - 31%
Torment 2 - 37%
Torment 3 - 44%
Torment 4 - 53%
Torment 5 - 64%
Torment 6 - 77%
You cannot salvage an item that was bought from a vendor, and all items that have been bought will be marked as such. There are many more legendary and set plans that drop much more frequently. Plans that you have already learned will not drop again for you, and recipes do not scale upon leveling, so there will be an entire new set of plans at level 70 to collect.
Crafting received the same benefits that item drops did. Everything you craft will have a high chance at rolling your character’s main stat, and with the separation of affixes and normalization of stat roll ranges the amount of useless items is greatly reduced. Crafting a regular plan is basically now just as good as using an archon recipe. When you craft an item, it will be a smart drop for that character. If you are on a wizard, you will only get wizard skill bonuses and intellect rolls. If you want to craft an item for a character, make sure that you are on that character, or you will end up crafting an item on your demon hunter with dexterity and rapid fire damage that was meant for your barbarian.
The Mystic
- The Mystic is a new artisan for RoS who will be unlocked early in act 5. After finding her once, she will provide enchanting and transmogrification services to all of your characters of that game type.
Enchanting
Enchanting is the primary purpose of the Mystic. It provides a powerful tool for rerolling a certain affix on a rare or legendary item to either increase that stat, or to change it into a completely different one. When you enchant an item, you will be shown the item's current affixes and the possible roll ranges for each (so an item with 250 vitality may show 200-300 as the range that the vitality could be rerolled to). There will also be a small question mark to the side of each affix that you can click on that will show the possible affixes that would be able to roll in replacement (so if you click on the question mark next to a strength roll currently on the item it might show the possibilities being strength, intellect, dexterity, all resist, sockets, and armor).
To enchant the item you will need some gold and crafting materials. When you have decided what affix to reroll, select it and click replace property. Once you have replaced a property you cannot replace any other, so make sure it is the one you want. You will be shown 3 properties. The first property will always be the previous one you had on the item, so if you don’t like the new rolls you can keep what you had. This way if you have an item with a near perfect roll you won’t have to risk losing it to roll higher. The other 2 properties will be randomly generated from the list of possible affixes with a random roll each. If you want one of them, you can just choose it and it instantly replaces your old property. You can reroll that item’s enchantment as many times as you like, and the material cost stays the same, but the gold cost increases dramatically every consecutive time. Once an item has been enchanted, it will become bound to your account. Legacy items found before 2.0.1 cannot be enchanted, but any found afterwards, including before RoS, can be. It should also be noted that according to this blue post, enchanting an item rerolls based on the item’s level, and not your character's level (it’s at the very bottom of that post). It used to be based off of your character's level, but this was changed on March 26th.
Transmogrification
Transmogrification works about how it works in World of Warcraft: it allows you to customize an item's appearance by changing it to any other item appearance that you have found that occupies the same item slot as the one you are changing. It is purely a cosmetic and visual modification, and will not affect gameplay or character power at all. Any legendary or set items found and identified after 2.0.1 will be in the library of available appearances once you have found the Mystic, so you don't need to keep any unidentified items to unlock when you find her; just identify them now and they will still be there. If you are in a group and someone finds a legendary item, that player can drop it for the other players to pick up to unlock the Transmogrify for them as well. It might not be the best idea to do this in a public game though, just for people you trust. Lower level magic, common, and rare item appearances will be unlocked as you level up the Mystic's skill. You can only Transmogrify items that have a visual on your character, which means if you can dye an item you can Transmogrify it. This does include weapons. Any item that has been Transmogrified can be dyed a different color as well. While all items with a visual appearance are eligible for Transmogrification, the item appearance you want to use has to have the same underlying animation set as the item you want to Transmogrify (For example: You could replace the appearance of a 2-handed sword with another 2-handed sword, or a 1-handed sword with a 1-handed axe or 1-handed mace, but you cannot replace a 1-handed sword with a 2-handed weapon).
To Transmogrify an item, open the menu for it on the Mystic and choose the item you wish to change. A list of available visuals will appear and a display window will show up so you can preview your character's look with any of the new appearances. Once you have picked an appearance, the price will be 500 gold for a rare, and 50k gold for a legendary or set item. This cost will not go up for consecutive changes, but it will make the item BoA. Legacy items found before patch 2.0.1 can be Transmogrified.
Paragon Levels
- The Paragon leveling system is now account wide. This means that all of your characters now share Paragon experience, as opposed to each individual character having to level up Paragon independently. The Paragon levels are, however, separated by game types. Hardcore and Softcore characters each add experience to their own Paragon levels and are completely separate. When a character hits maximum level, you will begin earning Paragon experience for your account. If you don't get RoS, you will continue gaining Paragon experience as normal. If you upgrade to RoS, you will stop gaining Paragon experience and gain normal level experience until you hit level 70. At that point you will start getting Paragon levels again.
Instead of a flat stat improvement per Paragon level, there is a new point system in place. All stat improvements that were awarded for leveling each character prior to the new system have been removed (as in, if you had a Paragon level 50 character, with the new system you will have lost 150 main stat, 100 vitality, and 50 of each other stat, as well as the gold and magic find that had been granted). With the new point system, you earn Paragon points to place in one of four categories: Core, Offense, Defense, and Utility. Each Paragon point must be spent in a specific category, with the first awarded point spent in Core, the second point in Offense, and so on. Each character will have its own points to spend and you may refund and swap around the points as many times as you wish. The menu for Paragon points is in the inventory menu at the top of the character overview.
The available point allocations per category are as follows:
- Core
- 5 Main stat (Dexterity, Intellect, or Strength)
5 Vitality
0.5% Movement Speed
Maximum Resource (0.5 Hatred, 0.5 Arcane Power, 1 Spirit, 1 Fury, 4 Mana, 0.5 Wrath)
Offense
- 0.2% Cooldown Reduction
0.1% Critical Hit Chance
1% Critical Hit Damage
0.2% Attack Speed
Defense
- 0.5% Maximum Life
0.5% Armor
5 All Resist
Scaling Life Regeneration
Utility
- 1% Area Damage
0.2% Resource Cost Reduction
Scaling Life on Hit
1% Gold Find
Each possible stat in each category is capped at a maximum of 50 point allocations besides your main stat and vitality. This means that there is a sort of soft cap of Paragon levels at level 800, where the only thing you can add Paragon points to after that will be in your main stat or vitality. There is no cap to how many Paragon levels that can be obtained, however it becomes significantly harder to gain the required experience every additional level. Theoretically this can go on forever, each time adding more points to your main stat or vitality. It should also be noted that when a character in hardcore dies, you will lose no Paragon experience.
Power leveling
- Power leveling is a means of quickly leveling a new character by having a higher level character kill everything for you. The best way to power level is to have a high level character make a game in act 3 that the new character joins. Once they have the quest in act 3, leave the game and make a new game on torment 6 and have the high level character join. Go clear out high density areas repeatedly until the high level character can't 1-shot everything, then lower the difficulty and continue. The best zones are Keep Depths level 2 and Areat Crater level 2. For hardcore characters, there are fallen maniacs in keeps level 2 and the burrowing worms in crater level 2, so to be safe you may want to stay away from crater especially. The other Keep Depths levels have good amounts of enemies and won't really be too much slower, especially with the reduced chance of dying. With this method, a new character can easily hit level 60 in under an hour. Don't try to power level a low level character in a higher level character's game: a character that is lower than the monsters' level will only get experience based on the character's level, not the monsters'.
Pools of Reflection
- Pools of Reflection are golden healing wells that instead of healing you, they increase your experience gained. Activating a pool of reflection will give you a 25% increase in experience until you reach a set amount of bonus experience (equal to approximately 10% of the current amount of paragon experience needed to reach the next paragon level). A golden marker appears on your experience bar that shows how much more you can earn. You may have up to 10 of these effects stacked at once. The effects will persist upon logging out, but will be lost upon death. Since it adds a percentage of your current paragon level, pools of reflection become even more valuable the higher level you are, as it represents a much higher amount of bonus experience.
Nephalem Glory
- When you kill or damage enemies, they will have a chance to drop power globes, which look like golden health globes. Picking up a globe will trigger a small explosion of damage to nearby enemies, and grant you the Nephalem Glory buff for 60 seconds. After it ends, another explosion will occur. Picking up additional power globes will refresh the duration and make the buff stronger. Picking up health globes will increase the duration by 5 seconds each, and after 5 of them it will also make the buff stronger.
There are 3 levels of Nephalem Glory. At the base level, heroes will do additional damage on each attack. At level 2, heroes will do bonus damage on attack that hits all adjacent enemies. At the third level, heroes will do bonus damage to all enemies that has a chance to trigger an explosion for even more bonus damage.
Adventure Mode
- Adventure mode is a new game mode exclusive to RoS that is intended to be the go-to mode for farming. There are two different game modes to choose from when making a new game: Campaign mode and Adventure mode. Campaign mode is just the normal Diablo 3 that you have always played before, where a quest was always active, even if you didn't do them but just farmed all day. Adventure mode is a new mode where there are no quests, and everything is open in the world. You will have all waypoints activated and the ability to jump from act to act freely wherever you wish to go. Adventure mode is unlocked by finishing Campaign mode (which includes all of act 5) at least once on any character. Once completed, Adventure mode is unlocked on all of your characters of that game type (hardcore or softcore), including brand new ones. You will have access to all follower types on new characters in Adventure mode even if you have not done the campaign quests to unlock them.
Bounties
Bounties are a huge part of Adventure mode. When you create a game in Adventure mode, you will have five random bounties appear in each act for a total of 25 each game. Bounties will be listed on the waypoint map, where there will be an exclamation mark by any zone that has one and a short description of the bounty when you scroll over it. When you enter a zone with a bounty, it will give you an event quest and give more information on what the bounty is. They can be anything from killing a boss (Queen Aranae, Belial, etc), clearing out a zone (these are mostly dungeons), hunting down a unique monster (can be a quest related unique but not always), completing an event (Last Stand of the Ancients, Jar of Souls, etc), and more. Bounties will usually only take a few minutes each to complete, but with so many of them in each act, you can still spend a lot of time working on them without having to make another game. For each bounty you complete, you will get a reward of gold, experience, and Blood Shards. When you complete all 5 bounties in a single act, you will be rewarded with bonus Blood Shards, a Horadric Cache, and a Rift Keystone, which is used to open a Nephalem Rift. Blood Shards and Horadric Caches are described below. There is no bonus for completing all 25 bounties in a single game, so if you don't want to do the bounties of a certain act (like if you are on hardcore and don't want to fight Belial when he is a bounty) you won't lose any potential reward for doing so.
Nephalem Rifts
Nephalem Rifts are the other huge part of Adventure mode. The Rifts are randomized dungeons that take about 10 to 15 minutes to complete. The dungeons are completely random, having a several levels of a random tileset from a random act (including Whimseyshire) with random enemies inside. Even the weather is random, and you'll sometimes get gloomy, rainy areas that are normally full of sunshine, or the other way around. With the enemy combinations being random, you'll sometimes come across some challenging groups of enemies from different acts and zones that you have not considered or faced before, with the goal being constantly changing content so farming becomes more enjoyable.
In order to open a portal to a Nephalem Rift, you must acquire a Rift Keystone. To get one, either complete all 5 bounties in an act, find one as a random drop in the world, or find one in a Horadric Cache. Go to the Nephalem Obelisk in town to open a portal to a Rift. Once inside, a progress bar will appear below your mini-map. To fill the bar, you must keep killing enemies in the Rift. To completely fill the bar, it will take several levels in the Rift. Once filled, a Rift Guardian will appear, which is a random mini-boss. When killed, the boss will drop boss appropriate loot. After finishing a Nephalem Rift, you don't need to leave the game to open another one; you can just open another portal that replaces the old one. Within the Rifts are special shrines called Pylons. These Pylons are absolutely overpowered, but don't last as long as normal shrines. There are five different Pylons:
- Power Pylon: Damage from all of your attacks is increased by 400%, causing you to deal five times as much damage.
Conduit Pylon: Lightning zaps your surroundings, causing massive damage to nearby enemies and obstacles.
Channeling Pylon: All resource costs and cooldowns on your skills are removed.
Shield Pylon: You become immune to all sources of damage.
Speed Pylon: Your movement speed is increased to maximum.
Blood Shards, Gambling, and Horadric Caches
Blood Shards are a new type of currency (shown next to your gold) in Adventure mode that is awarded upon completion of bounties. They can be used to gamble. Gambling works about the same as in Diablo 2, but you use Blood Shards instead of gold. When you gamble, you will be able to choose the item type (boots, shoulders, mojo, etc) that you want from an unidentified list on a vendor, and then you will get a random quality item with random stats. The quality will most often be magic or rare, but there is a chance for a legendary from gambling. The torment only legendary drops are unattainable via gambling. You may have at maximum 500 Blood Shards at once.
Horadric Caches are earned after completing all 5 bounties in a single act. When opened, the cache will drop (as in drop on the ground at your feet) magic and rare quality items, crafting materials, potions, and gems, with a chance at a legendary. There are some legendaries that can only drop from Caches, and are even act specific. A list of which ones drop where can be found here. The Greater Horadric Cache was removed from the game, as Blizzard thought it was pointless to have the loot from the final boss of the Rift be from a reward box instead of the boss itself. It was obtained by finishing a Nephalem Rift and killing the final boss, or by purchasing one for 100 Blood Shards and contained the same stuff as the regular ones, but approximately twice as much, and with a greater chance at containing a legendary. Caches also have a good chance to drop at least one Rift Keystone. And a tip: don't try to hoard a ton of caches as you are leveling up to try to get a ton of gear when you hit 70, because they will drop gear appropriate to the level when they were attained.
+Elemental Damage and +Skill Damage
- This topic is still under construction. In the meantime, these are some useful links:
Black damage bug – http://old.diablofans.com/topic/84199-guide-wizard-gear-guide/#blackweapon
List of where skill damage and elemental damage affixes can roll - http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-general-forums/diablo-iii-general-discussion/82397-list-of-skill-dmg-and-elemental-dmg-affixes
Guide to explain elemental skill damage (ignore the physical damage part, but the other elements are still correct)- http://bannedofgamers.com/index.php?threads/guide-2-0-1-elemental-damage-explained.1104/
Random Tactics, Tricks, and Tips
- When an item drops, the affixes and value rolls are determined instantly, not when you identify the item. This means that you cannot find a legendary and move it to another character to have them identify it for a smart drop tailored to their main stat or class.
- You can change the icons on your stash pages by right clicking on the tabs on the side. There are a good number of icons to choose from that help with organizing the contents of your stash such as pictures of gems, gold, armor, and different bag types.
- From levels 1-59, your characters are guaranteed to get a legendary drop from the end of act bosses (Butcher, Belial, Azmodan, Diablo, and Malthael) the first time you complete the quests. You can semi-abuse the system by making sure you entirely complete the quest line before you get to around level 56-58, and then reset quests and have a max level character jump you around to each boss, netting you several higher level legendaries to help smooth your way to level 60 content.
Note: this might not be possible once you have RoS. Leveling through the first 4 acts alone can easily get you to the 50s depending on what difficulty you played on. Since act 5 is meant to give enough experience for a level 60 to hit 70, it is unlikely that you will be able to finish the entire quest line before hitting 60. Even if you could, it probably wouldn't be worth it just to get a few level 60 items when you are about to continue leveling anyway, so this tactic is mostly for before RoS launch, and for those who are not getting RoS. - You were a Templar, Jondar!
- At level 60 or above, after you have completed every quest you may reset your quests to earn a guaranteed legendary drop from killing Diablo the first time in that quest reset. You can go through the quests in a normal play through or have someone else quest jump you to act 4, but either way you will have to complete every quest before resetting again. If you have RoS, as soon as your character is level 61 or above, the legendary drop will move to Malthael.
- There are some legendary drops at level 70 that can only drop if you are on a torment difficulty. A blue post made a list of them here.
- As of March 21st, all class specific sets (Natalya’s, Immortal Kings, Tal Rasha's, Inna's, and Zunimassa's) can only drop in torment difficulty. Blue Post
- You cannot have a jewelcrafting or blacksmithing recipe drop that you have already learned. Level 70 plans are all BoA so make sure you learn them immediately so you don't get the same one again wasting a drop that you cannot give away.
- Legendary and set items can now be dyed!
- If you hold down control while in a game and move your cursor over an item, it will show the stat ranges available for each stat roll (So an item that has 200 dexterity might show a range next to it like 100-250 that the item had a chance to roll). This is useful to show the possible stat ranges for enchanting at the mystic (although in the mystic's menu it should show the ranges anyway) and to show the relative strength of the items you have compared to the maximum stats you have a chance at finding.
- Even though it doesn't show on your character tab, magic find does increase the higher up in torment difficulty you are. Blue Post.
- You cannot get a torment only legendary from gambling, even when in torment, and the difficulty has no impact on the items generated. Blue post.
- If you are in a group and someone gets a legendary, you can pass it around to everyone and it will unlock the Transmogrify for each person. Be careful though and make sure you trust the people you are with.
FAQ
- What does area damage do?
Area damage is a new affix that can roll on gear and is also an option for your Paragon points. You have a fixed 20% chance on each attack to trigger area damage, which then deals X% of the attack's damage as bonus damage to every enemy nearby, where X is the total area damage number that you have. Area damage will not do any damage to the target that triggered the area damage, so against a single target it does nothing. Area damage as a stat is cumulative, so there is no diminishing returns for having more. If you have 10% area damage from Paragon points and 13% area damage from your shoulders, you will have a 20% chance per attack to deal an additional 23% damage to all other nearby enemies. The 20% chance to deal area damage cannot be changed, and in the details tab of the inventory menu shows area damage as a stat under offense. A good guide for area damage can be found here.
What is this Adventurer's journal or other random legendary reagent I found?
There are some level 70 legendary crafting recipes that require these reagents that can randomly drop in the world at any level. Keep any you find as they are nearly impossible to farm for specifically and might be very valuable later on when you can craft them. Here is a guide that lists all of the different types, what each is used to make, and where to find the legendary material: http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-general-forums/diablo-iii-general-discussion/83094-guide-legendary-crafting-materials-drop-locations.
Why are all the 2-handed weapons I'm getting at 60 rolling really low damage?
At first everyone believed that this was just a bug, and a blue post on the forums even confirmed that there was a bug with 2-handers that everyone assumed to mean the damage rolls were too low. When the 2-hand weapon fix rolled out and everyone still got terrible damage rolls on their weapons this blue post revealed that the low damage is actually intended, and that all of the ilvl 63 items people were running around with (Skorn basically) are now actually level 63 item quality, and so any new 2-hand weapon you find is a level 60 item (equal to the ilvl 60 rares that everyone didn't even bother to pick up before). If you are getting RoS, just deal with it for a little while longer and then it won't matter anymore. Unfortunately for anyone not getting RoS, you probably won't find any good 2-handers ever again on your own that can beat any of the 1-handers dropping, but it might be possible to get one with a level requirement reduction from someone else.
Why am I not finding items that have magic find any more, and does it even work now?
As of patch 2.0.1, magic find no longer exists on any newly dropped or crafted item with the only exception being a few specific legendaries. Blizzard has been looking for a way to phase out magic find without removing it from the game for a long time now, and the new expansion was the perfect time for them to do so. Magic find on all of your old gear and any new legendaries that you might find will still work the same way as they used to, but with a diminishing effect. 100% of the magic find you have is applied to your chance to find a magic item (blue), 30% is applied to your chance to find rare items (yellow), and a mere 10% is applied to your chance to find legendary items (orange or green). What this means is that a character with 100 magic find will only find approximately 10% more legendary items than someone using none over a long period of time. It still does have an effect, but it will never be worth it to use an old piece of magic find gear, or a whole set, over anything that just gives more damage so you can kill things faster or on a higher difficulty.
Does life steal work anymore?
For level 60s before patch 2.0.1, life steal worked at 20% of its value. After the patch, it only works at 10% of its value. When your character hits level 70, any life steal that you have will stop working altogether, and will be a wasted stat on your items (don't worry about life steal rolling on level 70 gear, this only applies to legacy items dropped before patch 2.0.1, because life steal does not exist on any new items). Blizzard thought that life steal was way too powerful and subtracted from the rest of the game when you could just stack dps and enough toughness to survive a hit and instantly heal up to full (and let's face it; that did break the game and made it way too easy). Just like with magic find, they decided the best way to deal with it was to phase it out in the transition to the expansion.
What follower should I use?
If you are having trouble choosing a follower, try basing it off of the passive effects that each have and choose what would best benefit you:
The Templar can grant resource regen and health regen or heals.
The Enchantress can grant attack speed and armor or charm enemies.
The Scoundrel can grant critical hit chance or extra dmg after a crit and blind enemies.
If you are using a build that needs a lot of resource regen, pick the Templar. Need to stack crit? Choose the Scoundrel. There really isn't a correct follower for each class or in general unless you are going for a pure maximum damage build, for which the Scoundrel is the best. You also do not need to retrain your followers to change a skill for them. Just click on the other skill you want them to learn and it will change instantly. Here is the game guide for followers where you can see skill trees and other information about them: Game Guide.
Will I get more stash space or character slots in RoS?
A fourth stash tab will be available for purchase which unlocks at about the same cost as the others. Gaining access to the new tab will cost 300k, and an additional 40k to unlock the rest of the slots on the tab. Since there is a new class, everyone will also get 2 new character slots so you won't have to delete someone else to make crusaders. If you purchased the collector's edition or the digital deluxe you will get an additional 3 slots, for a total of 15.
What Affixes are primary and which are secondary?
Primary Affixes:
- Area Damage, Cooldown Reduction, Resource Cost Reduction, +% damage to X(Physical or a certain Elemental type) damage skills, individual Class Skill Bonuses (like +10% damage to Spike Trap), Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Vitality, Critical Hit Damage, Critical Hit Chance, Attack Speed, Life per Second, Armor, +% Life, Increased Damage to Elites, Bleed Damage, Life per Hit, Life steal, All Resistance, Sockets.
Secondary Affixes:
- Gold Find, Magic Find, Thorns, Bonus Experience per Monster Kill, Chance for (Fear, Stun, Blind, Freeze, Chill, Slow, Immobilize, Knockback), Ignore Durability Loss, Bonus Healing to Health Globes and Potions, Bonus Gold and Health Pickup, X(Arcane, Physical, Fire, etc.) Resist, Life After Kill, Level Requirement Reduced.
Useful Links:
List of Torment only Legendaries - http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9582428450
List of Legendaries that drop from Horadric Caches - http://www.diablohub.com/database/sorting/bounty-bags
2.0.1 Patch Notes - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/game/patch-notes/2-0-1
List of Possible Skill and Elemental Damage Affixes - http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-general-forums/diablo-iii-general-discussion/82397-list-of-skill-dmg-and-elemental-dmg-affixes
Guide to Elemental damage (ignore the physical damage section) - http://bannedofgamers.com/index.php?threads/guide-2-0-1-elemental-damage-explained.1104/
Guide to Legendary Crafting Materials - http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-general-forums/diablo-iii-general-discussion/83094-guide-legendary-crafting-materials-drop-locations
Guide to Area Damage - http://bannedofgamers.com/index.php?threads/guide-2-0-1-area-damage-explained.1144/
