Today's random Diablo shout out

is to... Snatch??!?

Spynal Tapp

Found this in Diablo.

On Video Game Difficulty, Part 3, C, or three lower-case "i"s: Class

(I'm trying to clean out the "Vault," and this wasn't published back when I was discussing video game difficulty for some reason.  It's incomplete, but enjoy anyway.)

Something interesting happened to me when I played Mass Effect for the first time on my new laptop.  I didn't transfer over all the saved files, so I lost all the various buffs you get for fulfilling various achievements.  So I was playing the game with a "blank slate," although I had full functioning knowledge of how the game worked.

Diablo III: I, Um, What?

So there's this thing going around about how there's supposedly a bug that prevents items of the proper level from dropping when your level is somewhere in the mid-60s.

Turns out that's not a bug, it's a feature.

So I have to ask: did Blizzard learn nothing from the Auction House?

I will now attempt to explain why the Diablo III expansion has forced you to drop a difficult level or 3

Inspired by this post.

I am going to do something I normally don't do, and assume for the moment that you know nothing about the subject material of this post. This is not because I believe you're a moron who needs things spoon-fed to you, but rather because I'm in law school and can't get out of the mindset at the moment.

Yay, grinding.

So right now the best way to grind levels in Diablo III is to go to the Crypt of the Ancients, clear it out (except for the Elite/Rare/Whatever, because he takes too long to kill), warp back to town, and reset the game and do it all over again.

Prior to 2.0, the best way to grind was to follow a creep-heavy path throughout the majority of Act III, because then your increased XP, gold and magic find would stack after every Elite you killed (although you really should have killed Azmodan last because then all the stacks might give you a decent item).

While the loot is a lot better post-patch, I'm not really thrilled with the CotA grind model.  I do miss the system where every Elite kill would grant you a temporary bonus to XP gain. 

Chances are this is all going to be moot the moment Reaper of Souls and its Adventure Mode hits.  Ah well.

I found something else to whine about regarding the new Diablo patch

They overhauled the Blacksmith.  He's still mostly useless, but the best helmet he offers is (conceivably) better than the one I have equipped. Only they went and got rid of all the pages and tomes, so now I have to salvage normal items in order to get "generic debris." Only they overhauled the loot system, so normal items rarely drop now.

BRILLIANT.

(Diablo III patch) having had more time to whack at it...

Seems like the higher difficulty settings a) turn everything into a damage sponge, and b) give you less time to get out of the way of plague puddles before the damage really starts kicking in.

Meh. My Barb is more or less invincible (at least on the three lowest settings). Killing things now takes forever. TLDR combat is less fun.

Don't get me wrong, I still love Loot 2.0. But the balance is juuuuuust a tad off.

The Lord of Patches

An absolutely monster Diablo III patch dropped yesterday, and by "yesterday" I mean "all of yesterday" - look, Blizzard, given the crap you got for D3's release, wouldn't you try to make this patch go a little smoother? 

Anyway, so much is different. Me being me, I'll start with what I hate.