so just read the new patch notes... and they've nerfed the drop rate by a lot...


However, each level of Monster Power will increase the drop chance of Demonic Essence from Elites and bosses according to the following values:

MP 0: 20.0000% 15.0000%
MP 1: 23.0000% 16.5000%
MP 2: 26.4500% 18.1500%
MP 3: 30.4175% 19.9650%
MP 4: 34.9801% 21.9615%
MP 5: 40.2271% 24.1577%
MP 6: 46.2612% 26.5734%
MP 7: 53.2004% 29.2308%
MP 8: 61.1805% 32.1538%
MP 9: 70.3575% 35.3692%
MP 10: 80.9112% 38.9061%

not sure where the new sweet spot will be... i'll have to try some more ptr to find out

I think the sweetspot is the same as all of Diablo at this point. Play the lowest level where you one- or two-shot most enemies. The first time you might notice a difference in drop rates is MP0 to MP3 going from 15-20%. Unless you can run MP3 as fast as MP0, there's no reason to challenge yourself about MP0 if you're only farming DEs. Even at these drop rates, you'll still probably see them piling up.

The devs don't seem to recognize that an exponentially increasing function doesn't make sense here. If you want to cap the amount of DE's people are finding, you need to make it logarithmic. Give people a noticeable bump from MP0 to MP1, but very little bump from MP8 to MP9. You want to encourage the 98-99% of the userbase that can only survive up to MP4 to move their farming from MP0 to MP2. You don't need to reward the 1-2% of players currently farming MP7 to move up to MP8.

This decision displays a shocking lack of basic game design skills on the D3 team at this point. I'm saddened and suddenly pessimistic about future patches. I'm sure they're still throwing resources at the expansion, so I have high hopes for that, but I have a feeling this may be the last content patch the game sees until then.

(mind you, that would be okay from a value perspective since I've gotten my money's worth, but it's still disappoining as a player)

Well, shouldn't the higher XP be the motivator to move to higher MP, rather than the essence droprate?

It should be better with 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% for the first four MP levels. Demonic Essence wise that would encourage me to at least farm MP1, and maybe upgraded some of my gears to farm MP4.

only time will tell... i think on 106 there was no real motivation to go to the higher mps unless you were farming keys or doing ubers.

with the new changes to xp and DE, like @ecocd said, you should farm at the lvl where you are pretty much 1 shotting the white mobs

i think mp2 or 3 will be my new home... even on mp1, those dam phase beasts @#%@ me :(

Posted by shniggies at 02/01/2013 12:11 AM

even on mp1, those dam phase beasts @#%@ me :(

quoted for truth

i tried doing some DE farming last night, and man... they rarely drop
i was running mp5 with my cm wiz, and a few observations:

1. i died a lot, but i think this was mainly due to the fact i was trying out a meteor/cm build
2. only got 1 DE for a full run (same as xp run, but skipped everything except for elites)
3. i need to find a better DE farming route (maybe just keep hitting VOA?) since you don't need nv for them to drop
4. maybe just continue doing my normal xp run and cross fingers and hope it drops?

I think DE drops are incidental, not something you should farm for. Do whatever you like to do, and you'll get plenty of DEs to drop.

I think I'll do key runs and XP farming, but I think I will need to spend some money and regear for MP4 for all of my chars. I think that will be the sweet spot for me in terms of drops and XP once 1.0.7 hits.