Here are my initial thoughts. I can't play yet, so a lot of this is just supposition based on the patch notes.

Dueling: Seems like they didn't change anything. So DHs with high DPS are still going to be the bee's knees.

Experience: I'd still say MP0 is the best. I guess it depends slightly on how you farm, but all of these bonuses are still additive. So most people are farming with at least 100% BE; 100% bonus isn't going to double your exp. It's going to take 200% BE to double your exp, which is the difference between MP0 and MP6. I don't know anyone that can farm MP6 in only double the time they can run MP0 AT MINIMUM.

Demonic Essence: MP0. I mean, you're only getting a 10% bonus from running higher MP. Monsters get A LOT tougher than it's worth (consider HP increase, damage increase, one shot potential, etc).

Crafting Plans/Jeweler: I still think MP0 is the best. Why? For two reasons. The first reason is that these things are going to drop off everything (albeit at some small, unknown percent chance). So you don't really want to just kill/farm the bosses because you'd be missing out on all those tiny "lottery tickets" (as well as missing out on the general loot). The second reason is just that I don't think the increase in percent chance is worth it again. At MP0, the percent chance is 20, so on average, I would need to kill 5 bosses to get one plan. I'd much rather kill MP0 Cydaea 5 times than MP6 Cydaea twice. I don't think the need for 5 stacks is really an issue either. I can get 5 stacks in like 3 minutes on MP0. So we're talking 5 Cydaea kills in 15 minutes or so on MP0.

The only thing I'm not completely sure about is taking into account the fact that NV carries over through acts. I still don't think it's worth it though because of the time it takes to run through all the crap of the general storyline. I believe it's just best to take your 20% chance in a few minutes than grind MP6 for a 50% chance.

Aside from not knowing the general percent drop for plans, I have another question. What do we do with all the AB crafted items? Does it salvage like the HF rings? Can we sell them to the vendor? Or do you just drop them on the ground when they start taking up too much space. Seems like an important question.

Rest of the stuff seems fairly irrelevant. The slight boost to TR and SW might help my farming a little bit, but nothing huge IMO.

I can't play yet due to the 'unexpected error' of Asian location players playing on US server thing.

What I plan to do though:

- Farm MP1 Alkaiser with the improved TR on my P70 monk, hopefully I can still one shot things c.f. MP0
- Farm MP1 Inferno for plans with my low P low dmg (60k?)new WD
- Complete power rushing my Wizard (possibly another 2 hours or less)
- When connection stability allows, slowly level my HC Barb.
- continue playing HC GAH

I don't know about it. I played for about an hour...which is all I really get to play at a time, sometimes only an hour or 2 a week!! But, I did notice some differences. I like the whole reflect damage change. I got a legendary and a key on a run of mp5. I don't like farming just to farm, I would rather have some difficulty though. I may try a higher mp at some point, even mp5 is getting pretty easy with all of the help I've gotten.

Just did a short test for plans vs. time taken.

Run: Tower of the Damned 1, Tower of the Cursed, Cydaea (1 boss)

MP0: 3 minutes
MP1: 3 minutes, 20 seconds
MP2: 3 minutes, 40 seconds
MP3: 5 minutes (pretty bad run, I died twice and got 2 packs of those fat shielding wizard mofos)

By MP4, Tempest Rush is pretty bad and I need LS. Tried MP6 and it was an epic failure without LS. So I'd have to switch my build to see if it's worth it.

Looking at MP0-MP2, the time difference isn't too bad, but the respective percent increase isn't much either. Additionally, you aren't one-shotting a lot of mobs with SW, so you miss out on random loot.

I'd say it's not really worth it to keep going through acts just to preserve NV. Looking at the bosses that drop plans, I'd say the quickest transition is probably Cydaea to Rakanoth. Just kill Cydaea, kill Azmodan, exit the chapter, kill Iskatu, then he's the next boss over. But even that took me about 5-6 minutes TRing the entire way. And that's on MP0 where I can kill the bosses in about 5 seconds. I can simply remake and get another boss kill in 3 minutes.

For exp, run is AC 2, Keeps 2, Rakki's Crossing

MP0: 6.26M in 6:57 = 54M/hour
MP1: 8.6M in 8:15 = 62.5M/hour
MP2: 8.4M in 9:10 = 55M/hour

MP1 seems to be slightly better (at 150k DPS). This might be because of that extra 25% exp kicking in before NV stacks when hitting AC2 and all of those Stygian Crawlers. It could also be just getting luckier with certain packs and mob density. At any rate, I could buy into farming MP1.

fyi, I've had 3 plans fall from Iskatu. He's not in the patch notes as a boss that drops, but he's definitely a boss that drops plans. This makes Cydaea to Rakanoth easily the best plan route. For you, @Metta, that's 3 boss kills every 5-6 minutes. No contest.

If you only want one plan, Skycrown Battlements to Ghom will probably be even faster than Cydaea.

Posted by ecocd at 02/13/2013 12:02 AM

fyi, I've had 3 plans fall from Iskatu. He's not in the patch notes as a boss that drops, but he's definitely a boss that drops plans. This makes Cydaea to Rakanoth easily the best plan route. For you, @Metta, that's 3 boss kills every 5-6 minutes. No contest.

Which storyline do you need to choose to get these bosses?

I can't wait to try the various routes when I am free to play later tonight.

I only had 35mins to play and wanted to kill Gohm to try my luck and realised my WD hardly has any waypoints in A3 just the ones needed to farm.

So it forced me to play through the start of A3 along with the storyline.. it was actually really cool and refreshing, as I followed the story and didn't auto-slip the cut scenes. Loved it and need to do it again for sure!

In terms of playing, I found packs a lot easier with reduced damage from molten & the way reflect works now. Considering moving up to MP2. It was nice to see my XP bar chunk up a lot faster.

I found 2 demon essence as well.. now just need some plans! That'll be tonights mission... and to get ridiculed at PVP.

@Metta

Does your route guarantee 5 NVs?

I tried 3 runs. 2 Demonic Essences and 2 legs.

Tried another 3 runs:-

1. Spiderwoman
2. Skeleton King (forgot to kill him....got excited when I see a manticore drop and forgot to proceed to Royal Crypt)
3. Cydaea through to first mini boss in Act IV

3rd run gave me a Amulet Design of Strength. Hence over 6 short runs I have the followings:
- 5 Demonic Essences
- 3 legs
- 1 plan

Considering the buff to TR and the buff to MP1 XP, there is no reason that I should stay in MP0 with my 170k DPS +29% SoJ Monk. So now MP1 is my home. Considering my luck with legs, from now onwards I should do some sort of Alkaiser clear before proceeding to Cydaea-Azmodan-ActIV mini guy.

Continued running, and looted an IK Helm, + 3 shoulder plans (Dex, Int, Vital). I should hunt for more and sell on AH first huh.

I've not found 1 plan yet! Are they yellow/rare? I guess maybe depends on whether they're blacksmith/jeweller? Killed Gohm 3 times, seigebreaker and cydaea both once.

Got 8 or so essence from packs and two legs, both brim's.

This is all on MP1 with WD speedfarmer... loved the XP buff and now considering a few upgrades to make MP2 a breeze.

Tried a little PVP and got rather owned as I expected. DH would 1hit me with hungering arrow most of the time and wizard was oddly annoying with hydra's everywhere that kept zapping me! I got a few haunt kills but didn't find spiders effective like other people have mentioned.

Looks like I got a streak of plans going. Right after the 3 shoulder plans drop, I got another 2 razorspike plans in one run (Dex and Int). I know they boosted the drop rate. I am not sure if they are affected by MF%, I am running max MF.

@ninjax Archon Plans are Yellow. They're fairly easy to spot, though, because their names are usually incredibly long "Plan: Archon Gauntlets of Dexterity" takes up practically a quarter of the screen. I killed 7 bosses before I found my first plan across MP0-MP5. It was thoroughly annoying. Just keep plugging away.

@douvinsky I run the same route as @Metta and it's not a guaranteed 5 Elites, but I've never gotten under 4. If you don't have 5, TP back to town, take the WP to Depths 3 and check for an elite near the portal (about 1 in 3, I think) if it's missing there, Depths 1 and Bridge of Korsikk rarely have an elite pack right near the WP. Remember to take the WP back to town, though, so your TP is still up to jump back to the door before Cydaea.

Start on Second Sin Heart quest for the Cydaea-Rakanoth route. If you're only looking for plans, try to run past all elites and mobs in the Core of Arreat. The elites there tend to be really nasty and just aren't worth the trouble. Same thing for Act IV. Run past those elites. If you want to make it a hybrid Plan/XP run, run Depths 2 after killing Azmodan. Don't forget the Keywarden in Stonefort, but that will really slow down your run.

@ecocd

Plans seems to be easy for me. In the past couple of hours I have 3 Archon Spaulder Plans, 3 Razorspike Plans and one Strength Amulet plan (should have sold this for over 1 million instead of learning it at the BS >-<).

Now I am hook on getting a complete set of plans, so forget Alkaiser for now. I am running the same route as @Metta too, this should be the best route for fast chance at plan drop.

On the 5NVs, if I don't have 5 I will just go play around at the Bridge after TP, from WP to WP if necessary.

Did Act 3 MP 10 and definitely enjoyed seeing my exp bar grow noticeably after each kill - something about that made it satisfying. I didn't do any timed runs, but I think it's worth giving it a go if you're bored of low MP grinding..

Also did a couple runs at mp8 with @hdvision, that was fun and quick because he was CM wiz and I just hammer smash. Plans/designs dropped in both runs.

Few other observations:
- UNIDENTIFIED is no more
- shift click for potions is great
- plagued hurts; I can't WW in it for too long even with WOTB at mp10.

Started doing runs MP7 with a CM Wiz and Barb.

Act 3:
-Skycrown Battlements (4-5 elites)
-Stonefort (finish till 5 stacks, kill KW)
-Kill Ghom and restart

Bunch of keys, lots of plans, decent amount of essences, with noticeable exp gain. I think this is a pretty solid and fast run till we find something else to do.

Posted by eleganthobo at 02/13/2013 08:37 AM

- plagued hurts; I can't WW in it for too long even with WOTB at mp10.

Actually now you mention it yeh... it's like they nerfed molten and replaced it with plagued. Makes no sense.

I think part of the problem is that Plagued both stacks and stays on the ground until the enemy that dropped them is defeated. You could play around Molten stacks with some minor kiting in 1.0.6. The only way to play around Plagued in 1.0.7 is to backtrack to a previously cleared area until they put down plagued pools there and then have to move further away again.

Since the Plagued pools disappear when the enemies that dropped them dies, try focusing your damage on one Elite at a time. Even 1.0.7 Plagued pools aren't dangerous if they're not stacking.

Now that I think about it, the new Plagued seems to hurt Whirlwind Barbs far more than any other class since they can't necessarily afford to spend 3-5 seconds just standing around and waiting for the Elite packs to walk off their Plagued pools. Wow. A nerf to Barbs. Will wonders never cease?

There's an exploit that allows people to pick up account bound items by "killing" a player in town. Spotted it on General discussion on b.net and there's youtube video's of a twitch.tv player using it.

Demonic essence and the new gems are being exploited :l

Crafting for free!

I don't think I'm worried about a handful of people willing to be banned/suspended to buy Account Bound items in a shady way. You have to agree ahead of time that the person will pay you after they've picked up the item (or vice versa). They'll fix the bug at some point and until then, the market will be tiny and no one in their right mind would give up a great Account Bound item solely on the promise of getting 20 million gold or whatever from someone that's already ethically questionable.

@ecocd

Well, if Iskatu drops plans like a regular boss, then yeah, I would say Cydaea-Iskatu-Rakanoth is definitely the best run. Which chapter do you start for the Ghom run? I'd say the Cydaea run is good, but ToC does not guarantee 5 stacks, so I usually have to get 2 elites somewhere else.

@douvinsky

ToD + ToC pretty much guarantees 5 stacks. I'd say ToD gives 2-3 elites on average (just the first level, you can just do a quick circle around the WP). ToC gives 3-5 usually. I think it's POSSIBLE to not hit 5, but I've done the run 7 times now and I've always hit 5.

everything has a chance to drop plans, i got plans from Iskatu and Azmodan. it's just that the bosses listed by blizzard has a specific % chance, everything else has the same unknown drop rate across the board. My 2 gem plans came from trash mobs

@Metta I just start on "Kill Ghom" when I want to kill Ghom.

I was doing Cydaea runs for quite a while while I was at low Paragon levels for her guaranteed 2 rare drops instead of the normal 1 rare drop from elite packs so I've been doing this a long time. Occasionally, ToD has only 1 Elite pack, ToC 1 has only one elite pack and ToC 2 has 2 Elite packs leaving you with an annoying 4 stacks of NV before Cydaea.

I've had 3 plans drop off Iskatu. I've had 3 plans drop off Cydaea and Rakanoth combined. I can't believe that's just random chance. If it is random chance, it's a damn high random chance and worth running, anyway.

@ecocd

Yeah, I just did 2 Iskatu runs and he dropped plans twice. Would be interesting to know if other unlisted bosses like Siegebreaker also drop plans at 20+%. Azmodan doesn't seem to drop, so I'm pretty sure the 4 main bosses don't drop.