With all of the news of patch 1.0.5 coming out, it seems that blizzard is planning big changes, including nerfing defensive skills, reducing moster damage, adding the "Players 8" feature, adding uber boses ect... (It was a long patch note for sure).

Patches have had dramatic effects on the AH, especially 1.04 which pretty much collapsed the economy for mid range items, and lifted the economy for legendary items.

As for 1.0.5 the nerfing of defensive skills (particularly war cry with impunity being a nerfed) and in combination with the "Players 8" option is of concern for me (being a barb). In my group of friends I foresee everyone wanting to play on the highest difficulty to get the pieces for the ubers and higher mf as well as exp. This may cause many of them to purchase the best gear possible (particularly with armor and all res).

Many of them are also holding on their gold until after the patch to see if any new items will be added. Blizzard has not said anything about a new set of legendary items being introduced but many are speculating that there will be some.

Anyways in terms of the AH I beleive item prices will continue to drop in general, other than OP items. I forsee items with armor and all res to become more popular for barbs as War Cry impunity was so critical. Maybe a move towards armor (with the +armor rune in war cry) instead of all res will be seen. The diminishing returns of high armor vs. a balance of armor and all res may just bump the price of all res items.

Any though on items that will increase/decrease in price? It would be nice to see a non-barbarian point of view.

I would think monks are going to go for slightly more defensive items because of the significant nerf to Seize the Initiative (50% armor bonus instead of 100%). With 2500 dex, that's 1250 less armor, which is nearly the equivalent of 125 vit completely gone. This might become even more imperative on those higher difficulty settings when mobs hit harder. So yeah, monks still want Special resist + All resist, but I think the value of those items will increase. +Armor items will also be more valuable. I myself run pretty high armor, but for the monks that had low armor and compensated with StI, they will really feel it in 1.05.

It really depends on how the difficulty is scaled. If the monsters simply have a lot more HP, then DPS is still going to reign (like it does now). However, if the mobs start to hit really hard (think pre 1.03 Act 2/3), I'd imagine that defense is going to be worth a lot (remember how popular string of ears was?).

not only that, usually all the monks use enchartress with + 15% armor now nerfed to 5%

The 2 changes united is a great nerf to monks defense.


And the future nerf to the resistances pasive could be worse....


in my opinion Is time for all the monks to take the DPS way or the armor+all resist way in their equipment.

I expect the price of MF/GF legendaries to fall as more and more people get more Paragon levels, since the follower can not go over the cap anymore.

@Venoom Wow, great point about the MF/GF Legendary weapons. I might be able to pick one up relatively cheap post-patch. Thanks for the heads up!

you're welcome :)
not many of these weapons are powerful (DPS wise), so people buy them almost exclusively for followers.
if more high-end (usually the rich ones) players stop using them, they should drop in price.

@Venoom Does anyone use their followers for their dps? I just have a ton of Vitality and MF to make mine a meatbag for their passive bonuses. I think I can get most of them over 70k HPs and they still die when they stand in a pool of fire or poison. Adding AR to their Vit+MF gear starts getting expensive very quickly. Maybe I should look for fire resist instead...

I edited my previous post to add more clarity :)

I have seen few impressive followers, some guy got his Enchanteress above 10k DPS, which I think is a nice addition, at least for Act I/II.

Others suggest getting Vit, Armor and AR without caring for DPS, so the followers act as a meat shield.

a link with few ideas: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6606351722

As far as monks being nerfed with STI and resolve, it's not that simple. I've done the math, and my monk actually comes out slightly ahead, even with STI, providing Blizz reduces all incoming damage by at least 25%.

Losing 1250 Dex could be a nerf, but that's dependent on what other buffs you use from group play or followers. I don't use the Enchantress, so her nerf doesn't bother me that much.

Posted by ecocd at 09/21/2012 08:13 AM

@Venoom Does anyone use their followers for their dps? I just have a ton of Vitality and MF to make mine a meatbag for their passive bonuses. I think I can get most of them over 70k HPs and they still die when they stand in a pool of fire or poison. Adding AR to their Vit+MF gear starts getting expensive very quickly. Maybe I should look for fire resist instead...

Dead or alive they provide the bonuses they get from gear, so stack what you want and ignore anything else.

Posted by ecocd at 09/21/2012 08:13 AM

Does anyone use their followers for their dps?

I geared my enchantress to around 5.5k dps and 60k life for around 1-200k gold. She can definitely get much higher but I have some MF on her as well. My tanky barb has 25k buffed DPS, so you can see she adds quite a significant DPS increase. Push and erosion do a pretty good amount of damage. Even if you want her around only for MF/GF, you can get a cheap 2H weapon with 800dps, 350-400+ INT and some VIT.

As another option, the scoundrel can be pretty strong if you account for multishot hitting 3 mobs (mine is 3.5k dps with found gear, so I'm sure you can AH to make him much better). With 1.0.5 his attack is getting a nice buff too.

And regarding the legendaries, I wouldn't get my hopes up about them dropping in price too soon. Many people would probably rather upgrade their character's MF gear before the follower, and it won't be until around P-level 90 when the paragon MF/GF makes it unnecessary.

Posted by Detski at 09/21/2012 10:03 AM

As far as monks being nerfed with STI and resolve, it's not that simple. I've done the math, and my monk actually comes out slightly ahead, even with STI, providing Blizz reduces all incoming damage by at least 25%.

Losing 1250 Dex could be a nerf, but that's dependent on what other buffs you use from group play or followers. I don't use the Enchantress, so her nerf doesn't bother me that much.

With the damage reduction, then yes, Monks will still maintain the same survivability in regular Inferno. However, we don't know what higher monster power levels will look like. Monster level 10 could hit as hard as Pre 1.03 Act 4. In that case, I'd have to reach 6000 armor/900 AR to survive, which becomes very difficult without StI at 100%.

The enchantress buff is independent of the StI modifier. It applies a direct 15% to your armor after StI. So it's the same nerf to anyone who uses enchantress; it's just that monks who had high armor based on StI (like me) are going to be hit with a massive hit. To give you an idea, I have 6516 armor (2514 dex, StI, Powered armor), which is about 68.5% dmg reduction from armor. After 1.05, I will only have 4629 armor, which is 60.7% dmg reduction. This is almost 8% less, which doesn't seem like much, but when monsters hit for 50k-100k (possibly more), it's pretty significant.

Posted by Metta at 09/21/2012 01:04 PM

After 1.05, I will only have 4629 armor, which is 60.7% dmg reduction. This is almost 8% less, which doesn't seem like much, but when monsters hit for 50k-100k (possibly more), it's pretty significant.

Yes, but this 60.7% damage reduction is in the new patch where monsters are now doing 25% less damage. If we compare this to damage we're taking now in the current path, that origional 68.5% reduction increases to 70.5%, which means you're better off.

The monster level comparison, at least to me, doesn't seem appropriate. We don't know how exactly they'll scale yet, and it's kinda the point for monster level 10 to be difficult. I don't think it's fair for monks to get off scott free while the other classes have their defensive skills get adjusted. With the new changes to crowd control, the monk can alternate between blinding flash and serenity, and despite their recent changes, monks still seem tankier to me than the other classes.

I'm not disagreeing with you on the tradeoff based on the current state of 1.04: you maintain survivability (actually, it improves slightly) because of the overall mob damage reduction. I'm just saying that the nerf is significant in terms of how people go about estimating the required defense necessary to survive. Since there is no hard data available on how monster level scales, my current defense could be sufficient, it could be excessive, or it could be insufficient. Armor becomes increasingly important as monsters hit harder, so my current 6500 armor would feel very good, but with 4600 armor, I might be compelled to sacrifice stats for +armor.

I don't have a good understanding of how other classes play and I'm not completely aware of the nerfs to other class defense. If anyone else wants to jump in, I'd like to hear their input. To put it in perspective, my armor reduction would be equivalent to someone getting knocked down from 700 AR to 500 AR.

@zerokewl I didn't know they didn't have to be alive. I'm glad I at least gave him a Cold Damage bow, then so he's doing something.

Posted by ecocd at 09/21/2012 08:13 AM

@Venoom Does anyone use their followers for their dps? I just have a ton of Vitality and MF to make mine a meatbag for their passive bonuses. I think I can get most of them over 70k HPs and they still die when they stand in a pool of fire or poison. Adding AR to their Vit+MF gear starts getting expensive very quickly. Maybe I should look for fire resist instead...

I've been working on using my enchantress as a DPSer and have her at like 5.5K DPS right now. Can check her out in my profile if you'd like.

As for monks in 1.0.5, I played the PTR for a bit before it went down and here's my thoughts:
With my main gear I have about 32K DPS unbuffed, 715 all resists, 6K armor, and 1500 life per second.
- First went into the game in act two and three without a monster level and found I did just as well as I do right now. Didn't see any signs of taking more damage with my lower armor or anything.
- After finding out how to set monster level I set it to 10 to appease my curiosity and set my build to a completely defensive build and went into act two. I surprisingly found myself surviving quite well, although I had to use my healing spells more often. The thing that really sucked was my 32K DPS way hardly making a dent in the enemy's health. You're going to need some serious DPS to be able to take them on efficiently.
- I then checked out monster level 5 in act two and it was much more manageable, but enemies health will still too high to efficiently farm.

So all in all I think monks who aren't so defensive will still be fine.

How much extra MF do you gain per one monster level？I am thinking if my gears arent that great it could be much more efficient at low or zero level

Good to hear from someone who played PTR, I'm seeing many of my defensive items selling quite a bit more on the AH these days, but maybe I should focus on my DPS. Was looking at some of the uber bosse fights and they players there did not have much of a problem but who knows they might have OP gear...

I am keeping a couple items like my vile ward, as I think they will go up in price with the increased life regen, armor and all res.

The drop in gem prices caught be my surprise, I suppose everyone has purchased their rubbies for their helm. The drop in emeralds should go up if DPS is such a must have in 1.0.5

Looking to snipe some items before the patch come on as well. Anyone hear about any new legendary items coming out? Or anyone have a link to the new legendary ring that you get from killing ubers?

See the following thread for a view on MF and EXP gear...

http://www.d3rmt.com/forums/thread/686/

See the following thread for the Hell fire ring stats...

http://www.d3rmt.com/forums/thread/683/

Looks good, I could use one... I don't think I will buy a ring until I get one of these

What I've learned from patches is when a new patch comes out, lots of people come back to play.

So prices of items will go up indiscriminately :)

Here's my thoughts so far:

as chances of legendary items dropping is increased, there will be more of those, and the price will drop..
this will happen even more on the ilvl. < 63 items, since in patch 1.05 they will be able to spawn better affixes, and can potentially be way better than the ones found in this patch.

Some exeptions to this rule may SOJ and mara and the likes. Because these don't have random affixes, they cant drop better in the next patch than they did in this. And since SOJ gives incredible bonus damage to elites, it is a good ring for the high MPlvl in 1.05... so i speculate that this ring will increase in value in the days after the patch release :)

Also, i'm curious if any of you know about affixes in crafted items in the new patch?
for example the demonskin armor has +5 random properties, and if these could now be ilvl 63 instead of 62 that might rise as well... but the ilvl was based on the monster dropping the item, and since no monster dropped a crafted item, that might not be true.

anyways, just my thoughts so far :)

I believe they've said crafting does not change. It will be based on the ilvl of the item being crafted. I believe this means the Hellfire Ring will be the only craftable capable of rolling with ilvl 63 mods.

@haplo @ecocd I was about to pose that question about crafting. It would be nice if I can just set my MP level to 10 and stay in town to craft some cool kit...