Patch 1.0.3 has been just released offering some easing but also some
annoyances. While playing the game on Act II Inferno, I again had to face
some annoying things. Among these are classical: champion groups having
two or more magic attibutes and dealing massive amounts of damage.

Don’t believe it? Okay, giving you a short view on this. The champions had Fire chains, Arcane Enchanted and Desecrator as three very hefty damage dealing attributes. Another fact was that they had extra Health, giving them 50% more HP. So you have to take down 5 million HP off each champion. Wohoo. Now to my char: Having an average of 40% resistance against all elements, this should not do so much impact anymore. But no, when being hit and frozen, the guys spawn their fire chains dealing approx 3000 damage per Tick (.2 seconds). If you happen to be unlucky, an arcane sentry spawns under you and giving you the hell of damage additionally to the fire chains. We speak of 4000-5000 damage per 0.25s tick. Ouch! And as if things weren’t worse enough, the Desecrator cast slows you down and also deals approx 3000 to 4000 damage per 0.5s. Summing this up, we come to an astounding 43000 damage per Second. ot included is the melee damage that also deals out 5000 Damage per second. Now you have to know that my Char has approx. 59K HP I loose almost 90% of my health in only one second!

Rushing away and eventually dealing some damage seems the only possible thing to do. But it’ll take forever to take down one group. Oh… wait, we forgot something. The new patch brought in a DoT timer for such groups. If the battle takes too long (6 minutes I guess), you’re given a buff that inflicts damage on you. Hooray! Just what I needed! The group is already heavy to take down now I have to get extra penalty for not being able to do 4M crit hits?! So what ever one can do is to lure away the group from key points and try to sneak away without taking down the group! Wohoo! Way to go, Blizzard!

The repairing costs have been dramatically risen on Hell and Inferno difficulty level items. So when your items with an average iLvl of 60 are all f***ed up, you can start to fork out 40K gold to have tem repaired. Way to go, when you can’t loot so much money because you’re all f***ed down by enemies in Inferno. So back to Hell, farming away some rounds to have all the items repaired then go for another try in inferno… *sic*

Most of the guys at the blizzard forums say that you should farm the game until you can obtain better gear from the Auction House. Wohoo. Gear that would probably help me survive the violent beasts, costs up to 100M gold. There’s only two ways then: Waiting until the gear gets cheaper or buy gold from dubious gold farmers because farming Hell over and over again gets boirng with the time and I guess until I have the amount of gold to start shopping, another patch has been brought out, that you can put the items to the wastebin again and start all over again. Annoying and frustrating. Remembering Diablo II there was a chance to beat the bestiary even on the highest difficulty level.

A well-equipped char 10 levels under the maximum level was enough to perform the action. In Diablo III you’re stuck at Level 60 and can’t improve any further. The prices in the Real money Auction house are just ridiculous when you see items for 250 EUROS (which is btw. the maximum). But which normal player would piss away 250 simoleons for a virtual item?! Me? Well, I never! And did Diablo II suffer from being played through so easily? I guess, NO because Diablo II is still being played by a big fan community and IS still challenging! Try to bring up a L99 char. That’s very hard as you loose XP when dying (10% can be very hard on L90 already!)

Speaking of loosing and dying. When you die in Diablo III you have to wait a certain time to resurrect you. Okay, seems okay at first where you have to wait 3 seconds. Resurrect and try to buzz off some more HP from the enemy. But what about waiting 10 seconds or more or even worse.Then first go back to city and get repaired? Well then you’re out of luck because the mobs will heal themselves back to 100% life again. Oh and what I have already mentionned. There we have the DoT timer that ticks against you and dealing some extra damage on you sealing that you die! Thankyou, next game to be opened please… *sic!*

But the patch brought also good stuff: Izual got a tad easier to lay in Hell difficulty as only 2 Oppressors are attacking you now. So it’s now easier to slay Izual as before. Also Diablo seems a tad easier now but is still challenging! Well… for my and my friends it seems some more endless and stupid farming in the hope to get better equip and in the opportunity to slay Diablo on Inferno difficulty. But there are still some achievements to do… ;)