RMAH is real!

Smart auctioning works for real moneys now! Got my first profitable sale:

As far AH posting goes, I'm going to use the following ruleset:

• Item is cheaper than 6$ -> post it on GAH (15% tax < 1$)
• Item is between 7$ and 20$ -> post it on RMAH over Battle.net Balance
• Item is more expensive than 20$ -> post it to RMAH over PayPal

This way I get some flow of gold/balance to support my in-game buying needs (gearing up, reselling for profit) and sometimes getting some money out to save for a new graphics card ;)

I wish I've got more of those items from 3d category..

Weapon evolution

This my current weapon and off-hand:

 
My weapon evolution started with lucky drop of 999dps 1h weapon from Iskatu. By that time I was wearing two-handed axe with 1200+dps and was pretty happy about it, not looking for upgrade any soon. However with this drop I received a chance to experiment and I realized that 1000dps 1h weapon + 230dps off hand is actually better (and often more affordable) than 1300 2h. Main reasons are:

• Off-hand damage scales with weapon attack speed. So if you have a dagger with 1.4 ias and off-hand with 230 damage (low+hi/2) then offhand will actually add 322 damage! Also, if you upgraded your dagger to something with 1.6 ias you are instantly getting +46 to the dps with the same off hand.
• Besides damage, off-hand offers other very useful magic properties, like magic find or life regeneration
• A lot of people hunting for big dps numbers on weapons, which means you can get an awesome deal on AH for weapon with lower dps but some extremely good stats on it compensating for the flat damage

Once I figured this out, I started checking 1h weapon market regularly and buy under-priced weapons that look better than mine (even if dps was lower) while selling previous one for more! This how my upgrades looked like in the past 4 days:

1. dps: 999, ias: 1.2
2. dps: 889, ias: 1.4, crit dmg: 58
3. dps: 896, ias: 1.4, crit dmg: 47 (bonus +100 vitality)
4. dps: 845, ias: 1.4, crit dmg: 65 (bonus +217 intelligence)

With each of upgrades above my dps was going up.

1 to 2: I made about 1M profit on this change and gained extra dps due to added ias and critical hit damage.

2 to 3: Very similar weapon, but extra vitality allowed me to swap some other gear to be more offensive (int instead of vit) which added to the total damage

3 to 4: Flat dps number is going down again, but 217 intelligence beat it!

As a result I have a comfortable Act 3 farming gear set with: 30K hp, 70K dmg (buffed), 124 mf and 19% movement speed. High movement comes at a cost of hp, if I swap pants and boots I lose it but get extra 8K hp and 30 mf with the same damage. It's very nice to have option to adapt your gear to the situation (since you can't swap skills without losing nephalem buff). In full MF gear with follower I'm at 231 mf (no nephalem stacks), which means with valor I'm at 306% magic find when soloing!!!

If only the would not nerf IAS in 1.0.3...

Farming Inferno prior to 1.0.3 patch

I've been pleased to have few individuals contacted me with a question: "Why there are no updates on the blog? What are you up to?" Well friends, I've been farming:

Farming in my terms is when you repeatedly do some action to get profit and find/purchase better gear. Legitimate farming is a big part of Diablo 3 end game and it basically means you (re)start your favorite quest, go hunt champ/elite packs to stack nephalem buff and then have epic battle with Act boss to get guaranteed yellow items. With proper magic find on your gear it works even better as you constantly getting yellows from every elite demon you kill.

That said, there is also "cheesy" farming. This is usually exploiting some easy way to get profit avoiding fair battles in open ground. A lot of people are doing cheesy farming nowadays because Inferno Act II and further is quite tough and farming Act I could get boring due to low level drops. Here are few cheesy farming techniques I'm aware about.

Act 2 - Goblin runs

There are some specific places with high probability of goblin spawn. All you need to do is login, check the "sweet spot", if goblin not there logout and repeat. In full MF (magic find) gear single goblin can drop up to 4 yellows, a bunch of flawless gems and secret tomes. This farm works extremely well in coop mode: several people are looking for goblins simultaneously and once found all jump in to each other to loot it.

Act 2 - 1 min champ pack farm

There is a sweet spot where you can continuously kill with relatively low effort (<3 Archon) a champion pack really close to checkpoint. Usually it takes less than 30 seconds for a single run, so you can get full of yellows really quick (screenshot above was made after about 30 mins of this farm). It gets boring though, mostly cause its solo. It's possible to do coop here, but you rather slowed down than getting more profit.

Act 3 - Chest runs

There are few places where resplendent chest spawns very often, so it's similar to goblin runs. The main difference is that this is act 3 so there are chances for better items. The disadvantage is that you often getting killed by random soul reapers demons guarding the chest. Good for coop runs as well.

Act 3 - Trebuchet runs

There is an elite guy sitting behind gates at the trebuchet on "Kill balistae" quest. Once get there, range classes can kill him almost without any effort since he only get out of the gate if you come closer. It could be tough to get there though as this zone full of demons and often there are champs on the way. We've been doing it with my friends though and its a lot of fun cause you have to fight your way rather then just come and get loot for free (goblins/chests).

Act 4 - Iskatu farm

This is the first boss in Act 4 and its super easy to kill him as wizard if you have 50K+ dps (with buffs). Simply get Arcane Dynamo up and fire Archon - the guy will melt in no time. He doesn't drop yellows (well he did few times out of a hundred), but drops high level blues. For example, I got a 999 dps blue weapon out of him which I was using until recently (and it sold quick for 2 million after I got a better replacement for 700K - remind me to write about weapons). Possible to do coop.

Act 4 - Jars kicking

If you wear high MF gear, even simple jars in Act 4 will start dropping items better than those elite champs in Act 2. I was even getting more yellows from jars then from Iskatu! Disadvantage: it feels dumb to come to burning heavens just to kick jars :)

Act 4 - Ghosts farm

There is a place where random ghost appears when you walk in and after quick dialog it converts into elite demon for you to kill. Same idea as with Iskatu - you getting easy kills often, but only blue gears. I only tried it few times, cause Iskatu feels more fun.

AH deals farm

It started with me looking for a ring with MF and IAS and seeing good ones starting from 1M+. Suddenly someone posted a 3M worth ring for 500K - well, I happily snatched it and wear up. After some monitoring I start seeing more of those rings coming out for cheap and realized that they are only 54 level. My guess is people who level up don't realize true value of those items and post them heavily underpriced. So far I was able to get about 5M profit just from reselling jewelry and I have more items still to be sold. Farming AH is tricky but also fun and rewarding.

So what's going to change in patch 1.0.3? I feel like a lot. Check out the official post about upcoming design changes, to name a few: Inferno Act 2+ nerf, drop tables update, IAS nerf, repair costs change, coop nerf and more. Also I expect some of those cheesy farms to be fixed (just because they are so dumb and popular), so the end game and market is going to change for sure. Catch the train and do pre-1.0.3 farm while you can! :)

Potions half price!

Tastes a little like cheating, but quite useful money saving hint :)

How a Weapon's DPS is Calculated

After doing some research and testing myself I figured internet will have answer to this question :) This video is quite illustrative for example:

This frame includes all pieces that you need to multiply to get the in-game Damage value: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEyiezB8Mpw#t=6m19s

Few things to learn from it:

• Each weapon's type has its own base attack speed (e.g. 1h dagger = 1.4, 2h mace = 0.9)
• Weapon's own attack speed magic modifier is already applied to weapon's base attack speed on tooltip
• Weapon's total attack speed multiplies weapon's average damage and any other damage sources on armor (rings, amulets, off-hand)
• 3 other damage modifiers are equally important and they are: primary stat * 0.1, crit chance * crit damage and non-weapon attack speed
• Mana-based classes should also take resource into consideration: with two different builds giving same damage output, the one with lower attack speed may be preferable for continued fights!

Now, to my previous post about attack speed is the king. Apparently, if you have 100% crit damage and can increase crit chance by 15% - it will give you same boost as if you added 15% attack speed without any arcane power cost. However, I'm yet to build 100% crit damage (currently at 68%) and I never saw a ring with 15% crit chance, when 15% asp rings are cheap and available.

Same for intelligence. If my primary stat is 1480, then to have 15% damage increase I need to add 222 intelligence! Which is again a quite high stat for a ring. However if I replace my 200 int amulet with just 15% asp, I'm not getting much out of it.

Final note: you need to know relative importance of each damage affecting stat as well as this stat availability (i.e. how much you can add to stat X with single upgrade of item Y) to find the best upgrade for your current item set. Also different skills favor different dps builds (i.e. crit-based, asp-based or raw damage based).

Blue weapon > Yellow weapon

Apparently as wizard you don't need any stats on your weapon other than massive damage and attack speed. Well, of course those are useful and such, but if you want to maximize your damage output and have limited budget then just do what I did:

1. Go to Auction House
2. Search for 2-hand weapons (all types)
3. Filter those that have 20%+ attack speed and cost <1M
4. Sort by DPS column
5. Purchase something that has high damage/cost ratio
6. Enjoy your 10K damage increase:

New weapon = new DPS record

OMFG! Just purchased this awesome weapon on AH for 500K and got my DPS bumped by 8K instantly (under magic weapon, sparkflint and glass cannon)!!! Beware Belial, I'm coming! :)