Re: Drop Rates
I'm so strongly opposed to what I'm reading that I finally must speak out.
Some of you are going on like it's IMPOSSIBLE to attain legit hrs. Many of you want to slightly increase the drop rate of hrs so people won't be "forced" to dupe. Are you kidding?
You guys are justifying duping. Shame on you! Not only that, you are saying that having low drop rates "forces" people to dupe, like having godly ubber gear is a complete necessity and every noob should have every end game item that exists.
First, dupers are complete losers who suck hard and they are wrecking (have wrecked) the wonderful economy of our beloved d2 game. As a mod pointed out, people have a false assumption that everyone NEEDS end game gear. The truth is, this godly gear is only meant for the most dedicated players who invested enough time and effort into the game. We're selfish to think we should all get our greedy hands on every last thing in the game.
Secondly, it is very possible to get legit hrs on bnet. Every last one of you are capable of getting 3-4 legit hrs of your chosing, and it won't take a "lifetime" of playing. Now, before I go on, I'll say I'm talking about bnet only. I fully agree that for single player, something is wrong and changes are needed so it is reasonably possible to get hrs.
But for bnet, there are several ways to attain legit hrs:
1-Rush a friend for his forges over and over. NM runes available at forge: sol-Um. That alone gives you a change for lems, puls and Ums, which can be converted up to higher runes. Hell runes available at forge: hel-gul. This gives you good chances to get lems, puls, ums, mals, ists, and guls. 2 guls make a vex. 2 vex's make an ohm, and 2 ohm's make a Lo. Clearly, after less than 100 rushes you are on your way to the godly runeword of your choice (maybe not all the way there, but you'll have good runes). As for the problem of finding a friend good enough to help you with this (who will continually make new chrs to be rushed for his forges), that is one of the challenges you must face if you want hrs bad enough. In d2, if you really want something, you'll get it.
2-Simply save every low rune that drops and convert them up. Sell shiny things to noob's and take all their low crappy runes. Convert them. Ask them to message you when they have more. Make lots of friends and ask them to save every low rune for you that they come across. Be sure to drop what you're doing and join their game when they need to unload their low runes on you. Convert them. Trade good uniques for mid runes like puls or lesser good low runes like fals and lems. These are not duped. Convert them. Remember, puls and lems drop fairly frequently, unlike the astronomical odds of hrs. People on bnet are getting legit puls every day; you just need to wrest them out of their hands by selling them good uniques. Use your mf chr to farm good uniques and trade everything for puls. Convert them to ums, then mals, then ists...Flawless gems are extremely common, so save them all, convert to pgems and sell them all for puls or low runes. Covnet them to legit hrs. If you host nm chaos runs for 6 or more leechers, about 4-5 flawless gems will drop per run. Killing the council often yeids a low rune or a flawless gem.
3-Trading. Now, in a perfect world (like d3, hopefully) there would be no dupes. So lets say we have a hypothetical world where all hrs are legit. Many of you say it's impossible to get a small handful of hrs because of the astronomical odds. Well, the odds are actually pretty good because there are tens of thousands of people playing. The number of hrs on bnet is going to steadily rise, and only decrease as people collect them through trade to use them to make runewords. As for winning the lottery, people DO WIN the lottery because there are so many thousands of lottery players. The legit hrs are out there, you just need to trade for them. Now of course, d2 is ruined by dupers, so again I'm talking about a perfectly clean d3 ecconomy. Shakos, Coa's, arachs, facets and Hoz all drop in hell Chaos Sanctuary with relatively good odds. you just need to sell ALL this stuff for the hrs that are out there. Overpay for the hr you want; that's how you get something with near certainty. Again, we have a challenging situation here--you must overpay and this is a challenge we must be willing to face to really get what we want.
What's wrong with challenge? Why do some of you want all the niceties with minimal effort? Increasing the drop rates of hrs will only lessen the challenges of the above tactics I mentioned. Gee, are they even tactics? Any of you guys could do the above proceedures using the common mf gear that keeps droping.
4-Do countess runs all day for a while. She can drop up to ist with her rune drop, and IIRC up to Lo with her non-rune drop (but we won't count that since a Lo is almost out of the question). Obviously, lems, puls, etc are going to drop more frequently. Doing countess runs for a few weeks or even months does not constitue a "lifetime" of d2 playing. You could all make a tele sorc and do countess runs to get mid runes and convert them until you get hrs.
You just don't want to. You want Blizzard to give you the easy way by making hrs drop a bit more frequently.
5-Finally, you can build a very wide area attacker like a multi-shot bowazon and just clean out underpowered areas like in nm. You can join dueler games or w/e to get the no drop chance a bit lower or w/e (in nm, where you can kill stuff with 1-2 hits). Since it is runes you are after, ditch all the mf gear and make one really good killer that can hit everything on the screen. You simply increase your chance for low rune drops by increasing the number of monsters you kill. If you kill 3 times faster than Joe, then you have in a sense trippled your chances of getting a low rune in a given amount of time. This requires the sacrifice of mf; again, a challenge we must face to get those low runes we need for conversions to mids. You can also change your playing behavior a bit to ignore all the blue and rare goodies that drop since you want to save time and just collect runes. This is very hard to do (for me anyway). Again, a challenge to face in the name of getting hrs...
And, simply put, the longer you play, the more near-hrs will drop. Here's what all droped for me just doing solo chaos runs and a bit of act 5 dungeon and act 3 flayer jungle runs: 2 ists, 2-3guls, vex and 1 Ohm. Plus, puls, mals and Ums. So I never got a Lo, Sur, Ber, Jah, Cham or Zod which are used to make the godly runewords, but the ones I got are still pretty up there imo. I got the ones I did from spending virtually all summer playing d2 and whenever I had time off work. So this was just after 2-3 years, not a "lifetime". And, I was solo leveling, not really hunting for runes using the 5 methods I explained above. If you paly a lot, you'll get good runes as a reward, but if you want the best ones, you have to go some extra distance.
I'll tell you guys what the probelm is: you're caught up in a multiplayer sheme of dependance. You're getting rushed by others just to make some whim dueler character, getting leveld by baal runeers, etc. This means when a mid rune or w/e drops, you're not likely to be the one to snatch it up. You're also spending time dueling and mfing when you COULD be making a chr and a playing style devoted to earning mid-hrs. You COULD be spending that time rushing a frined over and over for a few days to get hrs, or doing countess runs. You're not using your time to get hrs, this is YOUR choice, and that's the only reason you don't all have 4 legit hrs which is very possible.
In d2, you can't have it all. You can't be on the ladder if you're dueling all night, and likewise, you won't get legit hrs unless you are devoted to it. You can't just expect them to drop for all of us.
