Please hold your group vs solo conversations here.
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Having observed the conversation for a little while now, I’m curious to ask which games people observe have both a good grouping feature, but where soloing is equally in balance?
All the games I’ve invested a lot of time in provide significant content progress advantages to groups and generally access to important equipment not otherwise accessible soloing.
Perhaps it is the GR progression nature of d3’s leaderboards that is also setting it apart from other games.
I’m hearing also that d3 did not orginally provide such advantage to groups as it does today, so perhaps part of the issue being experienced is the loss of what once was uniquely so here? (guessing a bit there).
People may claim that d3V did not reward group play, but it did. There was always a bonus to magic find and gold find when playing with others. Support builds have existed from the very begining. In D3V the support monk could drop an inner sanctuary that gave 55% damage mitigation and gave 50% damage boost. This was available day one. Being able to bring such support into group play always results in higher content completion, always…
The only game I can think of that rewards solo play is PoE, but it is because all loot is shared loot. So people can take the loot you are looking for. So it is more rewarding to play solo. Most PoE players I know prefer playing solo for that very reason.
I will comment on some previous posts pertaining to the perspective that group players get an unfair advantage on solo boards. I agree that group players will have higher gems for their solo pushing builds, and they will typically have higher paragon. I disagree that it is an unfair advantage. Each player has the option to play purely solo or to benifit from group play. That is fair by definition. If a player chooses to not play in group, then that is their choice to be at a disadvantage.
Solo leaderboards are for ranking players who complete a rift by themselves. No where does it say solo self found. I fully support the idea of adding a solo self found leaderboard, but the current solo boards should remain as is. If anyone wants to complain, just remember:
Even in your solo self find playstyle, you are probably using a follower, which is not truely solo…
Most of the posts I have read pertaining to solo vs group always becomes about complaining. Play the game the way you choose to play, please avoid complaining of unfairness because of your choices.
As far as the complaint that solo self find players cant compete with group players I raise the following arguement:
I have, on numerous occasions, ended the season at #1-3 while on a HC monk whose gear and gems were from solo self find and competing against players with way higher gems and paragon. It is possible! Homerjnick actually streamed an entire season of him doing the same thing.
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I never looked up PoE… have now… looks interesting. Guess I’ve been busy this last decade.
Other games I’ve played had shared loot too.
Only a passing interest for me in this thread… curious about other games if they reward solo play more and I wasnt aware of them.
Sounds fair.
That’s pretty funny for me… When i was super noobing it up… being all super casual in d3 and the campaign on my first char… I wondered if the followers would steal my xp … so I left them behind for a long time until I got curious what they could do for me that I might care about.
I can’t speak for others, but I typically don’t use one at all. I think it took me all of a month to stop using them, and this was back at launch. I gave up on the game for a couple of years, and I guess my console play never included them. To be honest, I don’t see the appeal. Maybe somebody can tell me what I’m missing.
buffs (eg Enchanter for AS) , an occasional heal/taunt in a bind (templar), occulus ring without losing a slot, unity option… at the expense of impressing myself with how independent I was being 
I’ve never been much impressed by Unity. Granted, I haven’t found a build yet which benefits more from Unity than from the rings to which I have access, but I don’t omit the possibility.
I’ve seen some LoD Twister Wizards with it on the build, for instance. I would have had to give up either Stone of Jordan, Halo of Arlyse, or Convention of Elements. All three are of great benefit to me currently, and with the extra shield strength afforded me by shunting some of my Paragon into Vitality…I just don’t see the relevance. I’ve already got Aquilla, backed by Stone Gauntlets and Halo of Arlyse…that’s some pretty aggressive DR already. I don’t want to give up damage output when I can adjust my Paragon to keep my shields up.
That’s one build. I’m sure there are situations in which Unity might benefit. I just haven’t used any.
sure… youd prefer to work in dps if you can… the lod hydra build i used last didnt use it (karini, soj/coe, rorg)… the typhon hydra build im using at the moment is using it (karini, unity, rorg), but I’ve got my thoughts on working it out if possible… similar argument for paragon vit vs mainstat… I’ve got no vit on either of those builds atm, but in other builds some was needed… that may be something i look at in part to get unity out of the typhon build… i tried soj for a look a little while ago and it was hurting.
occulus ring value maybe of more relevant to some builds than others too… being able to be flexible where you stand and get there sort of quickly makes it more attractive
The question would be have you pushed high enough where the unity become relevant. If your bubbles drop, you lose your squirts 100% damage bonus, which is worth more than any of the rings you mentioned.
Halo of arlyse? Really? It only provides melee damage mitigation. In higher rifts, it is elemetal damage from elite affixes that hurt the most. Arlyse is pretty much useless against elemental damage. I would go karini over arlyse. Yes you can opt for ancient parthan defenders to pair with stun/freeze effect of arlyse, put that is useless vs rift guardians and comes at the cost of losing ashnegar’s blood bracers.
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and squirts is causing 50% more damage
No, squirts is 100% damage bonus. As soon as your bubbles drop and you even take 1 damage, you lose all 100%. That is double your damage. I think you may be understanding it as half of your damage and seeing it as 50% damage increase.
That would depend on whether you consider 125 to be “high”. I know that there has already been a 150 clear on PS4, and it wasn’t me, but then…I’m still climbing.
I’m looking at all the alternatives as they present themselves to me. What I’m doing is “working”, but I find my damage output is stalling right now. I’m looking into other variants of the build and trying everything I can. Whatever set of options pushes me higher will be what I end up using.
As far as the choice of ring, Halo of Karini requires distance, and I find that 99.99999% of the time…my enemies do not give me distance. They instantly close to melee range and pound the ever-loving-snot out of me, so I go with that option and it works for me. I’ve turned their constant pressing for the denial of range advantage against them.
And you’re right: Squirt’s Neclace does present a 50% incoming damage debuff. But…I only lose the 100% damage buff if the bubble breaks. With the tactic of adjusting Vitality to compensate for scaling damage, and with the Illusionist passive, I can lean on the Teleport button and escape almost instantly, which is more than enough time if I find myself in a tough spot. Taking 50% more damage is rough, but it can be handled.
So, the teister build to play is LoD cold twisters. It is way tankier and actually out performs DMO. We have several players who have done 130+ with no augments with LoD cold twisters.
I wouldnt consider gr 125 high when considering the damage mitigation requirements of the unity in solo play. You will want it in 135+.
I’ve seen some of those, yes. I may try it, but I like my Wicked Wind so far. We’ll see how it goes.
Wicked wind is nice, but doesnt do as large of an AoE and does not move. Moving twisters allow for kiting. Cold twisters have built in resource cost reduction of 30% allowing you to spam more twisters while maintaining your aquillas damage mitigation. Cold twisters also afford you the ability to use the cold blackhole that grants a higher damage bonus per enemy affected.
So ive got some assumptions in my understanding here cause I havent fact checked how various buffs and debuffs interact… you might be able to confirm or clear it up.
Let’s take Galvanizing Ward. So my understanding is if my Life is 400k, then this is giving me a 240k bubble.
With Squirts charged up and getting the full 100% dmg buff the bubble’s effectively reduced to the equivalent of 160k (240/1.5) due to 50% increased incoming damage.
Double those numbers with a perfect Ashnagar’s.
Really…
I did not know that. I’ve been butting heads with the packs and letting them freeze themselves on my Ice Armor, then stacking as many twisters as possible before I have to get the hell out of Dodge. This cold variant might be worth investigating. I was already working on a spamcast variant for Arcane, but if the cold rune is cheaper…I might check that out.
One of the reasons I chose Wicked Wind was that it didn’t move. I saw the tendency of the enemy to engage in melee whenever possible and decided to weaponize my auto-cast Frost Nova for a few cheap shots. My tactic has been to try to group up as many as possible and then keep them stationary by letting them punch themselves out a little. I’m having trouble understanding how mobile twisters are to do much damage if they enter and leave an enemy’s hitbox almost immediately.
My take on it is you take 50% more only if you have 10 squirts stacks, then you only take 50% more damage on the first thing that does damage to you, not your bubbles. So your bubbles actually have their full strength. At 1mil health the galvanizing ward is 600k, 1.2 mil with ashnegar’s.
Our wiz runs 1 mil health. If the bubble was only worth 600k, he would not be able to maintain the bubble in a gr 150, which he does in solo attempts.
Food for thought there.
Not that I want to rain on this particular parade -especially given that I’m getting some new information here- but we appear to be straying from the topic again. This was to be a balance issue between group and solo play, and I’ve dragged you into a debate about which kind of Energy Twister to use.
Apologies.