Huh? Your first post was saying that you hate and detest them, ruin Diablo, and Blizzard should ban them.

And yeah, low level characters with high level gems doesn't mean they're cheating or hacking anything.

I know the 360 version was hacked to some degree. My son has a character that he transferred over to Xbone and he has 500,000,000 gold and a number of hellfire items. The game saves could be transferred to usb sticks and then modified on a PC.

I could have asked for some gold but that activity just breaks the game IMO. I just see no point in these cheats. The only reason to play this game beyond the first play though is to hunt for loot. At some point I can even see the gifting items mechanic that was added could be too much of a good thing.

Wow, I've had a bad go of it the last few days. Did about 50 bounties, and 3 or 4 rifts on torment, and I've gotten no set items or legendaries, except for a few legendary crafting materials, I haven't even gotten anymore gifts to send.

I haven't played Diablo since last Friday. I'll probably won't be on until this Friday because of work.

The first couple of weeks of being a teacher is a pain in the ass, isn't it? Look forward to playing again with you soon!

You teachers who get summers off complain too much lol.

Yeah, I have a few things keeping me occupied and is becoming harder to get online. I'll try tomorrow but if not it won't be until next week. Let me know in advance (if you can), you'll be playing Diablo again.

I regret not playing this more but three of us has been hitting Warframe for some items we didn't have and trying to get. kanjji my Diablo partner from the 360 has been hooked by Warframe since day one. Anyone who gets their characters up at 60 with Act III, IV and V want an extra player let me know. At least I can bring in one of the other five since my Crusader is stuck at 31 which is shame since I like him a lot.

Also if anyone needs or is looking for higher item stuff let me know...I wouldn't mind dragging out some of the other Level 60 characters. We got our DH and Monk up to Level 69 in Act V doing Torment II...that was no joke nor fun. Wouldn't want to do that again unless with 3-4.

When first starting out it is. You have to get the Jeweler Books to train the Jeweler to craft the higher gems which can only be obtained at higher levels and higher difficulty. The first one is a Level 1 training and goes to Level 10. The actually cost, time, materials to craft just one Marquise is astounding. Just do a search for Cost to make Marquise in Diablo III....not to mention the new ones. Even diehard and long time players are shaking their heads.


http://us.battle.net/d3/en/artisan/jeweler/

Had a good play session last night by myself. Finished off Act II and defeated a nemesis. Got gift for me and for Jason who was killed by it I guess. Pretty cool.
I've somehow equipped an item that gives health per hit rather than per second which is wonderful since it almost makes you immortal during fight -- the faster you take jabs at it, the quicker you recover health. Certainly a nice feature to have.
Is there ever a reason to hold a shield in your off hand instead of another weapon? I'm not finding one yet.

Is it required to equip the shield-based skills? like bashing

Right, but once you get the jeweler leveled up, he's leveled up for all your characters, if I'm starting a new character, I'll definitely use gems I have in my stash to help me. The issues really are that the gems don't have minimum levels on the items they can be used in, and that with a high level character the Marquise gems drop like crazy. I'll usually have 8-10 of the to throw in the stash after going through the five bounties in an Act.

True...but for those starting out the cost of installing and removing the High Level gems also becomes an issue not just with different characters but also as you level up items. New players just don't have that size of gold stash.

As to using Higher gems in any Level Character that's up to the individual. We've got access to several "marquise" but when we started a new character we followed the way the Gem Progression was meant to be with the exception of just one...a Marquise Ruby in the Helm to boost XP and level up the character. If we were at a level where you could use say a Star gem then that's what we would use and nothing else. But on the higher difficulties the Marquise does drop which surprised us when we started playing Act V not to mention some Rare items with damage numbers that put our Level 60 Legendary to shame. Some of the bonus and gold numbers we saw shocked and surprised us...3.500,000 XP completing a Special Event!...but did we ever pay the price.

I started a new season character, which means a completely fresh start, on August 28th and am level 70 with paragon 40. I have about 30 marquise gems of every type. If I started a new character I could, and would, load them up with marquise gems. It's really not an indication of hacking, plenty of people play this way. If you have an item with expensive gems in it that you are about to upgrade, if you salvage the item it removes the gems and returns them to your inventory at no cost. That's how you can keep putting high level gems in your new gear as you level up and not lose gold.

You don't have to explain this to me, I've played a few hundred hours on PC with a couple level 70's so i'm well aware. That and formerly working at Blizzard for awhile

But yeah, what DaveyJoe said.

I use the perk that let's you carry a shield and a two handed weapon. I'm playing a Crusader who has some shield bashing ability.

I think shields are mostly useful in Hardcore mode where you need a lot more defense and to play cautiously.

Lost power while playing this morning, when I came back on, the game kept crashing after a minute or two. Eventually I deleted and reinstalled the game, and all seems to be working now.

Yesterday I did manage to get the infernal machine plans, might try and get the keys tonight.

One of my friends joined a game we me yesterday. Somehow he was using a modded weapon. Probably carried over from the 360 version. But his attack speed was so high it was a blur of high damage hits. I told him to disable that during our game. Its just stupid. I have no fun playing with these types of mods. I really wish Blizzard to fix that shit.

Blizzard indicated that with the PS4 and the XBox One, they would be able to minimize the mods with future updates. It was non existing for the PS3 and 360 so here's hoping...

So last few days its been tough finding games as I guess everyone is putting time in Destiny

Yup. Pretty much everyone in this board is playing Destiny with a few exceptions. I'm still playing this but in hardcore mode. I'm using the Crusader and it's at LV. 43 right now. This character has become a tank and thanks to a few legendary weapons, the amount of damage it does, it's great.

At what level does this skill activates?

I've been putting time in with my hardcore Warrior. I've finished the story with him and have just been doing bounties to build him up, got him at level 51 so far.

I think it is like the 2nd skill (passive?) you can pick.