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My guess:

1.0.4 August-September
1.1.0 (pvp) December-Feburary

I was in the beta since January, and things change very slowly with this game.

Dual wield or 2h cuts your Magic Find. Any decent treasure runner will try to maximize MF in every available slot.

So apparently they could have fixed the Inferno drop rates last week with just a server reset all along. Very strange how this company is managing the game.

With knowing that, doesnt it seem that having MF on gear is pretty useless? The 5 stacks of NV give us a gauranteed rare. MF seems to be a pretty dead stat to me.

Not at all. The game will decide which item to drop, for example a "Archon Crown", the top level helm. Then, your magic find will be figured along with other factors to determine if that item is anything from a broken grey to a quality rare. Remove all your MF and watch all the grey and white items drop. Equip 300 MF (with NV buff) and you will often get 3 rares from a single Elite group you kill. Just adding 150 MF will significantly improve the amount of magic and rare items you receive.

Look at the "Latest Blue Topics" on the main page. They are aware of the situation now, and are looking into it.

Yeah, there is something going on because I had a similar situation today with my "dps" gloves and amulet that I carry just for killing Treasure Gnomes. At one point, the tool tip told me they were only 50 dps better than my regular set, then later it showed them each as 900 dps better.

After the patch I ran:
(inferno - barbarian, solo the whole time,1h + shield, 5 stacks of NV built on all runs)
Act 3 - full battle gear - much easier than before, but drops still don't equal the effort and time required to kill those elite packs
Act 2 - 1/2 magic find gear - better balanced, only slightly harder than act 1 now. Fun mix of fast kills and decent drops.
Act 1 - full magic find run - faceroll. Tons of rares with 300mf (including the 5-NV)
Whimsyshire - full battle gear - Easier than it was, I killed most of the Elites when I could rarely before. They really nerfed the cloud drops. Not sure if it is worth the time anymore until I get better gear and can handle all the elites.

Best drop was a Wizard helm that sold fast for 1.7 million (too cheap?). It dropped off an Act 1 Treasure Gnome.

Overall I am happy with the patch, but would like to see less level 50 gear dropping from Act 3 Elites, since there is no chance any player at that level is going to equip it.

Your gear is ok to start Act 2, but still pretty low overall. Don't get discouraged by frequent deaths. I would kick ass for awhile in Act 1, make some money, feel like a champion, then make some runs at Act 2 and deal with the rejection for a short time. Eventually, you will upgrade your gear and be comfortable staying in Act 2 for longer periods of time.

Also, make "death runs" to scout out the map and any elite packs. The biggest waste is to clear an entire area, just to find out it is a dead end. Many of the Act 2 quests are just "reach a waypoint" or "grab an item" (Zoltan Kuule).

Bashiok was talking about skill selection and the fact that nearly 100% of Barbs use Revenge with the Provocation rune in Inferno. His issue isn't that it needs to be nerfed, it's that 4 other runes are never used, and the skill is manditory - thus creating a dead slot in available builds. They are looking into other ways that will provide a similar result, while allowing some room for customization for the players.

Now that I have spent a good amount of time in Act 3 Inferno, I agree with the original poster about the Act 2 drop rate. It is more than just random chance, the drop rate is just far lower than than in Acts 1&3. Also, it's not just items but gold too. Mobs that drop 14 gold in Act 2 Inferno are common.

I was in the beta since January and month after month, patch after patch, the AH still is filled with bugs. They always take it offline for "service updates", but very little ever changes.

I guess it's better than nothing, but it's damn frustrating at times.

This YouTube video helped me make the transition to getting Act 1 Inferno completely on farm status. All of the stuff is available on the AH for fairly cheap if you check back a lot and look for deals.

Quote from Onivh

Edit: Time to switch it up to a shield? I'm DW right now

There certainly isn't any shame in using a shield on a barb in D3. In other games, you literally lose 50% of your dps by equiping one, here ...it is MUCH less. There are always rare shields with amazing stats on the AH for cheap because so many classes don't use them.

If anyone can spare a guest pass, please email it to:

spiderx222@hotmail.com

Thank You very much!

Meanwhile, all the developers are signing autographs and jerking each other off.