Context: Lev 17 HC Sentinel - running around with some whirlwind type skill, and erm… vengeance. I’ve not read any guides, but have played a lot of D2, D3 (meh) and GD in the past - loved GD btw - all HC only.
What is the best way to tell (other than examining every item for stats) if a dropped item is likely to be useful? I am not dropping lots of blue stuff but…starting to ignore most of it.
Does the town portal button work (it doesn’t seem to for me)?
It is important to complete every side quest? (Will I miss out on skill points of any kind)?
Any way to determine the ‘damage effectiveness’ (as defined by the game guide) for a given skill?
Any effective way to determine the damage type that mobs deal?
Currently, with out a loot filter, examining every item is really the only way to decide if an item is useful to you. I don’t generally do it at lower levels but I also don’t play HC in this game at the moment.
The town portal works after a very early story or side mission (though, I may be mistaken).
Most side quests will grant really nice rewards, such as Passive skill points & Idol slots which can be crucial to your survival.
Not an answer, but I found this line from the Wiki under Offensive Calculations that states, “Added damage is multiplied by added damage effectiveness multipliers and added to the base damage” though I can’t seem to find enough info to tell me what it means. Still learning a lot of the mechanics myself.
But if we’re talking about checking your overall damage when you make changes to skills/passives/gear/etc then I would suggest hitting the training dummy that is located in The Council Chambers as well as The End of Time. It’s a pretty good way to test your damage output for any given skill, though some things do require testing in the field.
The damage type of the enemies is usually dictated by its colour (provided there is one). Necrotic damage is teal, Void damage is purple, Poison is green, and the Elemental colours are pretty self explanatory. The only darkhorse here is physical damage, as some attacks can have multiple damage types and physical is usually the second damage type.
Hopefully that helps some until someone more knowledgeable of game mechanics can grant more insight into your ‘damage effectiveness’ question, and maybe correct my town portal answer if it’s wrong.
I forsee that being a pain.