Back in patch 1.0.5 Blizzard added in a new end game event to Diablo III. They added four new purple elites to the game, one in each act, which each drop a different bind on account item. Collect the 3 keys from the first 3 acts and a crafting recipe from Act IV and you can build yourself an infernal machine item which is also bind on account. Then going forward you just need the three keys again to make another one (meaning you can skip farming Act IV). Each of these items drops at X*10% where X is your monster power level, and only drop if you already have 5 stacks of the Nephalim valour buff.
Once you get a bunch of these infernal machines the real fun starts. Using an infernal machine opens a portal to a new zone which contains a new boss fight. There are three different boss fights beyond the portals and each one drops a different bind on account crafting item, again with a X*10% chance of a drop in any given kill. Collect all three of these items, buy a recipe for 2 million gold, and you can craft up a bind on account ring. These rings are bind on account and have 170-200 of a stat (your choice when you make it), a chance to shoot a fireball, 35% bonus experience gained, and 4 random ring mods. Oh, and no level requirement... Hello, alts!
Yesterday Randy put a little group together to try out the boss fights. Sceadeau, Tom, and I went along, though Sceadeau and I haven't played enough to have a lot of machines to use so we mostly just leeched off the items. I mean, we did help win the fights, don't get me wrong. But we didn't pull our key grinding weight. We did the first set at monster power 6, found it was pretty easy, and went up to 7. The fights on 7 took longer and were sketchier (but with only 1 wipe in 13 tries it was still pretty easy). Maybe we should have gone up to 8 for the better drop chance? On the other hand if we couldn't win on 8 it would have been really bad since we'd lose 4 shots at 70% (2.8 items) while hoping to earn 4*3*.1 = 1.2 items. I would have tried, as I'm always willing to try crazy things, but it may not have made sense. And since they weren't my machines it really wouldn't have been my place to make that call.
At any rate, we used 15 machines, did 16 fights, and I got the pieces to make 3 rings. I couldn't afford the 2 million for the recipe right away, but I ended up selling some gems I had lying around to get there. (And then finally sold a set belt I'd found for 6.8M so I'm flush with cash now!) But I'm in a bit of a quandry. My current build relies almost exclusively on having high amounts of attack speed and crit chance to function properly. My rings give me 7% of my 35% crit chance and 13% of my 44% attack speed. Swapping those out for other rings, even ones that give me 70% more experience, are going to make me worse. Perhaps so much worse that I can't function properly in this spec? On the other hand, getting 170-200 int is going to give a decent boost to my damage so maybe it'll be ok if I lose some of my stunlock? And if I have to start soloing at a lower MP level but with 70% more experience gained I bet it will be ok. Maybe I should keep my better stunlocking rings for the next time I run infernal machine bosses? Or maybe I can just get lucky and roll up some +xp rings with attack speed and crit! Alternatively I could just find a new spec entirely. I do miss shooting laser beams at people...
Well, what did I get on my rings?
ring 1 - int/vit, life on hit, crit damage, socket
ring 2 - str, vit, dex/vit, socket
ring 3 - damage, dex, cold resist, armour
No attack speed, no crit chance at all. The first ring seems really good, though. Really, really good. It rolled pretty high on the int, life on hit, and crit damage rolls and the socket is a reasonable bonus. The second ring has too many wasted stats. I don't need strength or dexterity on my ring. I'll give it to my follower for sure, and it'll be awesome on an alt. The third ring also has two wasted stats but I do need more defenses so getting armour isn't terrible.
I may research some other builds that can use two rings, but for now I think I'm going to try replacing my worst ring with ring 1 and sticking the other two on my follower and see how that works out. I can try to make up for the lost attack speed by using some of my newfound cashola on a better amulet or maybe buy a witching hour belt.
EDIT: Turns out they're unique equipped, so I will definitely just use ring 1 no matter what I end up doing, and giving just one of them to my follower. That makes things easier!
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