Yay 58! Time for bed. Maybe I'll get 60 tomorrow, we'll see.
Loving this witchdoctor build. What I really like is I feel like my success really comes down to how well I personally play this build. If I get sloppy I can die no problem. But, when I am on the ball I've kept it going against champion packs by myself after my team has died. It had just enough avoidance and life leach and mana regen and kiting that if you time it all out right you can stretch fights on indefinitely. Well, against most champion packs at least. There are some packs that are basically unkiteable (mobs that are already have fast move speed getting the fast suffix gave me the biggest headache so far when playing with some friends. I just couldn't create enough room to breath when my friends went down).
this build is really really hectic. I kinda die a lot. but maybe I'm undergeared. definitely not steamrolling like before. The level of challenge is nice, but I miss being able to hold my ground against stuff and blow them up. I also feel like witchdoctor CC kinda sucks for some reason. thinking of swapping out gargantuan/grasp of the dead for mass confusion with the stun, but that would need testing.
It really is a busy build. It took maybe 30 minutes of play for it to really click for me. Having 3 moves with no cooldown and 3 moves with very short cooldowns makes for very active gameplay. A few of the big "Aha!" moments for the build for me were: Spirit walk isn't only just an escape, its your mana fixing move, DPS enabling move AND CC. Using it to escape is pretty obvious but, a huge part of it is the body that you leave behind. Enemies will aggro it and attack it. That means the enemy clumps, so while you are getting tons of mana back its a great chance to drop a bunch phantasms on them, and then grasp them right as you phase back into reality. Another big "Aha!" moment was that splinter blowgun is just stupid good single target DPS. Like, it's silly. It's not just filler, its your primary single target nuke. It hits like a truck!
The build is very good and fun in my opinion but it can be very unforgiving. With how sharp the mana costs are on everything but the blowgun a doubled up haunt or misplaced phantasm is a lot of blown mana, and hurts efficiency a lot. Timing all the cooldowns is pretty important, a harvest at the wrong time is a large DPS and health loss. Missing a grasp is the difference between being super safe and being overwhelmed, and obviously using spirit walk at the wrong time is a big waste, but it can be hard to tell when you should use it for DPS (mana regen plus ability to just stand there and attack) or save it for defense.
But when you get everything in place it is an absolute slaughter.
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AegisFear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered Userregular
Thanks to the crew that ran through end of Nightmare and up to Skeleton King in Hell. It was rough going at first, but we pulled through! Crappy drops for everyone not named @Scosglen though :P
Speaking of rough times, this was our first Hell Elite pack: Molten Fire Chains Nightmarish. Yea, suffice it to say this did not end well.
Regarding Witch Doctor and pets in Hell...I'm having amazing success with Gargantuan in Hell. Even against Elites. Hell, my Gargantuan tanked multiple Plague & Molten mobs that might otherwise have given our group a hard time, without breaking a sweat. Not sure if it's because I'm running the life regen/thorns passive on pets or if something weird's going on, but I'm finding he's still as useful as ever.
managed to solo the butcher in inferno as a barb, collected my pity blues (me and a friend had gone in as a barb + monk duo with 5 stack valor, but there's just no way to make the enrage timer with that combination and our gear), picked my friend back up, went to act 2 and got murdered in a split second by wasps. I don't think we'll be trying that again for a week or two.
the friend did get tal'rasha chest to drop though, I thought it was the game subtly hinting at where he should be focusing his efforts
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
Endgame story related spoiler:
Did anyone else think it was pretty hilarious that Tyrael just appointed himself archangel of wisdom? When you consider that a good chunk of the awful shit that's happened in the timeline has been direct results of either his stupidity or laziness, that move seemed a little ballsy for him. My friend joked that he only did it because all the other angels were either dead or injured and couldn't call him on his bullshit at that point in time. "Welp, since all you jerks are dead I guess I'M the new God of Wisdom HA HA HA"
PSN: Waybackkidd
"...only mights and maybes."
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Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
Man i wish so hard i could get talrasha items to drop
I am up against the wall entering hell as a Demon Hunter. I switched over to a heavily stun and run type char, grabbed a solid 1-hand crossbow and shield combo, and whole basic mobs are pretty straightforward now, champion packs just slaughter me. I'm at level 52, so I feel like this should be possible. I even dippe back into act 4 NM to level up a bit but some packs are out of my reach there as well. What are the classy DH's running to survive this stuff?
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I'm like 1/4th through act one in hell right now. The regular mobs are so much easier than the mobs in act 4 nightmare. It's a breeze until you start facing random champions and mini-bosses - which are hella challenging.
Man, we're being a tad spoiler lax recently. I've seen bosses named that I wasn't expecting and then an embedded video with a preview image of what I assume is the secret level.
There are a few variations on this, but the basic idea is the same for all of them: combine a few +crit chance items with Magic Weapon with Venom and Shock Pulse with Living Lightning to cause Critical Mass to proc, which lets you cast Diamond Skin forever, with Energy Armor with Force Armor added in for supreme bullshit. The core of the build is this:
Living Lightning hits enemies a bunch of times. Each hit doesn't do much damage, but it hits each enemy several times. On top of that, Venom will cause each hit to do a few more ticks of damage. Each of these hits can crit, and each crit can cause Critical Mass to take a second off of all your cooldowns. With enough +crit gear (mine's at about 30% chance normally, but it started working earlier than that), you can basically cause all your cooldown abilites to be instantly chain casted. When you use Diamond Skin, you pretty much become invulnerable. It's nice to have Crystal Shell on for the times when your enemies are really pounding on you, but you can change it to other stuff. Living Lightning on its own doesn't do a lot of damage, but the instant cooldowns let you spam Explosive Blast forever, or at least until your AP runs out. I like to have Frost Nova with Deep Freeze for extra crit chances, but other people have used Force Wave instead to good effect. You can also switch out Galvanizing Ward for Prodigy so you can spam even more, at the expense of some health regen.
I just got into Act IV Hell using this build, although I have been grouping with other people on and off. However, it was super easy to solo Azmodan, I didn't even have to move or dodge any attacks. The only downside is your fingers get a bit tired from spamming Diamond Skin and Explosive Blast.
Smoke Screen(increased stealth or disc reduction), Preparation (restore health), Multishot(depends on what you're doing) Rapid Fire
Use entangling shot with rune of your preference or Electrified Bolas
You are going to be squishy for a while. Start prioritizing defense stats/vitality in your armor and just buy a cheap 300-400 dps bow from the AH. You should be able to nab one for 10-50k
If you are running solo use your time in stealth to burst down one of the elites/rares and start kiting again. Once they catch up/beat you senseless stealth again. Rinse Repeat. It's very tedious and won't save you against the really fast mobs. My suggestion is to run Hell with a mage/barbarian with tanky builds. Once you get to 57-59 you will get the vamp abilities. USE THEM. I'm a lil tanky now and can just sit there and elemental arrow my target and restore all the dmg received. If he hits like a truck I start kiting.
So Gem Merchant is clearly the best NPC in the game.
All the non-main-story NPCs are awesome.
It's like someone was designing a great game and then they were like "This story isn't plot-holy and dumb enough, someone come in and muck this shit up. Throw some cliches and copy-paste plot-ideas in there too or they won't know it's Blizzard!".
shryke on
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
I went with a simple Bash(stun)/cleave(explosion), leap(armour), Ground stomp (larger range/draw in), Whirlwind (tornados) and earthquake (swapped between the lava pools/freeze depending.)
For normal this was fine and dandy but i figure i'm going to need more survivability in Nightmare so i'm trying a Frenzy build with dual-wielding right now (frenzy/revenge/leap/ground stomp/ignore pain/wrath of the berserker) and it seems fine for now but i haven't even faced the first boss of Act 1 yet.
Also, paranoia and lack of faith but, are Barbarians viable in Hell/inferno so far? i assume so but i'd like my mind put to rest if people have personal/second hand experience.
There are a few variations on this, but the basic idea is the same for all of them: combine a few +crit chance items with Magic Weapon with Venom and Shock Pulse with Living Lightning to cause Critical Mass to proc, which lets you cast Diamond Skin forever, with Energy Armor with Force Armor added in for supreme bullshit. The core of the build is this:
Living Lightning hits enemies a bunch of times. Each hit doesn't do much damage, but it hits each enemy several times. On top of that, Venom will cause each hit to do a few more ticks of damage. Each of these hits can crit, and each crit can cause Critical Mass to take a second off of all your cooldowns. With enough +crit gear (mine's at about 30% chance normally, but it started working earlier than that), you can basically cause all your cooldown abilites to be instantly chain casted. When you use Diamond Skin, you pretty much become invulnerable. It's nice to have Crystal Shell on for the times when your enemies are really pounding on you, but you can change it to other stuff. Living Lightning on its own doesn't do a lot of damage, but the instant cooldowns let you spam Explosive Blast forever, or at least until your AP runs out. I like to have Frost Nova with Deep Freeze for extra crit chances, but other people have used Force Wave instead to good effect. You can also switch out Galvanizing Ward for Prodigy so you can spam even more, at the expense of some health regen.
I just got into Act IV Hell using this build, although I have been grouping with other people on and off. However, it was super easy to solo Azmodan, I didn't even have to move or dodge any attacks. The only downside is your fingers get a bit tired from spamming Diamond Skin and Explosive Blast.
This is essentially what I have been building around, although for a completely different purpose. My goal was to allow me to disintegrate for as long as humanly possible. So I got a nice weapon that has 8 Arcane Power on crit, an offhand with 10 arcane power on crit, and I try and pump my crit up.
Disintegrate with Chaos Nexus worked fantastically on providing those crits so much that I made sure to sub in critical mass for diamond skin pwnage.
My problem is, Inferno is a lot harder then I imagined so I am going to have to rethink my build. I want to be able to solo the packs without much of an issue, this might be a pretty decent way. Venom working with crits seems like a great thing for me to test out, that and Living Lightning. I've pretty much just use Throw Weapon with the Spectral Blade because it is awesome and terrorizes things when I am out of energy disintegrating. Chaning Power Armor to Force Armor might help me a lot too, we'll see
Smoke Screen(increased stealth or disc reduction), Preparation (restore health), Multishot(depends on what you're doing) Rapid Fire
Use entangling shot with rune of your preference or Electrified Bolas
You are going to be squishy for a while. Start prioritizing defense stats/vitality in your armor and just buy a cheap 300-400 dps bow from the AH. You should be able to nab one for 10-50k
If you are running solo use your time in stealth to burst down one of the elites/rares and start kiting again. Once they catch up/beat you senseless stealth again. Rinse Repeat. It's very tedious and won't save you against the really fast mobs. My suggestion is to run Hell with a mage/barbarian with tanky builds. Once you get to 57-59 you will get the vamp abilities. USE THEM. I'm a lil tanky now and can just sit there and elemental arrow my target and restore all the dmg received. If he hits like a truck I start kiting.
This is actually the first time I've tried smoke screen, and holy hell does it make a difference, thanks. That and the electrified bolas alone do wonders to my survivability. I'm amazed at the number of viable play styles. I have no idea how people are playing without vault though, too essential for any number of the ridiculous escapes I've pulled off. I suppose SS may have just invalidated it, however.
0
VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
Yay 58! Time for bed. Maybe I'll get 60 tomorrow, we'll see.
Loving this witchdoctor build. What I really like is I feel like my success really comes down to how well I personally play this build. If I get sloppy I can die no problem. But, when I am on the ball I've kept it going against champion packs by myself after my team has died. It had just enough avoidance and life leach and mana regen and kiting that if you time it all out right you can stretch fights on indefinitely. Well, against most champion packs at least. There are some packs that are basically unkiteable (mobs that are already have fast move speed getting the fast suffix gave me the biggest headache so far when playing with some friends. I just couldn't create enough room to breath when my friends went down).
this build is really really hectic. I kinda die a lot. but maybe I'm undergeared. definitely not steamrolling like before. The level of challenge is nice, but I miss being able to hold my ground against stuff and blow them up. I also feel like witchdoctor CC kinda sucks for some reason. thinking of swapping out gargantuan/grasp of the dead for mass confusion with the stun, but that would need testing.
It really is a busy build. It took maybe 30 minutes of play for it to really click for me. Having 3 moves with no cooldown and 3 moves with very short cooldowns makes for very active gameplay. A few of the big "Aha!" moments for the build for me were: Spirit walk isn't only just an escape, its your mana fixing move, DPS enabling move AND CC. Using it to escape is pretty obvious but, a huge part of it is the body that you leave behind. Enemies will aggro it and attack it. That means the enemy clumps, so while you are getting tons of mana back its a great chance to drop a bunch phantasms on them, and then grasp them right as you phase back into reality. Another big "Aha!" moment was that splinter blowgun is just stupid good single target DPS. Like, it's silly. It's not just filler, its your primary single target nuke. It hits like a truck!
The build is very good and fun in my opinion but it can be very unforgiving. With how sharp the mana costs are on everything but the blowgun a doubled up haunt or misplaced phantasm is a lot of blown mana, and hurts efficiency a lot. Timing all the cooldowns is pretty important, a harvest at the wrong time is a large DPS and health loss. Missing a grasp is the difference between being super safe and being overwhelmed, and obviously using spirit walk at the wrong time is a big waste, but it can be hard to tell when you should use it for DPS (mana regen plus ability to just stand there and attack) or save it for defense.
But when you get everything in place it is an absolute slaughter.
I love it. I had used the darts with that rune up into nightmare when I changed things around for some reason. it's really fantastic for a basically free skill.
but yes I feel the same way. I can survive a LOT as long as I'm smart which frankly is ideal to me. and I imagine most people. it also has enough WD feel that I don't just feel like 'why am I not playing a wizard?' which I was worried about feeling when I lost my pets.
I went with a simple Bash(stun)/cleave(explosion), leap(armour), Ground stomp (larger range/draw in), Whirlwind (tornados) and earthquake (swapped between the lava pools/freeze depending.)
For normal this was fine and dandy but i figure i'm going to need more survivability in Nightmare so i'm trying a Frenzy build with dual-wielding right now (frenzy/revenge/leap/ground stomp/ignore pain/wrath of the berserker) and it seems fine for now but i haven't even faced the first boss of Act 1 yet.
Also, paranoia and lack of faith but, are Barbarians viable in Hell/inferno so far? i assume so but i'd like my mind put to rest if people have personal/second hand experience.
Barbs get less viable as you go on, IME, because mob damage scales faster than damage mitigation. I'm in Act 4 Hell, and going to beat it shortly, but word is Act 2 Inferno is effectively a stop sign for all barbs regardless of build / gear (barring someone giving you a piggy back ride). I'm not surprised at all, because I've gone from being effectively invulnerable in normal to 100-0 combos (Izathoth, or whatever his name is who spams frost, does a cool two hit instant death combo in melee range, no getting hit by frost necessary.)
I'm sad pets aren't viable. They gotta be looking at buffing them to be viable. Too many of the WDs abilities factor them in for it to be ignored.
I think the big change, beyond survivability, is they need to lower the cooldown of zombie dogs. That would make Sacrifice a viable option and you could use the lower cooldown to differentiate them from the Gargantuan by making them more like often-summoned distractions rather then permanent tank pets.
Smoke Screen(increased stealth or disc reduction), Preparation (restore health), Multishot(depends on what you're doing) Rapid Fire.
Much disagreement.
1: Shadow power - 30% life gain rune.
2: Vault - with the passive skill this turns into your "zomg run away" button.
3: Evasive Fire - With cover fire rune, this takes care of most AOE packs. Plus it generates the hatred you need to cast your main attack.
4: Rain of Vengence: I like that it doesn't cost anything, and it helps with AOE packs
left click: Hungering Arrow.
right click: I've switched between:
- Rapid fire, with Web Shot + Cull the Weak Passive
- Impale with Chemical burn for bosses, overpenetration for aoe
- Elemental Arrow with Nether tentacles. I just got this, so I'm still trying to figure out if it's viable. I'm probably going to go back to Impale.
23 1/2 of which are at retarded prices that nobody in their right mind will consider.
Eventually it'll settle out. I remember during the Web Comic Wars on what was then the shiny new Dark Iron server in WoW, the AHs there were absurdly over priced but eventually as more people flooded the market with items the prices came down. Economics 101 and all that.
My friend was like Yay I found a Legendary item I'ma go sell it on the AH!!
Then he was like Damn son there are 24 pages of this exact item :O
Yup.
The Auction house may ultimately ruin the game, for this reason and many others.
How will a flooded market ruin the game?
Simple answer:
- Diablo 2: Farm bosses to get random items, hoping to get something good.
- Diablo 3: Farm bosses to get items that are sold to get gold with which you buy the exact item you want.
I think part of the longevity to D2 results from the fact that persons were still compelled to farm baal in the hopes of getting really, really rare items 11 years after the expansion was release. D3 isn't going to have that situation, since all of the items will be available on the AH, and all one need do is farm the gold to purchase them.
10 years after D2 I'm still kinda compelled to log in now and then and farm. I really can't see D3 having that same lasting appeal.
I'm sad pets aren't viable. They gotta be looking at buffing them to be viable. Too many of the WDs abilities factor them in for it to be ignored.
I think the big change, beyond survivability, is they need to lower the cooldown of zombie dogs. That would make Sacrifice a viable option and you could use the lower cooldown to differentiate them from the Gargantuan by making them more like often-summoned distractions rather then permanent tank pets.
Yeah, in my experience (I've got four of the five classes up to 10 now, and three up to 20), that's the only really, really obvious thing that needs to be fixed. Like there are a bunch of other things I think could stand mild tweaks (dire bat might be TOO good, for example), but that just is way too long and kills Sacrifice's utility. Using two slots on a long cooldown ability? Bleh.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Oh, man. Oh, man! This guy's finally dropped the price on the Legendary Blacksmith recipe for the Demon Hand from 5 million gold to 500,000 gold! I know that's still a lot, but I'm totally willing to pay that. Five-million was fucking absurd.
My setup is probably a bit odd sounding, but really effective.
1. Smoke screen with 3 second rune
2. Vault with cheap second cast rune
3. Multishot with fire at will
4. Preparation with 30% chance no cd rune
Lmb: Rapidfire with the last rune(grenade shots)
Rmb: Hungering arrow with puncturing.
Right now, im in hell, about to finish act 2 at lvl 57. Multishot will clear any wave thats not minions, with a good few shots. Hungering arrow does something like 230% damage against single targets, almost as much as impale/more than rapid fire unless runed for deeps. Also, its free. Rapid fire is there for champion mobs, though I may swap it out for something else. I like vault for general mobility and kiting. SS/prep combo is obvious.
You can swap any runes for preference except fire at will and puncturing. Those give you strong, reliable dps against single targets and groups. The rest is survivability and situational. Try it out
Oh, man. Oh, man! This guy's finally dropped the price on the Legendary Blacksmith recipe for the Demon Hand from 5 million gold to 500,000 gold! I know that's still a lot, but I'm totally willing to pay that. Five-million was fucking absurd.
My friend was like Yay I found a Legendary item I'ma go sell it on the AH!!
Then he was like Damn son there are 24 pages of this exact item :O
Yup.
The Auction house may ultimately ruin the game, for this reason and many others.
How will a flooded market ruin the game?
Simple answer:
- Diablo 2: Farm bosses to get random items, hoping to get something good.
- Diablo 3: Farm bosses to get items that are sold to get gold with which you buy the exact item you want.
I think part of the longevity to D2 results from the fact that persons were still compelled to farm baal in the hopes of getting really, really rare items 11 years after the expansion was release. D3 isn't going to have that situation, since all of the items will be available on the AH, and all one need do is farm the gold to purchase them.
10 years after D2 I'm still kinda compelled to log in now and then and farm. I really can't see D3 having that same lasting appeal.
Wow, you were playing a much different game of D2 than me. I NEVER farmed and always had great gear just by trading/keeping an eye out for people giving away free stuff which I then would take and from there trade away. Eventually, if you're good at trading, you can end up with a giant supply of stuff to use to get what you actually want. That and SoJs were the real drive of Diablo 2, not grinding. What Blizzard did was put themselves in as the middle man in order to get a buck off of that vibrant trading community. Sure, I did Baal runs and Mephisto runs, but for me it was more for fun than because I desperately wanted one specific item and because I liked pitting different builds against the game and seeing how I fared. Grinding had always been something I actively avoided.
TOGSolid on
0
Big Red Tiebeautiful clydesdale style feettoo hot to trotRegistered Userregular
items are much more randomized in d3. the completely perfectly rolled rares/legendaries will still be very rare
23 1/2 of which are at retarded prices that nobody in their right mind will consider.
Eventually it'll settle out. I remember during the Web Comic Wars on what was then the shiny new Dark Iron server in WoW, the AHs there were absurdly over priced but eventually as more people flooded the market with items the prices came down. Economics 101 and all that.
I wouldn't hope too much.
MMO markets often defy simple economics because people are idiots and don't care a ton.
"Selling something for less then it cost you to make it" is a type of thing that is not at all uncommon.
23 1/2 of which are at retarded prices that nobody in their right mind will consider.
Eventually it'll settle out. I remember during the Web Comic Wars on what was then the shiny new Dark Iron server in WoW, the AHs there were absurdly over priced but eventually as more people flooded the market with items the prices came down. Economics 101 and all that.
I wouldn't hope too much.
MMO markets often defy simple economics because people are idiots and don't care a ton.
"Selling something for less then it cost you to make it" is a type of thing that is not at all uncommon.
Well that's in WoW where you were probably only making something to skill up your crafting anyway. Here there's no point in crafting beyond the end product.
23 1/2 of which are at retarded prices that nobody in their right mind will consider.
Eventually it'll settle out. I remember during the Web Comic Wars on what was then the shiny new Dark Iron server in WoW, the AHs there were absurdly over priced but eventually as more people flooded the market with items the prices came down. Economics 101 and all that.
I wouldn't hope too much.
MMO markets often defy simple economics because people are idiots and don't care a ton.
"Selling something for less then it cost you to make it" is a type of thing that is not at all uncommon.
Well that's in WoW where you were probably only making something to skill up your crafting anyway. Here there's no point in crafting beyond the end product.
That was just an example. There's tons of other things of the sort.
Basically, alot of people don't care enough about this stuff in game to make reasonable economic decisions.
23 1/2 of which are at retarded prices that nobody in their right mind will consider.
Eventually it'll settle out. I remember during the Web Comic Wars on what was then the shiny new Dark Iron server in WoW, the AHs there were absurdly over priced but eventually as more people flooded the market with items the prices came down. Economics 101 and all that.
I wouldn't hope too much.
MMO markets often defy simple economics because people are idiots and don't care a ton.
"Selling something for less then it cost you to make it" is a type of thing that is not at all uncommon.
Well that's in WoW where you were probably only making something to skill up your crafting anyway.
Yup. That item has no worth since tons of people are grinding it out anyway. Market is working as it should in that case.
Smoke Screen(increased stealth or disc reduction), Preparation (restore health), Multishot(depends on what you're doing) Rapid Fire.
Much disagreement.
1: Shadow power - 30% life gain rune.
2: Vault - with the passive skill this turns into your "zomg run away" button.
3: Evasive Fire - With cover fire rune, this takes care of most AOE packs. Plus it generates the hatred you need to cast your main attack.
4: Rain of Vengence: I like that it doesn't cost anything, and it helps with AOE packs
left click: Hungering Arrow.
right click: I've switched between:
- Rapid fire, with Web Shot + Cull the Weak Passive
- Impale with Chemical burn for bosses, overpenetration for aoe
- Elemental Arrow with Nether tentacles. I just got this, so I'm still trying to figure out if it's viable. I'm probably going to go back to Impale.
I've found that kiting around with the damage rune on caltrops shreds almost everything in Hell. Still works in Inferno, too. The slow doesn't really work on elite mobs, but the damage does. It was ticking for around 3.5-5k, but I don't know if that's just because of abusing the max crit thing or what. I used that, ball lightning, [impale/rapid shot], devouring shot, ss (extended) and prep (hatred) all the way through Hell, no issues. If you use ss with the discipline-over-time rune on prep, you can get like 12 seconds of invulnerability. It's absurd.
I ended up being really disappointed with nether tentacles. The lifesteal is almost negligible, and it does the same damage as the rest.
Posts
It really is a busy build. It took maybe 30 minutes of play for it to really click for me. Having 3 moves with no cooldown and 3 moves with very short cooldowns makes for very active gameplay. A few of the big "Aha!" moments for the build for me were: Spirit walk isn't only just an escape, its your mana fixing move, DPS enabling move AND CC. Using it to escape is pretty obvious but, a huge part of it is the body that you leave behind. Enemies will aggro it and attack it. That means the enemy clumps, so while you are getting tons of mana back its a great chance to drop a bunch phantasms on them, and then grasp them right as you phase back into reality. Another big "Aha!" moment was that splinter blowgun is just stupid good single target DPS. Like, it's silly. It's not just filler, its your primary single target nuke. It hits like a truck!
The build is very good and fun in my opinion but it can be very unforgiving. With how sharp the mana costs are on everything but the blowgun a doubled up haunt or misplaced phantasm is a lot of blown mana, and hurts efficiency a lot. Timing all the cooldowns is pretty important, a harvest at the wrong time is a large DPS and health loss. Missing a grasp is the difference between being super safe and being overwhelmed, and obviously using spirit walk at the wrong time is a big waste, but it can be hard to tell when you should use it for DPS (mana regen plus ability to just stand there and attack) or save it for defense.
But when you get everything in place it is an absolute slaughter.
Speaking of rough times, this was our first Hell Elite pack: Molten Fire Chains Nightmarish. Yea, suffice it to say this did not end well.
Regarding Witch Doctor and pets in Hell...I'm having amazing success with Gargantuan in Hell. Even against Elites. Hell, my Gargantuan tanked multiple Plague & Molten mobs that might otherwise have given our group a hard time, without breaking a sweat. Not sure if it's because I'm running the life regen/thorns passive on pets or if something weird's going on, but I'm finding he's still as useful as ever.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
the friend did get tal'rasha chest to drop though, I thought it was the game subtly hinting at where he should be focusing his efforts
"...only mights and maybes."
Then he was like Damn son there are 24 pages of this exact item :O
Nice work guys.
I present: The Battel Wizerd.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bXhYSO!gTf!caaYYY
There are a few variations on this, but the basic idea is the same for all of them: combine a few +crit chance items with Magic Weapon with Venom and Shock Pulse with Living Lightning to cause Critical Mass to proc, which lets you cast Diamond Skin forever, with Energy Armor with Force Armor added in for supreme bullshit. The core of the build is this:
Living Lightning hits enemies a bunch of times. Each hit doesn't do much damage, but it hits each enemy several times. On top of that, Venom will cause each hit to do a few more ticks of damage. Each of these hits can crit, and each crit can cause Critical Mass to take a second off of all your cooldowns. With enough +crit gear (mine's at about 30% chance normally, but it started working earlier than that), you can basically cause all your cooldown abilites to be instantly chain casted. When you use Diamond Skin, you pretty much become invulnerable. It's nice to have Crystal Shell on for the times when your enemies are really pounding on you, but you can change it to other stuff. Living Lightning on its own doesn't do a lot of damage, but the instant cooldowns let you spam Explosive Blast forever, or at least until your AP runs out. I like to have Frost Nova with Deep Freeze for extra crit chances, but other people have used Force Wave instead to good effect. You can also switch out Galvanizing Ward for Prodigy so you can spam even more, at the expense of some health regen.
I just got into Act IV Hell using this build, although I have been grouping with other people on and off. However, it was super easy to solo Azmodan, I didn't even have to move or dodge any attacks. The only downside is your fingers get a bit tired from spamming Diamond Skin and Explosive Blast.
Edit: Just to give credit where it's due, this is where I saw the first version of this build: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3484805&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=16
Use entangling shot with rune of your preference or Electrified Bolas
You are going to be squishy for a while. Start prioritizing defense stats/vitality in your armor and just buy a cheap 300-400 dps bow from the AH. You should be able to nab one for 10-50k
If you are running solo use your time in stealth to burst down one of the elites/rares and start kiting again. Once they catch up/beat you senseless stealth again. Rinse Repeat. It's very tedious and won't save you against the really fast mobs. My suggestion is to run Hell with a mage/barbarian with tanky builds. Once you get to 57-59 you will get the vamp abilities. USE THEM. I'm a lil tanky now and can just sit there and elemental arrow my target and restore all the dmg received. If he hits like a truck I start kiting.
All the non-main-story NPCs are awesome.
It's like someone was designing a great game and then they were like "This story isn't plot-holy and dumb enough, someone come in and muck this shit up. Throw some cliches and copy-paste plot-ideas in there too or they won't know it's Blizzard!".
My vote goes to Covetous Shen being
"...only mights and maybes."
I went with a simple Bash(stun)/cleave(explosion), leap(armour), Ground stomp (larger range/draw in), Whirlwind (tornados) and earthquake (swapped between the lava pools/freeze depending.)
For normal this was fine and dandy but i figure i'm going to need more survivability in Nightmare so i'm trying a Frenzy build with dual-wielding right now (frenzy/revenge/leap/ground stomp/ignore pain/wrath of the berserker) and it seems fine for now but i haven't even faced the first boss of Act 1 yet.
Also, paranoia and lack of faith but, are Barbarians viable in Hell/inferno so far? i assume so but i'd like my mind put to rest if people have personal/second hand experience.
This is essentially what I have been building around, although for a completely different purpose. My goal was to allow me to disintegrate for as long as humanly possible. So I got a nice weapon that has 8 Arcane Power on crit, an offhand with 10 arcane power on crit, and I try and pump my crit up.
Disintegrate with Chaos Nexus worked fantastically on providing those crits so much that I made sure to sub in critical mass for diamond skin pwnage.
My problem is, Inferno is a lot harder then I imagined so I am going to have to rethink my build. I want to be able to solo the packs without much of an issue, this might be a pretty decent way. Venom working with crits seems like a great thing for me to test out, that and Living Lightning. I've pretty much just use Throw Weapon with the Spectral Blade because it is awesome and terrorizes things when I am out of energy disintegrating. Chaning Power Armor to Force Armor might help me a lot too, we'll see
This is actually the first time I've tried smoke screen, and holy hell does it make a difference, thanks. That and the electrified bolas alone do wonders to my survivability. I'm amazed at the number of viable play styles. I have no idea how people are playing without vault though, too essential for any number of the ridiculous escapes I've pulled off. I suppose SS may have just invalidated it, however.
I love it. I had used the darts with that rune up into nightmare when I changed things around for some reason. it's really fantastic for a basically free skill.
but yes I feel the same way. I can survive a LOT as long as I'm smart which frankly is ideal to me. and I imagine most people. it also has enough WD feel that I don't just feel like 'why am I not playing a wizard?' which I was worried about feeling when I lost my pets.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WeYVkP!eZb!YaZcbZ although I change it consistently depending.
Barbs get less viable as you go on, IME, because mob damage scales faster than damage mitigation. I'm in Act 4 Hell, and going to beat it shortly, but word is Act 2 Inferno is effectively a stop sign for all barbs regardless of build / gear (barring someone giving you a piggy back ride). I'm not surprised at all, because I've gone from being effectively invulnerable in normal to 100-0 combos (Izathoth, or whatever his name is who spams frost, does a cool two hit instant death combo in melee range, no getting hit by frost necessary.)
I think the big change, beyond survivability, is they need to lower the cooldown of zombie dogs. That would make Sacrifice a viable option and you could use the lower cooldown to differentiate them from the Gargantuan by making them more like often-summoned distractions rather then permanent tank pets.
Yup.
The Auction house may ultimately ruin the game, for this reason and many others.
How will a flooded market ruin the game?
Much disagreement.
1: Shadow power - 30% life gain rune.
2: Vault - with the passive skill this turns into your "zomg run away" button.
3: Evasive Fire - With cover fire rune, this takes care of most AOE packs. Plus it generates the hatred you need to cast your main attack.
4: Rain of Vengence: I like that it doesn't cost anything, and it helps with AOE packs
left click: Hungering Arrow.
right click: I've switched between:
- Rapid fire, with Web Shot + Cull the Weak Passive
- Impale with Chemical burn for bosses, overpenetration for aoe
- Elemental Arrow with Nether tentacles. I just got this, so I'm still trying to figure out if it's viable. I'm probably going to go back to Impale.
Simple answer:
- Diablo 2: Farm bosses to get random items, hoping to get something good.
- Diablo 3: Farm bosses to get items that are sold to get gold with which you buy the exact item you want.
I think part of the longevity to D2 results from the fact that persons were still compelled to farm baal in the hopes of getting really, really rare items 11 years after the expansion was release. D3 isn't going to have that situation, since all of the items will be available on the AH, and all one need do is farm the gold to purchase them.
10 years after D2 I'm still kinda compelled to log in now and then and farm. I really can't see D3 having that same lasting appeal.
Yeah, in my experience (I've got four of the five classes up to 10 now, and three up to 20), that's the only really, really obvious thing that needs to be fixed. Like there are a bunch of other things I think could stand mild tweaks (dire bat might be TOO good, for example), but that just is way too long and kills Sacrifice's utility. Using two slots on a long cooldown ability? Bleh.
All of the gem list prices show a gold value for last 10 trades.
But last day trades is 0.
i've had gems sitting on there for a while, listed below the average price, and they aren't selling. What gives?
1. Smoke screen with 3 second rune
2. Vault with cheap second cast rune
3. Multishot with fire at will
4. Preparation with 30% chance no cd rune
Lmb: Rapidfire with the last rune(grenade shots)
Rmb: Hungering arrow with puncturing.
Right now, im in hell, about to finish act 2 at lvl 57. Multishot will clear any wave thats not minions, with a good few shots. Hungering arrow does something like 230% damage against single targets, almost as much as impale/more than rapid fire unless runed for deeps. Also, its free. Rapid fire is there for champion mobs, though I may swap it out for something else. I like vault for general mobility and kiting. SS/prep combo is obvious.
You can swap any runes for preference except fire at will and puncturing. Those give you strong, reliable dps against single targets and groups. The rest is survivability and situational. Try it out
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
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Can't you just buy a better rare on the AH?
Wow, you were playing a much different game of D2 than me. I NEVER farmed and always had great gear just by trading/keeping an eye out for people giving away free stuff which I then would take and from there trade away. Eventually, if you're good at trading, you can end up with a giant supply of stuff to use to get what you actually want. That and SoJs were the real drive of Diablo 2, not grinding. What Blizzard did was put themselves in as the middle man in order to get a buck off of that vibrant trading community. Sure, I did Baal runs and Mephisto runs, but for me it was more for fun than because I desperately wanted one specific item and because I liked pitting different builds against the game and seeing how I fared. Grinding had always been something I actively avoided.
I wouldn't hope too much.
MMO markets often defy simple economics because people are idiots and don't care a ton.
"Selling something for less then it cost you to make it" is a type of thing that is not at all uncommon.
How so? Are drop rates spread out over different mobs now?
Well that's in WoW where you were probably only making something to skill up your crafting anyway. Here there's no point in crafting beyond the end product.
That was just an example. There's tons of other things of the sort.
Basically, alot of people don't care enough about this stuff in game to make reasonable economic decisions.
Yup. That item has no worth since tons of people are grinding it out anyway. Market is working as it should in that case.
I've found that kiting around with the damage rune on caltrops shreds almost everything in Hell. Still works in Inferno, too. The slow doesn't really work on elite mobs, but the damage does. It was ticking for around 3.5-5k, but I don't know if that's just because of abusing the max crit thing or what. I used that, ball lightning, [impale/rapid shot], devouring shot, ss (extended) and prep (hatred) all the way through Hell, no issues. If you use ss with the discipline-over-time rune on prep, you can get like 12 seconds of invulnerability. It's absurd.
I ended up being really disappointed with nether tentacles. The lifesteal is almost negligible, and it does the same damage as the rest.