Life on hit is only going to work well with a fast attacking character. My mage has a spear with 91 Life on Hit and it doesn't do much good for her, all things considered.
==Aelryinth
When you get to the point where all you can do is run around in circles and cast self-targeting spells because stopping long enough to aim will get you killed, I imagine 91 life on hit would no longer do much of anything. :)
Ouch, that sounds like not so much fun. Killing with radiating spells? Ugh.
I just finished barbarian on Nightmare. WAAAAAY easier then mage and DH...and that's with extremely limited healing! Why? Very simple. There's a stunlock frenzy run at level 51. Once you have that, it's just a matter of not dying as your stuns keep breaking the Diablo animations, and having the 3% of damage dealt passive skill to slowly regen, and the Pound of Flesh animation to spork out more healing globes.
I died twice, both times in the dream realm. The first time, I had no reserve healing when I went in. The second time, I had used up my 3 stooges and my Wrath of Berzerker, and had nothing to fall back on.
The third time, I smashed Diablo down with Frenzy stuns, using shouts and stomps as needed, and entered the dream realm at basically full health. I went right to berzerker to kill the clone, beat on the shadow diablo, summoned the 3 stooges to kill the shadow clone, and only had to drink two potions before I finally got the shadow guy in a frenzy-stun lock, and returned back to the main chamber.
In the main chamber, with the healing wells, I just had to be careful not to get imprisoned and lose 2/3 health, and then killed by an idle swipe. Both my timers for Wrath and Stooges came up, I used them as they did, and me and the ancestors hacked him down.
Considerably easier then the other two times. I almost shudder to think how the monk is going to be, with similar defenses and much better healing capability. If he's got a chain stun, I might beat Diablo first time...
key to this mess? Using a dagger. it's the fastest weapon. It took my DPS down about 20%, but I was using a 165 weapon after socket, and the key to stuns is, of course, number of attacks, not amount of damage. So I used the fastest weapon I could and piled on the stuns.
The stunning bash ended up being my rote attack until I got that rune, as it was effective on elites to some extent, but the hordes of weenies in the dungeons running up forced me to keep cleave on my bar. Shout, stomp for stun, and then bash away. If I could time it, a cleave for the last two hits made them blow up and injure their friends, which was always useful.
And I'm really growing to hate those arcane guys tossing out those lines of energy, especially when they scissor together and I've no way to avoid them except a leap...and hey, look at that, i can't fit a leap into my hot keys.
()*&()*&
==Aelryinth
==Aelryinth
Okay, I definitely started with the wrong class to try to get to level 60 first.
I'm sending my monk through on Nightmare. I have not died once.
Yeah, that's right. Boss fights, elite fights, swarms of goons...I have not died once.
I'm not doing the "Mass damage heal on hit" route. I'm not using two weapons...I learned the hard way with the barbarian that a shield is actually damn useful.
No, he's shield and whatever high DR weapon he can use, preferably a Fist or a Dagger if I can get it, but whatever works.
His defenses are INCREDIBLE. He's got a Heal Self, and Serenity on top of it to both heal and buy him a few seconds. He's got a mantra that gives him self-healing better then the Templar hands out...and it gives him impressive heal-on-hit, if you take that option. I just got the 'One with ALL' passive that enables your highest resistance to an element to be ALL elements.
His primary ability score is Dex, which means a high Dodge. Add that to the Shield's Block, and the fact monks and barbs take less damage by rote, and he can tank stuff that was murdering my barbarian. He adds his dex score right to his Armor. The 'teleporting fist' standard attack is excellent damage, with a built-in AoE that approximates a barb's Cleave without giving up individual damage...and he can reach ANY opponent, including one running away, moving around, sniping at him...which also means he's running away from stuff trying to follow him in a fight, shoot at him in a fight, meaning he takes much less damage and its harder to surround them. He can't teleport or dodge or evade with movement like, say, a DH or a mage, but he doesn't need to, because he's not supposed to run and shoot.
Plus, no treasure goblin EVER gets away from him.
I use the 'bell' base AoE attack in its round form...the area of effect is huge, AND it has a knockback. I have killed elites trying to ring me with fire chains by simply using this to seperate them and prevent the chains from having an effect, then teleporting to one of them and starting the beat down.
For boss fights, the Hundred Fist technique with the residual holy damage starts adding up nicely, but I'm not fixated on massive damage with him, preferring survivability.
==========
Has anyone noticed a fast healing problem with elites using fire chains?
I've now run across two unkillable elites, both with fire chains, and both of them regaining health so fast that if there was any interruption in the killing (like, say, trying to evade/run), they basically regained all their health.
This last one was on Hell difficulty, and was an elite burrowing team...Fire Chain Frost LIghtning Fast. Ouch. Threw out AoE damage, could run faster then me, AND the fire chains...all bad, but all the dogs basically regenned to full after they killed me. I was extremely miffed after 6 deaths and NO progress for my DH...I lured them off to the side, died, and just evaded them thereafter, highly annoyed.
========
My level 54 wizard is finding it harder and harder to function.
She doesn't have the damage output, the evasion ability, the tanking ability, or the spell choice I need. Now, on Hell difficulty you can actually find stuff higher level then you can use, so her gear isn't totally horrible...but the 'need' keeps changing so fast on spur of the moment, and killing just routine creatures takes up waaay too much arcane power. Elites just maul her, and I do a lot of running around while the hydra pecks them down. I have to use a shield just to tank with any hope of success (which isn't bad, as a +Int mod shield at that level is actually better then most off-hand focii).
My DH is having elite problems, although I'm wondering if I just need to bite the bullet and put fan of knives on my board to clear out room when I get surrounded. keep having to change weapons...crossbow is better with rapid fire, but bow/h crossbow are better with Hungering Shot because of rate of fire. Her dodge is good, but not good enough.
The barb is excellent when he novas...and average to poor at other times. He doesn't have the tanking power or regen of the monk. If he gets caught while his Berserk or Ancestor timers are down, he's in a world of hurt. I'm probably going to have to give up his shout and stun-jump for a Leap just to give him manuverability. I haven't tried him out on Hell level yet.
==========
In sum, I think I'll try to play the monk all the way through Hell level first as my 'lead' character, because it will be the easiest to play and thus pick up stuff for the other characters.
Wonder if the witch docter is going to be this easy.
==
Finally got the gibbering gem in Act III with my monk. One more item and I can make a Staff of Herding!
==Aelryinth
I didn't really have trouble on the the monk through nightmare until the third act, when I ran into some Arcane Constructs with Nightmare/Illusionist. There were 4 REAL constructs and they would populate the screen with 150ish copies as I ran away every other second getting nuked by them all.
Act IV was a little difficult too because some unique Morlu Sorcerers making the entire screen fill with fire and desecration. One with Everything might have been useful, but I just zerged through it.
It was perhaps my favorite playthrough though. The difficulty level was such that you couldn't just autopilot your way through.
Yeah, Illusionist can be annoying. That's why I'm using the Bell AoE.
285% damage for a HUGE radius in all directions snuffs illusions instantly, and does the knockback to give me breathing room. I think Fan of Knives for the DH will do the same thing. Have to test it...soon as I figure out what to drop. Maybe the turret...
The great thing about melee is you don't have to worry about mortar half the time, and with the knockback you can smash stuff further apart in order to avoid more of the stuff. Basically you're moving around so fast mortars don't have time to work like they should.
I just did the first two cut scene uniques in Act IV, and the first one, that spawns all the shadows, was cake. I just Lightning Fisted in every direction, about every five seconds blew the AoE to destroy everything I hadn't punched, and repeated until the unique terror demon was stupid enough to come up and beat on me.
Using the Wind Ally worked out well, too...it does 10% of your weapon damage in an AoE, which means all the shadows around it died basically every 4 seconds.
It's absolutely crazy how much better then the other classes the Monk feels at this point.
I'm going to hope I can do the acheivement for killing Diablo where you never use the healing pools. He's got enough self-healing he just might be able to do it!
If he's got any repeatable stun attacks Diablo is just dead.
===Aelryinth
Christ inna bucket.
Monk on Nightmare, Diablo...a total cakewalk compared to mage, DH and Barb. Mage, 15+ deaths. DH, 10+ deaths. Barb, 3 deaths. Monk, 0.
I didn't die. I didn't use the healing wells. I literally tanked all three sections. Serenity's damage mitigation meant I could endure his residual fire damage stuff while healing even more, self heal to deal with sudden stops down, and potions on backup...and healing mantra was good regen with extras as I whaled on him.
I basically sat there, whittled him down, recast my wind ally once, watched my health, and healed up faster then he could keep me down. Probably would have killed him faster using teleporting fist when Diablo ran away to get some distance, but I THINK the Fists of Fury with the extra holy damage is better DPR...and more strikes to help my self heal? Not sure...
So, as a monk I made it all the way through Nightmare with no deaths. Ending weapon was a 161 dmg Fist, 19k health, and about 1800 DPR + Mystic Ally (wind).
I'm going to play him through Hell difficulty now and use him as the gear finder for my other characters. Eesh.
Still have to get my Witch Docter through Nightmare, but I'm going to see how far I can take the Monk now. I was expecting fighting the Butcher with my wizard on Hell to be an exercise in frustration, I think this will be easier. Have to see.
If I try Hardcore, it's probably going to be as the monk. Even with less then level appropriate gear, it's got so many more survival options its just not funny.
===Aelryinth
Hell level Skeleton King with Monk.
Never in danger. Tanked and killed him. Forgot to go to boss mode, even.
Killed my DH first run. DH just doesn't have recovery options. Probably going to have to start running her with a shield, of all things.
Hope I can keep finding decent hand crossbows.
==Aelryinth
gOT MY Demon Hunter through with a combination of shadow beasts and fans fo knives clearing off the skeletons, and watching my Preparation and potion timers like a hawk. Hungering shots always hitting someone certainly helped.
I'm now using a 280 dmg crossbow with an emerald inset into it. With the increased crit chance for a demon hunter, says my DPS is up to 8000...over twice that of ANY of my other characters.
Hrn.
Witch Docter chugging along fine on nightmare. He hasn't died yet, only come close once, and he'll probably be fighting the Butcher tomorrow...
Monk is into Act 3 Hell, about to go out on the battlefield. He's dying a lot, but so far there has not been an enemy I haven't been able to kill. I sometimes have to switch on the fly between the ranged attack and the teleporting fist. Belial killed me twice...I then swapped out for extended serenity to survive his acid, the regen circle for extra healing during the beat down phase, and killed him without too much trouble. It did take a while...I haven't been able to crack the 4k damage barriar on any character except the DH, maybe because I haven't been able to find decent weapons, I don't know. My monk is 58 and using a 260 dmg UA, I can feel the pain in how long it takes me to kill stuff.
There are some enemies you have to be EXTREMELY disciplined about killing. You MUST kill the minions before you take out the boss. They tend to inflict about the same amount of damage, but they die a lot faster. Once you can solo the boss, you keep an eye on your health, but the monk with a healing mantra up and a couple of heal self effects, plus the emergency potion, can generally stay ahead of the curve.
Anytime I get a bouncing mortar combo, I have to go to the Spear hand, hold my ground, and shoot at them under their mortar range while not getting into pure melee and make them run away (which sucks even more if they are molten) of have fire chains.
My demon hunter has been stewing at the doorstep to the Butcher. I'm not sure how I'm going to go about killing him, given that he one shot me on a charge, and I don't know how to avoid that every time. I suppose I could do evasion and watch the sentry take him down, but that will literally take forever.
Well, maybe not, my DPS IS pretty high...
My barbarian has the grandest nova of my Hell level characters with the berserk rage + 3 stooges. That still doesn't help him a whole lot since those have LONG cool down times, and if something else aggroes into a fight, its generally too much. It's hard switching to eldritch spear, which unfortunately uses up rage, if he's fighting something that likes to keep its distance, too.
Have to wait out cooldowns for those things is very much not a lot of fun.
My most aggravating fight was a gold elite with no less then six minions...fire construct undead with the jailer feature. Yeah. basically, if you stayed in one position more then four seconds, you died as all those fireballs converged. I had to pick off the minions one by one, or use the huge AoE wrath of light effect to do SOME damage to all of them.
But the thing which made that fight interesting, other then a spawn of vipers aggro'ing in, is when I fled outside to heal, I inadvertently spawned a lacuni elite sword guy with four friends. While I was arunning pellmell from him into what I at first thought was clear territory, I aggro'd two wasp spawns, a rock giant, and a gaggle of imps.
The lacuni, of course, are natural mortar tossers..they always toss before they jump at you. Which meant I had to run, avoid the firebombs, engage for 3-4 seconds with whoever was in the lead, runrunrun and heal, wait out the cooldowns, do it again, etc etc. Teleporting fist helps with the instant charge, but doesn't help the running away all that much. I put that poor sorceress through a lot, and went through my mystick ally quite often! :) He's not as durable as he used to be, I might have to start using some other tactic, I'm just not sure what. I do enjoy it when my ally, sorceress and myself can all gang up on a big boss and I watch his health bar really start to go down...
My monk's sorceress is actually using a 360 dmg staff I found, which is annoying me to no end. I don't want to go two handed, I know what will happen to his durability if I do. But I really need better weapons, and I'm just not finding it. If I can't break 5-6k dps at a minimum for Diable, I'm betting that fight is going to be a huge exercise in frustration...
==Aelryinth
My wizard is really only useful in groups with a tank. Even then it's a bit "eh."
Sadly, the game failed to stay fresh for me for even 2 weeks. Got bored with it very quickly. Enjoyed my Demon Hunter for the first playthrough - Nightmare got very boring as soon as I got to Act II.
Wizard play through was unenjoyable from the start, but I persevered through the first act. Haven't had the desire to even start Act II with him - just didn't enjoy the class at all.
No interest in the Witch Doctor or Barbarian. Considered a Monk, but knowing that Act II is lying in wait stole my motivation to try one out.
Interestingly enough, I had a similar experience in D2 - Acts I and IV were the only two I enjoyed. I hated the desert and the jungle.
Oh, I still have to complete the Staff of Herding. And I've heard that if you arrange it right somehow, you can go through the portal the treasure goblin summons up.
The monk is by far the easiest class to play. It has the best defenses, the best mix of offenses, self-healing to speed recovery. My advice to everyone would be to start with the monk. The monk also benefits in that his Dex is both his damage, and ups both his block and his Armor.
Is Strength used for ANYTHING else then damage? The barbarian has a classic case of MAD...his defenses are poor.
The Witch Docter is the final class I played, and its VERY different then the others, since its all about minions. However, it's got the best base attack in the game, a neo-penetrating 180% RANGED attack; the best instant ranged AoE in its skull that drops poison, and a FREE immobilizing AoE that also does damage!
It's funny, Dal, but Act II has both deserts and jungle for you to hate, hehe. I don't remember a lot about the jungle maps in Diablo II, except for those little midget witch docters running around who were such a pain to kill...especially the ones who stood on the shoulders of another one.
I played the hell out of Diablo I, but on Diablo II, I got my barbarian to the three Ancients on Nightmare, and got stopped cold. Twenty times.
I had no interest in the Amazon, Druid, Necromancer or Assassin, and didn't even try them. If I couldn't take the barb through, I had no desire. especially after I heard the druid made a better tank then the barb.
III is coming across more balanced, and there's definitely a mental aspect to playing each of the three classes. If you put some thought into it, you can configure yourself to meet different opponents, but it can require some tactics...and some time. Just straight up tanking doesn't work past normal difficulty.
I'm looking forwards to trying a speed run on basic with a level 60 monk, seeing if I can do each Act in under an hour.
And of course, good gear makes SOOOO much difference. When you're wearing level 48 stuff at level 58, it kind of tells you that the loot system needs to be worked on just a tad.
Are you supposed to reach 60 during Nightmare Act 3? Monk's about halfway through 58, and about to go out onto the battlefield. The real advancing is completing quests, however, mooks are mostly for loot.
===Aelryinth
|
Every stat does something for everyone.
Strength is damage for barb and gives everyone armor at a 1:1 ratio.
Dex is damage for monk and demon hunter and gives everyone dodge.
Int is damage for wizard and witch doctor and gives everyone all resists at 10:1 ratio.
Vitality gives everyone hitpoints. I believe each class gets a different ratio with monks and barbs getting the highest.
Hmm. I thought everyone got enhanced HP from vitality, but Barbs and monks got more per level.
Armor, eh? Figures. The armor reduction table is very unkind to damage at the higher end.
BTW, has anyone soloed all the way through inferno? It'd be a heck of an acheivement.
==Aelryinth
My barb's biggest problem is his recovery options for hit points. How did you handle that problem?
Templar? Heal on strike gear? Lots of regen stuff.
Note that on the Diablo boards now they are pointing out that the gear that drops is of MUCH lesser quality after the patch...a fact I seem to agree with. Especially weapons...I haven't been able to find a 300+ dmg single hand weapon for my monk, and it's starting to irk me.
Also, is there ANY way to break Diablo's 'cage' effect?
==Aelryinth
I just spent almost 3 hours and probably 30 attempts attempting to get my DH past BAAL on Hell level.
I got my hit points up over 30k and Armor into the 2000 range. I went through over a dozen configurations trying to work out what to do.
Running around and shooting wasn't going to do it, I needed a way to do consistent damage to him and stay alive. The Demon Hunter has HORRIBLE active recovery options...Prepartion can heal a LOT of damage, but the 45 second cooldown is lethal.
The entangling cord that grants 6% life/dmg inflicted doesn't heal anything fast enough.
I totally redid my bar in the end.
I took Brooding for the health regen between getting pounded on. With my life buffed up, the Sentry that regens 1%/second was a good stacking regen with the templar there. Actually, the templar in the area of the Sentry never, ever went down.
hand crossbow with a high Block/defense shield. 343 base damage, level 55 unique weapon.
I totally got rid of effects which made me use Hatred and used Brooding to accentuate the healing effect of the Sentry.
I would have killed for a socketable weapon, you know? Because I went to Cluster Bombs. When you back yourself into a corner, the bombs always cluster in front of you with overlapping areas of effect.
I backed myself into a corner of the initial encounter area, and simply filled the area around myself with cluster bombs. The Viper minions would slither into the area and either be stunned by continuous rolling damage, or just flat out die in under a second from being in multiple areas of effect. Then Baal would float over in front of me and we'd exchange shots.If the vipers coughed up enough orbs, I'd have no problem sitting there regenning 500+/second in health and tanking the bastard.
What killed me past that point, once how I figured out how to get to stage 3, was the acid explosions from Baal. Sometimes they'd box me in, and I'd die, and there was nothing I could do about it. One explosion had to be in excess of 60k damage, because it could take me from full life to dead instantly.
But if I could move out of spots into clear areas, and then rejoin my pals in the sentry's healing area, I could make it.
I got killed once with 3% of his life to go. It took me another hour to finally kill him. Damn poison novas.
I made progress once I realized I didn't need Vault anymore and could simply use a Spider for additional damage.
The acid bolas would probably have done more damage, but trying to switch defaults was suicide, and the cluster bombs did plenty of damage, as they each do damage, and they all hit him.
Met one monster I simply could not kill with my DH...unique scavenger in the sewers of Caldeum, with invulnerable minions. I could not outrun it, it was also a waller and could box me in. I couldn't tank it, I couldn't get away from it, and when they got on me I died in seconds. I lured it out of the way and let it be.
And then there was the time I managed to trigger three spawns of elite blues at once...accursed, lacuna sword guys, and dust mites. Yeah, that was an interesting time picking all those off as I ran willy nilly around the desert, and blundered into areas I hadn't cleared yet and started more aggro.
I ended up killing the accursed by popping into and out of a dungeon, and using wall of blades to inflict AoE damage on them, then going back inside...usually down 15k in health inside 3 seconds.
And then there was the burrowing elite crew with desecrate and fire chains, that could do 30k of damage in under one second if they surrounded you. Died a lot killing them, too.
Needless to say, playing the DH is much, much harder then playing my monk was. My monk didn't die to Baal, and the fight against the minions wasn't a problem with his exploding fists, healing mantra, and multiple self heals, dodge, higher resist, better armor class, and shield.
My DH can really, really put out the damage, however. With sharpshooter providing regular crits, average damage is considerably higher then my Monk at the same level...and if you've been running for a while, that first shot is like 10k damage, boom.
Alternated between rapid fire, and wished I could swap runes in without a cool down. Against elites, you really, really want the webbing shot to slow them down and give you time to kill them. Against hordes, you want Armor Piercing to mow them down, although I suppose Elemental Arrow would do the same thing. I'm actually not that sure how Elemental Arrow works, given how flexible and useful Web shot has been throughout my career. As an AoE I'm sure it's cool, but it really sucks up the Hatred.
I tried shadow power with the beasts bombing and stuff, and they had too many limits to actually be useful, not to mention the horrendous cooldown timers.
Anyone else got tips and tricks for running DH's? Keep in mind this is all solo play, and I'm not buying uber gear on the auction block.
If I'd thought about it, I might have taken caltrops and use the empowering area on the templar and sentry turret to up everyone's damage while beating on Baal.
I do have a 600+ damage crossbow waiting for me when I hit 60, that's going to be sweet. Been using the same crossbow since level 54...
Levelled from halfway through 57 all the way to 58 just killing Baal's minions. :P Yeah, I had to kill that many of them, over and over again.
==Aelryinth
A buddy of mine was telling me about his DH build that got him through Hell to Inferno. I'm fuzzy on the details, but the jist is as follows.
Heal on Hit equipment (as much as he could get)
Bombs
Caltrops (with the damage rune)
Sentry Turret (with a rune that gives you a protective bubble that lessens damage - sounds like it could be the same one you have on now)
One of his passives was the one that makes foes hit by caltrops do less damage for 3 seconds.
He mentioned Preparation, but I'm not sure what rune he had with it.
Hand crossbow + shield.
He'd lure dudes in, throw down 3 caltrops all on top of one another, and bomb the poop out of everything.
Every time a caltrop did damage it healed him and lessened the damage he'd take, every time a bomb hit something it healed him, etc. It sounded pretty effective.
I haven't used caltrops at all. I will look into this combination.
The preparation rune I use is the 60% heal. It's the best single heal out of any class, but the 45 second cooldown is murder. Compare to the monk, which is every 15/30 seconds with force of light and serenity, then the Healing mantra for good regen and awesome heal on strike. Serenity also makes you immune to damage for two seconds...it can even soak a Baal poison nova.
Funny how hatred is becoming less and less effective with level.
===Aelryinth
Alright, I talked to my buddy last night and got the build specs. And he did mention that hatred is almost useless, he relies on discipline to the extreme.
Bombs - stun
Chakram - shuriken cloud
Caltrops - jagged spikes
Shadow Power - gloom
Preparation - backup plan
Sentry - guardian turret
Passives - cull the weak, numbing traps, custom engineering
He's got a hand crossbow and shield and steers his gear toward as much heal-on-hit as he can manage which is currently at 1200.
He's happiest when he is in the middle of a huge mess of dudes. He takes less damage and heals more when things are right on top of him.
I'll have to start looking for heal on hit gear, because i've almost none. Heh!
Noting the build. I'll start looking at caltrops and using them more. Sounds quite useful.
My only worry would be discipline regen. Does it actually keep up with what he needs? Or is that what Preparation is for?
==Aelryinth
My understanding was that's what he used Preparation for.
I now have a level 60 dmg 607 crossbow, and looking for a hand crossbow to counterpart it as an alternate. With built in dex and vitality, the thing doubled my DPS when I equipped it (base is over 10k, 18k if I allow Sharpshooter to build for that one big crit).
I'm one or two-shotting most of the stuff I've fought in Heaven, and the elites are noticeably easier when you kite them for 10k a pop, and can inflict 100k of damage incredibly fast. I just wish the damn thing had a socket so I could pop in an emerald adn REALLY juice those frequent crits I'm getting.
The big monster xbow has a secondary benefit. Turret damage is based off of the weapon you are building, and with 10k base damage a spitfire turret is 2500 DPS all by itself. I had the same thing happen with my monk and his Mystic Ally. I got ahold of a big 2h Hammer, 742 dmg, and it was slow, but it just beat stuff down. However, the ally does 35% of your weapon as damage, +10% as an AoE. In other words, my Mystic Ally was doing the same damage I did when I wasn't using the hammer! Needless to say, not many enemies lasted too long that way, because the Mystic Ally didn't slow down just cause he had the Hammer of God in his hands...It was my Mystic Ally who actually killed Diablo, at the end.
My DH is actually having an easier time out on the battlefields, because of the sheer amount of damage she can put up at range. As long as she can keep her distance, stuff largely dies before it ever gets to her. For special situations, I have to alter her bar - that first unique terror demon in Heaven, I switched to cluster bombs, multifire, healing turret, and simply obliterated the swarms of shadows trying to reach me, then destroyed basically the whole field with multishot while the demon got to enjoy multiple explosions in tight quarters from the cluster bombs. I managed to kill Azmodan second try (the first time, I didn't run away from his fireball fast enough and got caught in the explosion). He died to my spitfire turret, sitting in the middle of the map while I ran around in all directions, occasionally stopping to empty my Hatred of rapid fire into him before running off again. Elites that gave my monks fits becuase of the damage they did I'm managing to kite and chop down...my monk's damage output was less then a third of my DH's for much of Heaven and I can see the difference!
==Aelryinth
I have completed Hell level difficulty on my Demon Hunter.
The hardest fights in the game I have found to be Izual and Baal, on average. I went into this fight expecting Diablo to be every bit as hard as it was when I did Nightmare.
Oh, what proper gear does for you.
I had 32k hit points, which gave me nice insulation against getting killed. I resolved that most of the killing was going to be done by crits and the auto-hits of hungering shot...I only had to shoot in the general area to be assured of a hit. Sentry turrets would be doing most of my nominal damage. I used Impale for my Hatred-using shot, Brooding/Archery/Custom engineer, and Vault, Preparation (healing) and Spitfire Turret.
I made no attempt to tank him. I popped my turret in the center of the map and went from one side to the next of the spire, keeping me conveniently near the healing wells and interrupting some of his spell effects. I'd vault away from his teleports and charges, perhaps squeeze off a few Impales, but mostly just blink with a hand crossbow, shield, and hungering shot (50% pierce).
For the nightmare area where you don't have healing, the key is again to avoid damage and kill your double as fast as possible...multiple stunning Impales for decent damage did that job okay, and I basically ran around the crevice while the turret whittled him down.
I died only once, at the very start, when I had no shield equipped and basically was snuffed on the initial charge.
Which brings me to inferno!
=======
Ouch.
The first unique I ran across was in one of the dungeons...basically a fast undead. With desecrate and arcane.
It one hit me. 32k hp, splat, dead. I couldn't run away from it, and there was no room to manuver in there. Splat, dead.
Nope, not fun. Didn't go back in there.
My next set of elites were bats in the first church level. They were arcane fast extrahealth electrified...kinda tame, really. Except the arcane was instant death if touched... But so many hit points it was very, very hard to whittle them down before I miscued, died, and they mostly regened before I got back to them. The rote monsters weren't a problem.
I'm definitely going to have to start using caltrops to slow stuff down or immobilize them, give me time to kill them. You can only run away so much.
Also found out that you must level each of your helpers from 59 to 60. Templar reached 60 and scoundrel and enchantress stopped accumulating xp. Rather annoying. So I'm running around with the Scoundrel. he does have about 9 times the damage output that the templar has, what with his triple shots at 1700 DPS with a good crossbow, however. His crit-damage feature also works out very frequently when I have Sharpshooter active, becuase I just layer on crits.
still needing more tomes of secrets for the final jump for the gem guy. Always behind on those...more jewels on hand then I need, now, just need tomes and books to work them up.
==Aelryinth
LOL.
I ran my level 60 DH through on a speed run through the lowest difficulty. I picked her because she has the fastest default run with the +15% from Hot Pursuit, +12% boots. Took the scoundrel along.
Yeah, I could have done monk and air mystic ally slaughtering everything as I ran by, but it was fun seeing uniques and elites just explode as the Scoundrel popped them, or my raven bounced off them. Sometimes the whole screen would start slowing down as I let off Withering Fire and everything on the screen erupted at the same moment...
and popping Shadow Diablo as it auto-vanished to spork a shadow clone, that was fun. WOuldn't let me kill Magda, however...I had to go through her cycle of demons and invulnerability. Her locust attack is actually from the Witch Docter's spell selection!
Baal I let the scoundrel kill...just sat there and three bolts at a time at 1600 DPS did for him before he could even do his poison attack.
Got like 8 acheivements on that run!
Elapsed time: Started 12:18, done 2:48. The quickest level was actually Act 3, because you have no wide open spaces and no maze dungeons looking to find stuff. The areas are all pretty tight and controlled, and you just run until you find the stuff you need. The siege engines are very easy to spot vs trying to find a specific dungeon on a fairly large map, or picking the right lesion out of multiple choices.
Now just have to figure out a way to get a metric ton of tomes to level up the jeweller. Does he really reach level 10?
And is it at all worth it to level up the Blacksmith? I have not gotten anything good out of him since I made up some basic beginner loot for my noobs.
==Aelryinth
==Aelryinth
well, I tried to run my mage through all of Hell level difficulty.
With the better weapons I found running my DH and Monk through first, her DPS went up nicely, and her Resist ALL is very good.
I moved to using the armor that limits super dmg to max 1/3 hp. That helped my survivability. Combined wiht Diamond Skin as a soak and Teleport as an escape valve, I even managed to wipe a double elite spawn in the Crater area by running back and forth between Diamond Skin cooldowns...
I'm still using Chaos Nexus as my main damage dealer. The main reason is that on larger opponents, they are getting hit with one of the secondary rays at the same time as a primary one. This is in addition to the mass damage for multiple opponents, which is great for swarms. None of the other disintegrates could compare in DOT. For pure DoT to a single opponent, Frost Ray is still the best, and you can sustain it a lot longer...
Baal wasn't as hard as I feared. The Energy Armor meant he couldn't one-hit me, and the Diamond Skin soaked me through the Poison Geysers. I switched to Fire Bolts for 3 x 135% damage for doing damage to him, and the poison hydra doing supplemental damage while the Templar dutifully beat on him...
I'm having problems with the first unique in heaven, the terror demon with the massive swarms of shadow vermin. terror demons can do huge amounts of damage, and combined with the continual swarms, and the desecrates forcing me to shift position, I'm having serious problems there. I'm thinking the trick might be a couple life on kill items, since the vermin die so fast you'll be regenerating at huge speed...
I'm also very close to level 60 and being able to wield a 660 spear I found, which is a very significant upgrade from the 320 axe I have (I can't seem to find any decent one handers between 55 and 60), so I might just go through the crater until I level up and can wield an improved weapon, which should let me swap out gear.
I died at least a dozen times on that first encounter. Just trying to find a good combination to get past the bastard. With a better weapon I can use a shield, and that should help out.
==Aelryinth
Have you tried using Blizzard on Iskatu? Also, the corpse-explosion rune for Disintegrate on all the Shadow demons could do wonders for you.
I use Electrocute/Chain Lightning to get 6 enemies; with a 26% chance to crit and the Passive for each crit reducing cooldowns by 1 second, I can keep Diamond Skin up indefinitely on that particular encounter. My main damage skill is Meteor with the level 58 rune, and Poison Hydra.
Blizzard is actually the work around effect I used. What really helped is I found a 630 damage spear I could use...which just about doubled my damage output. With that I could equip a shield for more durability.
It was kind of fun going into Archon mode and just killing everything and staying around as the duration kept increasing, but not enough defenses to keep her alive without some serious regen or hp buffs. I've never had an Archon stick around for more then a minute before!
I ended up using Blizzard when Iskatu showed up to cut down on the shadows, spammed it, and used the Arcane Hydra for the AoE constant damage to keep the vermin down. I spammed him with Spectral Blade for damage otherwise, and the net result kept the vermin dead, the area free enough for me to move around and avoid the desecrations and pick up the health globes while I killed him.
==========
Now, I have another problem. How exactly do you kill that unique in the first cellar dungeon on Inferno? I can't even do enough damage with my DH to kill one of the minions before they reach me, and they one or two hit me. Heh. Them being Fast does not help me at all...I thought about caltrop traps, but I think all that would do is delay them long enough to cluster about the entry portal, and then they'd just wipe me when I re-enter.
Gah. If only I could kite them one at a time...
I got REALLY lucky and found an 848 damage bow for my DH, too, which shoots my DPS to over 10k...23k for that first shot because of Sharpshooter. I just wish it had a socket so I could throw an emerald on it.
I haven't seen a level 63 weapon yet, or even a 62, so I suppose better gear is all I can hope for...
==Aelryinth
Is this in Adria's cellar? If so there is a fire pit in the middle. Try running around that while dropping caltrops to slow them down. Try not to let them box you in.
I hope to make it to Inferno soon with my Wizard. Having a hard time with champions on hell though. My solution has been to remove the death penalty by equipping all indestructible gear and luring them back to a checkpoint. But this won't work for my Hardcore Wizard... so hopefully I will find a better solution before she gets that far.
No, this is actually the very first cellar as you go to kill the wretched mothers...in 'normal' dif, it's a level 1 encounter.
There are 4 of the bigger zombie types...a boss with three minions. They are always fast, so I can't stay ahead of them, it's basically an approach corridor with a single room at the back, so there's no room to retreat.
I've noticed that the monsters outside in the Weeping Hollow are MUCH harder to kill then those inside the crypts. For instance, I can NEVER kill an elite scavenger spawn. They are too fast, stick too close to me, and every time I outrun them they start regenning back to full before I can recover, come back and finish them. I spent an hour last night kiting and running, died at least twelve times, and managed to kill ONE that I managed to lure away from the rest of his pack.
This was with my DH, mind you. My monk with the teleporting fist of doom and the 800 damage spear I picked up last night might have a different story.
For your wizard, I highly recommend the double hit point prismatic skin as an extra damage soaker, and teleport as your escape valve. For offense, it's hard to do better then one of the magic missile variants for damage, because the slow effects don't work well on elites.
Your biggest problem is going to be level worthy damage gear. For hell level, hopefully you're starting out with a 250 damage single hand weapon, and a shield or really good orb.
My main damage dealer for my wizard all the way through to Inferno was Chaos Nexus disintegration...it's simply the most flexible of the types. It doesn't mean I don't swap it out for special situations (Hell dif Ikatsu required a dozen different set ups!). I alternated between Seeker Magic mIssile (because it never misses) and Thrown Weapon Spectral Blade (which is a close range AoE with excellent damage). I generally used the Arcanot familiar for extra damage and mana regen to make the Disintegrates last longer. My armor effect now is the 1/3rd damage force armor...when stuff is hitting you for 30k damage, being able to thumb your nose at it and take only 10k is great. The damage absorption also means your prismatic skin lasts longer. Make sure you have galvanizing ward so your Armor lasts longer, and you get some health regen.
Note for you: Chaos Nexus does more damage then any other disintegrate to single targets. Why? Because generally one of the 'secondary' arms hits EVERY target you are blasting...including the one getting blasted with the main beam. So, not only is it good for AoE effects on close range stuff, it's double tapping a primary target at close range, and it's easily positionable along walls where multiple spawns converge right into the beam.
I've tried all the other beams, and none of them work quite as well as the Nexus. The fact it burns multiple targets means it has more utility then Frost Ray, which arguably does more single target damage AND channels for less mana cost...but I keep going back to it despite all the experiments with other things.
really, the combination of Prsimatic Skin and Force armor is really powerful. If your Hit points are not that high, Prismatic Skin actually takes MORE hits to bring down, since 1/3 of your hp is actually LESS damage...
I started out with a mage, then did a DH...but had too many problems 'leading' with my mage through Hell...lousy gear. DH has next to no ability to tank without really good gear, due to lack of healing/defense ability. I bit the bullet, and rolled my monk on through Hell level and got decent gear for everyone, it was MUCH easier to play, and in doing so, supply everyone else.
===Aelryinth
For those looking to do Nephalim Valor stacks, I've noticed that whenever you kill another elite, the Valor stack timer restarts.
I found that going through all the crypts generally gets you enough elites to get to five. There's always a resplendent chest in the scavenger or fallen dungeon's second level, although you will probably have to kill 2-3 elite spawns to get to it. I got my first level 63 weapon last night out of that chest...an 830 damage spear. Nothing awesome, but it's still the best one-handed weapon I've seen.
I'm now going to equip my monk and see how he does. I got my DH up to the Skeleton King and didn't even try it...I'm basically crypt clearing for nephalam stacks. I don't have the gear to endure his attacks or keep up with the minions he summons. My DH can put out big damage figures, but I haven't got any tanking ability to speak of, and burns through Discipline too fast to really do any evading. HP recovery sucks, too.
==Aelryinth
I saw a YouTube video of a person using a demon hunter to tank Diablo on Inferno. They were doing it by healing them self so fast that Diablo couldn't hurt them... at least not while those green wings were up. Not sure which powers she was using but it shouldn't be hard to find one that grants green wings.
Yes Chaos Nexus has been my main attack. Though I am trying the version of disintegrate that scales up in damage the longer you hold it on a target and that works great for mobs of even tough critters. I can never get the hang of teleport... but it sounds like I will have to learn to use it if I hope to get into inferno.
Teleport's big thing is that it gets you out of Jailer and Walls, but I'm not sure of Frozen. Having enough time to get away from an enemy and reheal is pretty important. Monks use Serenity and Tempest Rush for the same effect, Barb's use Leap, Demon Hunters use Vault or Smokescreen. Witch Docters use their minions. :)
Just started on Hell level with Witch Docter, and the dogs and gargants are much more perishable now...looks like they don't scale as fast as the enemy does.
I completed Hell level with my mage...it actually wasn't all that hard, just took patience. Prismatic skin and force armor are such lifesavers. Seeker Magic Missiles let you shoot around walls, and hydras can be put anywhere on the screen to pound on Diablo. Anytime I could get a crevasse between us, I shot away, popped hydras next to him continuously (used Arcane because it seems to have the best Rate of Fire) and just wore him down. had to be more careful in the nightmare realm without the healing basins there, but still got through it by being careful.
It's been real important to build up base Armor and Resist All for my wizard. Not being susceptible to one hits does wonders.
---------
Started my monk on Inferno.
He has more and less problems then my DH. My DH can't tank. My monk can tank...but not more then two elites. I don't normally play tempest rush, so he's easier to lock into one place then my other characters.
I've found myself having to swap out Mantra of Healing (extra life on hits) for Evasion, and then using that with the Lightning Fist +16% dodge. I can't regenerate as fast as the enemy can do damage, so evading as many hits as possible seems to work much better.
That's on elites, mind you. Normal monsters, teleporting fist to send me dashing this way and that, doing AoE's every third hit, with mantra of healing for regen and Heal on Hit, works just fine.
As a word of caution, you cannot swap on the fly on Inferno level. For some idiotic reason, they made it very hard to change your choices 'in the field' on Inferno. If you want to swap skills in and out, Town Portal back to town to do so. There's no cooldown timer if you swap skills in town. THe inferno skill cooldown timer is at least one minute long (I think it's two minutes, didn't time it).
My monk killed the skeleton King first time. I switched to sweeping kick, 17 yard range...every third hit hits everything close by. What kills you in the skeleton king is the spawns...you have to wipe those spawns. Once you do, he teleports back, and you can resume beating on him.
My monk had enough self-healing ability to recover from getting hit by the Skeleton King (serenity can shrug off even his massive glow-mace base 100k hit), and could wipe the summoned spawns fairly easily with repeated AOE attacks. My Demon Hunter unfortunately has to contend with cooldown times for Wall of Blades and Shadow Power effects to accomplish the same thing, AND does not have anywhere near the healing capability without some heal on hit magic...which I don't have anywhere near enough of to stay ahead of the curve. The Skeleton King hits me with his glowy mace, 35k HP, DEAD. A DH can't stand in one place on the King, or at least mine can't...there's simply too much one-hit damage coming down. Maybe overlapping caltrop/turret effects can mitigate it, I don't know.
----------
One of the posters above iterated how you can tank with a DH. Use the Turret that reduces incoming damage; use the caltrop skill that reduces the damage of enemies hit by caltrop damage; and use a truckload of Heal on Hit effects to stay ahead of the damage curve with either stun grenades or cluster bombs doing multiple effects.
I don't have the Heal on Hit to do that yet...I'm presuming you need at least a thousand Heal on Hit to make it work. I'd like to know the numbers where it starts beign effective on Inferno level.
==Aelryinth
I might come back for some more when the next patch comes out.
Barbarian is now up through Belial on Hell level.
Belial was startlingly easy. I weathered him with straight regen from War Cry/Inspiring Prescence and the Templar's regen. I managed to avoid any real damage from the poison geyser, and when I popped Berserker and the three stooges, took him down to 1/10th life. He never did a second poison geyser, which was my only real worry.
I tried two handed, found it frustratingly slow if I needed to do something else, and the extra damage wasn't significant for what I gave up by losing a shield. Too, the best 2hander I've found is an 870 polearm, vs an 8.30 spear. Really, no reason to go two handed.
Never seen a mighty weapon worth anything.
I'm using Ground Stomp (76% dmg+stun), War Cry (Armor + Regen), 3 stooges, Wrath/berzerker, Cleave for mook clearing, and Furious for boss slaughter, and really haven't found a better combination. Leap might be useful as a get out of trouble, but I'm finding that by the time I use it, I can't get it off in time to be useful! heh. The stun effect usually gives me enough time to flee...unless I get walled with 3 arcane lines of death around me...
==Aelryinth
I might come back for some more when the next patch comes out.
I've recently returned to my level 54 Witch Doctor (now 57). I still don't think Hell is very fun... but after fiddling around a bit, I finally got my mana consumption under control, so it's fairly easy now. Still, every champion fight is me running away while casting spells over my shoulder. It's easy - I've yet to get into any serious trouble - it's just not very fun.
So far, I have one of each character, but I've only made significant progress with a demon hunter and wizard. DH is in Nightmare and Wiz is up to Belial in Inferno.
Umbral, the monk is by far the easiest to play...especially if you can gear him out from a higher level character.
I've been saving weapons and passing them from one character to the next. I've noticed that UA weapons, wands and Mighty weapons universally suck for DPR, and rarely use them. I do try to restrain myself to swords, axes and spears...the other weapons tend to be slow.
Characters tend to find good gear for those ten levels below them, at least until you are level 60. So, you should be able to get really good gear for a Monk and then charge him through, if you want to make a character that can pass good gear onto the others.
But yeah, there's a lot of running away from elites at the higher levels, no doubt about it. My Witch docter is going through a lot more dogs and gargants then he used to...
My DH is still standing outside the door of the Skeleton King in Inferno, but my Monk blew past it. It's a lot harder to play a DH without great gear. It's going to be a bunch of close calls and great discipline to get her past that fight.
==Aelryinth
I'm officially over diablo 3. I'll only play when I'm bored and have no desire to be productive.
I haven't made it with any character through Inferno. I've got to finish my barb and witch docter through Hell.
But I only play at night, which I do instead of watching TV, so being productive isn't a contest!
==Aelryinth
I could breeze through Nightmare with my DH but... eh. I've been bored. I keep hearing of an upcoming patch that will add new and interesting features in addition to the usual balance/bugfix work.
I just got my Wizard into inferno. But didn't make it to the skeleton king before being stopped by an impossible set of champions. So I am taking a break and switching to a monk... my friend plays a monk so I know a couple tricks from watching her. although my friend got stuck at the Belial fight in Inferno. So far my monk is now 20th level and into act 2 of normal. So far it has been super easy. But then I don't expect lots of trouble till hell level.
I've so far 'given up' on five sets of elites, four with DH, one with Monk.
The very first was a hell level 'baby spider'...gold, with invulnerable minions.
I couldn't out run them, I couldn't hurt the minions, and I couldn't kill the main spider fast enough to die before they obliterated me. Seriously, I had only a few seconds to kill the thing before I was just dead.
I eventually lured it out of my way, died, and bypassed it, feeling dirty. But after 15 deaths, hey, i had enough.
Later on hell level, going through the sewers of Caldeum, unique scavenger down there with three minions. Same problem...all sorts of hit points to go through, and the things was Fast with jumping ability. It would run around like a madman, jump on me, and I'd be dead, couldn't do anything about it. I think I killed one dog before I gave up and reset the dungeon.
First Inferno elite...fast bloated corpse gold with minions in the very first celler you run into outside of Tristram. Three hits, dead. Nowhere to run, nowhere to dodge, couldn't get away from them, no time to do damage to them.
Gave up on them.
Then, scavengers out in the tristram weeping fields. Same damn problem...too fast, jumping around, hanging together. If they swarmed, I died before I could do anything. I tried a dozen different configurations and just could not wipe the spawn. Killed one out of the three when I managed to seperate it from its friends.
And then my Monk ran into a slightly different bloated corpse spawn in that first cellar dungeon, fast + mortar + Illusionist. Basically swarm me, trapped me in one place and pounded me down. COuldn't do anything, died.
Left it behind.
Thankfully, haven't had an unkillable spawn I couldn't just skip. The closest was Izual, but he's a set encounter. Nightmare level Izual with my DH took longer then Diablo, but knew what do do for the Hell level, at least.
Without some much better gear, later Inferno is going to be...interesting.
I wonder if I should do the group join cheat to get early access to the higher levels of Inferno and a chance at better gear...
===Aelryinth
My barbarian is through Hell level Hell, leaving only my Witch Docter to make the long trek. It wasn't even that hard. He had a 723 dagger my monk found somewhere, which meant very quick attacks with the stunning Furious Focus. Stunned creatures don't deal damage, which is VERY useful. Unfortunately Diablo seemed immune to it, I should have gone with the level 60 damage hike variant, but ah well. With a belt giving 2.4% life and the skill giving 3%, he was making decent amounts of health back on top of his 1% per second, and could tank right through phase 1 and 2's spell effects. Lingering damage could wear him down, but it was easy to move out of that.
The WD is going to be interesting, because the survivability of his minions is going way down. Fights are requiring more direct spell support, and there's a lot more resummoning of doggies going on.
Because I needed storage space, I started a level 1 Witch Docter, and got her through the crown so she could town portal. Decided to try out some other spells if I bother to level her, becuase the Normal Difficulty Witch Docter is insanely easy to play.
Let me tell you, it's pretty funny pitching out jars of spiders to swarm over opponents! Alas that the damage is VERY low.
Firebats was more useful then I'd thought I'd be, basically to take care of things that got past my doggies, although it really eats up the mana. Unfortunately, Grasp of the Dead, with the slow effect and continual damage, is generally more useful overall. But I'll be testing out the variants if I bother to level her up.
My monk is the only character that has gotten past the Inferno Skeleton King so far, mostly because I'm dreading the slog that is going to take getting my DH through.
BTW, my record for a level appropriate character doing the Soul Jar is 92, for a DH with excellent gear, Penetrating Shot auto-hitting with every shot and on average killing 2 per shot. My monk with Teleporting Fist was 80 something, I believe. I'm tempted to bring in my high level DH into a normal room and see if I can break 100...
==Aelryinth
I'm glad they're getting rid of invulnerable minions in the 1.04 patch. Some of the changes are getting me excited to play again. So far, I've gotten my Wizard and Demon Hunter into Inferno, basically running into the same problems with the elites in the Caldeum reservoirs. Invulnerable minions can be beaten with large amounts of kiting and AoE's but it takes lots of room and takes way too much time just to defeat a simple pack of champions, and if they have the wrong set of other abilities (like waller, frozen, and vortex), I end up just resetting the dungeon. What's also horrible is that the monster health resets unless you lead them into view of your restart point, but thankfully, they're fixing that too..
YAY!
100 more "paragon" levels to grind!
I think I will uninstall this when I get home, pointless repetition does not equal a fun game to me.
YAY!
100 more "paragon" levels to grind!
I think I will uninstall this when I get home, pointless repetition does not equal a fun game to me.
I think I've played it once in the last month. It's good mindless entertainment if you're in the mood, but otherwise its kinda "meh."
I've played starcraft II more lately.
Yeah it's fun the first play through with each class... but... They seriously should have play tested inferno. That difficultly level is seriously unfun.
Inferno became MUCH more fun with the new patch. I cleared out my chests for the new loot incoming, and finally knuckled down to play my DH and kill the Skeleton King!!!
Loot drops were AMAZINGLY better. I was getting uniques all the time. All of my armor on my DH is now unique. I was upgrading continuously with everything all night. My 550 dmg hand crossbow got upgraded to a 750 18% bleed, and in the same drop a 780 3.5% heal on hit!
I got a heavy crossbow with a socket on it, 780 dmg. I made a maxed out star emerald, because Tomes were dropping so much, and with Sharpshooter, her max crit hit 30k! WIth barrels and things now dropping loot, I was getting tomes and gems by wiping out stuff occasionally. Woot!
My armor class is now over 4500, health over 30k. I have a viable Hand crossbow, the 848 2.5% heal on hit bow, AAAAAND...an 811 dmg, 580 Heal on Hit, 4.5% heal on hit, +27% crit, +80 Str +147 vitality heavy crossbow. My resists are now all over 240, my DPR is in the 28k range.
OMG, vault cinder trail is crazy useful. Remember how you're not supposed to walk on those magma trails uniques leave? 1000% dmg if they walk along your trail! That means if you run away and they come after you, they are taking damage. Better yet, you can Vault ON TOP of them, and force the damage on them! I killed the Butcher by basically Vaulting over top of him several times, and letting him burn...and having elites trail after me is now a death sentence for them. WOOT, what an awesome skill. I have also learned that if you are facing Wallers, don't try to Vault away...Vault AT THEM, make them take damage, get into a clear area, and if they want to chase you and kill themselves, let them!
I also had a problem where I was reaching level 60, and my helpers were not. If you reach Inferno with a level 59 follower, you couldn't level them up because you weren't generating xp. Well, at Paragon level, now you are, so you can upgrade your level 59's to 60 without a problem.
The only character I have that is not level 60 is my Witch Docter...he has to complete Hell. With the upgrades to Dogs and Zombie, I have the feeling it will be much easier then before.
My only regret now is how little uber jewelry i'm seeing dropped...I didn't replace any of my jewelry, or save any of the new rings or amulets for another character.
My DH is 61 and I killed King Leoric second try, and the Butcher second try (second try was under two minutes, for the Acheivement!)
I don't have to worry about endless fights against burrowers, jumpers, and invulnerable minions...they took out the health regen, so yeah, you get to whittle them down by dying several times. Normally, for me, this was when I was facing a Jailer, and was caught with Vault instead of Smoke Screen.
The Queen spider was an interesting fight...I won with CInder Trail, again. She'd charge up to me and spit poison all over me...but that's a very long animation, which means she's perfect to jump past, and plant a cinder trail on, doing huge damage to her. Then simply get back into a healing zone/sentry for double regen+ Templar and set up a blizzard of AoE grenades and traps for her charging hordes of kids, rinse and repeat. Died twice, but the third time I took hardly any damage. The key was simply not staying in front of her.
Brooding is now straight 1% life heal, don't have to wait 3 seconds after wounding, i.e. like all the other classes that get a regen skill. That's immeasurably useful in recovering if you don't have the Templar...and it's stronger with more health!
IN short, I'm having a great time last night, and finally getting the idea I might be able to take my characters through to Inferno. I can't wait to qualify for Act III and actually start getting regular drops of level 63 gear.
Oh, and I got a Legendary Staff last night. It was level 55. I almost salvaged it from pure frustration. A 331 damage staff is useless, even with a laundry list of great mods added to it.
The funniest thing is I gave the Enchantress a 507 dmg 2h sword with +176 Int and +217 Vitality. Her HP went from 18k to 31k equipping it. I could have given her an 800+ dmg weapon, but I figured the extra HP would help her staying power more, and the extra 500 DPR lost was just gravy.
I got an 808 dmg 1h axe with a +157 Int modifier on it. My Wizard is waiting for it...
I'm still waiting to see a 900 or 1000 pt dmg weapon, but I'm pretty happy right now.
Excellent loot drops without needing to rely on the auction house. I'm having fun in game again.
==Aelryinth
I like the Paragon levels because now you get a reward for going out and finding new gear.
+ the magic and gold find stacking, and the stat boosts from levels, mean that you can actually get a little independence from needing pure stat buffs on your gear. If you don't get +100 Dex on that item peice, but it has a move boost, or + Resist All, that' sokay because your base stats are now better.
Plus, since they max out, at some point I won't need + magic find gear at all. Heh!
==Aelryinth
Day 2, Paragon level 2.
Levelling on just monsters is a slow process, although the more rares/elites you fight the better.
My DH is still unforgiveably squishy. With 31k life, on average she takes 3 hits and is dead...and it can be one hit on a charge from an elite. The only way I can think of to get around this is to get her resist all over 500 to 600, and I'm not sure if they use a curve or gradient. Right now she's on 48% damage reduction, and it's not helping her tank.
The gear swapping continues, but obviously I'm going to have to focus more on defense then offense, and get that Resist All and general Armor as high as they can go. I think armor is similar to Resist all, just multiply by 10, but I'll have to see.
Sharpshooter and Archery do not mix when using a Hand Crossbow. The increased chance to crit means very little when you're getting a massive chance to crit anyways. The big damage bonus for a Heavy Crossbow seems to synerize best, although bows are okay.
Cinder Trail is getting huge amounts of use from me. That 1500%/3 seconds you can drop on top of someone, and potentially keep them there, is my default way of doing damage when running away. IF I can webshot and keep them in the trail to take the full damage...nice.
The Templar is seemingly more useful as a blocker, giving me time to Rapid Fire something down, but he always falls, in the end, and then they come for me. I'm basically forced to use him for the increased regen and clutch heals keeping me from dying.
I hit Paragon 2 at dahlgur Oasis, I just entered the dungeon with the head when I called it for the night. I had a lot of encounters over the evening, got some minor gear upgrades, died a LOT. But still, I knew I'd wear the enemies down in the end, and that was something.
)*&^*&^ sand sharks. If they're not right on top of you, they are burrowing and invulnerable. I basically had to run away, wait for them to surface around me, blow a Wall of Blades, Vault away and hope I burned one, and then they'd burrow and I couldn't shoot them. That was really annoying.
Ditto snake guys. Vault away, they go invisible and not even AoE's seem to do crap to them.
Using an 811 dmg heavy xbow, Web Shot, and the bat, I can JUST manage to kill one elite if I can keep it at a distance on one load of fury. If the Templar was giving me hatred regen, it wouldn't be quite so close. I I ws using Cull The Weak instead of Brooding, it might work out better, too.
I should be using more Caltrops/spike traps, but I dont know what to give up for them. Wall of Blades or the Bat is basically the only thing I can think of. I'd like to use grenades, but the way they spread out means they lack fire concentration except in really narrow places, and Hungering Shot's ability to always find a target is invaluable.
My crossbow gives +589 life on hit, +2.5%. My DPR is in the 16k range, with crits spiking to 31k. So, 1000 healing a round, and it barely keeps up with a single Inferno level attacker, never an elite. I can exchange fire if I Prep/Heal and pop a potion, but once that healing is done, the amount of damage I'm taking overwhelms me. I need more defense...I might have to start using a shield even if I don't want to...I've been using a quiver to up the speed of my heavy xbow.
The average set of elites now has FIVE abilities. Extra Health and Health chain seem the most common. Ugh. You can't kill any of them until basically they are all dead. Sucketh ye mightily. But the unkillable combos are just not there.
It costs 15k to repair once I hit the broken condition. With the improved loot, I'm sort of breaking even. I'm finding lots of tomes and a decent amount of gems, but the combined costs of making the higher end gems means that I've only made one so far (emerald). I understand that gems become much less important in the higher game, because the gear bonuses can be so much higher, so I'm not worried about that. FOr instance, I've seen +90% crit damage on a hammer, which blows away the +55% for a Star Emerald..
I've considered advancing the smith, but I've only got two formulas for him, and haven't run across any others...they don't seem to be dropping at all. Given my luck at lower levels, I'm wondering if I should bother advancing him at all. He never seems to make me gear worth keeping.
On the flip side, I've two million gp, and what else should I do with it? heh.
I'm not sure if I have enough gear to attempt the caltrop/sentry/grenade heal on hit tanking thing. I'll have to test and see. It's much more involved with discipline regen then I'm used to, also.
===Aelryinth