I'll say this...in the first part of Act V, NOTHING is going right for anyone. All you can do is kill and deal with the fallout.
I'm betting our Enchantress has a bad surprise waiting for her...but I haven't gotten there yet.
==Aelryinth
Yes, the conversations in A1 with companions is funny. Especially Eirena. That's where she first finds out the Templar is in love with her. And the Scoundrel is more comfortable in a cursed church then a holy one!
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Completed Act V on Master! At 2:45 AM last night. :P
Loot: One book of Dead Man's hands (unique bracers for smith) and a 2k damage level 70 unique xbow with a -29 Level Req.
Yeah, you saw that right. -29. It can be used by a level 41! My low level DH has just found his pre-68 weapon.
Final Stats for the big fight:
Companion: Templar (needed the heals, repeatedly, and regen. Dmg, 100k)
DPS: 415k (386k, see below)
Health: 408k
Res All: 54% Avg
Armor: 59% Avg
Crit Chance: 38.5%, +5% H Crossbow
Crit Damage: +385 Crossbow, +335 others
Skills: Vault for movement; Preparation/Scars for healing; Vengeance/last one with the stun effect, Animal COmpanion/Wolf for DPS and +10% buff (probably should hve used Marked for Death); Entangling shot (cold damage/slows); Rapid Fire (web shot/cold damage, slows)
Weapon: 2400 +600 dex Hellrack Crossbow (roots targets to location occasionally). I had a 2400 _550 Dex/Vit bow I could have used. I went with the crossbow because you get a LOT more sustained Rapid Fire out of a crossbow, and the damage buff from Archery Skill is HUGE (the bow buff is a flat 8%, with 38.5% Crit the Crossbow buff is effectively a flat 19.25%).
(Note:Bows and Hand Crossbows especially drain Hatred like a sieve, even if they can get it back faster. IF you want proc effects, like heal on hit or bleed or stun inflicts, yeah, use a Hand Crossbow. If you want sustained fire damage whose cost goes down to zero as hatred regen rises and resource cost reduction kicks in, you use a Crossbow. That's why most DH's prefer crossbows at higher levels!)
Skills: +20% damage to slowed enemies; Perfectionist (+10% res all/life, -10% costs); Single Out (Level 70 boss killer skill, +25% crit chance if no allies are within 20 yards of your target...Maltheal is a solo encounter); and the level 61 Dodge skill, where your Dodge increases by 6% per second until you dodge (this last was HUGE, since I already have a high Dodge from Dex).
When I subbed Single Out (+25% crit) in for Archery (+50% to Crit damage with crossbow), my 'rote' damage went from 415ish to 386ish. IN reality, it went from .385 x 415 (+159%) to .635 x 386 (+245%), or roughly another 100% increase in damage. Add to that +20% for Slow (I had +15% cold dmg bracers, but didn't equip them, wanting my defenses to stay high), and I was probably close to 600k 'real' damage for my fight.
Tactically, positioning wasn't that hard. Like many boss fights, you have an inbuilt timer as the battlefield fills up with damage areas...at some point, you aren't going to be able to move.
PARAGON: Note to all, your paragon buffs are still on your characters, even if you can't see them! When I made 70 and paragon kicked in again...nothing changed!
I totally shifted all my points from Regen (6700/second) to Resist All (picking up +200 Res all), and from Dex enough to keep my speed at +25%. Suddenly the damage I was taking dropped by about a third, and my survivability went way up. I let the Templar deal with the regen and relied on Heal on Hit for rapid recovery, Preparation, and Globes. The Templar's heal spell is VERY effective and saved my bacon repeatedly. The boost to Hatred regen also means longer sustained fire.
The best gear came out of Pandemonium Fortress, significantly better then every other area. This is largely because of the protection curve...as you approach 60% damage mitigation for Resist All and Armor, it costs more and more for each small increase. So, picking up 1000 pts of armor might move you 1-2% in protection %.
Loot spread was not solely focused on the character...I was picking up 2600 dmg +dex polearms, 1900 dmg +Int wands, and so forth. I think my Templar is swinging a 2200 dmg mace around, and popping out 100k damage. He's quite the beast.
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Single Out is a major Boss killer skill. If you've got a lot of bonus crit damage, it's a massive increase. It's virtually useless in normal fights where you have more then one foe (like, say, elite fights) until you get to the last one, but it's a great swapper.
The Dodge skill will Save Your Hide. Rapid increases in dodge mean avoiding 100% of an attack. Repeatedly. That's awesome.
The last Skill is +40% damage on anything with more then 75% hit points. This is a SPlive killer. It means your first hit is BIG...which means it has a better chance of knocking low health minions out with one hit. Against elites, it allows some powerful early damage. It's probably not as good as the flat bonus you get from Archery overall, especially given how tough the elites are, but that's fine.
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In Summary:
On Master Level Act V, you want to go into the final fight with:
400k DPS
400k Health.
Lots of armor and Resist ALL.
Massive heal on hit and/or some powerful regen.
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The new DH combat skill is Vengeance.
It's a boss killer effect, 90 second cooldown. You can put out a lot of damage really fast in that time period, and I was generally able to take down a single blue with concentrated fire, or a gold if I had a full bar, Wolf Howled, and could just sit there and drive it down.
The level 70 one is by far the best, as the Stun effect means the enemy is not hitting you, which means you can sustain fire better.
I had to use it twice in the Maltheal fight, and was just shy of finishing him with it. He died to trailing damage from an entangling shot as I was getting my health back.
I'm guessing that for Torment 1, my damage is going to have to be in the 500-600k territory to be truly effective in the boss fights. Meaning that I'm now looking to see what a level 70 Manticore can do.
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Final Note: I lost money over the course of Act V.
yeah! That's right!
Mostly it's because I salvaged EVERYTHING to get comps, rather then selling it. But I started with 25 mil, and ended with 21 mil. Swapping gems and combining them eats up a lot of gold really fast.
I'm waffling on replaying Torment mode or trying Adventure mode. I'll probably test out the latter and see what it's all about.
Oh, and now available for grouping if you want some help!
==Aelryinth
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Loot: One book of Dead Man's hands (unique bracers for smith) and a 2k damage level 70 unique xbow with a -29 Level Req.
Yeah, you saw that right. -29. It can be used by a level 41! My low level DH has just found his pre-68 weapon.
I had a Butcher's Carver drop last night (from the boss of the Diseased Tunnels?) with -15 Level Req. on it usable by a 45.
Loot transition from early 2013 to present continues at a breakneck pace. Whereas my Barb 60 had a ... 500 some-odd damage axe last week, she now, only 1.5 levels later, is swinging a pretty sweet 1300 damage dagger. Note, that butcher's carver I have, is a +141% damage increase over what I currently have equipped, but its utter *UTTER* lack of Vit on the stats would drop my vit somewhere near 900ish between my dagger and my unique shield (can't remember the name atm, some 1100 armor), and would result in a net loss of like 84% defense. I know those numbers look extreme, but I swear they're pretty close to what my screen was showing me last night.
I'm debating on whether to A) switch out my equip to the Carver and keep it on Normal as to not get slain or B) keep current equip and increase to Hard.
I just wish I could 1h that Carver...
Bwuh. My Wiz 70 is only about 200k DPS. I think it might be near 250k? I have no idea how I'd reach 400k. I am at only 69 Paragon, but that wouldn't make that much difference.
I guess I've got a long way to go in terms of gear.
My current build vs elites (currently competent at master, not so great on torment):
Repeated here:
Spectral Blades (Siphoning Blades) - For getting stuck in and generating shields and arcane power.
Meteor (Star Pact) - Constant rain of explosions, usually targeted on self while stuck in the middle of a mob!
Teleport (Calamity) - The most amazing mobility, and combined with illusionist allows near constant blasts of stunlock in the middle of a mob.
Black Hole (Event Horizon) - Gathers targets for meteor and removes awkward elite affixes. I might change it, but I have a lot of items with plus arcane damage so I like to keep the arcane type. Maybe spellsteal?
Magic Weapon (Deflection) - Simple damage + survival.
Energy Armour (Prismatic Armour) - More survival.
Passives
Illusionist - Free teleport all the time!
Astral Presence - More meteors!
Unstable Anomaly - One get out of jail free card.
Audacity - More point-blank annihilation!
The plan: Jump right into the middle of everything and explode everything. 5k life on hit helps a lot.
I'd really like to find a moonlight ward.
Edit: Also, you guys should sign up to <PFS>. We can do some bounties or rift runs together!
Yeah like Aelryinth I have been mostly doing solos to get the full experience. My wizard started act5 at 88k damage and blasted all out of her path at torment 1. That is until that first big angel boss where I learned the hard way why my build was weak. I had no way to escape being cornered and once cornered I was easily killed. So I dropped to master and kept going. At this point I had 200k damage because the drops of 61 level and up make 60th level stuff look like toys. However I was determined to finish the act at all costs and so I pushed higher and higher without regard for my ever worse gear score (I still have too many level 60 items to function effectively at level 70.) But as I hit points where I found it too difficult I would just drop the difficulty and keep going... by the time I finished act 5 I was all the way down to normal difficulty. Clearly my poor wizard needs a rebuild from the ground up.
I'm currently sitting on 20 rift fragments. When I see enough of the <PFS> peeps on, I'll invite for some rift delving!
Sign up, if you haven't. :)
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Found my first set item yesterday killing the maiden attacking the pandemonium gate. 10% all three fields upgrade over one of my 61 yellow rings. Also dinged to 65 just after killing adria. Long way to go to get my 72k to 200, but considering last week I was at 40k, I think I'm doing ok.
As an aside, adrias fight was the first real difficult fight I've hit in a5 hard, costing me three potions during. Didn't even have to pot once vs urzael. Though in the endless battlefield, I ran into something harder when an event purple mob was too close to a yellow scavenger mob...
Still haven't died since I started playing again. May need to move to harder to feel the bitter sting of death over and over again.
There's only three of us so far. Any more out there? It'd be cool if we could get enough to regularly have parties of 4 for adventuring.
I joined up, everyone else, just send an invitation and you can be included. Nobody bugging everyone, but it's easy to ask for advice.
I got my 2nd DH to level 70, mostly so he could actually use any level 70 gear I've found. He's at about 280k damage, went through on expert, but I've been using a Stone of Jordan for +19% fire damage, and +15% fire damage bracers, and all my attacks have been fire, so he's probably in the 380 range, with a +25% bonus against elites that is VERY helpful.
I did not die once during Expert level Act 5. I actually didn't die until I got wall-pinned doing some bounties.
FYI all, you get about ten levels running Act 5 on Expert and Killing EVERYTHING. I started at 56 and ended at 68 with Maltheal, so I rounded out the last two levels with Bounty hunts.
I'm just about to start my mage through ACt 5. She's rather frail, and I'm an idiot relying on Disintegrate and damage buffs which are probably going to not work rapidly, but I can always ditch something and see how Black Hole works. However, the +15% Arcane Bracers, +15% Disintegrate hat, and +15% disintegrate boots are doing a decent job keeping her in the damage game.
Oh, and she uses a Mirror Orb. Generates an additional Magic Missile. that's right, she does DOUBLE DAMAGE with never-missing magic missiles. I'm going to cry when I finally get something so uber I actually have to put that thing away. Double damage standard attacks are SO KEWL.
I've got a bunch of rifts stuff, too, but I'm holding off while I level my 60's to 70.
Then, I face the long, hard slog of taking a Crusader all the way up! :)
As for damage, people, the way to uber damage is base damage + crits x Crit damage. Crit damage is what drives your DPS to major heights. All my characters have a minimum of 30% crit chance, and +100% crit damage...most of them are at 40% crits and +200-300 damage, with my DH sitting on around 45% and 380% respectively. 45% of 380% basically means I am doing +170% of whatever my normal damage rating is, or basically 270% damage. All of that modified by any increases in attack speed, which is secondary.
So if you want big numbers, you want big +Crit damage mods. The easiest way to do so is a weapon with a socket you stick a big emerald into. The other is the rare weapons with huge crit damage mods (Manticore for xbows, Skorn for axes).
So, if you want to see your damage go up, get things with high Crit % and +Crit damage. Your damage will start to climb very quickly!
==Aelryinth
I've been running almost the same Skills as Umbral, although I've been trying out the one that slows stuff 80% when they take arcane damage instead of Astral PRescence. I'll probably go back to the latter.
I'm using Teleport, varying between black hole/Meteor/Arcane Hydra/power armor for more mana/ as the mood strikes me, Mystic Weapon for more damage, Arcane Familiar for more damage, Seeker Magic Missiles (DOUBLED!!! by mirror orb) for no-miss damage and mana regen, and Chaos Nexus for a combination of fast kills and area sweeps.
Chaos Nexus is by far the highest damage effect mages have, because the secondary half-damage disintegrates will HAPPILY hit a primary target, too, if they are close. If it's really big, it can end up getting hit by two of them.
And it's all arcane damage, so the +10% from bracers applies.
At about 230k damage just going into the blood swamp. Expert level, so that should be okay. I have died only once so far, which is nice.
In mass combat, I can go to a cold set up (doubled cold magic missiles!) or a fire set up (doubled piercing fire magic missiles!!).
I'm using a socketed wand of 1400 damage with a +120 emerald stuck in it, and a crit rate of around 40%.
Level 65 and chugging along.
==Aelryinth
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Finally hit 70 last night (plus 2 more paragon) with my Barb, and even got a new lvl 70 yellow weapon that was better than my 66 Ambo's Pride. Damage is currently around 150k. Definitely not where I need to be. Its taking 2-3 hits with Cleave>Broad Sweep to kill a skeleton in A1, and seismic slam is only getting about a 50% kill rate on most junk mobs. Fought Leoric, Magdga, and Zoltan and really only had a survivability issue with Magda's hordes of frost enchanted thugs freezing me too much, though still didn't die.
I killed the Butcher at 69 a few days back, to much ease, but the monster bump bt char level 69 and 70 was noticeable, and his annoying environmental crutch will probably give me hp issues. After feeling out my power level and looking at the A3 bounty of "Kill Azmodan" I said "Uh, no.". Probably need to run through story mode a bit to get to some of the unique areas and mobs that you can't get in adventure mode (the big goon before Alcarnus for one, the Pandemonium Gate in High Heavens A5 for 2). Might get a bit more 70 loots to catch me up some in power level.
The best pure 'loot' dungeon in the game is the Assassin's Vault in Blood and Sand, Act 2. Like 6 elite encounters, and big areas to fight them in. The outdoors has a ton of spawns, too.
The key behind getting your damage up is getting your +crit damage up and +Crit% up. The two feed on one another. Getting a weapon with a socket you can put a big emerald in also does wonders (Sticking a +125% Emerald in a weapon with a 20% crit rate is an INSTANT 25% damage boost. Crit rate 40%? 50% damage boost!). Base weapon are great, but to get big damage numbers, crits are how you do it.
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Clearing out Pandemonium, hit level 70, destroyed a barrel, and it dropped a legendary source. Went back to town, ID'd it.
The level 70 Mirror Orb. 10% Crit chance. Fires TWO EXTRA MAGIC MISSILES.
Triple damage no mana rote damage. They do more damage then my disintegrate.
I haf died und gone to heaven. Damage went from 220k to 310k when I equipped it, and that's ignoring the extra magic missiles!
Life Ist Gut. If I can get a viable hat with a Crit % booster, I'll be styling.
I now have THREE Stones of Jordan (rings)...all with different elemental kickers. This last one actually has a STRENGTH kicker, picked up by my wizard.
I also got Strongarm bracers with a +19% Lightning kicker, and 6% crit chance. Unfortunately no MM's do lightning damage, which is REALLY annoying. Unless I want to pay through the nose to see if I can get an arcane kicker, I'm SOL.
And I'm already down 10 million from when Act V came out. We don't earn enough gold in the game, even selling everything, to pay for the combining of gems we pick up. I haven't even put together my reds and purples, because I haven't earned enough money to do so. And swapping gems from gear is also hideously expensive (250k a pop for a Royal last night).
I'm bleeding gold, and I don't know how to fix it, because hunting for loot just gets me more gems I can't afford to combine because I don't get enough gold.
:P
==Aelryinth
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And I'm already down 10 million from when Act V came out. We don't earn enough gold in the game, even selling everything, to pay for the combining of gems we pick up. I haven't even put together my reds and purples, because I haven't earned enough money to do so. And swapping gems from gear is also hideously expensive (250k a pop for a Royal last night).
I'm bleeding gold, and I don't know how to fix it, because hunting for loot just gets me more gems I can't afford to combine because I don't get enough gold.
:P
==Aelryinth
That's no joke. The other night when I found a better pair of pants, I dropped them into Shen and there went 80% of my paltry 250k gp. For one marquess gem. Doing a single act's bounties earns me about 200k gp, though.
But yeah, marquess gems are retardedly abundant. Every respendent or radiant chest I pop? 2-4. Same with cursed chests, and I've had six drop from a treasure goblin. I probably have enough death's breath now to get Shen up to 12, but what am I gonna do then? Spend 2Mgp unsocketing all my equip, spend another 900K per socket upgrading marquess to flawless imperial? That's days of running just to bump one socket up 2 tiers. Let alone the 3.1M and 1 Death's Breath it costs to take 27 marquess gems to 1 royal. I guess I could go up to Master difficulty for Imperials to maybe drop, but I've got Expert between there and here right now.
I'm finding that running bounties in groups is a GREAT way to earn gold. It takes us about an hour (sometimes 90 minutes if we have a bunch of "kill x number of enemies" tasks) to run through and clear all 5 acts, but then the guys I'm running with can all solo T3 or better on their own, so I'm kind of riding on their coat tails running on T1. Still, I made 1.5 million gp after 2 or 3 runs, just from the piles of gold that dropped and the bounty rewards.
I think the Nephalem Rifts could prove to be a good avenue for getting better loot, but I've only done two so far. Whether they're best for improving gear or not, they are a BLAST with a group.
That's exactly what I've been doing; playing the game normally again with the Crusader (who is super-fun), then switching to bounty mode with my DH to get back old the gold I am losing from switching around gems in socketed items.
Something I've never seen that dropped for the Crusader was a Set Piece plan: Cain's something-er-other. The plan gave the means to create 3 out of 4 of the items in the set, which is pretty awesome. Between that and the Hellfire ring and my Crusader is plowing through the acts.
I am extremely sadface that I have so little time to play this/next week; I managed to play through half of Act 5 with my wizard last night. I'm using Fire because Cold is too easy, Lightning sucks, and Arcane is boring. I actually increased the difficulty after enchanting a couple pieces of gear to do Fire damage because Expert was getting to be too much of a cakewalk; I think my actual Damage is about +75% of my sheet. Even Master isn't difficult; killing Adria was very long and tedious because of her digging/teleport thing which prevented my Meteor/Meteor Shower and Black Hole/Blazar from having significant effect (Explosive Blast would've been better to have on my bar than BH/B). On the other hand, I had a special event trigger to kill 100 enemies to get a bonus chest: I killed !
I may end up having to do Adventure Mode until 70 so that I my guaranteed Legendary from Malthael is a level 70 item instead of level 68 or 69.
There's a definite power shift in getting a 70's item, so yeah, waiting for 70 for the end encounter is a Good Idea.
I've done the bounties, but I'm not playing on T3, which is +500% gold, and 1.5 million is literally a drop in the bucket for what is being spent.
I still don't have a Hellfire Ring, but I probably don't need one. I just want one so I can use a Stormcrow and that ice dagger and my familiar and a Mirror ORb and throw out like 7 projectiles at the same time.
==Aelryinth
Rakshaka and Macharius, you should join us in PFS! If we get together, we can split up to rapidly finish bounties (split up in the same game), then regroup for the rift. We all get the rewards, but do it in a quarter of the time.
I have a wizard 70 with roughly 400k DPS.
o0 nice. Mine got to about 340, ignoring bonuses for element and stuff.
My DH is sitting around 460, and I'm still waiting on a Manticore at 70...!!!
==Aelryinth
I've also been leveling a crusader with a friend. We got to 68 before reaching Malthael, so we're putting off the final battle and adventuring to 70 first.
I have yet to play a crusader. It's going to be interesting when I do. I've got 2nd characters in all the other classes ranging from 8 to 20, with my 2nd DH level 70 (fire focused, Stone of Jordan + fire bonus!)
Been wanting to see if I can actually get ahead on gold before I play a Str based character. I have like 48 marquis rubies to turn, which is like 5 million gold, and I don't think there's any way I can afford to actually convert them up.
Ugh. How do they expect us to afford all this stuff? And I loot and sell everything just to try and keep up with the cash reqs!
==Aelryinth
Crusader is loads of fun, definitely lots of balance and cool abilities. Alright, I'll try to join on in. I usually play solo (like going at my own pace) but am looking forward to joining up at some point soon.
just do a clan search for PFS and you should be good. Send a request to us and we'll get you in!
It's another +50% bonus xp weekend, too!
:( Back up to 19 million, tinkered with stuff, processed my emeralds, back under 15 million gold again.
Ugh. So unfair those people who had hundreds of millions from selling. I wonder if they'd burned through much of it by now? Heh.
Completed 2 rifts, got some legends, no keepers, although did get some nice damage boosting stuff if I want to turf my vitality.
One of us got a 2400 Dmg windforce with a big Dex mod, Danowan, I think!
==Aelryinth
I have something like 70k gold right now!
I've been working on combining emeralds and trying for a reroll on my L70 Chandoto wand to get a socket. No luck so far and I'm low on forgotten souls.
Danowan = Me
or rather, that's my Diablo name.. So getting the Windforce was pretty awesome. (I did that post right before I got on with you guys)
I made an Official Clan Thread!
shifting the discussion over to there.
I'm a bit on the technical side with Diablo, so I'll be digressing into numbers now and then.
Oh, and just so everyone knows, umbral is a Kiwi!
==Aelryinth