Mostly witch doctor stuff
#21
Most of our games are generic clears. I think you're short-changing your monk. In a group, I'll bet you can hang in MP3 in v1.08. Give it a shot some time in one of our games and see how it goes.
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#22
Why not? I'll give it a shot tonight.
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#23
Diablo 3 is a year old this week. Why not celebrate by...listening to ME ramble incoherently on the IncGamers podcast:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comment...ulty-nerfs

Part 2 will go up in a few days.
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#24
(05-03-2013, 11:37 PM)Athenau Wrote: If you have a lot of crit I'd try swapping out leap for seismic slam/rumble.

I still haven't tried this one; I need to do that eventually-but I don't play the barb all that much. However, I did take your suggestion to drop Leap. I switched in Overpower / Killing Spree and that got me more adjusted DPS which in turn helps with life steal and killing speed. It also forces me to pay attention to surrounding terrain since getting boxed in without Leap is pretty scary.

For witch doctor content: Cloud of Bats! Lots of DPS with an added dose of danger.
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#25
I've put up a longish post on a D3 group strategy over at IncGamers. If you're bored at work, check it out:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showt...mbinations
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#26
Most of that makes sense, although as a cm wizard, I think explosive blast with chain reaction is a overall better choice than meteor. If you have enough crit chance and aps, you can also forgo using slow time and replace it with meteor or hydra. If your wiz has low hp or low loh, you can use Magic Weapon with blood magic rune - a personal favorite of mine since my wiz has low loh and no life steal, but probably only necessary if you are playing on a high mp level. It really comes down to how much your ww ticks. Glass Cannon might be tempting to use, but I would only recommend this if you can get a minimum 750 all resists and 4.5k armor (with prismatic activated), have 2.7 aps, and a minimum of 50% cc unbuffed. If not, Cold Blooded is probably the way to go. Although I am speaking in the context of playing on a high mp level. On a low mp level, you can probably get away with lesser gear/stats and use the GC passive. Lastly, I would roll with Evocation over Power Hungry, under all circumstances Tongue

I'm currently running with this build on MP 9 pretty comfortably, meaning I can take out most packs within two tries:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wi...Ybg!Yccccc

But I would only advise this build on such a high mp level if you have outstanding gear. Minimum of 50% cc and 2.75 aps unbuffed, 45k hp, 4.5 armor, and at least 750 all resists is pretty much required. If you can only get above 50% cc or higher by using Pinpoint Barrier rune (instead of prismatic), then this build won't work (at least not without many frustrating deaths) - you will have to forgo using glass cannon in favor of cold blooded to keep resists and armor sufficient, and crystal shell on your diamond skin.

I absolutely love this build - my dps is 310k unbuffed, 49k hp, and with prismatic armor on most of my resists are in the high 700's or even well into the 800's. Without glass cannon they would be even higher but than I lose that precious dps. For a long time, my cc was below 50% unbuffed with under 2.5 aps, so I had to use Pinpoint barrier for my build to work properly. Thanks to the super low cost of gold now, I was able to make a ton of upgrades for relatively cheap, and now have a beast of a char. Can't say I am a fan of any pay-2-win system, but it is much more fun to play with a strong char than a weak or mediocre one. I still die plenty, but there was no way I could hang on higher mp levels (say above 7) with my old gear and build. The main weakness my char suffers from still is low loh, moderate life regen, and absolutely no life steal on any of my items, but blood magic helps out with this big time - plus u gotta love that extra dps. Admittedly I mostly play solo and have only tried this build out in group play a few times, but it seems to be just as effective thus far either way.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#27
Your gear is a lot better than mine. Smile

I have played the wizard the least of the 5 classes, so I am in no way an expert. I have no doubt all of your analysis is spot on. The idea behind that particular post was to try to find some skills that synergize between classes, with at least some providing a benefit to the group as a whole. My understanding of Cold Blooded is that it will boost everyone's damage-not just the wizard's. And of course you're right that Power Hungry is not feasible for higher MP's. I had farming runs on lower MP's in mind when I came up with that combination of classes and skills.

I've thought about coming up with another group designed for higher MP's, but I don't know that there's much of a point in posting it. Mostly I would be just choosing from among the best builds in the game already: Wiz CM, Barb S2W, Monk WoL, WD Fetish Sycophants, etc. Plus you have to kite more on higher MP's, so it's tougher to keep all four characters in the same place at the same time. But who knows? I like thinking about this stuff...
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#28
Well, I can't say I'm a WD expert, but one guy I know who uses the 0-dog build is very effective in mp 10 co-op. This guy is pretty nuts, his base dps is like 190k but those exploding dogs do in the millions per second. I was playing with him, some ww barb, and another cm wiz recently, and the mobs were just melting. Two cm wizards on higher mp levels makes things easier because monsters just get LOCKED DOWN, but every now and then you get a really tough pack where everyone just dies a bunch of times. Sometimes they are able to cast in that tiny split second that your frost nova is on cool down. I want to make a nice 0-dog build for my WD but this requires really specific gear so that Sacrifice and zombie dogs have basically no cooldown. May stick to a basic zombie bears build. But, I will worry about that after I reach paragon 100 on my wiz. Just hit paragon 79 last night, barely over halfway there.

What are the toughest affixes for WD to face? For a wiz, I find fire chains, frozen, shielding, and arcane sentry the most difficult (nightmarish too).
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#29
Reflect Damage is really bad for the build I'm currently using, but it's not too bad for a more balanced build. Waller is pretty tough for bear builds since it can negate your DPS for awhile. Shielding definitely slows you down or it can outright kill you if you're relying on LoH/LS procs. The ones you mention above can be tough at times, but as long as Spirit Walk is not on cooldown you can escape them. But really, the only one that makes me change my play style when I see it is Reflect.

I've never found even one item that is good for a 0-dog build, so I've never tried it out. Sounds like fun, though. You can farm lower MP's with a poor-man's version using Grave Injustice + Circle of Life.
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#30
Here's the 0-dog WD I mentioned above:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Death...o/20822409

he does over a million dps with that gear, but also has trouble with Reflect. Even though it was nerfed, it is still problematic sometimes. I personally think it should be removed from the game, its just an annoying mechanic designed to punish high DPS players, which is a bad philosophy. I guess they feel its pretty much the only challenge left in the game for well-geared players, but the whole purpose of these games is to build your char so IT IS powerful. The concept of reflect is paradoxical to this, and it seems Blizz loves cheesy mechanics and trolling the player nowadays, so I'm not holding my breath on reflect ever being removed.

What mp level can your wd handle? Add me if you want, fireicetalon#1265, and maybe we can co-op.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#31
(06-13-2013, 02:32 AM)FireIceTalon Wrote: What mp level can your wd handle?

Now that is actually an interesting question. My WD has long been built solely for farming items. I'm not actually sure where he would top out at this point. I'm going to guess anything above 6 or 7 would get pretty ugly as far as number of deaths go. My monk has a much lower screen DPS (65k) but is comfortable doing ubers at MP7. My barb is in the same screen DPS range as my WD (115k) but has much more survivability. I recently did an Act 2 key run with him on MP9 without a death, so that's probably the char I would use for top-end MP games.
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#32
Life on hit, steal, and regen are key for higher mp levels it seems. I found a REALLY nice pair of Blackthorne's Jousting pants last night: 170+ Int, 125 dex, 400+ loh, 97 vitality, 11% life, and 2 sockets.....this actually dropped! Now, I've been using a nice pair of Inna's Temperance for a long time, but I found the Blackthorne's to be actually superior on higher mp levels. I lost 8k DPS and about half my movement speed, but gained 6k health, doubled my life on hit, and raised my resistances and int and dex stats a bit. With Inna's I could take down pretty much any pack but it was not uncommon for me to die multiple times per game on high mp levels. With the Blackthorne's, I've only died like twice in the entire last handful of games I've played, and that was only because of lag since I was playing on a wireless connection, not because monsters were hard. I have about 750 loh now, over 500 regen, and with the blood magic 1.5% life steal I can survive even the most difficult of situations now it seems. And I still have well over 300k dps. Pretty happy with this find, needless to say. I would like my 24% movement speed back, and my 2.9 aps (I lost 9% attack speed from changing pants) but in all honesty it doesn't seem to matter much at this point. The defensive perks offered far outweigh the small loss in dps, attack speed, and movement speed. Reached Paragon 80 too relatively quick since I rarely die now.

Let me know if u want to roll a high mp level, I can tank for ya^
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#33
Here's some more shameless self-promotion: the latest Diablo 3 IncGamers podast. Most of it is about hardcore mode.

Part 1:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comment...dh-follies

Part 2:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comment...ind-issues

I'm still playing, although most of my time is spent in HC these days.
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#34
Hi,

well alot of people are angry about the hotfix that is coming tomorrow, where gold will now be sold in stacks of 50 million instead of 10 million for 25 cents on the RMAH. The fear is that this will drive down the quantity of high end items on the gold auction house and that players will be forced to buy gear on the RMAH. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Personally, I think people are overreacting - most of the absolute top end items, such as Mempo's with 6 cc have always been sold on the RMAH anyway. There are plenty of high end items to be found on the gold auction house, items good enough to make your char strong enough to destroy Inferno MP 10. I've always bought gold from the RMAH and then used it to buy items on the gold auction house rather than using the RMAH directly to buy gear. Although the top end items aren't quite as high on the gold house, they are close enough and in general it is far cheaper to gear your char this way then to actually buy items on the RMAH 99% of the time. The gold cap is 2 billion of course on the gold house, and I do not see a reduction in such items just because gold stacks are being sold in larger amounts. I could be wrong though. Anyone have thoughts on this?

In the meantime, I will continue to power level my barbarian Smile What a crazy powerful class this is, even though wiz is still my favorite. It is so ridiculously easy to steamroll Inferno MP 10 with even just good (not outstanding) gear that its absurd. Reached paragon 75 just a while ago. Using WW/HoTA hybrid build, with Over Power/Killing Spree rune for a more offensive type build, rather than the usual War Cry/Impunity. Here's a screenshot:

[Image: 6dlh.jpg]

The 425k dps is with buffs btw Smile Mostly I play solo MP 9 games, but will co-op or play MP 10 pubbies here and there when I get bored of playing alone.

After I 100 my Barb, Monk will be next. I'm pretty undecided on what to do with my WD - cant decide if I want to use a bats build or go zero-dog build. And I've given up on DH at this point - just a very poorly designed and weak class to play, at least at high MP levels. And on low MP levels, you faceroll everything but level slowly, so the class is a snooze fest in my opinion. Oh well. I guess 3 good classes out of 5 isnt terribly bad (maybe 4, I'm still undecided on how I feel about WD as a class in general).
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#35
A guildmate of mine quit due to the low eDPS of the demon hunter. I can't blame her; she spent a lot of time on getting to P100 (12/31/12-right before midnight!) but then she really struggled on the higher MP's while her monk friend was flying through stuff. Perhaps the expansion will address this issue. I still like playing the DH, but my limited SC time is going to my witch doctor (now P93).

I agree with your assessment regarding items on the RMAH. The top end stuff in HC isn't even being listed on GAH; if you want a Mempo with more than 4% crit, you'll probably need to go to a 3rd-party site.

Yeah, the barb has huge built-in survivability. Despite not spending all that much gold on him, I can do MP9/MP10 key runs. And they really shine in HC because of how easy it is to boost your EHP. I'm spending some gold on my HC wizard and plan to have her be my main.
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#36
Ah, I wouldn't play HC right now, not even on a Barb because of the rubber banding issue that Blizz still hasn't been able to fix. Although it usually doesn't kill my barb, it has a couple times, and in HC all it takes is once heh. If they fix that issue I may give it a go sometime.

P100 DH huh? She must have a will of iron. Mine is only P26 and I can't play it for more than 10 mins w/o becoming utterly bored. All power lvling is a grind, but at least on wiz it was a fun grind. CM wizards typically have lower sheet dps than a DH, but their eDPS is much higher, especially in terms of aoe dmg. And my wiz actually has exceptionally high sheet dps for a CM, higher than many DH's. Still has relatively low dps with my Archon build though (about 460k with buffs), so if I want to play that I have to stay around MP7 or so.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#37
Some of my HC exploits last night, along with a discussion of whether or not to use the cheating death passives (IncGamers link provided for context):

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showt...ors/page10

So last night I took Dark Side’s advice and dropped Unstable Anomaly-more on that later. I also switched to Living Lightning based on what Vega and TDS talked about. This really opened up build options.

I have been running public games in MP2. Switching to SP/LL opened up 2 skill slots for me since I was able to drop Spectral Blade/Healing as well as Energy Twister. Since I have zero APoC with my current gear, I replaced ET with Familiar/Sparkflint for the DPS boost. Also, I had been using Prism on Diamond Skin; I changed that to Crystal Shell. As tDS suggested, Blur was added in lieu of UA. Fully buffed in Archon mode, that left me at 1MM EHP (and 1.3MM EHP vs. melee). I played for a little while solo in MP2, and I felt pretty safe. The only uncomfortable situation was a Waller/Desecrator pack when Archon was on cooldown. I think the main trouble I had here was the walls blocking LL, so I didn’t get the CM procs. Still, I really liked how this worked out, and I plotted a different strategy for later.

I was hoping Keldaran would be on with his monk, and he was. Since he’s newer to inferno on HC, his gear is slightly stretched on MP1-or at a minimum, he’s still trying to get comfortable with that MP. I wanted to try going all-out DPS and melting stuff before it could hurt us. So I ended up running this build:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wi...Ygf!caZYZc

Very fun! My buffed DPS was 110k and, with Mantra of Evasion/Hard Target, I clock in around 785K EHP. And I got to melt stuff really fast. We did 2 Act 1/MP1 runs and I didn’t have any scary experiences-although those elite savage beasts with the bad lasers made me wary. On the 2nd run Keldaran switched to using Cyclone Strike and that made the farming even more convenient.

All right, now let’s discuss the elephant in the room: Unstable Anomaly. I assume this ground has been covered extensively before (maybe even on this very thread) but I’m fairly new to Hardcore mode so I’ll beat a dead horse. Flux brought this up several months ago regarding his monk and Near Death Experience. Do you use it and hope it never goes off in 3 months, or do you use a different passive that benefits your character more overall? My first HC char to make it into Inferno was a witch doctor, and I used Spirit Vessel as soon as it became available at clvl 30. I would use it again, mainly since you get an extra benefit from SV aside from the ‘Get out of Death Free’ ability. But having said that, it only proc’d one time for me. It was against Inferno Belial, and I ended up dying anyway. So I actually think it makes sense to use Blur (or Glass Cannon!) instead of UA. It MIGHT save me in the event of a disconnect, but then again it might not. Plus if I know I’m not using it, I’ll hopefully be more cautious than knowing it’s in my back pocket. (Maybe not-it didn’t proc even once through P27.) It seems to me that Blur will help offset a few of the biggest dangers on farming runs: charging Savage Beasts, elites that you can’t keep at range, and exploding Grotesques. Obviously it doesn’t help with everything (tree poison, arcane), but it certainly helps you avoid taking fatal damage. I’m going to continue to test it in MP2-and perhaps beyond.

What do you guys think about Familiar vs. Force Weapon, if choosing just one? I kind of like FW-mainly because I get an icon to let me know when it has worn off!
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#38
UA is good against some of those pesky elite packs when you are leveling or farming. It really just comes down to where you are playing - if you are in an area where the base monster types are not difficult for your wiz, you can probably forego using it for glass cannon, blur or something else. But if you are in an area where the monster types are difficult for a wiz (typically in the mid-later parts of Act 3 - heralds of pestilence, fallen fire mages, demonic hell flyers are some of the most dangerous monsters a wizard can face), you may want to consider using UA. It's not really good for boss fights though, since it has a lengthy cooldown of a full minute, and boss fights tend to be lengthy, so if it gets activated you are probably going to die anyway. Against trash mobs or tough elites though, it can certainly come in handy. I've found it useful in very dangerous places like The Fields of Slaughter, Arreat Crater, Tower of the Damned, or Vault of the Assassin in Act 2.

As for Familiar vs. FW, are you speaking in terms of an Archon Wiz build? I use both on SC, but on HC if you can only pick one for the sake of needing more survival rather than dps, I'd probably go with the latter. Not only cause it gives you an buffering icon, but because it in fact does more damage between the two. Familar with the Sparkflint rune does have a ranged element though, so keep that in mind also.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon


"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
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#39
My take is that the wizard is the least likely class to survive a d/c, UA or no, as they are the class with the most proactive defenses. NDE allows a monk to survive a d/c rather well due to the ridiculous tankishness they can achieve, making the save worth a metric butt ton of EHP, even when standing still. The same is somewhat also true with the WD save, as it offers a couple of precious seconds of invisibility. If your connection is stable, and you are not fighting above your gear, it's likely worthwhile to remove UA, imo.
Hardcore Diablo 1/2/3/4 & Retail/Classic WoW adventurer.
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#40
Just thought I'd post an update here. After killing off my HC wizard, I built up a DH, but of course that felt too fragile. I'm now working on my monk, and am totally addicted to Dashing Strike (last time I played with Athenau he was using it a bunch). After playing SC for so long, I couldn't get used to a sword-and-board monk, so I bit the bullet and went dual wield. I typically play with some barbs and we run mostly on MP4 or MP5. My monk is currently at Paragon 51:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Aahzmadius-1570/

The most recent expansion news has been...troubling. Hopefully it changes significantly before release.
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