Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

soulesschild said:
Then comes the Life on Hit, Life Per Spirit Spent gear which can cost you dearly. This will let you effectively ignore a lot of affixes (Desecrator, Plague, Molten, Fire chains? Please, I can stand in it without moving unless I have 2+ fire chains on me). 1k+ LoH is ideal here with any amount of LpSS as a bonus (Your main source of LoH is going to be weapons here with sockets. Shop around and don't be afraid if the weapon isn't 800+ DPS. I came from Wiz/DH/WD so this was a big change for me. You'll want a socket unless the weapon has a very high base LoH (700+), these weapons can run anywhere from 800k-293847239847 million) If you can't afford 2x weapons with LoH, then look below or go with a good sacred shield.
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Parja's Cheapass Guide for Act 1 Inferno Monkage

Personally, I wouldn't put money into LPSS. It's a nice bonus if you find something on the cheap with it, but don't go looking for it.

Dedicate a weapon socket (I prefer 1h/shield, myself...look for a shield with a ton of Dex, good blocking, and high armor) to a Star Amethyst for 300 LoH and get most of the rest from an amulet. Personally, I say go all out on the amulet slot and get as much LoH as you can. 450+ LoH on an amulet can be had for under 100k. You don't even need to worry about other stats. If you can find one with others on the cheap, go for it. But LoH is priority #1, #2, and #3.

Don't get too hung up on having a ton of Dex and Vit all in the same piece of gear. Dedicate a couple of pieces of armor for Vit and max Dex on the rest. Decide on a resist and stack that and resist all. So basically, you want to search the AH for Dex/Vit, <choose one> resist, and All Resist. It's too bad you can't search for total of the two resists, so you'll have to play with the numbers to get the most you can.

Put a good amethyst in a helmet for lots of % life (14% for a radiant square!). Then, you can get 3 sockets on your chest armor and two on your Pants to amethyst up...if you need to. Get to about 25k life, then invest everything else in Dex.

That's it. You don't need to worry about other expensive stuff like crit, attack speed, etc. just yet. Follow those and A1 Inferno will be fairly easy. Farm A1, make some money, then start working on the expensive gear for A2 and beyond.
 
chockomonkey said:
I still haven't gotten around to changing up my build, it probably is the reason i suck. I just can't help it, it's a fun build and i have 0% IAS atm, so it's perfect for arcane orb.


Frost Nova + -cdr
Diamond Skin + more absorb
Poison Hydra
Teleport + Fracture (clones)
Arcane Orb + Arcane Nova
Arcane Missile + 145% dmg single target

Astral Presence, 30% slow on Arcane dmg, and Blur or Glass Cannon (cant ever decide which is better)



You don't have a signature (free) spell? I hand't considered dropping those.

I've tried dropping frost nova for force armor (because the reduced effect of CC in inferno is complete bullshit), but i still die anyway.
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Your build is pretty good. I personally would suggest changing Arcane Orb to the "Tap the Source" rune so that you can cast it more often, and I use Force Weapon w/ the +15% weapon damage rune instead of Frost Nova. Your Hydra's damage is based on Weapon Damage, so Force Weapon is a pretty good dps boost for your hydra. Also, I use Magic Missile with the Seeker rune for snaring targets.

Alternatively, try out Prismatic Armor to boost your resistances. It's +40% to resists. That, or Force Armor.

Try those changes and see how you feel about it. Also, just make sure you clear plenty of room to kite before engaging elites.

I personally use the following: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#acRXSO!YUX!cYbaZc
 
Parja said:
Your gear is kinda messed up.

What's your LoH and armor rating?

Give up about 20-25k of that life for resists. With 50k HP and 300 resists, your effective health sucks. Double your resists and halve your health and suddenly your heals and LoH are twice as effective.
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A little over 5k armor. LoH is... probably most of my problem. It's 0. Always has been.

The 50k hp wasn't exactly planned for. I will replace for resists as money allows.

That said, I'm still progressing with a lack of resists. I'm several quests into the act. I Imagine there will be a brick wall soon, though.
 
IMO with 400+ resist in each category I'm doing pretty well. What else is priority, armor? (dh). THanks.
 
Parja said:
Parja's Cheapass Guide for Act 1 Inferno Monkage

Personally, I wouldn't put money into LPSS. It's a nice bonus if you find something on the cheap with it, but don't go looking for it.
*snip*
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Definitely agree, but if it comes as a bonus why not? :) Though some speculate with Life Regen + LpSS you can get about the same effectiveness as LoH at a much cheaper cost. Just can't sit and tank though, have to run away every now and then but that's not my play style and I know I pay for it :D

Some good gear combos,

Blackthorne's Breeches with Blackthorne's Medal are a great combo. %life, AS, LoH

Sage Seekers (Get one with OWE res/50+ all res/dex) as Parja said, don't get too torn up about dex/vit on the same item slot. I only just hate how ugly these boots look in regards to the rest of my gear :(

Another tip, you should never socket your gear with Ammys unless it's your helm or weapons. Emeralds in every other slot. EHP is far more important that HP and since dex gives you dodge + armor, it's a superior stat in every way to vitality.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
It means that overall DPS number in your character sheet is what determines the damage of your hydra. That number takes everything into account (which is why attack speed matters as far as upping your DPS number goes, but not really for the speed of casting hydra).

And the info is from the link I posted earlier. It's even normalized as far as the damage range of your weapon goes (the attacks from the hydra no longer hit in a range, but will do the average damage).
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Yeah, I understand that the overall DPS # is what Damage the hydra is doing. However, if we say that a weapon does:

10 damage * 1 attack per second = 10 DPS
or
15 Damage * 0.66 attack per second = 10 DPS.

So my point was, with slow things like hydra and arcane orb, you'll usually be better off with the higher damage 2H, no?

Real game numbers:

I used a dagger (46.5 dps, 16-46 dmg * 1.5 attacks/sec) and a 2h hammer (46.35 dps, 47-56 dmg * 0.9 attacks/sec).

Virtually same DPS!
and
With the 2h hammer, my Blizzards did an average of 590.7 damage.

With the dagger, my Blizzards did an average of 346.3 damage.

When you're only casting something slow or once, I feel like base damage is king and not what the DPS number is showing. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
 
Rdzona said:
Yeah, I understand that the overall DPS # is what Damage the hydra is doing. However, if we say that a weapon does:

10 damage * 1 attack per second = 10 DPS
or
15 Damage * 0.66 attack per second = 10 DPS.

So my point was, with slow things like hydra and arcane orb, you'll usually be better off with the higher damage 2H, no?

Real game numbers:

I used a dagger (46.5 dps, 16-46 dmg * 1.5 attacks/sec) and a 2h hammer (46.35 dps, 47-56 dmg * 0.9 attacks/sec).

Virtually same DPS!
and
With the 2h hammer, my Blizzards did an average of 590.7 damage.

With the dagger, my Blizzards did an average of 346.3 damage.

When you're only casting something slow or once, I feel like base damage is king and not what the DPS number is showing. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
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This is correct as far as I am aware.
 
Rdzona said:
When you're only casting something slow or once, I feel like base damage is king and not what the DPS number is showing. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.
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Yes it's true, but there are other advantages to having fast weapons. You can kite much easier with a faster weapon while stutter stepping (that 'gameplay advantage' blizzard sought to nerf with the ias nerf).

Hydra and magic missile are your biggest damage dealers. The purpose of blizzard is for a little bit of damage but mostly for the slow. Arcane orb isn't really a good skill at all.


Most fights will have you laying blizzard trails with hydra every now and then. There's a lot of magic missile hits in between. I personally favor fast 1H weapons over slow 2H. I've also found that your overall DPS can likely be higher with a fast 1H if you find an off hand with good damage range (and other stats too if you can find it).
 
Parja said:
Another tip, you should never socket your gear with Ammys unless it's your helm or weapons. Emeralds in every other slot. EHP is far more important that HP and since dex gives you dodge + armor, it's a superior stat in every way to vitality.
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My understanding of socketing has been this from Day 1. Amethyst in helm for extra % life, or Ruby for extra XP while leveling. And all armor slots, chest, pants, (maybe even rings and amulets?) socket your main attribute.

But...

I think I'm kind of confused with what to socket the main weapon with. So at first, ruby was king, everyone was socketing those to get the damage up. Then the IAS nerf came and everyone seemed to flock towards emeralds to go for crit chance and crit damage. But now I'm reading your guys posts and are you saying you put ammy's (purple gems) into your weapons? Whats that for? Life on hit? Is this only for monk? Any clarification anyone can give would be great.
 
Rdzona said:
I think I'm kind of confused with what to socket the main weapon with. So at first, ruby was king, everyone was socketing those to get the damage up. Then the IAS nerf came and everyone seemed to flock towards emeralds to go for crit chance and crit damage. But now I'm reading your guys posts and are you saying you put ammy's (purple gems) into your weapons? Whats that for? Life on hit? Is this only for monk? Any clarification anyone can give would be great.
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Life on hit for survivability in Inferno.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
Yes it's true, but there are other advantages to having fast weapons. You can kite much easier with a faster weapon while stutter stepping (that 'gameplay advantage' blizzard sought to nerf with the ias nerf).

Hydra and magic missile are your biggest damage dealers. The purpose of blizzard is for a little bit of damage but mostly for the slow. Arcane orb isn't really a good skill at all.


Most fights will have you laying blizzard trails with hydra every now and then. There's a lot of magic missile hits in between. I personally favor fast 1H weapons over slow 2H. I've also found that your overall DPS can likely be higher with a fast 1H if you find an off hand with good damage range (and other stats too if you can find it).
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Arcane Orb combined with Temporal Flux is a completely viable way to play, imo. It does rely on you to cast a spell for the snare effect, but Orb provides much higher burst dps which is useful in some cases (shielding mobs for example). I've been trying it out recently and I think it's a pretty solid build.
 
Rdzona said:
My understanding of socketing has been this from Day 1. Amethyst in helm for extra % life, or Ruby for extra XP while leveling. And all armor slots, chest, pants, (maybe even rings and amulets?) socket your main attribute.

But...

I think I'm kind of confused with what to socket the main weapon with. So at first, ruby was king, everyone was socketing those to get the damage up. Then the IAS nerf came and everyone seemed to flock towards emeralds to go for crit chance and crit damage. But now I'm reading your guys posts and are you saying you put ammy's (purple gems) into your weapons? Whats that for? Life on hit? Is this only for monk? Any clarification anyone can give would be great.
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The IAS nerf didn't really have anything to do with rubies vs. emeralds. Rubies offer a static bonus which gets relatively worse the more DPS you have. Emeralds scale with your DPS. So at some point, Emeralds overtake Rubies based on what your DPS is. Emeralds were always better at 60 than Rubies (and probably well before 60 too, it just took some time for people to realize that).

Yes Amethyst is basically for Barbs and Monks for life on hit.
 
butterfliesrpretty said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwQ5aXOStQ&list=UUeBMccz-PDZf6OB4aV6a3eA&index=1&feature=plcp

think this guy hits the nail on the head on every front. Hope blizzard listens if this gets enough attention.
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I watched that earlier... and he's pretty obsessed with the idea of ladder seasons. Most people didn't participate in Ladder when I played D2 and the whole leveling to 99 was never compelling to me (I think the highest I got was 93?, never bothered).

Seasonal ladder grinding to get to some champion level will only matter for a small percentage of the population. It's unreasonable to think that the majority of your player base will care about something that only matters to such a small percentage of players. Unless there's a reward for being #2 million in the ladder "race".

Blizzard has already realized this. WOW arenas had the incentive to play 10 games a week just to get some points with the reward of getting gear with it. SC ladder is a direct result of player incentive. The very reason there are leagues and divisions (you're top 25 in your 100 player division!) is to throw everyone a bone (everyone gets a trophy for trying!).
 
chockomonkey said:
And here i've been looking for a good LoH weapon for my Wizard. What are wizards to do then against reflect affix?
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I thought about it... and deduced that my DH would likely do more overall damage if he had a really loaded LOH weapon that I can swap to for reflect elites. It wouldn't be my main weapon... it'd be lower dps (fast weapon so each hit is less damage - less reflected relative to the hp you get on hit).

I never got around to getting this super awesome LOH alternate weapon though...
 
^^ so what do you do when you come across reflect? I have to let my monk buddy kill it. Or make a new game. Pretty lame options if you ask me.
 
chockomonkey said:
^^ so what do you do when you come across reflect? I have to let my monk buddy kill it. Or make a new game. Pretty lame options if you ask me.
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Just curious, how much DPS do you do? I pop diamond skin and then rotate pots and hopefully by then some will have died, allowing me to grab their health orbs as well.
 
chockomonkey said:
^^ so what do you do when you come across reflect? I have to let my monk buddy kill it. Or make a new game. Pretty lame options if you ask me.
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I rotate diamond shield + potions, grab health orbs, and kite in between CDs. But it really doesn't do that much damage to me. It hurts, but it doesn't kill you quickly.
 
chockomonkey said:
^^ so what do you do when you come across reflect? I have to let my monk buddy kill it. Or make a new game. Pretty lame options if you ask me.
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reflect is a huge pain in the ass.

as a wizard i just kill them slowly overtime using blizzard and hydras... that way it takes awhile and my diamond skin absorbs a bunch plus pots.


reflect is annoying but shielding/invulnerable is worse.
 
Attacks per second i THINK effects damage animation as well? So damage over time effects may be quicker delt? Just something i've semi-noticed / theorizing.
 
I'm not sure if this has ever been brought up in this huge thread, but I think this will be beneficial for anyone looking to upgrade and unsure of whether the item on the AH will actually be substantial enough to warrant your hard earned gold:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtJnAcUh3qX9dDU1Y01MSnFkSVA3R1FZWVpHSnBzRFE#gid=1

Save the excel file to your hard drive so you can configure it for your own needs. It was written for a caster in mind, but I"m sure you can substitute DEX or STR for INT here and the damage output calculated is just the same.

I never felt a need to use something like this until 1.03 came out and now crit % and crit dmg is now a priority. When you're looking for these two AND ias as well, it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out if a 10 million gold purchase will actually be worth it without something concrete like this.
 
Maplehamwich said:
Life on hit for survivability in Inferno.
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Yep, for A1 with a monk, if you've got a fairly fast weapon or dual wield, about 1000 life on hit with good defense and resists will allow you to just stand in about anything but Fire Chains, Desecrator, or Arcane and keep your health up while beating on the baddies.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Just curious, how much DPS do you do? I pop diamond skin and then rotate pots and hopefully by then some will have died, allowing me to grab their health orbs as well.
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only like 20k. I've been doing what everyone else has, apparently, using diamond skin during my nuke and kiting the rest. My hydra has fucked me a few times though by doing too much damage lol.

Do resists or armor help reduce reflect damage or is reflect true damage?
 
JayteeBates said:
So LoH is the must have stat for inferno monks?
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Short answer? Yes

Long Answer? Maybe depending on how you itemize. There are theories and some have tested that having a fuck ton fo life regen and Life per spirit spent can equal LoH. I believe 2k Life regen lets you more or less back off for a couple of seconds and regen to full. Combine that with a nice amount of life/spirit spent and you can achieve the same results at supposedly a lower cost.

Advantages: Works while you're frozen/jailed and can't hit mobs (life regen at least)
Cons: Need to back away if you're losing life faster than you can regen vs LoH where you can just be up in teh mobs face bashing away.
 
chockomonkey said:
only like 20k. I've been doing what everyone else has, apparently, using diamond skin during my nuke and kiting the rest. My hydra has fucked me a few times though by doing too much damage lol.

Do resists or armor help reduce reflect damage or is reflect true damage?
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I would imagine they do; I do about 27k DPS right now, and have 24k HP and reflect honestly isn't even that much of an issue. I'm sitting at about 550-600 in resists, and TBH there really aren't any champion combos (Act1 that is) that bother me too much, other than having to kite them a bit longer.

I guess I could advance to Act 2, but right now keeping my repair costs very low and having a good farm in Act 1 isn't too bad. I don't get to play that much anyway.
 
Full offense farming act 1 mode I get 29k.

Defense Kite Mode Act 4 mode I get 20k.

16k Health + 2000 life per second allows me to Tank with Spectral Blade all day.
 
soulesschild said:
Short answer? Yes

Long Answer? Maybe depending on how you itemize. There are theories and some have tested that having a fuck ton fo life regen and Life per spirit spent can equal LoH. I believe 2k Life regen lets you more or less back off for a couple of seconds and regen to full. Combine that with a nice amount of life/spirit spent and you can achieve the same results at supposedly a lower cost.

Advantages: Works while you're frozen/jailed and can't hit mobs (life regen at least)
Cons: Need to back away if you're losing life faster than you can regen vs LoH where you can just be up in teh mobs face bashing away.
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I'm simply not at that level of my build yet :( Need to be though.
 
BDV said:
You don't need LOH for Act1 and 2 that's for sure.

Act 3, dunno, not there yet.
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Definitely needed in A4 with my current stats since my DPS is on the low side. I'm guessing it's the same with A3.

A2 it's fairly useful vs certain elite champs with lame combos.

My monk:
13kdps
5k armor with enchant
~850 res all
~1500LoH
40kHP (huge hp boost from all the %life gear I have randomly)
 
chockomonkey said:
Do resists or armor help reduce reflect damage or is reflect true damage?
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Yes, armor reduces the hit from reflect damage. I'm not sure which particular resistance, if any, does. My wizard has about ~5500 armor and ~700 resist all and reflect damage is not even a concern anymore. That's with 63k health, however...
 
cageymaru said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o3qrnYrlCg&feature=g-all-u

I saw some pvp in there at one point.
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I just got around to watching that. The guy's an idiot, lol. He has no idea how a game economy works or why blizzard has done of some of the things that they done. LOL@ a trillion gold cap and pretty much everything he said about gold and the AH/RMAH.

It's a glorified pitch for beta tester status.

But yea, @5:15ish, looks like pvp.
 
I almost fell out of my chair. I hit level 60 while playing Hell mode with my DH and decided to check out the types of weapons and armor that might now become available in the AH. What I saw was shocking! Top end gear is not only amazing stat wise but the prices are re-god-damn-diclous! 1100 dps crossbows are selling for 80-200 million coins?!? WTF? Nothing is affordable (under 1 mill). Is this the reality of the AH at level 60?
 
StryderxX said:
I almost fell out of my chair. I hit level 60 while playing Hell mode with my DH and decided to check out the types of weapons and armor that might now become available in the AH. What I saw was shocking! Top end gear is not only amazing stat wise but the prices are re-god-damn-diclous! 1100 dps crossbows are selling for 80-200 million coins?!? WTF? Nothing is affordable (under 1 mill). Is this the reality of the AH at level 60?
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Well, you can always switch over to the RMAH and get one for $250.00!!! It's a steal!

In all seriousness though, yes, the high-end is like that since drops with good stat combinations are obscenely rare.

You don't need crazy drops like that to succeed though so don't stress about those ultra-high end items. You'll be fine stepping down a notch or three and getting the more reasonable priced, but still properly statted items.
 
Dropped 15khp and 2k dps for ~450 resists and went from 0 LoH to 1339.

Let's see how this works!
 
i wasn't having any loot luck all day... was about to just give up until

d8KFi.png
 
Does anyone else's character keep moving forward when you try to stand and cast? It fucks me up all the time. I move to a spot, hold my force stand still key, and my character will still move forward (wherever mouse is pointed obv)
 
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