Diablo 3 Discussion Thread

Far too often I've seen people miss balance armor and resist. Survival scales with armor and resist linearly each and multiplicatively combined. It's best to run with a ratio close to 1 resist per 10 armor.

If your armor mitigates 50% damage, you basically double your survival (factor of two). If you run 75% mitigation from resist, you quadruple your survival (factor of 4). Combined you'd boost your survival by a factor of 8. You can confirm this by multiplying the mitigation (50% times 25% damage taken = ~12.5% or 1/8th damage taken). Howeve if you were to balance armor and mitigation to the same survival ( 3 and 3, instead of 2 and 4), you will have increased your survival by a factor of 9.

It isn't alaways easy to balance them, but generally keep them close to 1resist:10armor. Or another way to tell is hover over your armor, then your resist. Whichever percentage is lower, go for more of. I've seen people try to stack one, which when going for survival is completely wrong.

Pre-1.0.3 I ran act 3/4 close to 700 resist. It varies on your dps and skill load out , but it should be a good starting point for act 3.
 
Far too often I've seen people miss balance armor and resist. Survival scales with armor and resist linearly each and multiplicatively combined. It's best to run with a ratio close to 1 resist per 10 armor.

If your armor mitigates 50% damage, you basically double your survival (factor of two). If you run 75% mitigation from resist, you quadruple your survival (factor of 4). Combined you'd boost your survival by a factor of 8. You can confirm this by multiplying the mitigation (50% times 25% damage taken = ~12.5% or 1/8th damage taken). Howeve if you were to balance armor and mitigation to the same survival ( 3 and 3, instead of 2 and 4), you will have increased your survival by a factor of 9.

It isn't alaways easy to balance them, but generally keep them close to 1resist:10armor. Or another way to tell is hover over your armor, then your resist. Whichever percentage is lower, go for more of. I've seen people try to stack one, which when going for survival is completely wrong.

Pre-1.0.3 I ran act 3/4 close to 700 resist. It varies on your dps and skill load out , but it should be a good starting point for act 3.


it's just hard to get that extra armor without a shield
 
For the moment, you can be a tad more loose with resists on a barb vs. monk. The barb has a couple skill combos that would be considered OP in comparison.

As of now, I'm not terribly worried about gearing the barb properly. I'd rather get my Monk to where he can farm any of the acts before I focus on alt gear.
 
For the moment, you can be a tad more loose with resists on a barb vs. monk. The barb has a couple skill combos that would be considered OP in comparison.

As of now, I'm not terribly worried about gearing the barb properly. I'd rather get my Monk to where he can farm any of the acts before I focus on alt gear.

my main was a wizard so im getting a nice change of pace and gameplay.. i like my barbarian quite a bit more at this point. a lot less deaths which means higher farmed income
 
Monk is much easier to stay alive without being super geared. My first monk died because I literally went afk without pausing so he just wound up dead. The next one was due to an arcane vortex mob that I underestimated. The key for that guy was I should have probably twinked a little more from the AH at that level. I was feeling a little undergeared but decided to keep going. From all the affixes I've seen in HC... Arcane Vortex has got to be the most deadly. It is by far the combo that you have the least control over. I didn't really analyze affixes that much in SC, but it becomes pretty key in HC. Sometimes you gotta learn to just run away and avoid a pack instead of risking it.


With my Wizard (really didn't feel like playing a 3rd monk), I pretty much overgeared everything through Hell and managed to stay alive fairly easy that way. In Hell, you can grind to ~56 while in Act 1 doing Leoric's Manor and then grind to 60 at the beginning of Act 3. 56 has some nice item step ups and of course 60 has all the items available. There's enough gear so you won't break the bank twinking your guy while leveling.


When you first start, get the 2-4 dmg rings/ammy (you can find some from the AH or keep reloading until the vendor in A1 sells them). At 15, you get socketed helms and (most) weapons (some require 17 or 18 for whatever reason). Generally, daggers will make the best use of rubies. Buy a flawless square ruby for your helm and your weapon. This makes HC leveling super smooth until about 45ish in A3 Nightmare. The latter half of A3 nightmare is when your OP ruby weapon loses a bit of effectiveness.

I decided to go monk since I havnt played one yet. Maybe not the best idea for hardcore but, meh, its just a game. What skills do most monks go with these days. Can you link me to your build?

Also, in inferno, do monks go 1h + shield like barbs?
 
Anyone else in this forum playing hardcore only. My first three charaters are dead and currently have a level 28 wizard. Looking for other hardcore players out there that want to group. If interested please PM me so we can get connected on battle.net
 
They did though with the nightstalker and critical mass people clearing inferno week 1. They also fumbled the critical mass issue by first nerfing force armor then realizing they're moronic because critical mass was what drove the build. Derp.



I don't know how else to explain it... 50% cut in ias is not a 50% dps nerf. You need to rethink how DPS is calculated.

So attack speed doesn't directly impact DPS? The formula is pretty simple. Damage * attack speed = DPS. So if you halve attack speed you will most certainly halve DPS.
 
So attack speed doesn't directly impact DPS? The formula is pretty simple. Damage * attack speed = DPS. So if you halve attack speed you will most certainly halve DPS.

Could be wrong, but let's assume:

100 Damage weapon
1.5 Attacks/sec

100 * 1.5 = 150 DPS

Add 50% IAS

1.5 * 1.5 (IAS factor) = 2.25 * 100 Damage = 225 DPS

Half IAS (down to 25%)

1.5 * 1.25 (IAS factor) = 1.875 * 100 Damage = 187.5 DPS

187.5 is not half of 225.

Correct?

Basically, the point is that halving IAS is not the same thing as halving attack speed. You're halving the attack speed bonus.
 
Could be wrong, but let's assume:

100 Damage weapon
1.5 Attacks/sec

100 * 1.5 = 150 DPS

Add 50% IAS

1.5 * 1.5 (IAS factor) = 2.25 * 100 Damage = 225 DPS

Half IAS (down to 25%)

1.5 * 1.25 (IAS factor) = 1.875 * 100 Damage = 187.5 DPS

187.5 is not half of 225.

Correct?

Basically, the point is that halving IAS is not the same thing as halving attack speed. You're halving the attack speed bonus.

this
 
I decided to go monk since I havnt played one yet. Maybe not the best idea for hardcore but, meh, its just a game. What skills do most monks go with these days. Can you link me to your build?

Also, in inferno, do monks go 1h + shield like barbs?

For HC, you may want to use a shield. In SC, I'm definitely not. Prefer the LoH from using 2 weapons.

I can link my build when I get home. It's a "survival" build.
 
For HC, you may want to use a shield. In SC, I'm definitely not. Prefer the LoH from using 2 weapons.

I can link my build when I get home. It's a "survival" build.

i use a 2hander with 750 LOH and 9% IAS... its amazing. that way i dont have to socket the weapon with LOH I just put crit damage in there... crit while beserker is almost at 50% with 200%+ crit damage :D
 
i use a 2hander with 750 LOH and 9% IAS... its amazing. that way i dont have to socket the weapon with LOH I just put crit damage in there... crit while beserker is almost at 50% with 200%+ crit damage :D

I'm not sure I'd run 2h as a Monk, personally. A Barb I'd have no problem with that switch, mostly due to some pretty beefy crits with berserker and earthquake.
 
I'm not sure I'd run 2h as a Monk, personally. A Barb I'd have no problem with that switch, mostly due to some pretty beefy crits with berserker and earthquake.

oops yeah I'm a barb :p

my friend is trying to use a staff on his monk and its failing him hard
 
I'm having a crazy time right now. Running A2, found 3 legendaries, 5 attribute armor plan, and a pretty decent sword (800dps, 526LoH, 130Dex, 122Vit). I'm not even at Maghda. If this luck continues, I'm gonna be swimming in awesome gear by the end of the act :p

46MF + 5 stack btw. So nothing spectacular
 
My highest crit 463k. 338% Increased crit damage.

Prismatic Armor (for no apparent reason)
Force Magic Weapon (15% dmg)
Sparkflint (12% damage)
Hydra no rune for fire damage
Magic missile for signature spell
Meteor Molten Impace (228% damage on impact)

Arcane dynamo (+75% dmg on next nonsignature spell)
Glass cannon (+15% damage)
Conflaguration (10% more damage on enemies hit by fire)


It was actually really tough pulling this off. Dropping a hydra before 5 stack AD, getting to 5 Stack, then hitting with meteor and critting was hard to do. Enemies either caused too much damage, or died to easily. Maybe theres another place to do this (hell azmodan maybe?).

I'm not sure if my conflag actually hit, so I might be able to squeeze out another 10% dmg to push past half a mil

critbg.png
 
Impressive. Did you see the barb that crit for a million? It made waves about a week or so after the game released.
 
Swear on my life it's impossible to roll a good archon chest plate, or even a semi decent one. random my arse
 
made lvl 60 on my only toon tonight. I'm about to go after diablo on hell.
 
Started a monk the other day, took her to level 12 bought her some gear for about 10K stuck some Flawless Stars on sockets and have absolutely destroyed Act1-Act3 up to seige. Level 25 right now with about 400 rated damage. Have not died once. I almost took out Belial before he did his first round of bombs. I was even able to stand in the farts and DPS ghom without much problem. My goodness Monks are so resiliant makes me cringe when I play my 60 wiz. I beat inferno with him but I die...often to elites.
 
Started a monk the other day, took her to level 12 bought her some gear for about 10K stuck some Flawless Stars on sockets and have absolutely destroyed Act1-Act3 up to seige. Level 25 right now with about 400 rated damage. Have not died once. I almost took out Belial before he did his first round of bombs. I was even able to stand in the farts and DPS ghom without much problem. My goodness Monks are so resiliant makes me cringe when I play my 60 wiz. I beat inferno with him but I die...often to elites.

Anything in normal with a flawless star ruby will run through 1 shotting everything.
 
My cousin found a 787 damage 1h with 536 LOH, dex, vit, and reduced level requirement of 15. Imagine rolling with that at lvl 45.
 
iTravis -

Bump that resist to at least 650 and dps to at least 18k. I assume due to the ac, you're sword and boarding it. With at least 1700 STR, a ~750 dps weapon should put you in the 17k dps range.

Thanks for the response, just bump up my res. to 550. :D I can cheat the armor to 8k by using Tough as nails to increase my armor by 25% but besides War Cry with a rune that buff all the res, is there another way to increase res. besides buying gears with lot of res?
And I'm still using dual wielding at the moment and it seems all the weapons with 800-900dps are expensive as hell.
 
made lvl 60 on my only toon tonight. I'm about to go after diablo on hell.

Just hit 60 on my hardcore barb took last night. Took me 39 hours as opposed to 23 for my witch doctor because of the lack of decent gear at a reasonable price on the hcah. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be but there were a handful of scary low health moments that probably doubled my heart rate. I'd say that the run was a lot more enjoyable than my overtwinkes wd, in which I have no desire to play again. In contrast, I can't wait to see how far I can get in inferno with my barb until I hit a brick wall.

I played very safely once I hit 52, staying in act 1 Hell until 60. This became tedious and monotonous, especially level 59 which took 2.5 hours to level. But I wasn't about to throw away a few dozen hours of work on some act2 bug.

After hitting 60, I visited the ah and geared myself as well as I could with the 800k I had saved up. Ended up with 350-400 resist, 5500 armor with two defensive passives, and 7300dps without shouting. I also have about 400 loh and life regeneration (using templar).

For you experienced barbs over here, how far can I expect to go before I'm going to have to gear up again? Everything on the hcah is so expensive. Level 60 chest pieces with str, vit, and some all resist go for minimum 600k unless you want those valuing to be less than 40. I ended up settling for a level 57 piece with about 35 resist and 60 str vit.
 
Just hit 60 on my hardcore barb took last night. Took me 39 hours as opposed to 23 for my witch doctor because of the lack of decent gear at a reasonable price on the hcah. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be but there were a handful of scary low health moments that probably doubled my heart rate. I'd say that the run was a lot more enjoyable than my overtwinkes wd, in which I have no desire to play again. In contrast, I can't wait to see how far I can get in inferno with my barb until I hit a brick wall.

I played very safely once I hit 52, staying in act 1 Hell until 60. This became tedious and monotonous, especially level 59 which took 2.5 hours to level. But I wasn't about to throw away a few dozen hours of work on some act2 bug.

After hitting 60, I visited the ah and geared myself as well as I could with the 800k I had saved up. Ended up with 350-400 resist, 5500 armor with two defensive passives, and 7300dps without shouting. I also have about 400 loh and life regeneration (using templar).

For you experienced barbs over here, how far can I expect to go before I'm going to have to gear up again? Everything on the hcah is so expensive. Level 60 chest pieces with str, vit, and some all resist go for minimum 600k unless you want those valuing to be less than 40. I ended up settling for a level 57 piece with about 35 resist and 60 str vit.

You'll need more dps for The Butcher and that part of the act, but Skellie King should be fine. Resists and ac should be fine for Act I. You're going to have to grind Act I hard for better gear/gold. Act II will splat you with those stats.
 
You'll need more dps for The Butcher and that part of the act, but Skellie King should be fine. Resists and ac should be fine for Act I. You're going to have to grind Act I hard for better gear/gold. Act II will splat you with those stats.

I guess its good to know I'm geared up to first half a1. Rest of Hell should be trivial then?

What dps is needed for barb to avoid enrage timer?
 
Any DHs who farm A3/A4 care to share your builds and or farming places?

Act4 is terrible to farm, no good or smart DH's should be farming there. Act3 is pretty terrible too, but it can be done. Its still not that smart to farm since you get almost 1 shot.
 
Act4 is terrible to farm, no good or smart DH's should be farming there. Act3 is pretty terrible too, but it can be done. Its still not that smart to farm since you get almost 1 shot.

DH get smashed?

I've only seen one DH who could do act 3 and he was tanking everything :p
 
Great...getting error 30008 now, can't start any games....good job Blizzard. :mad:

Whats "good job" about it? Did you read the scheduled maintenance message? The servers are down, hence you cant play. Why is this mind boggling?
 
Whats "good job" about it? Did you read the scheduled maintenance message? The servers are down, hence you cant play. Why is this mind boggling?

No I didn't read the scheduled maintenance for today...why the fuck would I expect that today or for that fact anytime during the day as they have such fucked up maintenance times? Would you and Blizzard like an apology? :rolleyes:
 
No I didn't read the scheduled maintenance for today...why the fuck would I expect that today or for that fact anytime during the day as they have such fucked up maintenance times? Would you and Blizzard like an apology? :rolleyes:

It shows a big box on the right side of the screen when you log in though.....it should be near impossible to miss.
 
Any DHs who farm A3/A4 care to share your stats and or farming places?

I'm a DH but i don't farm A3/A4

I do A1 + Pony Level

start at the wardens quest

festering woods for 4-5 stacks ... if you only get 4 , then go to leorics manor for 1 more stack
then go to ponies and clear it
then do halls level 2, cursed hold, warden, halls 3, butcher
then go clean up cemetery elites; cemetery is good for jar of souls and the husband and wife event (with 5 stacks it should drop a yellow per event)

that's usually where i stop ... there probably a lot more elites and stuff but i get tired of the run after that, really.
 
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