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Diablo III |OT4| Antiques Roadshow: Sanctuary Edition

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lionelhutz

Member
I started playing this a few days ago and it's the first Diablo I've played since the original. I created a monk and so far have made it into Act II. Is there a certain weapon/armor and skill setup I should work towards? I've been playing on the default difficulty and nothing has posed too much of a problem.
 

eek5

Member
I started playing this a few days ago and it's the first Diablo I've played since the original. I created a monk and so far have made it into Act II. Is there a certain weapon/armor and skill setup I should work towards? I've been playing on the default difficulty and nothing has posed too much of a problem.

Honestly, I'd just play and try out different builds and see what you like up until at least the middle of Hell difficulty. If you just start building towards a cookie cutter build this early you'll get sick of the class by the time you hit Inferno.
 

Number45

Member
Honestly, I'd just play and try out different builds and see what you like up until at least the middle of Hell difficulty. If you just start building towards a cookie cutter build this early you'll get sick of the class by the time you hit Inferno.
Yup, part of the fun of levelling new classes for me is trying out each new skill/rune as it unlocks.
 

lionelhutz

Member
Honestly, I'd just play and try out different builds and see what you like up until at least the middle of Hell difficulty. If you just start building towards a cookie cutter build this early you'll get sick of the class by the time you hit Inferno.

I've switched between sword/shield, dual weilding axes, a two-handed weapon. These games drive me nuts because I always feel like I'm missing out on something else.

I also can't seem to settle on a skill/rune combo either.
 

scosher

Member
Why is it such a pain in the ass to search for off hand items on the AH? I sorted by intel, crit, arcane from crit. Even going up to 6 million gold buyout, could not find a single item that exceeded 250 damage. Shouldn't that be enough to get one with at least 300 damage and those stats, or is the market higher than I realize?

It does suck that you can't sort by damage for OH's, but you just filtered for the 3 most coveted stats on sources. So yeah, an OH with good damage AND those stats are highly coveted and can go for 7 figures. Try just limiting search to AP on Crit and Int. You can make up crit chance on other pieces, but only wizard hats and sources can have AP on Crit.
 

Insaniac

Member
Archon is pretty nice now, blizzard just needs to fix blood magic rune not working with archon beam attack, or I could just find a good weapon with leech, and then I'm set

rShvB.png


(stats with scoundrel)

Archon stats

Improved archon does constant 375% dps (a bit more actually due to the burst attack every 5 seconds), so even in coop things die very quickly.

I think You and I have very similar builds, can I get a look at your items / skill set up?
 

garath

Member
Why does only like 5 percent of low level items have bid outs in the auction house?

Its stupid.

I'm starting a new character and I was looking for some stuff (Level 14 at the time and Act 2 wasn't going by fast enough). I thought about spending like 50K on new gear.

All the gear I looked at were under 2K current bit but had 2hour - 2day wait times. WTF 2 hours I will be at least 5 levels higher and don't need the gear in 2 hours. Ended up buying an armor for 5K (only at 1K current bid) since it was the only thing a good deal better than my current gear with a bid out.

Speaking of which does Gems have level reqs? Can I get lowest level socketed gear and puts some high level gems in there. I don't mean stuff like Radiant Star Gem or anything but I have stacks of square and flawless squares so like Radiant Square and Star.

Make a Star Ruby in the helm and a Star Ruby in some one handed weapon. You have a very good low level starting gear.

Because they don't want to make a quick buck. When I emptied my bank account I basically put all my low level gear (that I felt worth keeping) up for 5k buyouts. It all sold. I made more than vendoring it and didn't have to wait. Works well.
 

DSmalls84

Member
It does suck that you can't sort by damage for OH's, but you just filtered for the 3 most coveted stats on sources. So yeah, an OH with good damage AND those stats are highly coveted and can go for 7 figures. Try just limiting search to AP on Crit and Int. You can make up crit chance on other pieces, but only wizard hats and sources can have AP on Crit.

What is the minimum damage you would want on a source? 80-100 min - 300-400 max?
 

syllogism

Member
I think You and I have very similar builds, can I get a look at your items / skill set up?
Screenshotting all the equipment seems like too much work, but I can show something specific if you want.

This is the current skill setup http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#VOmjXS!Ygf!Yccaac

Wicked wind is just there to reset archon cooldown when that is necessary; it rarely is in single player and only sometimes in coop. Galvanizing ward is there only for the increased energy armor duration as archon frequently lasts longer than 2 minutes and waiting for it to time out is annoying.
 

scosher

Member
What is the minimum damage you would want on a source? 80-100 min - 300-400 max?

I'm not that rich, so I'm still just using a 70-270 dmg source, but has 140 Int and 10 AP on Crit (+ Blizzard duration). The 100-350/400 OH's are equivalent to the top damage rolls on ilvl 63 weapons, so expect them to be expensive.

If you have 6M to spend though, you should be able to get a 300+ top end OH, just don't expect to get one that has all the coveted stats. You could find a steal though. A lot of good sources get overlooked because we can't filter for damage.
 

DSmalls84

Member
I'm not that rich, so I'm still just using a 70-270 dmg source, but has 140 Int and 10 AP on Crit (+ Blizzard duration). The 100-350/400 OH's are equivalent to the top damage rolls on ilvl 63 weapons, so expect them to be expensive.

If you have 6M to spend though, you should be able to get a 300+ top end OH, just don't expect to get one that has all the coveted stats. You could find a steal though. A lot of good sources get overlooked because we can't filter for damage.

As of this morning I was sitting at 10.5 mil with 4-5 items still at auction. I need that cash to cover a Wand, Source, and then Helm/Bracers with Crit. I have a decent set of gear I farmed but those are the pieces I need to upgrade the most.
 
looking for some DH opinions...

1. better to go dual 1h xbows? or stick witha 1h/2h bow and quiver? ( i used to go shield, but have switched back recently for quiver)

2. I personally don't think LoH is important to me as a DH, do other DHs value it highly and use it?
 
I'm so tired of this maintenance every week. I know they have to do it but it makes me mad. They could also start it a few hours early, have some monkey come in around 2am and start it instead of 5am.
 

bs000

Member
looking for some DH opinions...

1. better to go dual 1h xbows? or stick witha 1h/2h bow and quiver? ( i used to go shield, but have switched back recently for quiver)

2. I personally don't think LoH is important to me as a DH, do other DHs value it highly and use it?

Most DH don't care about LOH so you can get a high LOH bow with high DPS for cheap. I personally like LOH on my DH. Throw down a stack of jagged spikes and I can stand in the middle of act 2 elites and I regen health far faster than I lose it. Or if you have to kite and you take a hit or two you can heal for free. Even if you don't want LOH, it's still a good idea to at least get a LOH side bow to switch to for reflect mobs.
 

theta11

Member
Most DH don't care about LOH so you can get a high LOH bow with high DPS for cheap. I personally like LOH on my DH. Throw down a stack of jagged spikes and I can stand in the middle of act 2 elites and I regen health far faster than I lose it. Or if you have to kite and you take a hit or two you can heal for free. Even if you don't want LOH, it's still a good idea to at least get a LOH side bow to switch to for reflect mobs.

It's interesting they don't value it but I guess with the amount of DPS they are capable of Lifesteal is a real option. =/
 

RDreamer

Member
Then 1k all resist?
Im thinking of dropping my other 1h for a shield.

Yeah, 900-1000 seems alright.

1k Resist is overkill...plus expensive.

I don't think it's overkill. I've got almost 8000 armor, 940 resists, 40,000 life, and about 1200 LOH and the elemental properties on elites still eat the hell out of my life.

1k is perfect.... if you plan on going back in time and playing pre-1.0.3 Diablo :lol

Honestly, I think they did something to the elemental properties like molten and desecrator that bring them to pre 1.0.3 levels now. That stuff is crazy. I feel like I need to get them higher so I can do a more offensive build. As it stands I'm running pure defense even with those stats.

What sucks is I still get eaten alive if I switch away from my shield. I bought a new weapon and before I sold my old one I wanted to try them both at the same time. So with them both I have 1800 life on hit. From losing the shield my resists go down to mid 800s, unfortunately, life to about 35,000, and my armor goes to ~7000. I'm really wondering what the hell the threshold is for dual wielding in this game. I guess the affix I tested it out on was kind of bad for me, but still.
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
Thing with armor and all resist is there's diminishing returns

I can put more armor with higher AR but take a hit on STr/VIT (which impacts my armor anyways) but once you hit 900 AR and 9000 armor, the amount of protection you get off additional points is such a waste

Better to spend on life regen, life on hit (low DPS), life steal (high DPS) and straight out Vitality to make those resistances and regen worth it. Have to be able to remove yourself from using potions if at all possible

ACT 3 is still murdering my barb because I simply cannot afford anything on the auction house

I looked at my bracers which I bought for 10 k near game launch... Now would go for 25 million... Ridiculous.
 
Most DH don't care about LOH so you can get a high LOH bow with high DPS for cheap. I personally like LOH on my DH. Throw down a stack of jagged spikes and I can stand in the middle of act 2 elites and I regen health far faster than I lose it. Or if you have to kite and you take a hit or two you can heal for free. Even if you don't want LOH, it's still a good idea to at least get a LOH side bow to switch to for reflect mobs.
I do like LOH, but at the same time I wouldn't sacrifice a ton of DPS in order to get it. My current bow doesn't have it and I don't see myself switching as it's pretty darn good as it stands.

I'm usually able to handle reflects fairly easily just using SS, but I also have Shadow Power/Gloom which is really good for reflect mobs.
 

GJS

Member
Thing with armor and all resist is there's diminishing returns

I can put more armor with higher AR but take a hit on STr/VIT (which impacts my armor anyways) but once you hit 900 AR and 9000 armor, the amount of protection you get off additional points is such a waste

Better to spend on life regen, life on hit (low DPS), life steal (high DPS)

ACT 3 is still murdering my barb because I simply cannot afford anything on the auction house

I looked at my bracers which I bought for 10 k near game launch... Now would go for 25 million... Ridiculous.

There are no diminishing returns with armor and resist.

The visual percent each point adds decreases, but those small increases are worth just as much as the large increases before them.
 
So I changed a couple things out and after a slight re-gearing, was progressing through Act III last night. Felt good. I even had a 3 stack. Molten is just stupid fast at killing me. HAHA. I farmed first, but probably could have progressed slightly further. I lit all the torches and raised all the catapults.

I need more DPS & LOH and more of … well … just about everything, but it’s a start.
 

RivalCore

Member
Yeah, 900-1000 seems alright.

I don't think it's overkill. I've got almost 8000 armor, 940 resists, 40,000 life, and about 1200 LOH and the elemental properties on elites still eat the hell out of my life.

I'm only around 5.5k armour and 750 resist and I can't say I feel in anyway inadequately geared for Act III/IV. I mean I still die the odd time against dickhead mobs with Vortex and Arcane/Molten but I'm going to die sometimes regardless of resists.

But I'm dual wielding two LoH weapons, close to 2.0 APS and hitting at 24k DPS. I guess both are completely viable but I got sick of playing defensively in Inferno.

Also I agree they definitely buffed the some of the affixes. Especially Vortex, I get raped by that.
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
There are no diminishing returns with armor and resist.

The visual percent each point adds decreases, but those small increases are worth just as much as the large increases before them.

Mathematically, yes there is diminishing returns

You are welcome to graph it out as I am too lazy

1 point early on reduces damage more for armor and AR than it does when your numbers are high

That's what diminishing returns is. Your gains become lower for every point you add to both.

10000 armor and 1000 AR is not a 65% increase over 6000 armor and 600 AR in terms of damage reduction.
 
Yeah, 900-1000 seems alright.



I don't think it's overkill. I've got almost 8000 armor, 940 resists, 40,000 life, and about 1200 LOH and the elemental properties on elites still eat the hell out of my life.



Honestly, I think they did something to the elemental properties like molten and desecrator that bring them to pre 1.0.3 levels now. That stuff is crazy. I feel like I need to get them higher so I can do a more offensive build. As it stands I'm running pure defense even with those stats.

What sucks is I still get eaten alive if I switch away from my shield. I bought a new weapon and before I sold my old one I wanted to try them both at the same time. So with them both I have 1800 life on hit. From losing the shield my resists go down to mid 800s, unfortunately, life to about 35,000, and my armor goes to ~7000. I'm really wondering what the hell the threshold is for dual wielding in this game. I guess the affix I tested it out on was kind of bad for me, but still.

750 resists is very squishy at the start of Act III. Especially with 680 LOH (working on getting that up next ).


I'm only around 5.5k armour and 750 resist and I can't say I feel in anyway inadequately geared for Act III/IV. I mean I still die the odd time against dickhead mobs with Vortex and Arcane/Molten but I'm going to die sometimes regardless of resists.

But I'm dual wielding two LoH weapons, close to 2.0 APS and hitting at 24k DPS. I guess both are completely viable but I got sick of playing defensively in Inferno.

Also I agree they definitely buffed the some of the affixes. Especially Vortex, I get raped by that.

750 was doable, but my 2.2 APS and 680 LOH were not cutting it. I have 19K DPS too ... need to get that up.
 

Darkman M

Member
Yeah, 900-1000 seems alright.



I don't think it's overkill. I've got almost 8000 armor, 940 resists, 40,000 life, and about 1200 LOH and the elemental properties on elites still eat the hell out of my life.



Honestly, I think they did something to the elemental properties like molten and desecrator that bring them to pre 1.0.3 levels now. That stuff is crazy. I feel like I need to get them higher so I can do a more offensive build. As it stands I'm running pure defense even with those stats.

What sucks is I still get eaten alive if I switch away from my shield. I bought a new weapon and before I sold my old one I wanted to try them both at the same time. So with them both I have 1800 life on hit. From losing the shield my resists go down to mid 800s, unfortunately, life to about 35,000, and my armor goes to ~7000. I'm really wondering what the hell the threshold is for dual wielding in this game. I guess the affix I tested it out on was kind of bad for me, but still.

I don't think resist does anything for desecrator.
 
I pretty much have Act III inferno on farm now with my WD, which feels really good considering the class is probably the weakest one (but I'll always stick to it).

VQ+Bears+Fire Pit+Big Stinker

1000 LoH
800 Life Regen
40k Health
6k Armor
15k DPS
600 All Resist

I just spam fire pits and pop some bears whenever I have enough mana. Spirit Walk with the Mana regen rune is necessary as well.

My build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#hfTdUX!ZWU!bcYZZY

I can pretty much tank anything. When it comes to some tough packs though (arcane, frozen, desecrator), I just kite them around spamming fire pits on their path and some bears as well. I think some people make the mistake of only trying to tank when they roll a Tankdoctor spec and they forget it actually also helps you kite with awesome survivability. Anyways, the LoH ticked by Fire Pit is amazing. My Big Stinker is actually very resistant and his AoE poison ticks LoH like crazy as well.
 

RDreamer

Member
I'm only around 5.5k armour and 750 resist and I can't say I feel in anyway inadequately geared for Act III/IV. I mean I still die the odd time against dickhead mobs with Vortex and Arcane/Molten but I'm going to die sometimes regardless of resists.

But I'm dual wielding two LoH weapons, close to 2.0 APS and hitting at 24k DPS. I guess both are completely viable but I got sick of playing defensively in Inferno.

Also I agree they definitely buffed the some of the affixes. Especially Vortex, I get raped by that.

Hmmm maybe I just have to try it some more. I don't quite have 2 APS, unfortunately, but with the two weapons my damage is close to yours. As I said, I've got 1800 LOH with both of them, and my armor and resists are higher. Maybe I just have to play around with it and the first elites I got were just a bad affix for testing.
 

Darkman M

Member
Are you guys talking 1k resist with buffs or no buffs? I just switched one of my passives to an offensive one, added battle rage-marauder, and got my crit damage to 320+ to my tank build and im doing over 20kdps most of the time while keeping my shield and having 11k armor with buffs. This is working out good so far want to get my damage up a bit more though.
 

scy

Member
Mathematically, yes there is diminishing returns

You are welcome to graph it out as I am too lazy

1 point early on reduces damage more for armor and AR than it does when your numbers are high

That's what diminishing returns is. Your gains become lower for every point you add to both.

Well, yes and no. Each point is worth less individually but each percentage itself is worth more. It balances itself out to create a relatively smooth function. Of course, "relatively smooth" isn't the same as perfectly smooth.

Going from 50% Mitigation to 60% Mitigation requires +1575 Armor (3150 -> 4725) for 20% reduction in damage taken (50% -> 40%). Another +1575 Armor gets you to 6300 Armor and 33.333% damage taken, around a 17% reduction. It slows down but not nearly to the extent that people think it does.

I'll also note you want the bulk of your EHP to come from your mitigation. Diablo 3 doesn't have as much healing as most games where EHP calculations are done so having a lot of HP isn't _that_ great versus more mitigation and ways to sustain (Life Regen + Life Steal/Life on Hit).
 

Artanisix

Member
Honestly, I think they did something to the elemental properties like molten and desecrator that bring them to pre 1.0.3 levels now. That stuff is crazy. I feel like I need to get them higher so I can do a more offensive build. As it stands I'm running pure defense even with those stats.

not sure what class you are, but if you're a barb you can spec into overpower/crushing advance and it lets you completely sit in plagues desecrates moltens and heal back to full with it. low cooldown too. i use it on my dual wield barb
 

scy

Member
Anyways, the LoH ticked by Fire Pit is amazing. My Big Stinker is actually very resistant and his AoE poison ticks LoH like crazy as well.

The sheer amount of stacking pool effects that WDs have is ridiculous. Unfortunately, you can't really utilize all of them :(
 

GJS

Member
Mathematically, yes there is diminishing returns

You are welcome to graph it out as I am too lazy

1 point early on reduces damage more for armor and AR than it does when your numbers are high

That's what diminishing returns is. Your gains become lower for every point you add to both.

You have to look at EHP, EHP increases linearly with armour and resist. Every 300 resist or 3000 armour increases your EHP by the same amount, something like 100% of your base EHP, no matter your resist/armour level.

The DR may level out, but each smaller increase in DR becomes worth more to EHP.
 
750 resists is very squishy at the start of Act III. Especially with 680 LOH (working on getting that up next ).

Are we talking barb or monk?

I made it through to Ghom dual wielding with 6k armor and 600 resists and 900 LoH with my monk, killing all but 2 packs because I aggroed them both at the same time and had to run.

I died a few times but nothing too crazy.
 

RDreamer

Member
Are you guys talking 1k resist with buffs or no buffs? I just switched one of my passives to an offensive one, added battle rage-marauder, and got my crit damage to 320+ to my tank build and im doing over 20kdps most of the time while keeping my shield and having 11k armor with buffs. This is working out good so far want to get my damage up a bit more though.

We're on monks so for the most part I believe we're all talking unbuffed, since we only have one or two mantras that change that, and it's not as drastic as with barbs. I usually run with mantra of evasion > hard target and that ups my armor, but I forget what it is with that.

not sure what class you are, but if you're a barb you can spec into overpower/crushing advance and it lets you completely sit in plagues desecrates moltens and heal back to full with it. low cooldown too. i use it on my dual wield barb

Monk, unfortunately. I'm not sure there's a spec or gear we can have that we can sit in those things forever, unless you have crazy LOH or something. With a barb in my party pre patch I could sit in those things as long as I was attacking and be fine for a while. After that patch, though with a barb in my party I'm getting my health eaten away way too fast to stay for even a second, unfortunately.
 

scy

Member
You have to look at EHP, EHP increases linearly with armour and resist. Every 300 resist or 3000 armour increases your EHP by the same amount, something like 100% of your base EHP, no matter your resist/armour level.

While this is true, I do think that EHP is a little misleading. EHP is best as a case of how much spike damage you can survive in a given interval and a lot of EHP use is ignoring that whole "interval" part. That or people are just stretching the interval to be "until the fight ends" which means they need that much more EHP to make it that long which means their DPS suffers which means they need to last even longer and ...

Monk, unfortunately. I'm not sure there's a spec or gear we can have that we can sit in those things forever, unless you have crazy LOH or something. With a barb in my party pre patch I could sit in those things as long as I was attacking and be fine for a while. After that patch, though with a barb in my party I'm getting my health eaten away way too fast to stay for even a second, unfortunately.

Makes me wonder at the validity of Monk Retribution Aura tanking. Could be interesting if it has decent returns for sustain.
 

RDreamer

Member
Makes me wonder at the validity of Monk Retribution Aura tanking. Could be interesting if it has decent returns for sustain.

I see almost no one use retribution. I have to wonder about it, actually. Does it even return damage if you dodge? If it doesn't then isn't it pretty much useless on a monk? Also, is the 40% of damage sustained that's reflected mean 40% of the damage you actually take in or 40% of what the monster is hitting for? Because if it's what you actually take in, then yeah that's a useless mantra.
 
Just got to Inferno this morning with my DH, and have been pretty much running a glass cannon build ("I don't always get hit, but when I do, I die.") and I'd like to toughen up a bit.

Are there general Damage and Health numbers I should be striving for to increase my survivability?

At around 50% damage reduction between armor and resists (I have fairly low resists) and roughly 23k-24k HP, I can take a hit or two in Act 1, and probably one in Act 2. Which is doable.

Act 3 I still haven't made much progress in as I need either better defense, or higher DPS to survive. Anything there will 1 hit me right now. It's a lot like playing a tank in WoW used to be where you'd gear towards effective HP and just being able to take at least 1 or 2 hits before being killed (between swings healers would heal you.) Any marginal improvement in EHP over that 1-2 hit threshold won't help much in terms of the primary survivability challenge, so at that point you'd gear more for avoidance or threat to increase your effectiveness.
 

Options 2 and 3 are the best I think. With Option 3 I prefer the solution of using the lowest MF% in the past X minutes, rather than a rolling average.

Except for IAS, where I think a cap would have worked, attribute caps seem sort of antithetical to Diablo style games with such a huge focus on the items and stats over anything else (especially more so than WoW.)
 
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