DIORBLO 3: RAZE OF A BURNT GOBLIN - THE RETURN, A COMPENDIUM

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 8:49 am

So, I've heard tellings 'round these parts of demon slaying and dungeon skulking, see. Suffice to say my interest is piqued.
As it turned out, I've got a couple of notches on my cane when it comes to just the thing.
And it's in both our best interest that the fine hunters and sharpers know the real skinny, see?

So here's the game: I'm going to let you in on some trade secrets so when you find yourself behind the eight-ball with three bindle stiffs, you don't end up knocked off or in the back of a meat wagon headed to the nearest infirmary.

MONKS:
Crazy thing about monks, they gotta be played with finesse. Synergy and all that jazz. Otherwise you're going to get smacked around like a cheap lid in a gin mill, savvy?
Here are some combos that aren't just coffee and cake.

Quote:

The Musclegrinder:
Attacks:
Deadly Reach + Foresight (+18% damage for 30 seconds)
Crippling Wave + Breaking Wave (enemies struck take +10% damage for 3 seconds)

Support:
Mantra of Conviction + Overawe (enemies in range take +24% damage, and an additional +24% for 3 seconds after activation)
Breath of Heaven + Blazing Wrath (+15% damage for 45 seconds)

Passives:
Guiding Light (+16% damage for you and an ally for 15 seconds after using a heal on them)
Combo Strike (+8% damage per unique spirit generating move used)

If you didn't fail basic arithmetic like my uncle Charlie, That's 54% increased offenses for you, an additional 16% for one ally, and a 58% debuff you can fire out faster 'n a chopper squad can look at ya funny.

Quote:

Karmageddon:
Attacks:
[SPIRIT GENERATOR OF CHOICE]
Wave of Light + Empowered Wave (Reduced spirit cost to 40)

Support:
Mystic Ally + Air Ally (Chance to restore 100 spirit)
Mantra of Healing + Circular Breathing (Restores 3 spirit per second)

Passives:
Transcendence (Every point of spirit spent heals you)
Exalted Soul (Increases maximum spirit by 100)

This one speaks for itself. Eat spirit like buttons do donuts, keep yourself hitting on all eight, and make chin music with giant gongs.

Quote:

Brick and Mortar:
Attacks:
Crippling Wave + Concussion (Reduces enemy damage by 20% for 3 seconds)
Seven-Sided Strike + Sustained Attack (Reduces cooldown to 13 seconds)

Support:
Sweeping Wind + Blade Storm (Increases base damage of Sweeping Wind)
Mantra of Evasion + Hard Target (Allies in range get 20% increased armor)

Passives:
Resolve (Reduces enemy damage by 25% for 3 seconds when you deal damage to them)
Seize the Initiative (Increases armor by 100% of your Dexterity)

Sweeping Wind applies Resolve to any enemy within melee. Makes a stroll through Chicago lightning feel like a nice spring breeze. Crippling Wave compounds the effect.

Now see here, if you don't want to wind up having tea with the trout, take a hard look at these other street smarts.

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Fists of Thunder + Thunderclap
combined with
Lashing Tail Kick + Vulture Claw Kick
make an extremely aggressive CC combo that capitalizes well on attack speed.
The third strike in Fists will knock enemies slightly, interrupting their attacks. Lashing Tail will get you out of a tight spot if you're surrounded, and can also be used for avoiding delayed AoEs while maintaining damage if you follow it up with the thunderclap rune teleport effect, moving your target out and then you to them.
Also useful for locking on to Treasure Goblins.

Quote:

Cyclone Strike works well with the strongest abilities Demon Hunters and Wizards get, enabling them to deal massive AoE damage. It also works well with defensive builds that use Sweeping Wind, Air Ally, Crippling Wave and Blinding Flash.

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Inner Sanctuary can be very versatile, used either as a 10% damage increase, a 35% incoming damage mitigation, and always a wall enemies cannot pass for 5 seconds. While in ranged teams specifically, a 5 second reprieve can make the difference between sustained CC or death.

No citations, this is theorycrafting/gameplay experience derived by Perse, Slyck, Goodracial and myself.
Demon Hunter and general tips will be added when I have the time.
Quoting is for formatting aesthetics.

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 8:51 am

PART TWO: THE LEGEND CONTINUES BUT WITH LESS NOIR BECAUSE THAT JUNK TAKES A LONG TIME TO THINK UP LET ME TELL YOU.

Demon Hunta
This is the class I'm "maining", but I kind of found my groove and stuck with it so I don't have a whole lot to say about combo and skill synergy.

As I've gotten later into the difficulties, especially progressing on Inferno, I found that Gloom/Smokescreen and Caltrops are pretty much essential to any build if you expect to not die.

Enemy modifiers to watch out for: Vortex, Teleport, Fast
These guys will tear you up every time, and require perfect play for 5 minutes if you don't outgear them significantly.

I've solo killed the entire first act on inferno using this build:

Quote:

Hungering Arrow + Devouring Arrow
Elemental Arrows + Nether Tentacles

Shadow Power + Gloom
Caltrops + Torturous Ground
Companion + Bat Companion (it will attack treasure goblins and piss you off, be warned)
Marked for Death + Mortal Enemy

Steady Aim (Increases damage by 20% if no enemies are within 10 yards)
Archery (+15% damage with bows, my weapon of choice)
Perfectionist (10% reduced Discipline costs)

Alternatively, if I'm running Frost Arrow, I'll switch Perfectionist to the Cull of the Weak passive for an extra 15% damage on slowed targets.
I've considered switching out Shadow Power for Smokescreen, and Companion for Preparation, but since I typically run in groups I haven't found it necessary.
I'm pretty sure they're mandatory for doing act 2+ solo though. We'll see.

There are a few other late-game builds I've seen people run with. But I don't have first hand experience, so take this info with a grain of salt.

Grenade specialization is one, and there is some top-grade gear which actually increases grenade damage, but it's hella expensive.
Pros to this build are being able to provide stun support to your group using Cluster Arrow + Dazzling Arrow, and grenades don't cause backlash against targets with Reflect Damage.
Rapid Fire's final rune is also a grenade attack, and it's the highest damage I've personally messed around with, but it is awkward against moving enemies and I wouldn't recommend using it against anything except bosses.

Another is an Impale critical build which stacks +crit damage/chance gear and makes use of the Grievous Wound rune, which increase Impale's critical damage by an extra 100%.
Impale can also be used as a stun with another rune, but it's less effective CC than the grenades if that's your goal.

And the last is a Rapid-Fire + Fire Support build with Marked for Death + Mortal Enemy to help refund hatred while using it against a primary target.
Seems to work fairly well.

Preparation is a fantastic emergency cooldown. If you've got +max discipline on your gear, you should be able to use Shadow Power/Smokescreen a total 6 times in a row with Prep to survive really tough situations.

Surviving Hell and Inferno solo, and in groups:

The first thing I found myself reevaluating when I hit Hell difficulty was the Vitality stat.
Getting one-shot is no fun, so you kinda need enough as ranged to survive at least one blow. As melee, it goes without saying you need to be able to take a couple hits.
Vitality is only part of the equation though. The stats which scales best for most classes are resistances.

In Hell difficulty you'll start seeing a lot of specific resist armor: this is fantastic if you're a monk, because you have a passive which clones your highest resist to every other one, meaning you can stack say... arcane on a couple of pieces, and get an additional 30%~ mitigation to EVERYTHING. With just one passive!
You'll also see increased armor as a stat on items.
Armor mitigates all forms of incoming damage, so it could be prudent to consider armor as a factor when deciding on upgrades.

In Inferno, you start to see a stat called Resistance to All Elements. This includes Physical resistance.
The reason this is so crucial is because there are some classes which can multiply this stat to pretty amazing levels.
Barbarians get a Rallying Cry(name?) rune which increases all elemental resistances of your party by 50% of their current.
Monks get a Mantra of Healing rune which increases all elemental resistances by 20% of current, and Mantra of Evasion has a rune which does the same thing with armor.

These party-wide buffs are incredibly useful for helping soften the harsh damage arc of later difficulties.
I tested out act 3 duo with a Barbarian to see if resists are still viable with the group difficulty curve on later content, and they were. He's at 800~ all resist (without shout) and 31000 life, and was able to tank entire packs and elites without too much trouble.

To kill the hardest content in Inferno, expect to need a group. No class can solo the entire game on Inferno with the current gear available. The bosses, maybe you could kill, but quite a few of the random rares and elites will have some combination which counters your class's abilities and will be impossible even with perfect play. These can be bypassed by kiting them into a corner somewhere and dying.

In a group, however, I've only come across one pack which was unkillable. It was a Fire Chains, Vortex, Waller, Frozen pack of a very fast monster type (Scavenger, I believe). Our group of 3 ranged couldn't kill it.

Finally, there's a lot of stigma against melee classes. Everyone whines about how quickly they die on Inferno etc.
Having tested both ranged and melee, and witnessing a strong Barbarian (supposedly the weakest class) first hand, I can say with confidence that this is a gear issue. You WILL have to farm an act before progressing. (Or have very lucky friends).

Joined: Dec 21, 2009 Posts: 339

Don't play a wizard, all you can do is die until you get a bunch of crit gear and can permafreeze things with critical mass/frost nova

I mean, I soloed everything up to inferno, so it's not terrible, but I died a shitload of times in hell.

Through nightmare, the best build is spectral blade + frost nova + teleport + diamond skin + explosion + magic weapon, it does so goddamn much damage.

After nightmare you have to actually fight at range or get one shot, so you can use Magic Weapon + Diamond skin + Teleport + Frost Nova or Familiar + Electrocute with lightning blast + meteor (more fun but pretty bad) or disintegrate (easier to kill large groups but technically worse) or arcane orb with obliteration (best)

Once you get level 55 and get the energy armor rune for 35% max life at once, you can use it through hell before it stops being useful (things one shotting you anyway). Exchange Familiar for this skill

Inferno you will know what you like doing/what actually works so you might just give up, but also you can play with people, and the wizard isn't complete garbage in a group. Then you can actually use blizzard (which is basically just a cc field, the damage is pretty negligible most of the time - 200% or whatever over 6 seconds can fuk). You can't use blizzard to solo, because a lot of the time, even the slowed mobs are faster than you (i'm looking at you scavengers and soul rippers)

Plus, being the only class that doesn't have an invincibility button to press, you get the chance to be a great sight ward for your group, something the wizard truly excels at

Officer Joined: Apr 07, 2008 Posts: 182 Location: Chicago

hmm... I haven't had much trouble as a Wizard, granted I am only through Act 3 Nightmare, but I haven't had many deaths, I tend to kite quite a bit.

I use a Frozen Hydra build using Arcane Hydra and Frost Nova, with Arcane Orb / Obliterate and Electrocute for regen. I use Diamond Skin and Teleport when things get a little too out of hand.

But I am sure things will get crazier in Hell and Inferno.

I have only played a little bit of the Monk, but it seems awesome. I will definitely put the Riin theorycrafting to good use.

Joined: Mar 27, 2010 Posts: 10

I am still not convinced Inner Sanctuary is good enough to justify a slot over many of the other skills...

Also, on Inferno, Cyclone Strike is pretty much a death wish (which is too bad because it was a lot of fun to play with on Normal/Nightmare)...

I have been running a modified version of your musclegrinder build. Not quite as much offense (not using combo strike or two generators to make use of it), but MoC with Overawe rune, Breath of Heaven with Blazing Wrath, and Deadly Reach with Foresight is a lot of extra damage... Just for fun I'll run yours without Blade Storm and see where that gets me...

In a perfect world they would tune the battles to be like the hardest battles in Normal/Nightmare difficulty, where they were challenging but the entire thing didn't boil down to kiting until a defensive cooldown was ready to pop again... If they made the fights about killing the rares/champions/elites in a very short period of time in order to get the best loot (like if there was an internal timer on what signified the best loot drops), rather than surviving, there could potentially be a lot of fun to be had with developing strategies around maximum damage output with just enough survivability... Kinda like the treasure goblins but with some skills/strats needed to survive...

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 1:03 am

Bump with Demon Hunter/general edits.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 7:38 am

Wiz does tend to be tough to solo in inferno, my best suggestion for any of those willing to play it like me is to do as follows for an easier time in ACT 1.

- stack +Resistance to all elements
- try to get between 20k-25k HP
- Get enough int/weapon to get you around 30k dps
- Movement speed. 10%+ is ideal, but anything is a plus

These are my abilities

- Shock pulse (Piercing Orb)
- Hydra (venom)
- Teleport (fracture)
- Energy Armor (Prismatic)
- Magic Weapon (Force Weapon)
- Diamond Skin (Crystall Shell) for solo
- Archon (Teleport) for groups

- Glass Cannon
- Galvinizing Wound
- Illusionist (solo)
- Arcane Dynamo (group)

Use venom hydra, it leaves a puddle that ticks every second to all enemys for a % of your weapong damage as well as the initial damage it does, learn to kite and let the hydra do your work for you. on slow mobs, use hydra and piercing orb since it has a long range and hits hard. I was getting destroyed in inferno, not so much anymore. There are still elites that are not worth trying by yourself. anything thats faster than you is usually a skip depending on its abilities.