I really really hate those snakemen in Act 2. You think you’ve ran far enough away to start your DPS and then all of a sudden BANG, ‘You are Dead’. An Elite pack? Forget about it. I love stumbling upon a pack of snakemen and realising, to my wonderful relief, that they’re only mages.
I’ve managed to scrape and swear (a lot of swearing) my way to Belial only to be slaughtered by those bloody snakemen in his second phase. I’ll give it another go tomorrow now that I’ve boosted my DPS and resists a little. I hope no children are in hearing distance…
Currently sitting at 40k HP and 35k DPS on my Witch Doctor. I would check my armour and resists but the server is down for the next 7 hours. I’m using a fast attack speed Poison Dart/CC spec. I can kill most elite packs in act 2 so long as I have room to kite. I must admit I lost my patience trying to get through the Cave of the Betrayer, one day I will go back there and teach those bastards a lesson!
I’m only in Nightmare, but I don’t look forward to fighting Belial again. He has been the only thing in Nightmare that has given me trouble (solo). I tweaked my build 5 or 6 times before I finally finished him off!
Overall, I am having a ball with my Chain Lightning/Ray of Frost wizard. She melts everything in her path. I have a nice combo of Frost Nova, Explosive Blast, Wave of Force, with Runes and Passives picked to keep cooldowns and casting costs to a minimum.
My strategy is to let a group of monsters approach with Chain Lightning or Ray of Frost blazing (with life leech to keep my HP up). When enough monsters are in range, I hit Frost Nova to freeze everything near me while letting more monster approach. Then I move up into the fray, still attacking, and hit Explosive Blast from the center of a tight group of monsters, dealing maximum DPS from a single cast. When everything un-freezes I finish with Wave of Force with extra knock back which scatters everything across the battlefield, allowing me to back off and sap life from a distance. I can follow up with another Explosive blast if anything survived the first combo, or wait a bit longer for Frost Nova’s cooldown and give them all a mini-combo if needed. If the monsters still keep coming, the long cooldown on Wave of Force should be finished after a bit of kiting, allowing me to unleash another full combo of all three skills. For bosses, I have Ray of Frost setup for almost a solid minute of pressure.
I fought Nightmare Belial in a group with another Ray of Frost wizard, and he had to use it in short bursts along with his primary attack. I just sat there blazing away for the entire fight, watching that health bar diminish. I think the key to a wizard build is to never let your Arcane Power run out. A glass canon is worthless without ammo.
…and I found that my defenses make awesome offense in my level 42 DH…when I get in range of a large pack with elites and champions, I just lay down a stack of 6 Caltrops with Jagged Spikes for a total of 270% weapon damage (per second I presume) which makes makes their health bars look like 3-4 second cooldown timers. The normals usually die in a second or so.
Personally, I’m loving my Demon Hunter. I’m currently packing 734 DPS at level 30, which is multiplied hugely by Rapid Fire, and boosted even more by the passive that increases damage to slowed enemies (which they always are). In the uncommon event that anything survives the first volley, I back off using Vault and/or Evasive Fire (thus retreating and continuing to fire at the same time) until my hatred is back, then repeat. I’ve got a couple of hotkeys for debuffs, but I never even use them, since the debuff I’m most efficient at inflicting is the one called “dead”.
This topic over at Inc Gamers shows the change in the DH Smoke Screen skill. It doesn’t make any sense to me. Can someone explain how a 2 second skill is OP, while a 1 second skill is useful? How does a 1 sec “get away” skill even come in handy? You can’t get very far in one second…
My DH is low level, so I don’t really have a gripe here. I just want to understand the change.
From what I’ve seen on my DH (level 60, currently in Act IV Hell) SS doesn’t only just take you (temporarily) off of the mob’s aggro list. It also avoids all damage. E.g., against the Butcher in Hell, I noticed I was in the middle of a flaming plate, and Vault (runed to make it free but have an 8 sec. cooldown) was still on cooldown. So I used SS and ran off the plate, taking minimal damage.
Of course, I’ve noticed that sometimes mobs continue to follow me after I’ve hit SS instead of pathing back to my templar. I’m not sure if that’s a display bug or a real bug, but it’s pretty annoying.
Basically, with the Lingering Fog rune the Smoke Screen duration was 3 seconds, with some +discipline on gear and Preparation you could chain 6 or more Smoke Screens together giving you long periods of invulnerability.
With the nerf it is still useful to break snares or avoid incoming attacks but you can no longer chain it and completely ignore monster attacks.
Caltrops is one of the skills I have hotkeyed but haven’t been using (don’t know if I have the jagged spikes rune yet). My idea was that I could place a few while running away (which does seem to work well; you can place them while moving), except that so far, I’m finding that one or two Vaults is all the running-away I ever need.
I should maybe try Smokescreen as a panic button, though. Currently my loadout is Evasive Fire with the exploding rune, Vault with Action Shot (to keep firing while vaulting), Rapid Fire with the rune that slows enemies, spider companion, and Caltrops and Entangling Shot that I never use. For passives, I’ve got the one that occasionally immobilizes enemies, the one that increases my damage when nothing’s in melee range, and the one that increases damage vs. slowed enemies.
Oh, hey, does anyone know how slowing effects stack? Like, if I put two different effects on a monster that both say “slows by 50%”, do they overlap, leaving them at 50%, or multiply, leaving them at 25%, or add, leaving them immobilized?
So, I had been reluctant to try out the damage rune with Caltrops on my Demon Hunter, because 45% weapon damage seemed like it’d be too low to worry about. Man, was I wrong. It is, in fact, far more effective than I’d thought, and it took me a while to realize why.
The key is passive skills that increase damage. I’ve got one passive that increases damage by 20% when I’m not in melee, and another that increases it by 15% to slowed enemies. Both of those are almost always true, which means that I’ve got 35% extra damage. Apparently, this is added in the same step as the damage multiplier for each skill, so it turns a 228% Rapid Fire into 263%, and a 45% Caltrops into 80%. But going from 45% to 80% is a much bigger increase than from 228% to 263%, and the skills were apparently balanced against each other without considering the passives, so with the passives, Caltrops ends up being overpowered.
This is probably worth a try on other characters, too: Use a skill that has a low damage multiplier but other benefits, and pair it with whatever passives you have that add a percentage to the damage.
At level 40, I’ve found a delightful melee wizard combination:
-Diamond skin (basically an extra 2K or so temporary HP) with Prism (makes spells much cheaper)
-Venom Hydra (does a little bit of damage, but creates pools on the floor that deal constant nasty damage)
-Ice Nova (freezes people) with the reduce-cooldown mod
-Electrocute (shoot up to 6 or 8 people with lightning).
-Cold Ray with sleet storm (do something like 235% weapon damage continuously around yourself).
-Mirror image with the rune that makes 5 images
In most battles, I pop the venom hydra early and watch my Templar buddy go to engage enemies; the enemies stand in pools of acid and die, while I electrocute them in great spazzy waves of electricity. Eventually they close with me if anyone survives, and I put up diamond skin and then hold down the right mouse button, creating a ridiculous zone of death around me: the venom hydra continues to make puddles around my feet, and the enemies that stand near me take damage from that as well as from the sleet storm. I can keep the sleet storm up for a really long time.
As of yesterday I am up and running with my new video card. My wizard is at lvl 11, and I guess at the end of the first act. I’ll keep LHoD’s build above in mind. If anybody is at my level, come join me, I’ll be playing for the next few hours.
My Level 44 Barbarian just finished Act II in Nightmare. There are some pretty great skills for the barbarian. I’ve got the whirlwind rune which generates 1 fury per enemy hit, combined with bash generating twice the normal fury. Then the passive that adds 25% damage when fury is maxed out. Revenge with knockback is my defensive skill of choice - I can’t tell you how many times Revenge has saved my butt (thanks for the tip, Chronos)
I got my first item that was indisputably awesome. A one-handed war mace at 126.6 dps. It upped my weapon damage by about 300.
Ah, and my uncle escorted me and my husband through Whimsyshire. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.
There is a “reduce required level” stat that shows up on high level items that can make life a lot easier leveling up. Having a lvl 60 weapon at 42 about quintupled my damage.
By the way, a tip for Whimsyshire, especially if you’re playing a glass cannon type: Start the game on the “Kill Jondar” quest. That way, you’ll have the templar you met in the Cathedral following you, and acting as an indestructible tank.
olivesmarch4th, I’m not sure if runes that increase fury generation are the best choice with the passive that boosts damage at maximum fury. The passive is only good if you’re usually at max fury, which means you’re not using very many skills that expend fury. And if you’re not expending fury, then your extra fury generation is going to waste. It takes a little while for Fury to start degenerating (30 seconds, maybe?), so as long as you hit something with any fury-generator at least that often, you’ll stay at max-- It doesn’t matter how much fury it actually generates. Destructible objects count (including the ones that don’t have a red outline-- Hold shift to swing at them).
I have literally full valor stacked cleared Inferno Act 1 a dozen plus times, I used the gold to purchase upgraded items since nothing that dropped was doing any good in Act 2.
Now I can go into Act 2 and only avoid a few mob types (invulnerable minions and sometimes molten/fast). The problem I am having is I cannot, no matter how many resets not get a combination of that blocking either of the bloods in Blood an Sands quest. If I get one the other dungeon has that blocking, I have tried kiting into “out of the way” places so I can avoid them I usually just nerd rage and quit though. Any helpful advice?
