Yeah, exactly. I am working my way through A2. It is not impossible, but it is really freakin’ hard. I am reasonably well but imperfectly geared and have an unconventional build. But it is working out fine. I probably spend half my time doing A1 runs and half inching forward in A2. When I have a bit more cash, it will all come together.
But it is difficult making purchases now in light of what we know about 1.03.
I already have a WD in Act 3 so I’m aware of the difficulty increases. Personally I’d say Act 1 is pretty easy, my Barbarian has not had to avoid a single champ/elite pack (even immune minions!). Act 2 was a very big jump in difficulty for my WD, especially the second half. I briefly visited Act 2 with my Barb after his first Butcher kill but I only had about 300 resists and 7k armour then and got slaughtered by the bees. I now have 700 resists and 9k armour, with a lot of planned upgrades in mind. I need to farm some more but unfortunately there is just too much good sport on TV at the moment…
As soon as I hit 800 resists, 10k armour and ~40 block I’ll move on to Act 2/3. My endgame plan is to have 1k resists, 10k armour, 50% block, 50k health, ~20% reduced damage from melee and as much strength as possible to fill the gaps. Lots of life on hit would be nice but considering the prices on the AH it’s not something I have planned. It’s nice to have goals, heh.
Well I got bored farming Act 1 and decided to give Act 2 another go. I had 800 to all resists, 42k health, 9.5k armour but only 28% block with a crappy block damage shield.
It was easy. I went the whole way through the Act in a little under 3 hours. I only needed to park 3 or 4 champ/elite packs on the way. I managed to kill Belial on the second try with a full NV stack.
The gap certainly seemed a lot larger then when I was playing my WD. My WD would die in a couple of hits from trash whereas my Barb jumps into the middle of a horde of enemies and lives to tell the tale. It might involve a lot of Revenge spamming but it sure does feel epic and exhilarating. I really hope Blizzard don’t nerf Revenge, heh.
Tommorrow I go to meet the Siegebreaker!
OK, so I’ve found a nice broken combo. Demon Hunters have a passive skill, Sharpshooter, that gives you a continually-increasing critical hit chance, that resets after you actually make a critical hit. Meanwhile, Caltrops with the appropriate rune does 45% (or more, if it’s boosted by other passives) of your DPS each second. Caltrops can’t actually get a crit, but it uses your total DPS figure (i.e., what’s displayed on your Inventory screen), which includes the average effect of critical hits. So if you wait half a minute for Sharpshooter to reach maximum (100% chance of critical hit), you can lay down huge damage Caltrops, and as long as you don’t take an actual shot, they stay at huge damage. Combine it with a high critical damage modifier (a crossbow with an emerald in it, plus Archery), and it gets pretty insane-- I’m finding that I can kill most things in Hell with nothing but a couple of caltrops. For those few things (basically elites) for which that’s not enough, I just lay down those max-damage caltrops, and then pour on the Rapid Fire.
Broken? Is it really more effective than just shooting trash with a high damage skill? If the way to make this work is by not shooting, it seems anything but broken.
It’s more effective than shooting because you can do it while running, and if you really need to, you can lay down your caltrops and then shoot, giving you both (in which case you’d want to wait to let your crit chance build up again before the next fight). Against trash, it doesn’t matter if you don’t shoot, since the monsters pretty much die instantly, anyway.
Does anyone else think the banter between your character and the companions is better written and acted than the main story? The Templars crush on the enchantress was particularly well done.
Yeah, I think this game suffers from Mass Effect 3 syndrome (where the main writer is bad at his job, but the secondary writers in charge of stuff like sidequests and dialogue are good). I found the Templar to be the most interesting character in the whole game, and the Scoundrel by far had the best dialogue. (Zultan Kulle was decent too, but I think he needed the chance to shine beyond Act 2.)
And Covetous Shen, of course, is absolutely fabulous.
By the way, if you’re starting up a secondary character and skipping over the dialog because you’ve already heard it, don’t skip over Shen. Most of his dialogs are different for each class, and there are things about him you can only learn by piecing together bits from different classes.
Yes, but I wish they didn’t repeat themselves so often. And they shouldn’t do their random babbling during a critical moment.
Up to Belial NM on my wiz. Level 45, 2.6K dps, 19K health. Think that’s ok to take him without any close calls?
I know you’ve likely finished the fight already, but Belial is the hardest boss for my DH by far. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as “safe enough” with him on hardcore mode.
So how’d it go?
Belial NM was my first death on a boss, but you’re way nastier at that level than I was. I’m thinking you’ll be fine :).
For myself, I’m at 55 in Hell act 2, and am finally breaking down and really using the auction house. I think I’ve reached a place where I can’t reasonably progress without it. I’m still trying to use it sparingly, though, upgrading things just a few at a time, and trying to spend less than 10K on any single item.
As a wizard, I’ve got all 4 of my extra slots going to defense: I’m using:
-Mirror Image (3 images, 100% of life)
-Ice Nova (the version that spawns mini-novas when you kill frozen people; I may change this one out)
-Diamond Skin (the kind that reduces spell costs, which is IMO very useful)
-Energy Armor (the kind that gives an extra 20 points arcane power)
With electrocute’s chain lightning and, most importantly, the obliterate version of arcane orb going, I can finally survive most attacks and still do some decent damage. I’m at 18K health and 3K dps.
I’m at about the same spot, but personally, I’m going more the glass cannon route. There are a lot of things that can one-shot me, so I just make sure that they don’t get that one shot. And really, I’m getting pretty good at it. I don’t remember my life off the top of my head, but my DPS is somewhere between 9k and 19k, depending on how charged up my Sharpshooter is. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I’m going to need some serious help getting past Belial, since I’m almost certain that any of his final-form attacks will kill me instantly.
And how the heck is one supposed to deal with Reflects Damage elites? Killing a pack of those typically costs me about twice my life total, even without them ever actually touching me. Is there any form of damage they don’t reflect?
How did you do against him?
I use diamond skin, so I can run around for a little bit without being hit. A hydra, which I plant right next to Belial, so he can farm some health orbs for me. I run and grab the orbs when I can, which isn’t too difficult with the use of diamond skin. Then I equip some type of magic armor, usually arcane, the one where each hit only takes a certain percentage of your life. And then I use the laser beam and transform into Archon to do some extra damage. There’s a good amount of running around but with the hydra and templar to whack some orbs out of Belial, it isn’t too bad.
Lev 60 wizard here…57k health, 13353dps. Seem to survive pretty well despite not having much armor (sacrificing armor/resistances for more health.) I want to get better stuff but I’m at that point that items with even a little better attributes cost way more than I have…Just finally able to hold a million gold in my inventory, how are people able to get millions? It’s insane. And Inferno is insane.
I think the standard response is to carry some life on hit to help even it out.
And I was avoiding the auction house for a long time but I’ve dove in full bore and I’m loving it. I spent 200k on a reduced level requirement lv.60 dagger when my WD was at 46. It does 450(!) dps, where a good standard weapon at that level would be around 80, maybe. 200k was basically all my money at the time, but I made it back in around two hours and just melted everything straight through the end of NM.
I’m level 52 right now, doing upwards of 12k dps, which has to be insanely high for my level.
How did you find that dagger? One of the stupid quirks of the auction house is that an item that’s supposed require level 60, but actually only requires level 48, won’t shut up if you filter only level 48 items. Internally, the search engine still thinks it’s a level 60. So you’d never stumble across one when looking for stuff you could use at your current level.
Unfortunately, that one is level 54, so it’s not available to Autolycus unless he levels for 9 more levels (which might be a good idea on hardcore).
I finally finished Normal with my monk and all I got were 3 crappy rares, a couple of blues and a few gems. Is this pretty typical for end-of-Normal item drops from Diablo?
My badass monk is going to look pretty silly in NM getting killed by those baby quill fiends :mad:.
I haven’t done it yet and probably won’t have time to do so for another few days, but since NM Kulle runs are netting decent exp (the area not just the boss), I’ll probably level a bit more before taking on Belial (dunno about 54 though that seems a bit overkill.)