I’m only at Act II of the second difficulty level so take this for what it’s worth, but I find that using Impale with Impact (which has a 65% chance to stun) makes things much easier. On a few of the bosses, you can almost perma-stun them and barely take any damage. I throw a few hungering arrows at the boss (from as far away as I can get) and then get into a pattern of Impale-Hungering-Hungering Hungering-Impale-etc. When they start getting close throw a few caltrops out, run away and continue along.
This works best if you can get at least a full screen away from whatever you are fighting - the AI seems to take it easy on you once you’re far enough away but you can still hit it as long as you have a general idea of where it is standing off-screen (and the hungering arrows make your margin or error a lot larger since they “home-in” if you’re close).
The bonus for your first boss kill apparently only applies to normal difficulty where you’ll quickly outgrow whatever drops anyway. Of all the bosses in the entire run, only one dropped a single yellow item.
In fact, the bosses have become trash. They’re some of the easiest fights - for the most part you just have to sit in one place and click them until they’re dead - and the fights often lasted under 30 seconds. I may have died once in a boss fight, and I’m not even sure about that.
On the other hand, you could get little packs of elites with nasty combinations of effects and actually be challenged and die. Moreover, those packs much more consistently dropped yellow/rare items.
So essentially the boss fights are the trash, and the trash are now the boss fights. It’s pretty anticlimactic, since the story is designed to build up to and then climax at the boss fights, but those end up being the most routine and least rewarding.
I’m still in Act I Nightmare, but I’ve found that I can buy the Lizard’s eye for about 30 each on the AH. So why smash a rare that I can sell for 300? If I think a magic or rare is pretty good for it’s lvl requirement, then I’ll put it on the AH for about 10x its vendor worth. If it’s vendor worth is less than about 100 then I’ll salvage (that’s what you meant by “smash”, right?) it. The in-betweens get vendored.
BTW, After reading about the next patch I’ve been holding off on training my jewel guy or upgrading my gems. It doesn’t look like the upgrade that I’m waiting on right now is going to lower those prices yet.
Yeah, I’ve been salvaging all my found items, figuring that one day crafting will be useful, but I doubt it will. I’ll end up having nothing to do with all my crafting ingredients. I suppose I might as well just sell stuff.
Amen to that! Even though I wasn’t good enough to make it work in Hell, I’ve got to say that Revenge is easily the funnest skill I’ve seen in the game. It’s a great thrill to see your health bar erode away to 20 or 30%, and then jump instantly back up to full.
Real money auction house opens today. I bet chinese farmers have been stockpiling billions or even trillions in gold, ready to sell - which means when the real money auction house opens up, the economy is going to be injected with a massive amount of cash and we’re going to see massive inflation.
It’ll also mean that a lot of the better gear goes to the real money auction house, so the quality of the items available on the gold auction house will go down, even while prices skyrocket… we’re in for a pretty massive shock to the economy.
I don’t expect gold to sale for much at all, so you’re right on the cost of gold AH items going sky high to compensate. But I do think the okay/good gear will be cheap on rmah, it is only the elite best of roll gear that I think will go high. And possibly in the beginning cheap great gear as so many people hoarded.
We shall shortly see… seeing as I loaded a few dollars up I am interested in seeing what 10$ will do compared to 10million gold.
Level 53 Barb in Act I Hell. It’s getting a lot harder and my stubborn ass is determined to kill every single one of those magic packs. I spent a half hour yesterday on one Corrupted Angel in Act IV Nightmare… the little bastard kept healing himself. I die a lot.
I got a really sweet drop, though. It was a 234.5 pole-ax. With frenzy and the weapons master passive it is a pretty formidable weapon.
In general I’ve been disappointed by the items. I’ve yet to find any legendary items at all. Last night I dreamed that I got like 4 or 5 legendary items in one drop, and they all sucked.
I’m not sure how you feel about the AH but you could probably easily double your DPS for next to no money. Search for weapons at level 60 with at least -7 Required Level.
I’d been using Impale at that point, but once I hit lvl 43, Lightning Elemental Arrow was the clear winner. Incredibly fast, cheap (10 Hatred, v. 25 for Impale), and still has a stun on Crit.
It’s not looking like Caltrops are effective at all on Big D. But then, neither is the sentry, so maybe I’ll switch that out. Any other suggestions? Chronos, you’re running a DH, right?
Munch - which part of the fight are you having trouble with? If it’s the first or last phases, there’s not a lot to be done other than more practice with dodging (and possibly adding Vault or Smoke Screen to your build to give you some more mobility). If it’s the Shadow Clone portion of the fight, you may want to add Impale with Impact as noted (for a more reliable stun that you can spam on that one part) and/or Shadow Power with Gloom (to put up a 65% less damage buff as the clone spawns).
It’s the third section, after the shadow fight. It’s his teleport attack that’s killing me. How do you dodge something you can’t see coming? Stand closer, like with Azmodan?
Munch, I’ve been using this build for quite a few levels now. I’m still dual wielding 1h hand xbows (235 and 153 dps atm, I think) since the very beginning, and at level 53, I just completed Act 1 in Hell Difficulty, and I’m only at 3900 dps. I still like the Bolas with the chance to stun, my caltrops with Jagged Spikes is still king, and I’m gonna try Chronos’ strategy he mentioned upthread. I seem to do better solo than grouped up…I seem to die easier because I think I can still run in front of a pack, drop 6 caltrops, and vault back and start shooting…works pretty well solo, but they hit harder and stay alive a little longer when grouped, so I got to pick a better strategy when grouped.
Last night, I successfully used the AH to my advantage by selling a level 42 1h xbow (118 dps) for 102k net, and turn it around to buy a level 53 1h xbow (300 dps) for only 31k! Gonna really make Act 2 Hell more manageable. Gonna see how much further I can dual wield with this set up.
Sorry, not sure I’ll be a ton of help - I haven’t done that fight in a couple of weeks, and I don’t remember having a lot of issues with the last part (and don’t remember teleporting at all). My general strategy for all fights is designed around maintaining max range, and I don’t recall doing too much differently there.
I will say that in general you should probably get used to having either Smoke Screen, Vault, or both as part of your lineup - they’re unfortunately near-musts in Inferno and even Hell, where every elite has enough CC reduction to make Caltrops and other snares insufficient alone.
My build is this, though I usually switch out Multishot for Shadow Power when I’ve done the Diablo fight. I have been able to beat everything through Act 3 in Inferno with this build, though I generally have a ton of trouble with Belial (though my impression is that fight just sucks for Demon Hunters in general with so much stuff moving around such a small space). YMMV, most people prefer Nether Tentacles and Smoke Screen.
