So my 6th legendary Andariel's visage still sold for 6.5 million after the IAS patch. I checked the AH today, and it's already selling for much less than that!

6/20/2012 8:52:44 AM

Quote :

"Elite packs (Champion/Rare) now drop an additional item for players with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor, which is guaranteed to be of Rare quality"

i dont think this is working.

pre patch i was averaging at least 8 yellows on an inferno butcher run starting at the imprisoned angel quest

last night, i got 2. i had 5 stacks of NV pretty early and 1 of my 2 yellows was dropped by the butcher

6/20/2012 9:15:46 AM

^ seems to be working for me, i saw a noticeable increase of rare items with 5 stacks of NV. plus my MF is terrible so i really don't expect to see as many drops as i experienced last night post patch. maybe it was just an unlucky run?

6/20/2012 9:29:05 AM

I saw a bunch of gray items for the first time in awhile. My base MF is something like 250%. Didn't kill too many packs after 5 though..fuck soul rippers.

And waller seemed to happen a lot more, but that could just be a 'I'm paranoid' thing. 4 Waller mobs walled about every 2 seconds. Kiting was pretty much impossible - they tronned me off and spit out tons of ice balls

6/20/2012 10:26:10 AM

what kind of wizard builds are you guys using for inferno? I've been running around with blizzard/venom hydra in Hell. Is it gonna cut it in inferno though?

6/20/2012 10:40:38 AM

boss mobs like butcher and the jailer now are only guaranteed to drop 1 rare quality item, down from 2 with 5 stacks of NV

6/20/2012 10:47:27 AM

^^ Zero chance after the drowned temple. Until then, enjoy. Quickly after than the mobs ramp up fast and you'll have no hope.

6/20/2012 12:02:25 PM

maybe it was an unlucky run. will report back after more attempts.

6/20/2012 12:05:25 PM

yeah i gave up on solo wizard in Inferno. I simply can't do it unless I've got one of my Monk buddies tanking for me

6/20/2012 12:05:32 PM

So where are the new farm spots I can exploit. Warriors Rest was somewhat nerfed

6/20/2012 12:09:55 PM

I suck at Blizzard Kiting.

I do Piercing Orb, Mirror Image Duplicates, Venom Hydra, Force Weapon/Armor/Crystal Shell. Illusionist/Cannon/Blur passives.

Basically 'kite' stuff around by puking out 5 Images. If you find corridors all the better. With a decent amount of resist they take 2-3 hits. Meanwhile Venom Hydra is doing awesome damage, and Piercing Orb is okay, if not annoying. Whenever you get hit you can vomit out 5 more images, and can Crystal Shell if you need to take a hit to recast them. (You can also intentionally get hit by an ice ball to reset images - they break you out of freezes/jails)

Waller is a problem, and elite Soul Lashers are still pretty much impossible. If you can stack enough crit (get crit damage on a weapon) it scales really well and you could probably throw crit mass in that build. I only do 28k dps, but my Orbs crit for 35-50k.

6/20/2012 1:25:17 PM

It seems that there are less packs in Cursed Hold for the Butcher runs than before. I think they made it much harder to get 5 stacks before butcher. Plus, it seems like what you are really farming now are the elite packs, instead of the bosses. What a lot of groups were doing last night was get 5 stacks of valor, and then go all over the act looking for elites to kill with 5 stacks.

[Edited on June 20, 2012 at 1:31 PM. Reason : -]

6/20/2012 1:30:40 PM

So just finished getting my monk to lvl 60. Took 24.5 hours without using any of the leveling tricks most of which have been nerfed. Not sure if I did everything the fastest way possible but tried to.

Any suggestions on certain items I should be looking to buy for the monk? I have about 17 mil to spend getting decked out.

6/20/2012 1:33:53 PM

i feel as if i should stop beating my head against a2 on my barb - im just not that well geared right now and dont really have the funds to buy stuff

6/20/2012 1:48:28 PM

of act 2 is too hard for you there is no reason to not be farming act 1 now.

Our WD got a ilvl 63 dagger with 850dps, 100+ int 100+ vit and + attack speed from a champion pack during our butcher run last night.

farm farm farm!

6/20/2012 2:03:27 PM

i thought + attack speed was worthless now?

6/20/2012 2:17:05 PM

Not worthless. There are still cases where you want faster attack speed.
Though maybe its worthless in terms of item budgeting. I haven't tried yet, but I would hope that the max IAS you can get on a certain piece would be a comparable DPS increase to the max Crit Chance you can get on a piece (excluding other variables).

Though I will say that if you are looking at a weapon's DPS, yeah, IAS on a weapon is useless because it is already factored into that top level DPS value.

6/20/2012 2:25:05 PM

Quote :

"I think they made it much harder to get 5 stacks before butcher"

I just did a run this morn. Had 5 stacks by the time we hit Jailer. Luck of the draw

6/20/2012 2:34:55 PM

also did a run this morning. no problems hitting 5 by jailer

6/20/2012 2:45:53 PM

Any people playing monks want to suggest if I should dual wield(and if so which weapons to look for), weapon/shield, or 2 hander?

I got an 1100ish dps 2 hander using just for now but seems pretty slow and costing me spirit.

Let me know what I should be looking for.

6/20/2012 3:03:11 PM

Good to know. In Act 2, are people doing Belial runs? What is the best farming part of Act 2?

[Edited on June 20, 2012 at 3:10 PM. Reason : -]

6/20/2012 3:09:43 PM

reporting back, 18 yellows on the last butcher run. that other run must have just been a statistical anomaly or something

6/20/2012 3:11:49 PM

I would always clear up to the warden, and if I didn't have 5 stacks of NV, port out and take the waypoint to the crypts. The three dungeons (4 if you get Dev Hell) usually have elite or champion packs near the entrance, so use those to get up to 5 quickly. Then just run back to the waypoint and take your portal back to the warden ... profit.

As for monk gear, check my post on the previous page. I finished Act 3 last night, and the only life on hit I have is about 300 on an amulet. I have 2500 life after kill on my weapon, though, which is great for areas with huge swarms of weak mobs (Fallen swarms in early Act 3, the Iskatu fight, etc). IAS is still nice but not necessary if you find fast weapons, so go for a dagger or fist instead of a mace or spear. One non-obvious thing that I've found nice is that I have 12000+ extra HP from health globes on my boots; that's been really helpful for the monk, since they pop up right next to you when you're meleeing. I got lucky and found a good piece with an absurd health globe bonus, but be aware that it's helpful if you find it on multiple pieces. But mostly, pick a resistance to stack and load up on that, dex and vit.

6/20/2012 3:47:23 PM

For monk weapons: I used dual wield for Acts 1 and 2 without any problem, then picked up a shield in Act 3. Use the Guardian's Path passive that adds Dodge when dual wielding, then I switched to Resolve when using a shield (the other passives I use are One With Everything and Seize The Initiative). If you get fast weapons, life on hit is the consensus on what to invest in, but I had 0 until Act 3 and was totally fine; I tend to restrict myself to weapons with over 200 Dex, since it also gives benefits to Dodge and Armor (with passive). Crit damage is great if you pick up crit chance on your gloves, helm and/or rings.

If you want to use a 2-hander, definitely look for a good daibo instead of the others, because its base attack speed is faster. Our damage is not very reliant on having big base damage caps from slower weapons; we have to rely more on defensive skills to survive at melee, so that's less room on the hotbar for special attacks with multipliers based on damage per swing. But I would generally recommend dual wielding or wpn/shield for the extra stat boosts.

^^^ For Act 2 farming, start on the quest to kill Kulle, then go into the other dungeons in his archives to get 5 NV; you can pretty much always get 5 from the two side instances, unless you get a pack of lunatics that suicide bomb before you can kill them. Kill Kulle, do the scouring of Alcarnis, then kill Belial.

[Edited on June 20, 2012 at 4:02 PM. Reason : ]

6/20/2012 4:00:15 PM

^,^^

Thanks sounds good. I quickly grabbed some gear from AH and am 900 resist/4000 armor/22k dps. My vit seems low though at only 21k health so I imagine need to get that up into the 40s/50s. Guessing pretty standard to keep the passive that matches the resist and the armor to dext and then rotate the 3rd based on whatever it is you need.

Can you guys post the builds you are using?

6/20/2012 4:29:44 PM

anything over 30k hp is really overkill. especially with 900 resists.

i usually run transcendance one with everything and dex==>armor passives.

a toz rin gaze and transcendance means anything i cast basically heals me to full. havent played my monk after the nerf after pawning all his gear on the rmah, trans might be unneeded now

[Edited on June 20, 2012 at 4:41 PM. Reason : .]

6/20/2012 4:40:41 PM

Quote :

"Thanks sounds good. I quickly grabbed some gear from AH and am 900 resist/4000 armor/22k dps. My vit seems low though at only 21k health so I imagine need to get that up into the 40s/50s. "

I'm with ssclark in terms of vit. Monk is all about mitigating enough dmg so you don't die before you cast your next ability (which usually heals to full). Well, that and making sure your attack speed is fast enough to generate spirit fast enough (have fun with shielding and invulnerable btw ). My monk friend in Act 3-4 has been running around with like 24k I think (not sure where his gear is at right now). There are probably other builds, though.

6/20/2012 5:15:14 PM

yah monks aren't like barbs...


there's no 2000% weapon damage abilities in the monks kit. You can't just have 100k hp on a monk cause you'll never fucking kill anything.

the 25k-30k hp 24k-28kdps build seemed to have the best effect for me.

for a while i had 40-48k hp and 815 resists... but act 3 was a fucking nightmare because nothing ever died with 10-15k deeps (this is prenerf obv)

I dropped 12k hp and double my damage. and the game was significally easier.

6/20/2012 5:49:04 PM

There's a definite tradeoff between survivability through mitigation and through damage output to kill mobs faster. I have about 44K life when dual-wielding, and 47K with a shield (24.5K DPS dual-wield, 17K with shield). That's more than I need, and I'm looking for gear that will add more dex (about 1600 now) and give up some life in exchange. But the extra buffer is nice for the random anti-melee packs that have molten or fire chains and like to run around like chickens, or arcane waller/jailers that trap you while your invulnerability skills are on cooldown.

900 resist is plenty; I would pick up more health by the time you get to Act 2, but you don't need as much as I've gone with.

For my build, I use:

Passives
One With Everything (always)
Seize The Initiative (always)
The Guardian's Path (dual-wielding) or Resolve (w/ shield)

Actives
Breath of Heaven - Blazing Wrath (always)
Serenity - Peaceful Repose (always)
Deadly Reach - Keen Eye (progression) or Foresight (farming)
Mantra of Evasion - Hard Target (progression) or Backlash (dual-wielding Farming)

I typically use two out of the three of
Blinding Flash - Faith in the Light
Sweeping Wind - Blade Storm
Mystic Ally - Fire Ally (Earth Ally is a good tank for Act 1, but his taunt gets him killed too often after that)

If the ally is dying a lot, I typically use the other two. Sweeping Wind is great but costs a lot of spirit, so you have to adjust your playstyle to be able to keep it from dropping off; if you refresh it while still active, it keeps the stacks you've already gotten on it, so sometimes it's worth it to refresh while running to the next mob to keep 3 stacks up (unless your crit chance is high enough to get 3 stacks quickly).

Also, while farming, I'll sometimes swap Mantra of Evasion for Mantra of Conviction - Overawe, which is a great damage boost.

[Edited on June 20, 2012 at 6:03 PM. Reason : added DPS]

6/20/2012 6:02:22 PM

this is the build i use with a 2h axe

6/20/2012 6:33:28 PM

Yep definitely still some massive balancing problems post patch. Wizard still completely unplayable against almost all Inferno elite packs.

6/20/2012 7:39:29 PM

In Act 1 I have not ran up on an Elite pack that I did not kill, now in Act 2 the Fallen champions (little guys with the clubs) and some REAL HORSESHIT. I will say though that there are a some packs in Act 2 that were managable, but overall the Wizard can deal with packs you just got to go ALL damage and say to hell with survivabililty, and save gold for your repairs bills.

6/20/2012 8:14:44 PM

As a wizard I am still able to destroy any Act 1 packs (including inv minions). The only packs I have issues with in A2 are those jailer/waller serpent packs. I am arcane orb kiting though. I don't have spectacular numbers (25k dps, 350 AR, 30k health, 5k armor).

6/20/2012 8:15:36 PM

How effective are the monk mantras? Worth the slot for the buffs? I find those type of things sound good in theory but end up not packing enough punch.

6/20/2012 8:50:03 PM

Depends on the rune, some of them are great. Conviction - Overawe is a constant +24% damage across the board, and +48% for the first 3 seconds. If you're in a fight where you're just facetanking something and building plenty of spirit, just refresh it every 5 seconds as soon as your spirit fills back up to full; that's a massive damage boost. Same tactic for Evasion boosting your dodge chance to give you more survivability.

6/20/2012 9:47:54 PM

Quote :

"Wizard still completely unplayable against almost all Inferno elite packs."

Not trying to be a troll or dick, but you're doing something wrong. This should read:

Quote :

"Wizard still completely destroying almost all Inferno elite packs."

I can't speak to *what* exactly you're doing wrong, as my experience is almost 100% in the Barbarian, but from what I've read/heard/seen, Wizard is one of the hot-shit classes right now.



[Edited on June 20, 2012 at 10:02 PM. Reason : clarity]

6/20/2012 10:00:56 PM

Quote :

"I don't have spectacular numbers (25k dps, 350 AR, 30k health, 5k armor)."

Those are pretty spectacular. I'm at 16k dps, 33k health having farmed a tremendous amount and done everything right, twice over. Auction house is not viable because everything is vastly overpriced and at absolute fastest rate, gold can be collected ~100k per hour. And with 1.0.3, repair bills have pretty much wiped out my net worth.

I'm not going to participate in the RMAH, so I have no recourse for cheating to better gear. I have researched alternate skill builds but none of them are viable. It is not possible (fact) to outrun an elite with the Fast affix, and those elites also seem to be totally immune to freezing effects. There is no response to it.

All in all a very poorly developed endgame.

6/20/2012 10:26:33 PM

Agree about the fast packs. Even with movement speed I get destroyed. I usually skip those, forgot about them.

6/20/2012 10:32:52 PM

But then I'm left wondering what's the point?

eh.

Strangely I'm not bitter or anything. I've seen all the complaints on the bnet forums and was ready for Inferno to be an unfun mess.

I also realize now how truly screwed the entire AH is because of the gold farmers. I've never possessed more than 280,000 gold at any one time - and that was due to several days of not spending. A million is a pipe dream, playing legit.

Disappointing, but I do feel I got my $60 worth. I'll try some other classes through Hell and then be done with it most likely.

---

Actually what might bring me back is if they introduce the ladder system, including on a segregated ladder AH. That might serve as an economy reset to get prices back down to the sub-100k region where they belong, consistent with the gold drop rate in the game.

[Edited on June 20, 2012 at 10:56 PM. Reason : ]

6/20/2012 10:36:32 PM

A million gold is a pipe dream playing legit? Really?

6/21/2012 1:05:04 AM

I had 35 million gold like two weeks in the game from buying/selling on the AH. After I stopped doing that I made probably another 5-10 million from just random drops.

1 million gold is nothing.

6/21/2012 7:06:26 AM

Quote :

"A million is a pipe dream, playing legit."

I have over a million at least every other day, wtf are you doing with your money?

6/21/2012 7:27:10 AM

Again, I do not play the auction house. I'm sure it's quite possible to get to the millions by playing the auction house.

6/21/2012 8:44:24 AM

By "play the auction house" do you mean "use it at all"?

I don't buy/resell, I just put up yellows that I get while playing, and buy gear upgrades when I can afford them.

Are you not even doing that? If so, then no wonder you're struggling.

6/21/2012 9:06:03 AM

"I'm hamstringing myself and then wondering why I move so slow."

6/21/2012 9:11:29 AM

^^ this. buying gear you can afford off the AH is so critical to improving your character.

dont let dzags discourage you though, not everyone bots for 18 hours a day =/

[Edited on June 21, 2012 at 9:19 AM. Reason : .]

6/21/2012 9:19:08 AM

I do buy when forced to (game difficulty step jumps without ever dropping usable loot), and I do sell. But I list my yellows for correct and reasonable prices. Anything I've listed for over 20,000 has never sold.

6/21/2012 9:25:47 AM

Quote :

"It is not possible (fact) to outrun an elite with the Fast affix, and those elites also seem to be totally immune to freezing effects. There is no response to it."

Depends on which "fast" mob it is. If its a fallen . . . yeah, they suck because they are already really fast. If its one of the larger mobs with the large weapon, they aren't so tough. They are faster than you, but if you keep walking they usually match your speed briefly and when they try to attack, you are already far enough away from them that they miss. Its about choosing your battles.

Quote :

"Those are pretty spectacular. I'm at 16k dps, 33k health having farmed a tremendous amount and done everything right, twice over."

If this is for your wizard, your DPS is way too low. Keep in mind that your dmg is based off weapon dmg/dps and not just how much INT you are stacking. Rings with +dmg are often much better than rings with mediocre INT.

Quote :

"I do buy when forced to (game difficulty step jumps without ever dropping usable loot), and I do sell. But I list my yellows for correct and reasonable prices. Anything I've listed for over 20,000 has never sold."

What are you farming? Butcher runs should regularly drop items between 20k-100k, more now that the higher gear can still drop. My best item sell from the butcher was a 1.8M amulet. My best from a Magda run was 2M. My best item I've gotten from Siegebreaker sold for 4M. I have another that should go for 5M+. You can get good money by farming items as opposed to gaming the AH. Selling for 20k just seems really really low since I sold things for much more than that at level 30-40.

[Edited on June 21, 2012 at 10:04 AM. Reason : ]

6/21/2012 10:01:22 AM

what kind of crit% are yall working with? im like 27% @ 170%-210% damage (depending on gear) A1 inferno is that reasonable or way to low

[Edited on June 21, 2012 at 10:04 AM. Reason : .]

6/21/2012 10:02:55 AM

^^ Best item I got from Butcher PRE-PATCH was Andariel's Visage = 6M.

6/21/2012 10:11:34 AM