Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[ViralSpiral]

You got some pretty good hits in for having died instantly. But yeah, he looks like the kind of guy you don't want to hug.

[Elric of Grans]

I have faced Vortex/Jailer/Fire Chains before and it was not a real issue. Frozen is pretty well a non-issue for Demon Hunters too. No, that is not a scary one for a Demon Hunter. Swap Frozen for Mortar and you would have me crying a river and rage-quitting

[FireIceTalon]

I agree, Frozen is much worse for melee chars....and what makes it worse is that the monsters tend to ABUSE it, so you often get Frozen several consecutive times. It's quite annoying. My first mob on Hell with my barb was a Fire Chains, Frozen, Shielding combo, which took me 3 attempts to defeat.

[MongoJerry]

Yeah, in playing around with the character builder on the D3 site, Galv Ward, Illusionist, and Temporal Flux struck me as the "duh" choices for passives. They look the best on paper, anyhow. Evocation is the only other one that looked appealing to me at all. Maybe something like http://tinyurl.com/87lsplw where there's three sources of Arcane damage to work with Flux, nothing costs over 20 AP, and your signature spell generates 4 AP (I don't know numerically exactly how many max AP L60 Wizards have, but I know the armour I picked lowers it by 20 and I see skills that cost 60) so it seemed in theory that you'd be more likely to run into issues with cooldowns than running out of AP with any major frequency.

Passives I have found useful at different times during my Wizard's career:

Blur
Power Hungry (Don't knock it -- it keeps your AP ball full in long fights)
Evocation
Glass Cannon
Prodigy
Astral Presence
Temporal Flux

I expect that when I get into Inferno, Illusionist and/or Critical Mass (when I have about 20% critical hit chance) will probably be useful, too. Other Wizards love Galvanizing Ward more than I (and I can't say they're wrong), and of course the magic school specific passives are useful if you're that kind of Wizard. So, the Wizard definitely has some very useful passives that one has to make hard decisions about.

[Archon_Wing]

I agree, Frozen is much worse for melee chars....and what makes it worse is that the monsters tend to ABUSE it, so you often get Frozen several consecutive times. It's quite annoying. My first mob on Hell with my barb was a Fire Chains, Frozen, Shielding combo, which took me 3 attempts to defeat.

Frozen is very much abused, though shielding is also very much abused by them.

[FireIceTalon]

Yep. I really like Wiz's passives to be honest, and I'm always switching them out (except for Astral Presence) and trying different combos. That is the sign of a well designed class, unlike DH sadly. Barb's passives rock too. It is a pity that DH is designed so poorly because this is the class I was most excited to play, as archer/ranger classes have traditonally been my favorite.

[ViralSpiral]

Yeah, Blur would have to be awesome at some point if partially because it's one of two passives you can actually get at level ten. I'm only looking at things from the builder perspective where all options are available, though. That's what I meant about the comment where only four of the passives looked exciting to me endgame. Although Blur probably could have some late game potential too, especially around high HP, fast-moving melee packs you can't kite super effectively. I was hoping the teleport + clone spamming would mitigate more than 20% of damage, though.

Critical Mass probably works a lot better for you build than it would mine, since mine uses precisely two skills with a CD and already has a passive devoted to resetting their CD in most situations where I'd likely want them reset. On a side note; here's a hurrah to the sort of cheese limiting the healing potions prevents. Consider running a character like this in D2 that could spit out four clones of themselves (and teleport) every time they took 15% of their life in damage with the kind of potion access D2 had. You'd pretty much be invincible to everything that didn't one-shot you.

[BellaStrega]

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot019.jpg

I ran into this as my monk and died instantly. Wonder what a demon hunter if they ran into this would think besides "Why do I play this game?" :p

I've killed similar combos on my monk, so they are doable. But extremely rough. When I was first going through act I inferno, they were pretty much instant death. You can gear up enough to survive long enough to kill them back first, though.

[MongoJerry]

Yeah, Blur would have to be awesome at some point if partially because it's one of two passives you can actually get at level ten. I'm only looking at things from the builder perspective where all options are available, though. That's what I meant about the comment where only four of the passives looked exciting to me endgame. Although Blur probably could have some late game potential too, especially around high HP, fast-moving melee packs you can't kite super effectively. I was hoping the teleport + clone spamming would mitigate more than 20% of damage, though.

I swap Blur in for situational purposes for various bosses like the Butcher, Siegebreaker, and the first two minibosses in Act IV. Obviously, if I'm feeling overpowered, I won't in order to keep the Nephelem Valor stacks, but right now, survival is most the most important consideration.

[Roland]

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot019.jpg

I ran into this as my monk and died instantly. Wonder what a demon hunter if they ran into this would think besides "Why do I play this game?" :p

That situation? Depends on gear. Those mobs are notoriously fragile, although they hit hard and can summon reinforcements right on top of you. Frankly I wouldn't bat an eyelash at that. Caltrops + Guardian Turret if I'm forced to stand still (ala Jailed), otherwise just kite with Caltrops, spray with Multishot or Impale (depending on mob density), and Bola Shot. Easily winnable fight once you can take more than 2 hits and live. Fire Chains is an anti-melee ability, just as Mortar is an anti-ranged ability. That wouldn't phase me one bit.

Now, if it was on Berserkers I might be a bit more nervous, but not hugely so.

[Elric of Grans]

I had a mob of Jailer/Fire Chain/Extra Health Berserkers once. A really, really tedious battle, as it was in very tight corridors and my DPS was pants. I quit when I accidentally kited them into a Frozen/Mortar/something mob of Conjurers

[ViralSpiral]

How effective is save & exit in D3? Same as D2 or is there some delay?

[FoxBat]

How effective is save & exit in D3? Same as D2 or is there some delay?

You'll sit there for 10 seconds doing nothing.

[Mavfin]

How effective is save & exit in D3? Same as D2 or is there some delay?

You'll sit there for 10 seconds doing nothing.

Town Portal also has a cast time, so 'hardcore' in D3 means you can't Alt-F4 or instant-TP out like you could in D2. Also, most achievement bosses' rooms (SK, Act end bosses, Maghda, etc) can't be TP'ed out of till the boss is dead.

[Athenau]

Berserkers are generally not difficult boss mobs, since they waste a lot of time on their windup attack which gives you lots of openings to dps them.

The exception is if they spawn with waller. I got triple-walled into a pixel of the screen (I literally could not move at all) while four berserks readied their overhead smash of doom. Serenity was on cooldown so you can guess what happened.

[BellaStrega]

I had a similar experience, except instead of Waller it was Illusionist. My screen was an unending sea of berserkers.

[ViralSpiral]

From sea (of blood) to shining sea (of blood)?

[Elric of Grans]

Well, I have to say I like what I have seen of Inferno so far. In general. The regular mobs feel just right. The drops feel better balanced than they were in Hell, though more than half the magic drops are still utter trash you cannot even salvage for crafting. The Elites are my bugbear. Almost everything I face is Invunerable Minions or Reflect Damage (I am fine with the latter in principle, but I know I am too under-geared at the moment). The rest are either a cake-walk, or my DPS is too low and I get hit with the enrage timer just before finishing them off --- even in Inferno, I am not too convinced there is any justification for this. With that fourth ability, even a combination of three abilities that are normally weak, the fourth can just tip it into the `too hard' basket, making it surprisingly difficult to farm. Still, probably half are killable, so Nephalim Valour ensures my gold and item drops are decent enough to make farming fun. If I just faced less completely unkillable mobs, Act I Inferno would definitely be the best fun I have had in this game.

[FireIceTalon]

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot019.jpg

I ran into this as my monk and died instantly. Wonder what a demon hunter if they ran into this would think besides "Why do I play this game?" :p

That situation? Depends on gear. Those mobs are notoriously fragile, although they hit hard and can summon reinforcements right on top of you. Frankly I wouldn't bat an eyelash at that. Caltrops + Guardian Turret if I'm forced to stand still (ala Jailed), otherwise just kite with Caltrops, spray with Multishot or Impale (depending on mob density), and Bola Shot. Easily winnable fight once you can take more than 2 hits and live. Fire Chains is an anti-melee ability, just as Mortar is an anti-ranged ability. That wouldn't phase me one bit.

Now, if it was on Berserkers I might be a bit more nervous, but not hugely so.

Oh, yea, I had some Berserkers in the Wortham area the other day that had Fire Chains....Berserkers in general are very gnarly to begin with, with Fire Chains and extra Health and some other affix, it was quite a pain for my Barb.

[Concillian]

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff247...hot019.jpg

I ran into this as my monk and died instantly. Wonder what a demon hunter if they ran into this would think besides "Why do I play this game?" :p

This might go easier if you had one of the monk skills which move a jail. I have real issues playing with an ally. They just aren't that useful. Even earthen isn't that useful, since +10% health gives you zero mitigation or healing.

You might try with FoT / thunderclap or Dashing strike to move the jail, or even SSS to have a few seconds of immunity to weave in with your other cooldowns and it should be significantly more manageable.

Dashing strike has the advantage of seeming to always put you at the rear of a monster. You can abuse this on desecrator / jailer to flip sides when jailed or fire chains when surrounded. You can also "blink" through arcane beams as tehy come around by targeting the ground. The game won't let you teleport very far unless you have a target, but it's plenty far to completely avoid damage from arcane beams if you have any sense of timing. I use the 10 spirit rune of this on my right click, and I use it a LOT to avoid significant damage from elites, and it speeds up killing the non-elites.

The fire chains packs seem to have some kind of script that seeks to surround you to get you in the chains. However, once you let them do this once, they seem to act like normal monsters from then on out. I will let them surround me, then blink through them and then I'll be able to better corral them into a formation where I'm not taking chains damage.

I've also used it on bees to avoid some of the missiles, though I always seem to take at least one or two hits if I go STRAIGHT through. I try to move more to the side first.