05-18-2012, 08:24 PM
Finished the normal campaign with my level 32 DH this morning (I'll post relevant stats - mainly dps and life - later tonight). I made the point of soloing all 4 acts, visited every square inch of every zone and dungeon, killed every single spawned mob, used only the templar NPC, and kept gemcutting and blacksmithing even with my character level.
Here are my thoughts, mostly specific to the DH class:
If you are careful and have a decent internet connection, you can mostly ignore vitality and stack +AS or dexterity as the most important stats through the first 3 acts, with the possible exception of the Act II boss, where you might find a larger health pool to be a bit more useful. There's really no reason to stack MF at lower levels as you'll be replacing gear often and you'll have plenty of items to melt down into crafting materials.
First time through the game, gold is at more of a premium than crafting materials, so selling excess blue or even gold items may be more useful than melting them down for crafting materials that will be obsolete by the 2nd difficulty level.
Because of the high damage, difficult to avoid attacks from regular monsters in Act IV, you'll need to replace some dexterity with vitality. I think I had around 3600 life at level 32, when I fought and defeated the Act IV boss (3 attempts, with several hundred life points added each attempt and some minor skill shuffling) fairly comfortably.
Use Sentry (Spitfire Turret) for the few boss fights that require you to move frequently/almost constantly/ kite. Helps a lot, and you should have discipline available to keep Sentry up while still having enough for Vault. Bat Companion (generates 3 hatred/second) is also good if you feel like you're constantly out of hatred.
I'm not going to get into an extended skill/rune discussion, because new runes have such a huge affect on which skills use, its mostly pointless to spend time evaluating these until hell difficulty.
I started to write up some general strategy for how to use certain skill combinations, but really, this stuff is just really freakin obvious.
Death summary: I died once in Act II due to a really bad lag spike (which disconnected me about a minute after the death), I died once to normal monsters in Act IV (half asleep, not enough vitality on gear), I died 3 or 4 times to the Act II boss (mostly poor play on my part, and probably not enough life from vitality), I died twice to the Act IV mini boss (failed to kite around obstacles; this was easy once I knew the boss mechanics), and I died twice to the Act IV final boss (not enough life/vitality, and sub-optimal skill selection).
Grand total number of deaths through full clear of normal: 10. Goal was no deaths; this would have been achievable had I approached gear selection with a higher priority on vitality.
Here are my thoughts, mostly specific to the DH class:
If you are careful and have a decent internet connection, you can mostly ignore vitality and stack +AS or dexterity as the most important stats through the first 3 acts, with the possible exception of the Act II boss, where you might find a larger health pool to be a bit more useful. There's really no reason to stack MF at lower levels as you'll be replacing gear often and you'll have plenty of items to melt down into crafting materials.
First time through the game, gold is at more of a premium than crafting materials, so selling excess blue or even gold items may be more useful than melting them down for crafting materials that will be obsolete by the 2nd difficulty level.
Because of the high damage, difficult to avoid attacks from regular monsters in Act IV, you'll need to replace some dexterity with vitality. I think I had around 3600 life at level 32, when I fought and defeated the Act IV boss (3 attempts, with several hundred life points added each attempt and some minor skill shuffling) fairly comfortably.
Use Sentry (Spitfire Turret) for the few boss fights that require you to move frequently/almost constantly/ kite. Helps a lot, and you should have discipline available to keep Sentry up while still having enough for Vault. Bat Companion (generates 3 hatred/second) is also good if you feel like you're constantly out of hatred.
I'm not going to get into an extended skill/rune discussion, because new runes have such a huge affect on which skills use, its mostly pointless to spend time evaluating these until hell difficulty.
I started to write up some general strategy for how to use certain skill combinations, but really, this stuff is just really freakin obvious.
Death summary: I died once in Act II due to a really bad lag spike (which disconnected me about a minute after the death), I died once to normal monsters in Act IV (half asleep, not enough vitality on gear), I died 3 or 4 times to the Act II boss (mostly poor play on my part, and probably not enough life from vitality), I died twice to the Act IV mini boss (failed to kite around obstacles; this was easy once I knew the boss mechanics), and I died twice to the Act IV final boss (not enough life/vitality, and sub-optimal skill selection).
Grand total number of deaths through full clear of normal: 10. Goal was no deaths; this would have been achievable had I approached gear selection with a higher priority on vitality.
Continuous improvement through procrastination since 1973.