Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[kandrathe]

You rather missed the point, though. My post isn't a statement about CC at all. It's an analysis on the failure to produce a viable melee game, yet again. And on this score, can there even be any argument?

I shouldn't have brought up Inferno. My point was that CC isn't the proper style of play here, even in Nightmare/Hell modes. Melee is quite viable from Normal to Nightmare to Hell difficulties. I ran into the same brick wall you did, and asked for help. It made a big difference, so I'm suggesting that to you as well. The simple fact was, I was Doing It Wrong.™

I'm not as far with my Barbarian (level 32) -- but I took that advice too. My solo style (and the way I want to play) is to mostly, heedlessly wade through trash mobs. This build, which has most emphasis on damage reduction and health recovery, allows me to mostly do that. I was struggling a bit yesterday so I decided to swap in Weapons Master, and crafted a rare sword that then improves my damage by 15%, but my reason was since a % of my damage per hit returns to me as health. In swarms of melee my Revenge is almost always lit, and I spam the hell out of it. Where I'm at now, the biggest trouble I face are mobs with non-physical damage (fire, cold, poison) since I don't have any resistance yet. My play style is Frenzy, and periodically rend, and spam Revenge whenever I can. I use Leap to jump in and out as needed, with the temporary Armor buff for now. My CC is to kill them, or make them mad at me then jump away to draw them off my team. For champion packs, I burn Earthquake then retreat to pull the most into it. Under Tactics, the best I have now is Threatening Shout, which reduces damage for 15 seconds, and I apply it also as needed. I don't have to rely on health orbs, or potions -- but I do need to use them now and then especially with non-physical damage mobs.

I do die when I'm being stupid, and I can live with that. I will need to see if this set up is viable through Nightmare. I do need better gear, with more armor, vitality and resistances. And, I'm AH buying averse, but I funnel in to sell as many unusable rares as I can for reasonable prices. I've only spent about 3000 gold on the AH for affordable upgrades. I don't like to spend my game time doing Item accounting.