Basic Math - The Failure of Diablo Melee

[BellaStrega]

Well, in Inferno, all classes have it pretty equally rough. Inferno is just a troll-fest/gear check by Blizz to screw with the players, and nothing more. But in normal through hell, I'm pretty sure melee classes have it a bit easier. In the case of Barb, you just put Revenge, Ignore Pain, the fury generator that best suits the situation (Bash for act bosses, Cleave or Frenzy for just about everything else), Leap or Furious Charge, WotB, and its GG.

I don't know about normal through hell and melee.

A couple of days ago I took a barbarian from act III normal to act I nightmare, and I had to pause upon entering Arreat Crater to upgrade my gear as I was losing life far too quickly.

I am taking my witch doctor through the same area now, and she's not having any trouble, just melting everything with acid cloud. It may be that she has better gear already, though.

Actually, being as this is my fourth character through this part of the game, I think that gear has a larger impact on how easy or difficult the game is than the specific class. I ran into a lot of troubles on my monk that other monks haven't, and you ran into problems on your wizard that I haven't. It may be related to build choice, or gear, or tactics, or a combination of any two or all three of those.

One spell that I like to use on Wiz that I rarely see people try out is Arcane Nova. Does REALLY big dmg, and its great for both a single target or AoE effect. I guess it's not as fancy or aesthetic as the typical Disintegrate or RoF users that you see all the time in pubbies, but it does quite a bit more dmg in general, and with the Galvanizing Ward passive it is quite efficient in terms of resource management, since normally Arcane Orb is very resource demanding. Venom Hydra and Blizzard are a pretty lethal combo for big crowds, at least in nightmare. My Wiz just started hell, so I will find out soon enough how effective it is there.

I've used obliteration fairly frequently. I hadn't noticed when I unlocked arcane nova. However, I do find it really nice for clearing crowds, although I often also use the venom hydra/blizzard combination.

A friend of mine still uses venom hydra and blizzard in inferno, and says it works fairly well for him.

You must have been very lucky as far as Rakinoth goes, cause I always have trouble with him when I use a ranged class - usually to the point where I have to co-op in a pubbie to be able to advance. At any rate, I really hope DH somehow gets rectified, they are in desperate need of dmg reduction passives or "armor/tanking" skills that can at least make them survive a couple more hits.

I was experimenting with mirror image at the time and had teleport/fracture and mirror image/duplicates, so I was alternating those during the fight. I mostly used shock pulse/piercing orb and arcane orb/obliteration after archon expired, and had magic weapon/force weapon for my sixth skill.

I may have been lucky, or had better gear, or my spells worked better in the fight, or whatever.

Also, on the passive side: I tend to use glass cannon, astral presence, and evocation. I mainly used evocation in tandem with archon, but I don't usually think to swap it out.