Crit / meteor build

[Spangles]

... I'm thinking that Diamond Skin won't be as useful in higher Monster Powers, due to a set amount of damage being negated ...

I agree, so I replaced Diamond Skin with Magic Weapon and made up the durability loss by replacing Spectral Blade / Deep Cuts with Healing Blades:

LMB: Spectral Blade / Healing Blades
RMB: Meteor / Star Pact
1: Explosive Blast / Chain Reaction
2. Frost Nova / Bone Chill
3: Magic Weapon / Force Weapon
4. Energy Armor / Prismatic Armor
Critical Mass, Cold Blooded, Blur.

I used this build on live 1.04 Act 3 and found a marked improvement in killing speed. I can survive in massive packs of white mobs that I had to kite previously. I can demolish most champ packs. Reflector / desecrator combos are still troublesome but I can usually avoid one-shotting myself by not meteoring until I kite them apart and can attack individuals.

Act 3 1.04 with the new build now feels like MP3, downgraded from MP4.

I put a cheap subspec Windforce on Scoundrel to experiment with knockback. This was a big success: knockback on multishot is great CC, it interrupts without scattering.

...

I farmed an Infernal Machine on MP4 and another on MP5 with this build. I substituted Force Armor for Prismatic Armor and saw no improvement, so I'll keep Prismatic. I will make MP5 my home, having to slow down for the champs actually improves my survival rate.

Patch day tomorrow finally! I'm glad I did all this research without paying the cost of doing it live. Discussions here were a big help.