10-30-2012, 04:11 PM
Been playing this quite a bit at "Monsters 4" lately.
Basically been running:
Spectral Blades -- Healing Blades
Meteor -- Star Pact
Frost Nova -- Bone Chill
Diamond Skin -- Prism
Teleport -- Fracture OR Energy Armor -- Pinpoint Barrier
Magic Weapon -- Blood Magic OR Energy Armor -- Pinpoint Barrier
There are two things I'm trying to do...
1) With Teleport -- Fracture I am very, very durable, but kill slowly, high monster power really considerably ups health, and killing speed goes down considerably. Initially I was doing MP4 very slowly and unable to kill Siegebreaker before the enrage, even tanking all hits in a corner and having nearly 90+% time on target.I was trying to trade fracture for offense.
This is what I found:
Without fracture the following things that were fairly trivial become nightmares:
Exploding fallen -- With fracture, you can teleport and run. They'll explode on your images and you still have nova and/or diamond skin to save you from a stray.
Frozen -- getting out of frozen is really easy with teleport. Put your mouse on a clear area, hit the button, and you're done.
Jailor + desecration -- again, getting jailed in desecration is a much bigger deal when you can't just point and teleport. Fracture breaks you out of jail too.
Vortex -- Without Teleport, Vortex can put you in the middle of a very nasty situation.
In addition to these, it took away an option for fire chains that I liked to purposefully sit in a corner so they can't get their chains all around. If I was taking too much damage from regular attacks, I could teleport out, run away, they'd often get stuck on my images and I could often get free enough to TP even if I needed to.
Lastly, I lost a lot of flexibility in choosing targets to attack. I liked being able to use teleport as an offensive tool. While fighting melee, you could wait for Frost Nova cooldown, single out a ranged foe, teleport next to him, nova and go nuts. Without teleport you can chase those fat moon clan mages halfway to china and miss a frost nova... GRRRR.
Bottom line is that Teleport -- Fracture is an immesurable amount of defense & flexibility, and while I can play without it in softcore because death has little penalty, I have no idea how MonTy was able to survive at length in hardcore without Fracture.
2) Second thing I was looking at was options that provided both defense and offense. Pinpoint barrier and Blood Magic Weapon both offer mixed offense and defensive buffs. Pinpoint barrier seems most beneficial for defense, and depending on crit & + crit damage % can offer just as much offense as magic weapon. Currently I'm only +70% crit damage, and Pinpoint barrier offers only about +9% damage vs. +10% damage, but it's so superior defensively that I feel it is a better option than blood magic.
Another offense + defense option I explored was to use:
Cold Blooded
in conjunction with
Ice Armor / Chilling Aura
Here you have a clear synergy. your aura chills stuff that isn't frost nova'd and cold blooded increases damage done to chilled and frozen stuff. It works okay except that the damage reduction from ice armor is only melee damage, and frankly melee damage is not a huge problem with this build... ranged damage is. This allows you to drop blur without too much penalty, but the passives available are kinda meh. Galvanizing ward is a good defensive option, and astral presence is always a good offensive option.
Overall I didn't feel like this provided enough defense against ranged. A room full of quill fiends or whatnot really hurts, since there's no ranged damage reduction. Pinpoint barrier seems the better option, since you don't also tie up a passive.
Basically been running:
Spectral Blades -- Healing Blades
Meteor -- Star Pact
Frost Nova -- Bone Chill
Diamond Skin -- Prism
Teleport -- Fracture OR Energy Armor -- Pinpoint Barrier
Magic Weapon -- Blood Magic OR Energy Armor -- Pinpoint Barrier
There are two things I'm trying to do...
1) With Teleport -- Fracture I am very, very durable, but kill slowly, high monster power really considerably ups health, and killing speed goes down considerably. Initially I was doing MP4 very slowly and unable to kill Siegebreaker before the enrage, even tanking all hits in a corner and having nearly 90+% time on target.I was trying to trade fracture for offense.
This is what I found:
Without fracture the following things that were fairly trivial become nightmares:
Exploding fallen -- With fracture, you can teleport and run. They'll explode on your images and you still have nova and/or diamond skin to save you from a stray.
Frozen -- getting out of frozen is really easy with teleport. Put your mouse on a clear area, hit the button, and you're done.
Jailor + desecration -- again, getting jailed in desecration is a much bigger deal when you can't just point and teleport. Fracture breaks you out of jail too.
Vortex -- Without Teleport, Vortex can put you in the middle of a very nasty situation.
In addition to these, it took away an option for fire chains that I liked to purposefully sit in a corner so they can't get their chains all around. If I was taking too much damage from regular attacks, I could teleport out, run away, they'd often get stuck on my images and I could often get free enough to TP even if I needed to.
Lastly, I lost a lot of flexibility in choosing targets to attack. I liked being able to use teleport as an offensive tool. While fighting melee, you could wait for Frost Nova cooldown, single out a ranged foe, teleport next to him, nova and go nuts. Without teleport you can chase those fat moon clan mages halfway to china and miss a frost nova... GRRRR.
Bottom line is that Teleport -- Fracture is an immesurable amount of defense & flexibility, and while I can play without it in softcore because death has little penalty, I have no idea how MonTy was able to survive at length in hardcore without Fracture.
2) Second thing I was looking at was options that provided both defense and offense. Pinpoint barrier and Blood Magic Weapon both offer mixed offense and defensive buffs. Pinpoint barrier seems most beneficial for defense, and depending on crit & + crit damage % can offer just as much offense as magic weapon. Currently I'm only +70% crit damage, and Pinpoint barrier offers only about +9% damage vs. +10% damage, but it's so superior defensively that I feel it is a better option than blood magic.
Another offense + defense option I explored was to use:
Cold Blooded
in conjunction with
Ice Armor / Chilling Aura
Here you have a clear synergy. your aura chills stuff that isn't frost nova'd and cold blooded increases damage done to chilled and frozen stuff. It works okay except that the damage reduction from ice armor is only melee damage, and frankly melee damage is not a huge problem with this build... ranged damage is. This allows you to drop blur without too much penalty, but the passives available are kinda meh. Galvanizing ward is a good defensive option, and astral presence is always a good offensive option.
Overall I didn't feel like this provided enough defense against ranged. A room full of quill fiends or whatnot really hurts, since there's no ranged damage reduction. Pinpoint barrier seems the better option, since you don't also tie up a passive.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.