Why Dex-based classes are terrible.
#21
(06-30-2012, 11:47 PM)Concillian Wrote: Lots of stuff works in NM that doesn't work at inferno. It breaks down when things can kill you in 1-2 hits.

It is simply not possible for a DH to gear defensively enough to do this in inferno (solo), because there are no lasting +% armor or resists buffs.

It's the same story in NM and Hell - I've gotten insta-killed numerous times by cheesy, unplayable champ packs - it's just a lot more prevalent and unbalanced in Inferno. However, LoH works just as well in Hell as in Nightmare - unlike leech, it suffers no penalties at higher difficulty levels. OTOH, I agree with you on the lack of damage mitigation for Demon Hunters. Beyond a modest amount, neither armor nor resists are winning strategies for a DH.

As for what works in Inferno, not even Blizzard portrays it as anything but "optional content". Of course, they're being disingenuous, since the highest level items drop only in Inferno. But with what's available on the AH, magic find has a poor return on investment. What's the point, really, since it's little more than an exercise in stat inflation? I've seen nothing that indicates Inferno benchmarks anything more than your budget and your tolerance for zerging.
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#22
(07-01-2012, 12:59 AM)RogueMage Wrote:
(06-30-2012, 11:47 PM)Concillian Wrote: Lots of stuff works in NM that doesn't work at inferno. It breaks down when things can kill you in 1-2 hits.

It is simply not possible for a DH to gear defensively enough to do this in inferno (solo), because there are no lasting +% armor or resists buffs.

It's the same story in NM and Hell - I've gotten insta-killed numerous times by cheesy, unplayable champ packs - it's just a lot more prevalent and unbalanced in Inferno. However, LoH works just as well in Hell as in Nightmare - unlike leech, it suffers no penalties at higher difficulty levels. OTOH, I agree with you on the lack of damage mitigation for Demon Hunters. Beyond a modest amount, neither armor nor resists are winning strategies for a DH.

As for what works in Inferno, not even Blizzard portrays it as anything but "optional content". Of course, they're being disingenuous, since the highest level items drop only in Inferno. But with what's available on the AH, magic find has a poor return on investment. What's the point, really, since it's little more than an exercise in stat inflation? I've seen nothing that indicates Inferno benchmarks anything more than your budget and your tolerance for zerging.

Let me tell you, as someone that is routinely playing in Act 2 Inferno (still hunting for gear to get going in Act 3), your setup won't work. You need far, far larger life on hit than 300. Likewise, mobs typically hit you for 60% to 75% of your health in one hit with 35k health. In order to even stand a chance of being able to with stand the punishment a DH received per hit, you would need 20,000 health on hit or constantly using multishot and hitting 4 to 5 mobs with 4000 to 5000 health on hit to make up for just one mob hitting you.

The only survival method that works, while solo, is to run like hell and using things like caltrops with jagged spikes and firing the occasional hungering arrow (I use devouring arrow rune) and multishot (using fire at will rune) while using your companion as a human shield (sorry Erenia, but outside of you're speed buff, you're just a meatshield... :p). Simply, DHs do not have an effective mitigation skill like the other classes. You have Shadow Power - Gloom which costs 14 discipline to use and only lasts for 3 seconds, but gives 65% damage reduction during those 3 seconds and you have Vault for getting out of the way at 8 Discipline per use (and 4 more if you have tumble and using Vault again in 6 seconds) along with Evasive Fire, but that costs you 4 Discipline if you backflip (moves you backwards 15 yards, 30 with Displace rune). And you're expected to handle all this with 30 base Discipline (you can get more on gear) that returns at 1 Discipline per second (you can get 2 back per health globe if you use Vengenace passive, but IMO there are more useful passives at than this), not much chance at survival there otherwise. Simply, DHs are setup wrong for tackling Inferno, all other classes have some way of mitigating damage through their active and passive skills, DH has one mitigation skill (that is expensive) and has very limited use.
Sith Warriors - They only class that gets a new room added to their ship after leaving Hoth, they get a Brooncloset

Einstein said Everything is Relative.
Heisenberg said Everything is Uncertain.
Therefore, everything is relatively uncertain.
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#23
(07-01-2012, 01:22 AM)Lissa Wrote: Let me tell you, as someone that is routinely playing in Act 2 Inferno (still hunting for gear to get going in Act 3), your setup won't work. You need far, far larger life on hit than 300. Likewise, mobs typically hit you for 60% to 75% of your health in one hit with 35k health.

Of course you do! Blizzard has rigged Inferno to require far bigger stats on everything, which are available only on level-60+ items. So realistically, you'd need to ramp up LoH just like everything else. If that's practical, then fine, it will continue to work, since it's not penalized in higher difficulty levels. If not, it's yet another detail in inflationary attribute scaling that Blizzard failed to get right in the 1.03 Beta patch.

Also, only 35K HP in Inferno? I felt like 25K was barely enough to start Hell. And again, I totally agree on the Demon Hunter's dearth of defensive skills. I just found that in order to survive, I had to focus on life recovery rather than damage mitigation.
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#24
(07-01-2012, 01:34 AM)RogueMage Wrote:
(07-01-2012, 01:22 AM)Lissa Wrote: Let me tell you, as someone that is routinely playing in Act 2 Inferno (still hunting for gear to get going in Act 3), your setup won't work. You need far, far larger life on hit than 300. Likewise, mobs typically hit you for 60% to 75% of your health in one hit with 35k health.

Of course you do! Blizzard has rigged Inferno to require far bigger stats on everything, which are available only on level-60+ items. So realistically, you'd need to ramp up LoH just like everything else. If that's practical, then fine, it will continue to work, since it's not penalized in higher difficulty levels. If not, it's yet another detail in inflationary scaling that Blizzard failed to get right in the 1.03 Beta patch.

Also, only 35K HP in Inferno? I felt like 25K was barely enough to start Hell.

Did you miss that mobs are hitting you for anywhere from 20k to 30k per hit? Even at 40k health, being hit for 20k means you're going to be two shot. The difference between 35k and 40k doesn't mean squat when the mob hits you for 20k at a hit cause you're going to die if you get hit twice. Most mobs in Act 2 hit for high enough that even with having 50% phys damage reduction through resists along with 50% damage reduction from armor still takes big chunks out of you. So, you're completely missing the point, unless you have 20k LoH or 4k to 5k LoH and using Multishot and hitting 4 to 5 mobs with each MS fired, you're not going to make up that damage your taking through LoH before you die as a DH, it comes down to not even being there which means kiting like crazy and/or using Vault to get out of the way.

For LoH to really work, you have to be able to take the hits, this works for classes like Barbarian and Monk, and to a lesser extent Wizards under the right skill usage, but it doesn't work for DHs cause they don't have a strong mitigation mechanic. This is the crux of the problem.
Sith Warriors - They only class that gets a new room added to their ship after leaving Hoth, they get a Brooncloset

Einstein said Everything is Relative.
Heisenberg said Everything is Uncertain.
Therefore, everything is relatively uncertain.
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#25
(07-01-2012, 01:34 AM)RogueMage Wrote:
(07-01-2012, 01:22 AM)Lissa Wrote: Let me tell you, as someone that is routinely playing in Act 2 Inferno (still hunting for gear to get going in Act 3), your setup won't work. You need far, far larger life on hit than 300. Likewise, mobs typically hit you for 60% to 75% of your health in one hit with 35k health.

Of course you do! Blizzard has rigged Inferno to require far bigger stats on everything, which are available only on level-60+ items. So realistically, you'd need to ramp up LoH just like everything else. If that's practical, then fine, it will continue to work, since it's not penalized in higher difficulty levels. If not, it's yet another detail in inflationary attribute scaling that Blizzard failed to get right in the 1.03 Beta patch.

Also, only 35K HP in Inferno? I felt like 25K was barely enough to start Hell.

I have "only" 43k health in Inferno, and yet I have just shy of 234k Effective Health - on my Demon Hunter. I find I cannot survive Act II Inferno, and the reason I've come to realize is not inadequate defense, but inadequate offense. My DPS (without SS, since I do not use it and find it to be a bogus indicator of actual DPS output) is right around 25k. This is easily about 5k, maybe even 10k too low for me to comfortably handle Act II - let alone Acts III and IV. Quite simply, despite all the changes made to Inferno the only "viable" way to make a DH is still glass cannon. They just moved the metric for "glass" from 1 hit to 3 or 4. You still absolutely need offense over defense, it's just that now the game punishes you even more for not having it (via repair costs).

Frankly, Life on Hit is not viable for a Demon Hunter because you lack the inherent active / passive damage mitigation of the other classes. You cannot get the same amount of armor and resists as every other class out there, therefore your Effective Health (and thus how useful Life on Hit actually is) will always be less.
Roland *The Gunslinger*
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#26
(07-01-2012, 01:51 AM)Roland Wrote: I have "only" 43k health in Inferno, and yet I have just shy of 234k Effective Health - on my Demon Hunter. I find I cannot survive Act II Inferno, and the reason I've come to realize is not inadequate defense, but inadequate offense. My DPS (without SS, since I do not use it and find it to be a bogus indicator of actual DPS output) is right around 25k. This is easily about 5k, maybe even 10k too low for me to comfortably handle Act II.

Well, I can only conclude that your analysis confirms my overarching contention about Inferno - that it's a poorly balanced, inflation-ridden crap-shoot, rife with cheesy insta-kills rather than deeper levels of tactical challenge. At this point I think Nightmare offers the most balanced game-play, with champ packs limited to random combinations of "only" two lethal uber-skills. I'm frankly more interested in how low a character level you need to solo each entire Act in NM, than in how much gold you need to spend on AH to make progress in Inferno.
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#27
I'd say Hell feels about right, challenge-wise. Yes, it's like Normal all over again where the gear you bring in has no chance of being the gear you wear at the end of it (perhaps excepting jewels, which have no inherent armour or damage value to fall behind on...although you will probably still be hunting for +damage/armour/resist all jewels) and yes, sometimes you will land an unplayable pack. But that's a fairly rare event. I've only come across two so far: I got stairtrapped by Horde/Fast/Arcane Enchanted, which was just no chance, and I ran across an Illusionist/Teleport/Fire Chains bat pack that would have been a reset if it had been a stair trap. I had kiting room and Teleport-Fracture, and even then I spent a lot of time being chained at first by the sheer number of chains between all the eratically moving bats.

So basically, the ones that multiply the numbers in the encounter are the most dangerous ones - so far, anyhow. Haven't run into Invulnerable Minions yet, and not looking forward to it.
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#28
Dex is awesome for monks. Aside from the passive and the fact that monks often tank enough hits for the probabilites to average out, dex also negates a fair amount of crowd control. Dodging frozen bursts and so forth is nice.

(07-01-2012, 02:10 AM)RogueMage Wrote: Well, I can only conclude that your analysis confirms my overarching contention about Inferno - that it's a poorly balanced, inflation-ridden crap-shoot, rife with cheesy insta-kills rather than deeper levels of tactical challenge.

This is exactly why most are discussing Inferno strategies, and don't really need to discuss SC normal-hell. Just about any setup or approach will get you through that, while in Inferno even with god gear (and you have to figure out exactly what is "god" in the first place) the workable choices are limited.
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