**OFFICIAL** Diablo 3 Thread

[Phoenix86]

Now, the other gear, such as gloves, bracers, rings, amulet, and helmet, can all offer +crit chance. Gloves, rings, and amulet offer +attack speed and +crit damage.

This is good advice, knowing what slots have damage modifiers lets you gear smarter. For example, rings have the higher attack speed and lower crit compared to other pieces. Attack speed is still really nice, so get it on rings.

The other items you mentioned w/o crit belt, pants, shoulders, and chest can have +life % (not 100% sure on chest). Also note belts can have things like blind/stun/slow/whatever. The DH I run with has 2% freeze and it procs all the time on ball lightning. You can get those properties on other items (weapons/helms?) but belt is probably the best.

 

[diesbudt]

I hate A2 with a passion. The open areas are wonderful for pulling a bunch of shit at once, very little LoS and worst of all. The mob types there are a bitch for ranged. Sand shark guys, Lacuni hunters that go immune and leap to you.

So much shit you simply can't avoid, it requires you to change your play style a bit. I had to change specs on my monk and wiz for A2.

Yea... 2 back to back champ packs were land sharks. That was fun...

Luckily even as a wizard I had no problem with them in A2 inferno.

I would wait for diamond skin to be up as I kite them. Throw hydra down, get them to come out and attack, then pop Diamond skin and blow them up hard, until diamond skin fell off, then teleport away. Rinse and Repeat. And with high Health regen, any damage i did take between rounds I almost fully healed.

 

[KentState]

wrong. 800 resist is about 72.73% reduction, 1000 resist 76.92% reduction. if a monster hits you for 100,000 damage, @800 you take 27,270 damage, @1000 you take 23,080 damage. that 4.19% increase in resistance reduction translates to 18% less damage taken. @1200 (this is if you have 800 + barb warcry), you have 80% reduction and only take 20,000 damage which is 36.35% more damage reduction over 800 resists.

edit: just to clarify, the formula to calculate reduction are X / (5*charlevel + X) for resistance and X / (50*charlevel + X) for armor, where X is either resistance value or armor value.

Wrong about what? It's diminishing returns since it's exponential. That is a correct statement based on the formula. I have also not seen an impact on survivability. That is a correct statement based on my experience.

All you had to say was that at higher levels, the few percent does have a big impact instead of opening with a one word attack. Even the example you gave means that pretty much anyone would die in 1-2 hits.

 

[darkxshade]

I broke 100m(110m actually) last night. Never thought I'd hit this milestone. It only happened because I got a bunch of lucky drops. I'm still not done as I probably have another 50m in inventory. I only really play a few hrs/night, more if you include the AH grind of finding gear but I'm usually multi-tasking while I do that since I play in windowed mode on a dual monitor setup.

 

[Phoenix86]

Wrong about what? It's diminishing returns since it's exponential. That is a correct statement based on the formula. I have also not seen an impact on survivability. That is a correct statement based on my experience.

All you had to say was that at higher levels, the few percent does have a big impact instead of opening with a one word attack. Even the example you gave means that pretty much anyone would die in 1-2 hits.

There are no diminishing returns on armor or resistances in D3.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149150485

 

[AMDZen]

I hate A2 with a passion. The open areas are wonderful for pulling a bunch of shit at once, very little LoS and worst of all. The mob types there are a bitch for ranged. Sand shark guys, Lacuni hunters that go immune and leap to you.

So much shit you simply can't avoid, it requires you to change your play style a bit. I had to change specs on my monk and wiz for A2.

What kind of spec did you use for your monk in A2? My DH is far away from inferno and I wanted to beat inferno first with my Monk.

Right now I decided on a resist build, so I'm selling my gear and gearing up for resists. I was build more for crit and overall just tank style. I was at like 500 resist and using the ability where they all match your highest resist as well as the plus 20% gained from your healing abiltity.

Now I'm selling everything and building around resists, since arcane resist was the one I had the most of I am selling anything that doesn't have that resist and getting items that have it, hoping to top out all my resists at over 1000+ because I've read thats a great way to build a monk. Not sure but I guess I'll find out. I am already building towards it on the thin budget I have so there's no backing out now.

If it doesn't work, I just have to farm A1 I guess or buy more gold from the chinese and see if I can get the money back on the RMAH which I've made $25 on, but spent $20 on and also $19 on the gold, so down $15 right now. Probably won't buy anything until I can sell something to offset any incurred cost.

 

[bonkers325]

Wrong about what? It's diminishing returns since it's exponential. That is a correct statement based on the formula. I have also not seen an impact on survivability. That is a correct statement based on my experience.

All you had to say was that at higher levels, the few percent does have a big impact instead of opening with a one word attack. Even the example you gave means that pretty much anyone would die in 1-2 hits.

there are no diminishing returns, that is the point i am trying to make. each additional point of resistance/armor mitigates MORE damage than the last point.

based on my experience, having 1200 resistance with 10k armor lets me stand in arcane sentry and desecrator in act3. and numbers-wise, 10k armor and 1200 resist mitigates about 95.38% of incoming damage, so yea the math works out too.

the example i used (100,000 damage) is just a random number i used for simplicity of math. with 1200 resists, 10k armor, -25% dmg debuff from talent, -30% melee bonus, i get 97.5% damage reduction. so that 100,000 damage (again for simplicity of numbers) gets reduced down to 2,423.1 damage. that is far from getting one shot, or even two shot, or even ten shot.

 

[darkxshade]

What kind of spec did you use for your monk in A2? My DH is far away from inferno and I wanted to beat inferno first with my Monk.

Right now I decided on a resist build, so I'm selling my gear and gearing up for resists. I was build more for crit and overall just tank style. I was at like 500 resist and using the ability where they all match your highest resist as well as the plus 20% gained from your healing abiltity.

Now I'm selling everything and building around resists, since arcane resist was the one I had the most of I am selling anything that doesn't have that resist and getting items that have it, hoping to top out all my resists at over 1000+ because I've read thats a great way to build a monk. Not sure but I guess I'll find out. I am already building towards it on the thin budget I have so there's no backing out now.

If it doesn't work, I just have to farm A1 I guess or buy more gold from the chinese and see if I can get the money back on the RMAH which I've made $25 on, but spent $20 on and also $19 on the gold, so down $15 right now. Probably won't buy anything until I can sell something to offset any incurred cost.

1000 is going to be tough unless you sacrifice. I'm sitting a tad over 900 now and will prob have to lose a bit of it to bump my dps up. Having played only a monk since release, I found that balance is the best way to build one cheaply. Straight stacking one thing is a detriment, if you have 900 resists and 6k armor, you actually gain more defense by bumping armor to 7k rather than resists to 1k.

I've built a formula that works well for me that you might wanna give a shot if you're going with a shield. I call it the 35 build and what you do is aim for that number:

35k HP
35k DPS (probably the hardest to get to)
35% crit rate
35% dodge
35% block
35 x 2 = 70% dmg reduction (or try 7k armor)
35 x 2 = 70% elemental reduction (or try 700 res all)
350 x 2 = 700 loh

Once you hit this mark, aim for 40s but that's when it starts to get expensive.

Comparatively as of last night for your reference, my stats are:
35k HP
30.5k DPS
43.5% crit rate
~33% dodge (no mantra)
35% block
~7k armor (with enchantress and initiative passive)
910 all res
~625 loh

 

[AMDZen]

Damn. I don't think I can get anywhere close to half of those stats.

I think I'm about 13k DPS, and thats with two fist weapons - both expensive as hell (like 2 million each) with spirit regen and attack speed and dex and vitality.

I don't know what LOH is, but I don't think I'm anywhere close to most of those. I have like 5k armor so that one I am sorta close to, but that was while using the 100% dex to armor ability which I tossed off in favor of another ability. I'll have to check to see where I am on those others

 

[darkxshade]

Damn. I don't think I can get anywhere close to half of those stats.

I think I'm about 13k DPS, and thats with two fist weapons - both expensive as hell (like 2 million each) with spirit regen and attack speed and dex and vitality.

I don't know what LOH is, but I don't think I'm anywhere close to most of those. I have like 5k armor so that one I am sorta close to, but that was while using the 100% dex to armor ability which I tossed off in favor of another ability. I'll have to check to see where I am on those others

Really? 12k? Do you have crit rate or crit dmg? What's your total budget? If you blew 4m total on 2 weapons for 12kdps, then you're doing something wrong.

LoH is life on hit

 

[bonkers325]

Damn. I don't think I can get anywhere close to half of those stats.

I think I'm about 13k DPS, and thats with two fist weapons - both expensive as hell (like 2 million each) with spirit regen and attack speed and dex and vitality.

I don't know what LOH is, but I don't think I'm anywhere close to most of those. I have like 5k armor so that one I am sorta close to, but that was while using the 100% dex to armor ability which I tossed off in favor of another ability. I'll have to check to see where I am on those others

getting the stats that darkxshade mentioned will cost you a lot - i've seen his gear and can attest to that

the cheapest route (the one i went) was to get pieces with high single resists (+50 or more) and really high stats like dex or vit. you can stack vitality, life%, and one resist on your chest piece and belt and dex and resist on your boots and pants. find a helmet with an open socket and stick a ruby in there, plus a main stat (dex/vit) and the resist you are looking for. shield all u need is block% and crit w/ dex, bonus if you get resists too. rings/ammy, just get magical items w/ high LoH and the resist of your choice.

if you get average +50 resist on each of those pieces you can easily pass 500 resist all. you need is 600 resists and 6k armor to farm act2 comfortably, but you can attain those numbers pretty cheap if you just search a little bit for singular resist pieces w/ the main stats you want

 

[AMDZen]

Really? 12k? Do you have crit rate or crit dmg? What's your total budget? If you blew 4m total on 2 weapons for 12kdps, then you're doing something wrong.

LoH is life on hit

The only weapons with better DPS then what I have are upwards of 20mill or more. DPS wise any way. Mine are at 850-950 DPS with nice stats, like 6 and 7 different things, and the only ones better, like 1000-1100 are completely out of this world compared to what I was able to spend.

Its 13k BTW, but yea, I'm going by what the "I" screen says it is, I am not doing any calculations on it or anything but I know when I crit its like 22k-25k maybe, just based off the numbers I see when I play.

 

[darkxshade]

Yea, I'm pretty decked but besides my mainhand which I splurged 13m on... everything else I got for under 3m a piece mostly under 1.5m. The amulet isn't fair though since that's a pretty expensive item but I found it myself. And I'm pretty much working my way to 40's. If I removed the pieces to get me to 35s then honestly, it shouldn't be overly too expensive... relatively speaking.

 

[AMDZen]

getting the stats that darkxshade mentioned will cost you a lot - i've seen his gear and can attest to that

the cheapest route (the one i went) was to get pieces with high single resists (+50 or more) and really high stats like dex or vit. you can stack vitality, life%, and one resist on your chest piece and belt and dex and resist on your boots and pants. find a helmet with an open socket and stick a ruby in there, plus a main stat (dex/vit) and the resist you are looking for. shield all u need is block% and crit w/ dex, bonus if you get resists too. rings/ammy, just get magical items w/ high LoH and the resist of your choice.

if you get average +50 resist on each of those pieces you can easily pass 500 resist all. you need is 600 resists and 6k armor to farm act2 comfortably, but you can attain those numbers pretty cheap if you just search a little bit for singular resist pieces w/ the main stats you want

Thats kind of what I'm doing right now. I had 500+ resist all and 5k armor and that wasn't even close to getting me around act 2. I'd say I was at 560 resist all with the 20% rune on my healing ability, and 5300 armor to be exact. I am bidding on items and so far had luck on 1 or 2 items with more armor and I'm just bumping up one resist type (arcane) and also the +all resist stat, so most of my pieces are going to have 50-100 resist each and then with the ability that makes them all equal, I will be close to 1000 resist.

We'll see if it works, I might be sacrificing other stats that I need, such as vit and dex in some cases. And its really annoying because none of my items have the ability to get gold and health globes anymore, I have to be right on top of them. Which I HATE!!!!!!

Any way. Just about any elite group became a 20 minute affair for me and when I would beat one there would be one right behind it. If I make a mistake and try to kite in an unexplored area, BAM I always get another elite group. This is just the very, very beginning of act2 also. LOL

 

[bonkers325]

Thats kind of what I'm doing right now. I had 500+ resist all and 5k armor and that wasn't even close to getting me around act 2. I'd say I was at 560 resist all with the 20% rune on my healing ability, and 5300 armor to be exact. I am bidding on items and so far had luck on 1 or 2 items with more armor and I'm just bumping up one resist type (arcane) and also the +all resist stat, so most of my pieces are going to have 50-100 resist each and then with the ability that makes them all equal, I will be close to 1000 resist.

We'll see if it works, I might be sacrificing other stats that I need, such as vit and dex in some cases. And its really annoying because none of my items have the ability to get gold and health globes anymore, I have to be right on top of them. Which I HATE!!!!!!

Any way. Just about any elite group became a 20 minute affair for me and when I would beat one there would be one right behind it. If I make a mistake and try to kite in an unexplored area, BAM I always get another elite group. This is just the very, very beginning of act2 also. LOL

at your level of gear, mantra of evasion - hard target will give you much more damage mitigation and offers a better on-use buff. mantra of healing w/ 20% resist rune is not very good unless you have far more resist than armor.

you should use deadly reach - keen eye for the 50% armor debuff, it helps immensely.

try running with earth ally to offtank some mobs for you, i found it helped me a lot when i was struggling to clear act 2.

hit me up, lect#1710 i have a lot of arcane resistance gear that i have stockpiled.

 

[AMDZen]

at your level of gear, mantra of evasion - hard target will give you much more damage mitigation and offers a better on-use buff. mantra of healing w/ 20% resist rune is not very good unless you have far more resist than armor.

you should use deadly reach - keen eye for the 50% armor debuff, it helps immensely.

try running with earth ally to offtank some mobs for you, i found it helped me a lot when i was struggling to clear act 2.

hit me up, lect#1710 i have a lot of arcane resistance gear that i have stockpiled.

These are good tips, thanks. I will try that mantra then. I am using the crippling wave because my current spirit stone adds 10% or something damage to crippling wave, so thats why I had been using that. I will try deadly reach too because I am going to eventually get rid of my spirit stone for a helm with better stats, assuming I ever win a bid on one for a decent cost. As the buy it now options are all way too expensive for gear better than what I already have

 

[darkxshade]

3m - highest dps you can find weapon 1.4 or faster, must have socket... dex as secondary goal, ias as third

1m - find a shield min 24 block with arcaneR, about 6% crit or higher...
500k - helm of command with arcaneR & 4.5% crit, socket a plus but extra
750k - blackthornes pants with arcaneR and a socket
750k - blackthornes belt with arcane R and dex as high as possible
(gained +100 vit set bonus)
750k - gloves with arcaneR, 8% ias, 7% crit (pref with dex but prob extra)
750k - bracer with arcaneR & allRes, 4% crit, & dex
750k - boots with arcaneR & allRes, & high dex
750k - shoulders with arcaneR & allRes, & dex
1m - chest with arcaneR, high vit(about 120+), and 3 sockets.
1m - ring#1 arcaneR, 200LoH, 3% crit
1m - ring#2 arcaneR, 200LoH, highest dex you can find
2m - ammy with arcaneR, 400+LoH and dex
600k - star emerald to socket into weapon

 

[bonkers325]

These are good tips, thanks. I will try that mantra then. I am using the crippling wave because my current spirit stone adds 10% or something damage to crippling wave, so thats why I had been using that. I will try deadly reach too because I am going to eventually get rid of my spirit stone for a helm with better stats, assuming I ever win a bid on one for a decent cost. As the buy it now options are all way too expensive for gear better than what I already have

fyi i completed act2 with 10k dps, 6k armor, and 600 resist all. used sieze the initiative, resolve, and one with everything for talents and DR w/ 50% armor, earth ally, blinding flash + serenity + breath of heaven w/ mantra of evasion: hard target. this was weeks before 1.03.
edit: though you probably wont beat belial now with those stats, as he will most definitely enrage.

the trick is to use your mystic ally as a makeshift choke point and hit them from afar with deadly reach. also, your mystic ally will retain all of your buffs at time of cast, so spam your earth ally if you have the +50% armor buff active.

 

[AMDZen]

3m - highest dps you can find weapon 1.4 or faster, must have socket... dex as secondary goal, ias as third

1m - find a shield min 24 block with arcaneR, about 6% crit or higher...
500k - helm of command with arcaneR & 4.5% crit, socket a plus but extra
750k - blackthornes pants with arcaneR and a socket
750k - blackthornes belt with arcane R and dex as high as possible
(gained +100 vit set bonus)
750k - gloves with arcaneR, 8% ias, 7% crit (pref with dex but prob extra)
750k - bracer with arcaneR & allRes, 4% crit, & dex
750k - boots with arcaneR & allRes, & high dex
750k - shoulders with arcaneR & allRes, & dex
1m - chest with arcaneR, high vit(about 120+), and 3 sockets.
1m - ring#1 arcaneR, 200LoH, 3% crit
1m - ring#2 arcaneR, 200LoH, highest dex you can find
2m - ammy with arcaneR, 400+LoH and dex
600k - star emerald to socket into weapon

That might be part of my problem, my latest weapons don't have a socket.

Also, fuck a shield I like having two fists

I dunno if I'll go for a shield, seriously though

I think I'm already screwed as I don't have the money to buy stuff unless I can sell everything for at least what I have into it. And both of my weapons were like 2.5 and 3 mill I think

 

[darkxshade]

lol aight, dual wield works pretty good when you have really high dps but is prohibitively more expensive than with a shield and with 13k dps, the dw is actually hurting you imo.

xyrrus#1462, add me as well. I'll give you any arcane monk gear I find.

 

[AMDZen]

I'll have to add you two and see if I can buy anything off you guys for less than the AH

 

[AMDZen]

So I bought an OK shield to try the theory out. DPS went down to about 11.9K

Shield was like 1800 more armor with 88 more resist and 5.5% to crit

My life is 22.9K
My Armor was 9400 when buffed with the Mantra of Evasion. Tried deadly reach instead of crushing wave to get that boost in Armor, my Resists were all at about 560, had the 3 skills you told me to use and I just got smashed even harder than before. Not sure if that was possible.

BTW, I had already been using the earth spirt, but it costs so much spirit that I can hardly even do shit with the other things I need to cast. I was using transcendance, which heals you for every spirit spent and I think that is better than the one that gives you 100% of your armor based on dex, as I have about 950 dex which doesn't make that big of a difference.

Inferno is just too hard for me

 

[ch33zw1z]

So I bought an OK shield to try the theory out. DPS went down to about 11.9K

Shield was like 1800 more armor with 88 more resist and 5.5% to crit

My life is 22.9K
My Armor was 9400 when buffed with the Mantra of Evasion. Tried deadly reach instead of crushing wave to get that boost in Armor, my Resists were all at about 560, had the 3 skills you told me to use and I just got smashed even harder than before. Not sure if that was possible.

BTW, I had already been using the earth spirt, but it costs so much spirit that I can hardly even do shit with the other things I need to cast. I was using transcendance, which heals you for every spirit spent and I think that is better than the one that gives you 100% of your armor based on dex, as I have about 950 dex which doesn't make that big of a difference.

Inferno is just too hard for me

What's the rest of your setup look like...here's mine:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WZgiTk!YUX!YYZbcc

I have two LoH weapons, one also with 2.9% Life steal. Went all arcane resist with some items double stacked with all resist as well. 835 resist, 13,500 damage, 4797 armor, 24.5k HP, 1635 Dex, critical hit damage +110%

I can do inferno a1 with little difficulty(I do still die sometimes doing the Halls of Agony), unless I get in a pub with someone who sucks and I gotta carry their ass. i get smashed in a2...

 

[Phoenix86]

What kind of spec did you use for your monk in A2? My DH is far away from inferno and I wanted to beat inferno first with my Monk.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#ahdiXg!YXU!aabZba

You really need mobility in act 2, at least the first half or so. Dashing strike-quicksilver is amazing for it. Remember you can dashing strike any destructible object, even if it's not selectable like pots.

If you have enough mobility, switch dashing strike to blinding flash-faith in the light.

If your crit is near 20% switch sweeping winds rune to cyclone.

If you want a little more CC, switch the heal rune to penitent flame for the fear.

If you need a lot more, switch sweeping winds to blinding flash-faith in the light.

You can squeeze in a little more dps by switching hard target rune on MoE to backlash. This is the first change I'd make to add dps.

This is what I run in act 3: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#ahYiXg!YXU!acccba

Right now I decided on a resist build, so I'm selling my gear and gearing up for resists. I was build more for crit and overall just tank style. I was at like 500 resist and using the ability where they all match your highest resist as well as the plus 20% gained from your healing abiltity.

The heal/resist mantra just doesn't compare dodge/armor, I never liked it after the healing nerf. I think I had around 600 resist in act 2, but that was before the damage nerf. I'd also hang on to the crit gear if it also has some resists, you might want it later.

1K resists is a little overkill imo, 7-800 is enough for act 3 assuming your damage doesn't blow goats.

 

[Phoenix86]

I think I'm about 13k DPS, and thats with two fist weapons - both expensive as hell (like 2 million each) with spirit regen and attack speed and dex and vitality.

I don't know what LOH is..

OK, your gear isn't good enough for DW. To make DW sing you need high crit and crit damage on -both- weapons. Ideally that means crit damage and a socket so you can add more crit damage.

Get a shield with dex/vit/resist/crit (can get up to 10% on a shield). Don't ignore block% or on the shield, they can vary as much as dps on a weapon.

Look at it this way...
A shield adds ~1K armor, 20% block of ~2K damage, ~8%crit, and ~ 50 resists.
A second weapon lowers base dps (averages the 2 weapons, unless the dps is identical you lose some here), then adds back 15% attack speed, and spirit regen.

You can actually gain dps with this switch if the shield is good enough, but more likely you lose about 1K.