Kahlil
4361
My WD relies mostly on “Haunt Bombing” to do most of his damage, similar to this article (though I came up with the idea independently):
I got that going on my PS4 monk. Pretty decent.
Another fave is immunity to arcane and healing of 25% of the damage. Love standing in the middle of all those arcane streams and laugh at the fools who are trying to take me down.
I ran Mad Monarch for a long time. It’s great.
I just found (and ground) the wand that removes Teleport’s cooldown and gives it a 20 AP cost, though. It is better than great.
KevinC
4364
Ooo. That sounds so tempting, but I have Slow Time slotted instead because I have the “Slow Time gains all runes” thingy, and that’s just too useful.
I finally feel like this game has meaningful choices, and I love it. I can’t get into games without that.
The great thing about the teleport wand is that it lets me slot Fracture (mirror images on teleport) instead of Wormhole (free 2nd teleport within 3 seconds) and frees up my passive slot from Illusionist to (currently) Dominance.
Well, that and chasing down bounties is like 10x faster now.
So I have the armor set that super-buffs Archon (all Archon runs, stacks on hit, etc.), and since I have RRG slotted, I can use a non-set helm that gives me 19 seconds of Archon’s bonus after it ends.
And a ring that reduces recharge times with secondary (in this case, disintegrate) hits. So I basically kick in Archon, kill everything (building stacks at an insane rate), then when I dump out of Archon I get 19 seconds of stack bonuses to kill everything more. In the short pause that follows, I spam disintegrate to reduce my Archon cooldown. Then I kick in to Archon again, repeat.
Oh, did I mention I have a power slotted that gives me 20 archon stacks to start out with?
I think this build gives Firebird a run for its money.
On my last set of GRs I picked up a bunch of Vyr gear (two sets of overlapping items, alas), so I’m seriously considering trying out the Archon build. I don’t really have any good legendary passives for it though.
Inspired by these posts, I took a break from my S4 Demon Hunter to revisit my WD. Turns out I had a couple Jade Harvester pieces (chest and helm) to try out the “Haunt Spam” build. It was fun, but not as efficient as massed Zunimassa gear engendering a bazillion fetishes over time. I also had trouble actually seeing the Haunt effect – it’s so subdued and non-linear that it got lost in a lot of the other visual clutter.
So I think I’ll go back to a pet-heavy build, but thanks for the inspiration.
I love Haunt—on paper. In the game, while effective, it does as you note lack that visceral feedback that is so satisfying. And I never quite know what its doing, or if it’s doing anything. That’s one reason I spam poison frogs and piranhas. You can see 'em do their thing!
Got a question for hardcore types. Infernal Machines. I have some of these things, but have never used them. What sort of stats/gear should I be sporting to tackle the ubers? For instance, my WD is easily running T3 right now and Grift 12. Would that do, or should I up my game before I try one of the red portals?
I have a belt that hits everything within a certain distance with haunt whenever I open a chest. It’s a delight to loot a body, see 20 haunts fly off screen, and just walk behind them.
Oghier
4372
I don’t play Hardcore, but I have fought all the “ubers” multiple times at various Torment levels. They’re not more difficult than normal wandering bosses. You should be fine at whatever Torment level is comfortable for you elsewhere.
I don’t play hardcore, but when you activate the Infernal Machine, you go into a little pocket boss-fight and go against a pair of baddies. The bosses in there will be as tough as your difficulty-level… so if you’re running on T3, they should be about as tough as TWO T3 Rift bosses… maybe a little less. Of course, the chance that one of them will drop a demonic organ is dependent on the difficulty level, so on T3, you’d see an organ drop every third fight, on average.
KevinC
4374
The chance of the keywardens providing access to the infernal machine is a random chance based on difficulty as well, is that right? Because I’ve killed a few (Torment III currently) and have never seen anything, and most of the wiki is woefully out of date on this subject.
Yeah, but on T3 you ought to see a drop from a keywarden pretty often, I think. As you say, it’s probably changed, but I’ve seen them drop more often than not at that level.
LockerK
4376
This chart is buried a half dozen pages back and gives a nice summary of what to expect from each difficulty.
All the ubers really give you is bits for Hellfire Rings / Amulets, though, which are twink items. So they’re a branch more than a part of the trunk of the progression tree.
Unless I’m missing something, which is entirely possible.
Well, I’ve never done 'em, and there’s precious little I haven’t done in this game except for very high Torment levels (MOTS really) and the non-existent cow level.
Oh, I get it! Just didn’t want to get your hopes up.
I’m terribly disappointed with the non-cow level in D3, for the record. The cow level was a really amusing one-off experience, whereas Happy Sparkle Land or whatever (while a funny joke about butthurt nerds) is MOTS with the same kind of enemy mix as the rest of the game.
