You are far more trusting than I am. Besides, I’m in a guild; if I need people I can always do that. And I have no interest in interacting with random people.
Mysterio
4542
I just had a sour experience in a T2 Adventure while fighting a unique on my last bounty. Whenever his HP would get too low, he’d kneel or something and then heal back to about 50% of his max HPs. I couldn’t prevent him from healing. After about the 5th time, I said, “F this,” and logged out.
What type of monster was that, and how does one kill him?
Was it in Act IV? The fire-demon-infantry-dudes there will heal themselves, but only when they’re down to like 2% so they’re easy to finish off. Or in Act I the Templar dudes for the “Captured Villagers” or whatever bounty I think will heal themselves.
Short answer is probably to stun/freeze/knockback/fear him to kill the healing and finish him off. Longer answer is do moar damage ;)
The only mob I had problems with doing this were those Templars in the captured villagers quest. If your DPS is not high enough you just can’t kill them.
LMN8R
4545
Is anyone having latency issues with Diablo right now? My connection is perfect for everything else in both speed and latency, but in Diablo I’m just hitching all over the place with a ~250ms ping…
II lost connection twice this morning about 3 hours ago.
I don’t play hardcore because I don’t think I’d be able to accept a lag death well. It’s happened a few times to my softcore characters already.
Ultrazen
4548
Fairly ridiculous Witch Doctor build based around mimic. Suwong diviner (100% acid cloud damage)
Acid cloud
Haunt
Piranhado
Spirit barrage (manitou)
Firebats
I’m still in horrible gear on my season WD, and you can literally just walk through levels picking up treasure. Keep spirit barrage up, and your mimics will spam spells for you. They will also start channeling firebats if you are after a bit. You + 2 mimics doing firebats + all the other stuff they spam + haunt/jade reaver 2 piece…it’s pretty silly. Firebats is not suppose to work, but it seems to for me, maybe fixed/bugged?
Currently fighting way above my gear level. If you like lazy builds, boy is this build lazy.
JFrazer
4549
Friday night I had a Corrupted Ashbringer with a socket drop. It was useless for my Witch Doctor, but Gem of Ease in the cube + reforge int in to dex, and suddenly a level 1 monk becomes a level 70 monk in 2 days of casual playing. What a freaking ridiculous twink weapon.
I put in a LOT of time with Diablo this weekend thanks to the double-bounties thing. My Seasonal DH is doing fairly well and is nicely stocked up on all the materials.
But I figured I would play some of my non-seasonal characters and stock them up on bounty-mats as well… and I managed to (unexpectedly) turn a corner on my Monk.
I’m not entirely sure what the actual straw that broke the scales was – I certainly enchanted a few items to increase this or that, and I cubed a couple armor pieces that gave me a nice bonus, and I think I might have rearranged my passives too.
But whatever the reason, I went from comfortably doing T2 rifts and edging into T3 territory to basically blowing through T5 with no issues whatsoever.
Then, two pieces of Uliana’s dropped and everything snowballed. Hell, it’s tough to target anything because enemies are simply detonating right and left before I can even get close. As a result of THAT, I started to do some GR25 runs and finally got a gem up past level 25, which simply added to the destruction.
And just as I was ready to jump out for the night, my very first Ancient Weapon dropped! Unfortunately it’s a two-handed sword and the only character that can use it right now is my Crusader (I don’t have a 70 Barb yet - that’ll be next season). Echoing what others have said in the last couple pages, my Crusader now bores the crap out of me. She does just fine and is tough as nails, but good lord it takes forever to kill an elite… coming off my Monk who basically evaporates foes, watching the Crusader slooooly plink away at them puts me to sleep.
tpenland
4551
I too was trying to think about what the tipping point was that changed everything for my latest character. I’ve been playing D3 on and off since it came out, always hardcore, and this is the first time I’ve ever had anything close to this kind of success. Kanai’s cube certainly helped, but I think a lot had to do with finally deciding to play in public games. The accelerated pace not only helps leveling, but the drop rate was really the key. In the course of a week of playing a couple hours a night in the evening (and probably 10 hours this weekend) at lvl 70, I went from having a few decent pieces to having complete sets for all 4 WD sets and most of the rares you want.
By the end of this weekend, my Witch Doctor has become an absolute monster. I’m running the zombie bears / Helltooth combo and it’s insane. The necessary weapon (Skrimshaw? that gives a huge boost to damage and cuts mana cost) is really easy to get because there are only 2 legendary spears. I just made about 15 rare spears and cubed them, resulting in a pretty decent ancient version. Now, when everything aligns (firewall bonus + focus & restraint + ring of elements(?) on the correct damage type), I’ve landed crits as high as 1.5 billion (maybe higher but it can be hard to make out in the middle of the fray), which I had no idea was even remotely possible.
I should point out too that my stats aren’t incredible - my gear is in general the correct pieces for the slot, but many aren’t the best rolls. My base damage is a little over 1.1 million and my toughness around 27 million.
I have succesfully soloed a 45 grift, and finished with just under 5 minutes to go. The real issue I’m running into is the insanely slow movement speed of the WD. In public games I have to switch to the Fierce Loyalty passive just to try and keep up with the other classes (I’m using the belt that gives me fetishes on mana spend). There’s also a user skill issue as I’m still getting used to how to optimally group creatures and keep the firewall bonus up. Without it things slow down real quick.
There’s only been a little bit of drama - in a level 42 grift I got pounded by those tall act 4 creatures that slam all their limbs on you - so physical damage, which is my biggest weakness - and before I knew it they had popped my resurrect passive. Other than that, there were a few close calls but nothing too bad.
Welcome to the Uliana build! Once you get a few pieces of the key EP-SSS gear together, everything just turns into fine red mist in seconds. I used to run a Tempest Rush build, but the Uliana EP-SSS build just totally blows that out of the water. The only issue is that it’s a little bit of a glass cannon but that’s what the second chance passive is for.
rhamorim
4553
Yeah, I did the same yesterday - decided to play with my non-seasonal Wizard, and wow, I had lots of fun. I don’t remember Disintegrate being that powerful, but I was just evaporating everything (playing on Hard for mats - I’ll try expert and then Torment I later).
So this week I’ll unlock Kanai’s Cube for my non-seasonal characters and try to get better equipment for my Wizard, and maybe level my (mostly ignored) Monk.
stusser
4554
So you have 25% from paragon points, and are having trouble keeping up with sprinting barbs, dashing monks, vaulting DHs, etc? Never considered that might be a problem.
tpenland
4555
Yeah, I knew the WD is slower than other classes, but I had never seen what high level builds for some of the others could do. Monks and DHs in particular will be halfway across the map in no time. I end up just trailing way behind picking up loot, which while nice on one level gets boring pretty quickly. With Fierce Loyalty (+15% movement in combat / +30% out) you can be at 40% / 55%, which is enough to keep up for the most part. But giving up a passive slot just for that seems a bit much, although mobility is key to a good defense so it’s not totally without merit. The only other issue is that if you are depending on the belt to get your fetishes (and you are not running dogs), then you don’t see any boost until you hit with a mana spender and get that first fetish.
stusser
4556
Take some time to craft a bunch of hellfire necklaces. If you’re doing grift 40+ you should be able to handle torment 7 no problem. Hellfire necks are pretty easy to craft these days, they always craft with a socket now too, and that extra passive is incredibly valuable.
Kahlil
4557
If you’re not using your cube weapon slot for anything mandatory, you can switch your cube weapon skill to the Shukrani’s Triumph mojo. That lets you go into permanent Spirit Walk mode that lasts until you either hit an attack button or get to close to a monster. If you’re falling behind in a rift, it should at least enable you to catch up.
Anyway, I found a pretty interesting Cube weapon item that looks pretty crappy on paper, but seems to be surprisingly effective in practice. It’s the “Soulsmasher” mace:
When you kill an enemy, it explodes for 450–600% of your Life per Kill as damage to all enemies within 20 yards. You no longer benefit from your Life per Kill.
The consensus I’m seeing online seems to be that 6X Life Per Kill is worthless, since supposedly it doesn’t scale with your primary stat. Well, I don’t know if they’ve changed the way the item works since then, but for whatever reason it works very well for me. I ran through a bunch of HC L25 Grifts to compare it with my previous Shard of Hate power, and I clear them out faster with the Soulsmasher. Dense packs of weak monsters set off a chain reaction of green explosions.
Thanks to running bounties over the weekend, I finally got/cubed my Royal Ring of Grandeur. That allows me to get the 4 set bonuses for both Zunimassa and Helltooth. The extra toughness allowed me to feel comfortable making the jump from HC L25 GRifts on Friday to L 32 Grifts now. I created a T8 game and did an A1 “Templar’s Inquisition” bounty just to see if I could handle it, and it wasn’t much of a problem.
I’m spamming “Haunt” with the 2-set Jade Harvester bonus and using the “Hack” Axe to apply Thorns damage on top of every hit. Hitting monsters with the Thorns damage remotely seems more likely to make them go into their “interrupted attack” stagger animation. I’m using the pretty unpopular “Lingering Spirit” rune with Haunt, so I don’t even have to aim when I cast. At the rate that I’m casting, at any moment I have multiple Haunt spirits orbiting around me. As soon as a group of monsters comes on screen, the Haunts will automatically fly off of me and attack.
JFrazer
4558
I swapped some gear around this weekend on my WD. I’m now running 4-piece Helltooth + 4-piece Arachnyr (sp). Originally it was just in response to my survivability issues. But now that I’m running hex with giant toad + bonus damage rune, I’m in love with the build. Paperdoll toughness is only 10.5 mil, but when Necrosis and Giant Toad are both out (which is 100% of the time I’m in combat), it jumps to 35+ mil.
Missing out on the 6-piece Helltooth is a bit of a bummer, but I just haven’t been lucky enough to get that last piece yet, despite blowing through mats on reforges and rare upgrading.
Man, I’m jealous of all you WDs with better gear than me.
I’m also a bit lost on how I get from where I am (running T4 and level 20-ish Grifts) to beyond. My toon can handle T4 pretty well except I’m starting to feel pretty fragile - as in, it’s easy to die if I stop running around for long.
What I’m doing now: I’m spending blood shards on helms to get a Mask of Jeram. I have maybe 2 pieces of a couple of sets (Jade, Zunimassa, Helltooth), a couple of bad roll Legendaries (Quetzalcoatl, Flayer) and a decent Carnevil helm. I’ve crafted a couple of Aughild Shoulders/Bracers but nothing worth swapping out my current gear). I do not have a RoRG.
Have maybe 6 gems, and am leveling up Effacious Toxin and Bane of the Powerful.
Cube abilities are a Wormwood, Short Man’s Finger, and a Grin Reaper.
I’m running a “starter endgame” build with haunt w/the mana refund rune, locust swarm, gargantuan, dogs & sacrifice (since I get a free dog every 2 seconds, I can blow them up at will). It’s not that great but it works.
So right now I’m running bounties/rifts/GRifts to get better gear but I would love to get a strategy. Am I simply waiting to find enough set pieces to make swapping worthwhile? Should I be gambling with the cube to get more set pieces? Should I be rerolling set pieces? I feel like I only have a vague idea as to where I’m heading!
Hanacker
4560
Yes, complete sets are basically mandatory for T6+.
Should I be gambling with the cube to get more set pieces?
No. Gamble with the cube for weapons or jewelry.
Should I be rerolling set pieces?
If you have dupes and can afford it, sure.
Also, run bounties until you get a RRoG and then wear it/cube it so you can get your set bonuses up ASAP. 6-piece set bonuses are so OP these days. Once you have that you can fix your fragility with passives and paragon points if necessary.
