Diablo III Random Question Thread I : Clever Title

[Plow]

maybe, in the pure dps setup

he's not hard, you just need to be able to kill him pretty damn fast

[kisada]

you don't need to kill him quickly. either way's fine as he's one of the easiest bosses in the game. but with 600 AR and i assume some decent HP you should go with your DPS setup so it doesn't take forever. watch the pools and smoke up the moment they stop filling out and you won't get hit. he casts them right on you so you can get him to make a snake type pattern which will allow you to keep shooting him in the pool phase.

[Slott]

Once you learn how to pool dodge, he's easy. He casts 7 pools. You can avoid the first 3 standing in the middle. The last 4 you just smoke screen out of. It's rather easy to anticipate when to smoke screen so you take 0 damage once you learn the timing of the pools.

[Lucavi]

I'd be happy with saving Leah, really. Maybe it's just her VA, but she grew on me.

This. She's hot, plus her character is pretty tragic, plus the fact that she seriously didn't deserve her fate (seriously, worst two parents ever; Cursed King Leoric's eldest son-turned-diablo-vessel and a shady leader of a prime evil-serving cult that is obsessed with doing Diablo's will). I pretty much decided that the only real way I'm getting the next xpac is if they either bring out some seriously awesome playable classes or if they heavily focus on the story-side and wrap up some of these cliffhangers in a believable way. No Mass Effect 3 bullshit.

Blizzard has fucked up enough. Do something right for a change, and make sure you handle your business with the next Xpac. It was your plan all along to sucker us into buying the next one by making this one so wholly incomplete in just about every conceivable way. You might as well throw us a juicy bone.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Stack life/sec. Ignore Azmodan's pools.

[Plow]

you don't need to kill him quickly. either way's fine as he's one of the easiest bosses in the game. but with 600 AR and i assume some decent HP you should go with your DPS setup so it doesn't take forever. watch the pools and smoke up the moment they stop filling out and you won't get hit. he casts them right on you so you can get him to make a snake type pattern which will allow you to keep shooting him in the pool phase.

He has a 3 minute enrage now, so a person with <50k dps and little enough resist that pool phases are going to be rough is going to be somewhat pushing it.

I've never tried the snake thing tho, I just drop em in a circle around the edge so he's out of range most of the phase, prob makes a pretty good difference.

[Slott]

Stand in the very center by the pillar and the first 3 pools cannot be on you at all. You only need to dodge 4.

[Anakron]

For somebody that doesn't do equip swapping, at what point do you guys think +Gold outweighs +MF? As in "3% Gold = 1% MF" or something like that. I'm just starting out, and so far it seems like gold is a lot better, and MF wouldn't come into play until around 60?

[arus2001]

Sub-60 GF is probably more productive if you don't mind bidding ahead on upgrades every 10 levels or so. I probably wouldn't pay more than 50k for an individual piece of gear at those phases. If you want to EZ mode the leveling process, try to search for level 60 items with the -level req at 10+ or so. Having a 600+ DPS weapon in late nightmare or early hell simplifies things.

I wouldn't prioritize GF for your first time/not specialized build, though. Primary stat and VIT will do the trick until Inferno.

[Guitarman]

get any helm, even a shitty one, and toss the best red gem into it you can find. Helped me speed up the leveling process a ton.

[aireeku]

I have tried both on demon hunter and prefer to take my chances with magic find. You can reasonably stack above 150 MF while keeping your primary stat + dex on DPS classes for around 150k per piece. With the higher drop rates, it makes more sense to go for items rather than gold.

The rationale being that the gold you get will never change in terms of absolute numbers, but it's value will continually decrease as the entire game has more gold overall as time passes. You wouldn't be able to keep up with inflation and have no shot at getting top items. But get a couple of decent drops using magic find and you're good for a full set upgrade. Please feel free to dispute my logic as I would appreciate knowing if I have been doing this incorrectly and should change.

[Falaras]

So I'm probably going to get 60 on my Monk today and am looking to spend about 3-5m on a good 1 hander. For that price range what should I be looking for? All I really know is that 400ish life on hit should definitely be on the weapon, but should I focus on trying to get pure DPS, a socket, crit hit damage, or dexterity?

[Plow]

just focus on life on hit, and if you can get decent loh + a socket for even more, all the better

[Falaras]

You kinda just said what I already knew, I was more looking for if someone could provide me with a more in depth kind of thing. For instance if someone asked me about DH weapons for that pricepoint I'd tell them get a 2 hander with the highest DPS possible because that will usually yield more damage for less gold, good socketed/stat weapons generally run higher than 15m.

[kisada]

He has a 3 minute enrage now, so a person with <50k dps and little enough resist that pool phases are going to be rough is going to be somewhat pushing it.

I've never tried the snake thing tho, I just drop em in a circle around the edge so he's out of range most of the phase, prob makes a pretty good difference.

yeah i think most of us do what slott mentioned where you kinda just stand there for the first 3 pools, then start dodging on the 4th. what i do is, on the third one, i run over to the side it's spawning so i can see when it stops. so if it's on the right, i head over to the right, wait for it to hit the edge then smoke and move over to the left. the pools will chase you instead of trapping you in and you can just do whatever you want to azmodan.

also good point with the enrage thing, completely forgot about it. i kept thinking about how i can basically kill him with with just entangling arrow if i wanted to and i'm only riding 50k dps atm. so i still think it can be done with around 25k dps and definitely with less than 50k. that said i recommend using cluster arrow/cluster bombs to the poster asking for advice, because that burst damage will save a whole lot of time, and i'm not sure pure HA/DA will be enough with low-end dps.

[aireeku]

You kinda just said what I already knew, I was more looking for if someone could provide me with a more in depth kind of thing. For instance if someone asked me about DH weapons for that pricepoint I'd tell them get a 2 hander with the highest DPS possible because that will usually yield more damage for less gold, good socketed/stat weapons generally run higher than 15m.

Assuming your goal is more with group play and taking on a tank role, try to get a dagger or fist weapon for the faster attack speed. You can probably find one with about 800-900DPS, some amount of LoH and a socket in your price range. Remember to keep a budget for the star gem (around 500k). For Act II and beyond, you'll want to try to get closer to 1000+ LoH, which is easier to reach with 2 weapons, but also decreases your survivability without having a shield. If you do that, then you need higher resistances, attack speed, and dex to survive. You can fiddle around with your passives and mantras to see what gives you the best combination.

Edit: Forgot to add, if there is a choice between weapons, see if there are any with +attack speed or even some kind of small percentage of stun as your goal is to survive until your next cooldown of serenity / somebody else killing the mob.

[Falaras]

Cool that helps a lot, thanks! Yeah I plan on DWing and Sword+Boarding but I want to get one really good main hand first (I actually already have an "ok" offhand)

[Anakron]

Thanks for the tips, guys.

I poked around the AH a little bit, and is it just me, or is the implementation really poor? There's no way to sort by remaining time or bid, or even to look at buyout-only auctions. I searched for 10-14 rare quivers with Hatred Regeneration and Gold Find, and got over 40 pages back with buyouts. I imagine it'd only get worst at 60. How do you even go through all of that? >.<

[Tohmane]

With patience and sorting by buyout price in my case.

[Plow]

Thanks for the tips, guys.

I poked around the AH a little bit, and is it just me, or is the implementation really poor? There's no way to sort by remaining time or bid, or even to look at buyout-only auctions. I searched for 10-14 rare quivers with Hatred Regeneration and Gold Find, and got over 40 pages back with buyouts. I imagine it'd only get worst at 60. How do you even go through all of that? >.<

if you enter a max buyout you won't get any that don't have a buyout, but yeah, the whole system sucks ass horribly