Diablo III / 3 - Page 43

Fastest way to level is to do Act 3 boss. The cut scene to end the act generates another quest exp. Then you jump into act 4 for the first quest.

But it's actually faster to just do act 3 boss and only act 3 boss. You can get from 50-60 in about 9 hours doing this in hell. Also a good way to get to 50 by doing it in NM.

Yeah, greenfrog....have you just been throwing away the good items?

Its not always clear at first which stats are actually important which is why I suggested turning on advanced tool tips so you could see exactly how items would effect your health/damage/protection.

I was often quite surprised how big of an effect small changes could have. One of my first rings added 2-4 damage and I kept it for a LONG time because I needed something like 15-20 dexterity to get the same boost in overall DPS. I don't know much about the barb, but from what I saw it sounds like you need to get some better weapons and load up on vitality and strength. You simply have far too little health to be stuck in the middle of it.

socketed items can help...a chest armor with 2 sockets can easily have several hundred health added with the kind of gems you probably have already picked up and been able to craft with the jeweler. And unlike D2, when you tire of the weapon, you can take the gems out of the socket and put them into something else.

go with:
entangling shot (hatred regen)
elemental arrow (lightning ball)
SS (with the +2 rune)
Prep (with life regen)
caltrops (with bait the trap)
rain of vengeance (guided arrow should be fine)

try to get a regular bow... those are much better than xbows


what act? I might need to do that to farm for some gold.... how quick is it?

act 4, very first quest where you fight diablo's minion. there's always 4 people in a public game. just spawn and spam lol.

oops i meant what difficulty?

Seems like people are using 2x hand xbow for 15% IAS bonus, hand xbow for archery crit%, and nightstalker for discipline regeneration.
If you hit enough crits (especially with sharpshooter), you should have enough discipline to stay in SS [funtionally] forever.

That said, I am currently using a regular bow. I am planning on stalking the AH for dual xbows soon, though.

I'm only 53 right now, but I'm set up:
hungering/puncturing
chakram/twin chakram (not really sure how i feel about this...i've always been a multishot guy. but i like it)

smokescreen/lingering fog
prep/battlescars
caltrops/tort (though bait the trap is probably better once i have access to it)
rain/stampede

I think hell difficulty. That should get you to 60 before infernal.

Lvl30+ in NM now

Wiz rocks
~550+ DPS w/ 3K HP and a bunch of rare socketed items

AH is great for jewels ATM IMO

I'm level 42 or something. Mid of A2 nm. 1k dps. 100k gold or something, 1 step to max level 5 of BS.

So far, I've sold all my blue and yellow items to the merchant. And then I bought some mats for cheap in the AH. But I may sell some good yellow ones in the AH. Apparently, you can make good money by just buying stuff cheap and selling expensive.

FWIW, I'm not sure whether this has been confirmed by Blizz, but apparently there were people abusing the AH. If you spammed the "buy" button (like 10 times) and the item was just available once, you'd pay the price once, and after that you just get messages that it's not available anymore, yet you receive money back for each click even though you didn't pay. So you could possibly generate infinite amounts of gold in a short time. Maybe that was the reason for the downtime @ EU in the middle of the day yesterday.
There are already dozens of ebay vendors who sell millions of gold.
Edited by b1os - 5/21/12 at 3:36am

I killed Diabro last night on normal.

Did it as a wizard, ended up with

missiles
disintegrate
force armor
mirror image
hydra -- since you have to move so much its nice to be able to just drop a hydra to keep DPS going.
diamond skin

now to actually step up my game and learn more and try out nightmare.

Started this weekend, Act 3 normal lvl 27 Wizard using charged bolt (I don't care what they call it that's what it is) with exploding rune, wide-band disintegrate, frost nova with shatter, arcane hydras, ice armor. It's great for mobs and there are a lot of them in Act III. My stuff is powered essentially to give me highest DPS possible (higher than I should have at my level) so I'm just ripping through guys, basically +INT as much as possible, spheres, and a ruby in the wand socket. I have taken to calling disintegrate "the light of judgment" because everything just dies instantly.

Benefits of the build - frost nova freezes everybody, then kill a couple of weaker dudes, they cause a chain of frost novas, half the mob is dead before it can move. Exploding bolt = every time anyone dies they explode, which also causes a chain reaction of damage. Then pick off stragglers or beefier enemies who weren't toast from the first round with disintegrate. If there's a door, cast arcane hydra on the other side and let it rip the hell out of anything on the other side before you ever see them.
Problems with the build - Frost Nova is more of an offensive skill. Diamond skin is super useful for when you're worried about dying. So I have to kite more than I otherwise would when things get hairy.

Works pretty well, though in Act II i had MMissile + damage rune going with arcane torrent + that rune that makes enemies hit by it susceptible to arcane damage. Pair that with arcane hydras and the wizard helper and you can rip through strong enemies. I think I might have to go back to that once the cannon fodder stop being complete pushovers.

By the way if anyone was complaining about bad writing in Mass Effect, this game's is so bad it's hilarious.

Anyone using the helpers/worrying about their gear much?

AR seems to be using the enchantress. I've been using the Templar full time...leveled his skills to heal me as well as charge and stun occasional enemies.

I basically carry him around as a heal-bot...I've given him a couple pieces of gear but haven't really focused on it (and his weapon is definitely crap) so he does barely any damage. Still, when I am low health, I yell out "Heal Me!" and he does which seems to work as a nice replacement for being able to pump potions. He seems pretty invincible as I have only seen him die once and while he won't truly tank monsters, he will usually keep a couple busy for a while.

Only problem is that I have gotten so used to his heals that I am confused when I fight without him against diablo or when I am in groups. Luckily if you are in a group with a good melee character, they are right in the middle of it so you get health globes picked up for you.

You should worry about gear; I gave my scoundrel this bow I thought otherwise unremarkable but the dex boost on it (I guess?) leads to him doing a lot of damage for his level. He's been helpful when dealing with mobs. Trims 'em down faster.

Yeah I have templar on that same stun/heal build, I have been using him this Act now that I've got him a good shield and hammer with some gems to boost them. He still doesn't do as much damage as my scoundrel but he can take way more puishment and it's nice to have the bad guys focusing on something besides me. Plus, extra healing isn't bad though I don't currently need it.

Enchantress is good for basically a second pair of hands throwing magic missiles at things. If you're trying to do arcane damage like I was in Act II it works. It's hard to boost her damage effectively though because you can't do wand/offhand to get points from two items, basically have to use a staff or something.

Someone needs to explain to me how the AH or whatever it is works. I want to buy a couple of random items... how do I get into that? I've been spending all my gold upgrading my smith.

You get into the AH from the menu before you join a game.

When you first click, it gives you some suggested items, but you can search for specifics after that.

Most yellows for someone your level are probably in the 10-100k range (though the 100k ones are probably a ripoff and similar stuff can be had for way less). Or you could get lucky and buy an auction from someone like me who just wants that shit to sell and doesn't care much about the money so it is priced really low.

I wonder if that auction money hack is still working? I bought something at auction last night and for some reason I got money back. My item was there in the "Send to Stash" section, but so was something like 100 gold that referenced the item in the title.

Its really easy to search for items. I needed a pair of +50 dex and +50 vit boots and had about $50k - took about 2 mins to find something from a selection of 15-20 I liked for about $15k.

Just finished act I in NM - died once while away from the computer but otherwise mowing them down.

Strategy is to run into the shit - drop a few dmg caltrops and a sentry, templar goes running into the mob, get my distance to allow accuracy to kick in - bola bola chakram chakram bola bola, templar grabs health potions, if I get overrun - rain of vengence.

lvl 36 now. Doing about 750 dps and have 2900 HP.