At the moment my skill choise is this:
Left click: Crippling Wave + Concussion
Right Click: Seven Sides Strike + Pandemonium or Sustained Attack
1: Breath of Life + 15% damage
2: Serenity + Heal
3: Sweeping Wind: must try the fire rune (what actually change from normal and fire damage, except the radius?)
4: Mantra of Healing + All Res (or Mantra of Evasion + Hard Target, but only if I try dual wield)
Today I've encounter a pack of Bees with Barrier, Arcane, Fear and Extra Life. I have to log out because they got enraged. I'm really frustrated.
If your using crippling wave your not using this build. Deadly Reach is absolutely essential.
Sweeping wind plus fire rune changes the radius, that's exactly the point with deadly reach, I was often hitting stuff with deadly reach but it wasn't in the radius of sweeping wind.
Enrage isn't a death sentence for this build, last night a pack enraged on me and I managed to keep fighting through it, it last about a minute and goes away.
IIRC with your formula i've hard mitigation = 7,22% with 24984 hp.
Today i've tried again act 2 and I could kill 2 elite pack without dying, but they dont have nasty combination (like fear + mortar or freeze + molten or the worst of all: illusionist).
That comes out to 346k effective health. I had 392k and by the end of the act 2 was thinking of bumping up my vitality some, I'll probably shoot for 30k soon, which will be another 42k effective health.
Some packs just suck. Use corners, and practice kiting. Bring an aoe skill and illusionist become a lot easier. Sweeping wind with the fire rune for the bigger radius has become my go to for one of the open spots as of last night.
You might find Mystic Ally effective for taking some of the heat off you, I've been using the water one lately and it pretty much steals aggro on something if it's out. For 25 spirit the water one is worth it if it just gets off the initial attack, in fact I sometimes chain cast it just for that nuke. The earth one has obvious benefits as well.
i've tried this build.
My stats are about 10k armor with keen eye activated, 700+ res with mantra and 2,40 atk speed....but elite packs still destroy me without any problems. But at least I survived in Act 2 at all normal mobs i've encountered
I have less armor (8.6k) and more resists (824) right now, with 26997 health. That comes out to 6.8% of damage taken and 392,821 effective health. I'd be interested to know where your numbers are.
Most normal mobs are a joke as you said, although anything with a wind up attack is worth avoiding, as are the flies. Elites can be hit or miss. Some packs I can stand and tank no problem. Others I have to kite no matter what mods they spawn with. I managed to kill everything I faced from the start of the Kulle stuff up to Belial last night however with only 7 or 8 deaths before Belial. Five of those were on a wrath pack with molten...very nasty they phase through you to attack and leave you in lava constantly, with jailer and frozen as well it was the first pack I thought about skipping in a while. Kulle was easy, but I died once when one of his guys hit me right as the ceiling caved in on me. The guys still hit hard enough I had to kite, getting hit by both at once would of been death.
Got 3 attempts on Belial but it was late and I was tired and kept messing up around the half way point. I expect to beat him tonight, and try out act 3, though I fully expect it to be a bit much until I get some more gear.
i dont see my damage getting to be that high but maybe if i replace a bunch of my gear that is lacking in dex and has more vit i should be ok, i have quite a bit of gold to be able to spend on the AH it shouldnt be much of a problem for me to get dex/allres/lit res gear for myself so as soon as blizz gets off their butts and fixes these servers i will attempt your build and get back to you, thanks for posting this, act2 has really been a downer for me
Just to be clear I'm still kiting a lot in act two with my gear. Get your three deadly reach hits in, back off 3 or 4 steps and unload again. Getting surrounded by an elite pack is very often deadly. I can run through molten, or arcane if needed. I can stand in plague for a few seconds (in act 1 I can ignore it, Mantra of Healing heals more). Desecrate in act 2 is insane, must move quickly and mortar on ranged guys is really difficult. Mystic Ally is my favorite skill of the choice ones right now. The guy seems to get some of our defenses and can tank for a while, though he falls quickly when he ignores the tricks of the elite packs.
i was just wondering if you wouldnt mind posting your stats page, im attempting to gear up to act2 right now and this seems like the build will do it for me
Can't log on right now with the server issues, that's why I finally wrote this up. I do know offhand I have 73.xx% reduction from both armor and resistances when everything is up. I got lucky and found an amazing weapon last night so I'm right at 20k damage with Breath of Heaven, but I did most of act two with less than 15k.
I have 130 magic find as well...should actually be fairly cheap to match my numbers if you don't spend the money on magic find I did.
I call the build the Paladin because it plays like a holy crusader with a shield. Grab a sword or mace to go with your essential shield and your basically look more like the archetypical paladin and not a monk.
I've messed with a ton of builds trying to find something that works for Inferno. This is the one I've found that works. It breezes through Act 1. I can kill the Butcher without avoiding anything and standing in the fires, there isn't a pack I can't kill in Act 1 anymore, though I occasionally have to resort to kiting and the like. Standing in Arcane rays and molten are no problem. Cruising through Act 2 right now when solo. It's quite a bit tougher in a party unless you have a barb for warcry.
They key element to any effective build is synergy. Any time a skill or gear choice can help you survive and do more damage it goes from good to great. You will see I mention this synergy at several points during the guide.
The last two skills are up to you, I use a combo of mystic ally, seven sided strike, dashing strike, cyclone, and sweeping wind. Use what sorts your play style or is appropriate to the situation.
The main point of the build is to stack effective health through damage mitigation in the form of armor and resistances. Deadly Reach with Keen Eye and Mantra of Healing with Time of Need are therefore absolutely essential. The other two skills give you spot healing when needed. The ability to be immune for 3 seconds is also nice for avoiding damage as you gear up. Breath of Heaven also gives us a 15% damage boost that you can keep up pretty much all the time.
Stacking Resists and Armor (Warning Math)
When I refer to hard mitigation in this guide I basically mean the mitigation that applies after you take a hit. By stacking both you can make every hit you take is for as little as possible. You can figure out how much damage your actually going to take with the following formula:
Don't forget to make sure deadly strike and mantra of healing are up when you check your armor values.
At low gear levels it's not hard to pull off 70% armor and 70% resists. That comes out to (1-0.70)*(1-0.70)=0.3*0.3=.0.09 So when you take damage your actually taking only 9% of that damage. If you have 27000 health at this point (which is what I'm working with) that comes out to an effective health of 300,000. Here's the formula.
health/hard mitigation=effective health
Having high hard mitigation also makes your heals work better. When a skill might heal for 9k health, that's 100k effective health healed for the person in our example above. It's one of those synergy things. Stacking more hard mitigation means your heals are more effective.
One with All is the key here to stacking resistance. Search the AH for pieces of gear with both resist all and a resist of your choosing. It shouldn't be that hard to get several pieces of gear that basically give you over 100 resist all with the talent. Adding another 20% to the resulting resists with Mantra of Healing and it's possible for us to stack more resistance to all than anyone. A barb can stack one, maybe two higher, but not everything.
Of course the higher your armor the better as well. Seize the Initiative and Deadly Reach are the essential abilities here. A shield also becomes essential since you can get 1k+ armor pretty easily one one. Don't forget when looking at the armor of a piece that both the strength and dexterity on it add to that value. Your not gonna look at strength that much, but stacking your dexterity means more hard mitigation from armor and dodge to go with your primary damage stat. It's synergy like this that makes builds work and getting plenty of dexterity is essential to making sure you make your way through inferno at a decent pace. Essentialy the best way to mitigate damage from an enemy is to kill it.
Why not Mantra of Evasion with Hard Target?
Answering this question is key to understanding what makes this build tick. Understanding why I went this route is key to understanding how the build functions once content isn't trivial.
Basically I'm finding that stacking dodge is virtually useless when it is in place of the hard mitigation that armor and resistances give. Eventually your gonna get hit and if you don't have armor and resists to mitigate that health it's going to kill you. Basically stacking dodge is hoping you don't die and stacking hard resists are making sure you don't. My daddy use to tell me "Hope in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills up first." That's basically what dodge is worth, without really high hard mitigation to back it up, less than crap.
Also, even though dodge is the worse of the three forms of mitigation available for some reason it's dimininishing returns seem to kick in lower than the other forms of mitigation. Comparing builds of similiar gear resists or armor may get you to the 70-80% range of mitigation, while dodge gear and build of the same level is probably 50-65%. This means Guardian's Path and Fist of Thunder with Lightning Flash with 1500 dex, like I was trying at first. Both abilities mean your giving up some form of hard mitigation. So not only is dodge worse than the others it's more expensive to gear up for.
Lastly the extra healing from Mantra of Healing is nice. Deadly Reach allows you to kite pretty well when the damage in an area or from some elites is more than you can handle. Basically Deadly Reach/Mantra of Healing becomes one of those synergy things I mentioned earlier when you start kiting.
Finally, despite all this I want to mention it's actually possible (though not likely without trying due to diminishing returns) to reach a gear point where the 20% extra armor gives you more hard mitigation and therefore effective health than 20% more resists. In which case you may find Mantra of Evasion is better.
Gear Choices:
Dexterity is your key stat. A piece of gear without it should be exceptional in other aspects.
All Resistance and your chosen secondary resists: Hopefully you'll have as many pieces as possible with both. Don't forget every 10 int is 1 resist all, this might push one piece of gear ahead of others.
Armor (and Str): Anything to get more armor for your Deadly Reach to multiply. Dexterity figures in to this one as well that's why it's your number one stat. You shouldn't look for gear with strength but it can push one piece ahead of another.
Vitality: Your going to get enough pretty quick. I'm comfortable with 27k health nearing the end of Act 2. Despite not having as much vitality as some people your effective health will be quite high.
Attack Speed: It's essential to get off that third strike of Deadly Strike very quickly, especially when melee kiting. If you don't get it off before mobs swing at you your taking a lot more damage.
Movement Speed: Makes kiting easier, I wouldn't give up what I have on my boots, though I've yet to find any other pieces of gear that have movement speed I'm willing to give up other stats for.
Life on Hit: I didn't realize how good this was til I swapped out a couple of pieces that had it as an afterthought. A couple hundred is really nice, some of the weapons with up to 1k would be amazing, but I'm getting by with 200 right now and my next big purchase will be a Blackthorne ammy.
0
If your using crippling wave your not using this build. Deadly Reach is absolutely essential.
Sweeping wind plus fire rune changes the radius, that's exactly the point with deadly reach, I was often hitting stuff with deadly reach but it wasn't in the radius of sweeping wind.
Enrage isn't a death sentence for this build, last night a pack enraged on me and I managed to keep fighting through it, it last about a minute and goes away.
0
That comes out to 346k effective health. I had 392k and by the end of the act 2 was thinking of bumping up my vitality some, I'll probably shoot for 30k soon, which will be another 42k effective health.
Some packs just suck. Use corners, and practice kiting. Bring an aoe skill and illusionist become a lot easier. Sweeping wind with the fire rune for the bigger radius has become my go to for one of the open spots as of last night.
You might find Mystic Ally effective for taking some of the heat off you, I've been using the water one lately and it pretty much steals aggro on something if it's out. For 25 spirit the water one is worth it if it just gets off the initial attack, in fact I sometimes chain cast it just for that nuke. The earth one has obvious benefits as well.
0
I would make vitality more of a priority. How much so is hard to say of course, probably more like even with dex instead of the 2/3 or so mine is now.
I have less armor (8.6k) and more resists (824) right now, with 26997 health. That comes out to 6.8% of damage taken and 392,821 effective health. I'd be interested to know where your numbers are.
Most normal mobs are a joke as you said, although anything with a wind up attack is worth avoiding, as are the flies. Elites can be hit or miss. Some packs I can stand and tank no problem. Others I have to kite no matter what mods they spawn with. I managed to kill everything I faced from the start of the Kulle stuff up to Belial last night however with only 7 or 8 deaths before Belial. Five of those were on a wrath pack with molten...very nasty they phase through you to attack and leave you in lava constantly, with jailer and frozen as well it was the first pack I thought about skipping in a while. Kulle was easy, but I died once when one of his guys hit me right as the ceiling caved in on me. The guys still hit hard enough I had to kite, getting hit by both at once would of been death.
Got 3 attempts on Belial but it was late and I was tired and kept messing up around the half way point. I expect to beat him tonight, and try out act 3, though I fully expect it to be a bit much until I get some more gear.
0
Just to be clear I'm still kiting a lot in act two with my gear. Get your three deadly reach hits in, back off 3 or 4 steps and unload again. Getting surrounded by an elite pack is very often deadly. I can run through molten, or arcane if needed. I can stand in plague for a few seconds (in act 1 I can ignore it, Mantra of Healing heals more). Desecrate in act 2 is insane, must move quickly and mortar on ranged guys is really difficult. Mystic Ally is my favorite skill of the choice ones right now. The guy seems to get some of our defenses and can tank for a while, though he falls quickly when he ignores the tricks of the elite packs.
0
Can't log on right now with the server issues, that's why I finally wrote this up. I do know offhand I have 73.xx% reduction from both armor and resistances when everything is up. I got lucky and found an amazing weapon last night so I'm right at 20k damage with Breath of Heaven, but I did most of act two with less than 15k.
I have 130 magic find as well...should actually be fairly cheap to match my numbers if you don't spend the money on magic find I did.
2
I've messed with a ton of builds trying to find something that works for Inferno. This is the one I've found that works. It breezes through Act 1. I can kill the Butcher without avoiding anything and standing in the fires, there isn't a pack I can't kill in Act 1 anymore, though I occasionally have to resort to kiting and the like. Standing in Arcane rays and molten are no problem. Cruising through Act 2 right now when solo. It's quite a bit tougher in a party unless you have a barb for warcry.
They key element to any effective build is synergy. Any time a skill or gear choice can help you survive and do more damage it goes from good to great. You will see I mention this synergy at several points during the guide.
Here is the must have part of the build: http://us.battle.net...b.QgX!YXU!Z.cab
The last two skills are up to you, I use a combo of mystic ally, seven sided strike, dashing strike, cyclone, and sweeping wind. Use what sorts your play style or is appropriate to the situation.
The main point of the build is to stack effective health through damage mitigation in the form of armor and resistances. Deadly Reach with Keen Eye and Mantra of Healing with Time of Need are therefore absolutely essential. The other two skills give you spot healing when needed. The ability to be immune for 3 seconds is also nice for avoiding damage as you gear up. Breath of Heaven also gives us a 15% damage boost that you can keep up pretty much all the time.
Stacking Resists and Armor (Warning Math)
When I refer to hard mitigation in this guide I basically mean the mitigation that applies after you take a hit. By stacking both you can make every hit you take is for as little as possible. You can figure out how much damage your actually going to take with the following formula:
(1-damage mitigation)*(1-resistance)=hard mitigation
Don't forget to make sure deadly strike and mantra of healing are up when you check your armor values.
At low gear levels it's not hard to pull off 70% armor and 70% resists. That comes out to (1-0.70)*(1-0.70)=0.3*0.3=.0.09 So when you take damage your actually taking only 9% of that damage. If you have 27000 health at this point (which is what I'm working with) that comes out to an effective health of 300,000. Here's the formula.
health/hard mitigation=effective health
Having high hard mitigation also makes your heals work better. When a skill might heal for 9k health, that's 100k effective health healed for the person in our example above. It's one of those synergy things. Stacking more hard mitigation means your heals are more effective.
One with All is the key here to stacking resistance. Search the AH for pieces of gear with both resist all and a resist of your choosing. It shouldn't be that hard to get several pieces of gear that basically give you over 100 resist all with the talent. Adding another 20% to the resulting resists with Mantra of Healing and it's possible for us to stack more resistance to all than anyone. A barb can stack one, maybe two higher, but not everything.
Of course the higher your armor the better as well. Seize the Initiative and Deadly Reach are the essential abilities here. A shield also becomes essential since you can get 1k+ armor pretty easily one one. Don't forget when looking at the armor of a piece that both the strength and dexterity on it add to that value. Your not gonna look at strength that much, but stacking your dexterity means more hard mitigation from armor and dodge to go with your primary damage stat. It's synergy like this that makes builds work and getting plenty of dexterity is essential to making sure you make your way through inferno at a decent pace. Essentialy the best way to mitigate damage from an enemy is to kill it.
Why not Mantra of Evasion with Hard Target?
Answering this question is key to understanding what makes this build tick. Understanding why I went this route is key to understanding how the build functions once content isn't trivial.
Basically I'm finding that stacking dodge is virtually useless when it is in place of the hard mitigation that armor and resistances give. Eventually your gonna get hit and if you don't have armor and resists to mitigate that health it's going to kill you. Basically stacking dodge is hoping you don't die and stacking hard resists are making sure you don't. My daddy use to tell me "Hope in one hand and crap in the other, see which fills up first." That's basically what dodge is worth, without really high hard mitigation to back it up, less than crap.
Also, even though dodge is the worse of the three forms of mitigation available for some reason it's dimininishing returns seem to kick in lower than the other forms of mitigation. Comparing builds of similiar gear resists or armor may get you to the 70-80% range of mitigation, while dodge gear and build of the same level is probably 50-65%. This means Guardian's Path and Fist of Thunder with Lightning Flash with 1500 dex, like I was trying at first. Both abilities mean your giving up some form of hard mitigation. So not only is dodge worse than the others it's more expensive to gear up for.
Lastly the extra healing from Mantra of Healing is nice. Deadly Reach allows you to kite pretty well when the damage in an area or from some elites is more than you can handle. Basically Deadly Reach/Mantra of Healing becomes one of those synergy things I mentioned earlier when you start kiting.
Finally, despite all this I want to mention it's actually possible (though not likely without trying due to diminishing returns) to reach a gear point where the 20% extra armor gives you more hard mitigation and therefore effective health than 20% more resists. In which case you may find Mantra of Evasion is better.
Gear Choices:
Dexterity is your key stat. A piece of gear without it should be exceptional in other aspects.
All Resistance and your chosen secondary resists: Hopefully you'll have as many pieces as possible with both. Don't forget every 10 int is 1 resist all, this might push one piece of gear ahead of others.
Armor (and Str): Anything to get more armor for your Deadly Reach to multiply. Dexterity figures in to this one as well that's why it's your number one stat. You shouldn't look for gear with strength but it can push one piece ahead of another.
Vitality: Your going to get enough pretty quick. I'm comfortable with 27k health nearing the end of Act 2. Despite not having as much vitality as some people your effective health will be quite high.
Attack Speed: It's essential to get off that third strike of Deadly Strike very quickly, especially when melee kiting. If you don't get it off before mobs swing at you your taking a lot more damage.
Movement Speed: Makes kiting easier, I wouldn't give up what I have on my boots, though I've yet to find any other pieces of gear that have movement speed I'm willing to give up other stats for.
Life on Hit: I didn't realize how good this was til I swapped out a couple of pieces that had it as an afterthought. A couple hundred is really nice, some of the weapons with up to 1k would be amazing, but I'm getting by with 200 right now and my next big purchase will be a Blackthorne ammy.