So, I'm going to start off by saying my 4 builds are completely theoretical. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to find 3 other people to run these exact builds, but it's interesting to think about as a whole group of 4 people instead of 4 individual builds. It's mostly based around pulling enemies together, debuffing them in every way possible, buffing the group to the greatest effect and AoEing everything down.
First: Here are the builds and basic descriptions of their roles.
Monk: He overall wants to debuff the enemies, pull them closer together, and heal the group. Skills:
1. Crippling Wave with Concussion is a great debuffer that reduces their attack speed, movement speed, and damage done.
2. Sweeping Wind with Inner Storm is mostly useful for its spirit generation, but also has a nice AoE effect which fits well with the rest of the builds.
3. Dashing Strike with Blinding Speed is essential for this build. It allows him to move to any part of the field of battle that he needs to be and gives him a nice dodge buff with the rune.
4. Breath of Heaven with Circle of Life is a great heal that synergizes well with his second passive.
5. Mantra of Conviction with Intimidation increases damage taken by the enemy and reduces the damage they do.
6. Cyclone Strike with Eye of the Storm is what makes the monk indispensable for this group. He wants to pull all the enemies together so the rest of the group can AoE effectively. I was torn between Eye of the Storm and Implosion for the rune on this because I'm not sure on the yardage just yet.
Passives:
1. Resolve fits his role of debuffer reducing the damage enemies do even further.
2. Guiding Light is amazing with this build. It should be up almost 100% of the time because Breath of Heaven has a 15 second cooldown.
3. Seize the Initiative is just for survivability, because he's going to be in the middle of the fray.
Barbarian: His main role is to tank as much of the damage while still buffing and debuffing. Skills: Edit: 1. Cleave with Gathering Storm is there to keep mobs CCed as much as possible, and the AoE damage is pretty nice as well. I miss the old Gathering Storm rune though.
2. Rend with Bloodlust is also chosen for the heals, but he also needed a fury spender other than Threatening Shout.
3. Threatening Shout with Demoralize makes everybody love the Barb in the group, he pulls them in and keeps them on him so others are free to do as they will without worrying too much about being instagibbed. And it has a nice 20% damage debuff! Edit: 4. Leap Attack with Iron Impact is useful for a nice armor bonus for the beginning of the fight for initiating and is nice for generating a bit of extra fury at the beginning for that first Threatening Shout. I chose Iron Impact over Call of Arreat because Threatening Shout has a 9 yard greater range.
5. War Cry with Invigorate is an amazing buff that helps the entire team be a bit more tanky.
6. Revenge with Provocation is another skill that will help him lifesteal off of enemies and should top him off every time it procs.
Passives:
1. Tough as Nails is your physical damage reducer that also works well with the tons of thorns damage you'll hopefully have built up.
2. Relentless is a just in case precaution for when you do happen to get low.
3. Superstition is your non physical damage reducer that has a fair fury generator bonus.
Witch Doctor: He's an all around hero that will debuff, buff, and do great damage. Skills:
1. Firebats with Hungry Bats will be his main spamming spell which will be spammed and will actually cause him to regenerate mana while he's using it due to Vision Quest.
2. Acid Cloud with Slow Burn will be his main AoE spammer that also applies the Bad Medicine Debuff. I know this skill is getting a lot of hate right now, but with this build it will hopefully be fairly spammable and will do the full 275% weapon damage from the dot.
3. Soul Harvest with Swallow Your Soul is a great buff to intellect, giving him a 650 int buff for 30 seconds that also will allow you to spam Acid Cloud even more.
4. Wall of Zombies with Dead Rush is going to do tons of damage in a radial area that I prefer to Pile On.
5. Fetish Army with Fetish Ambush is going to do tons of damage and should probably be popped against uniques/elites. With Fetish Ambush I can see this skill doing upwards 2000% damage over it's full duration.
6. Big Bad Voodoo with Slam Dance is a great buff that increases attack speed and damage of all allies.
Passives:
1. Bad Medicine is an amazing debuff that will be affecting all the enemies the entire battle with Acid Cloud.
2. Tribal Rites is there so you can spam Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo even more. I was torn between this and Grave Injustice, but I'm not sure if I'll be close enough/want to risk it/will have enough gold/healthglobe radius.
3. Vision Quest is extremely good, boosting your mana regen from 25 m/s to 75 m/s at all times allowing you to keep spamming your Acid Clouds and regenerate mana through Firebats.
Wizard: He's mostly here for the massive AoE damage, but also has some nice utility with Slow time. Skills:
1. Electrocute with Surge of Power is only here for arcane power generation. I chose this over Magic Missile with Attunement because of the attribute "generate arcane power on crit." If you have any amount of crit then electrocute will overpower Arcane Missile with Attunement for arcane power generation.
2. Meteor with Meteor Shower provide the massive AoE that all of these builds are set around.
3. 4. and 5. all go together in one combo. The Wizard will Teleport in with Reversal, use Frost Nova with Deep Freeze to get a beautiful crit buff for 12 seconds and freeze enemies for 3 seconds, use Slow Time with Time Warp for a nice enemy attack speed debuff/ damage taken debuff, then activate Teleport with Reversal again to take him back to the original point.
6. Energy Armor with Energy Tap is for the nice armor buff and a great 20 arcane power buff.
Passives:
1. Prodigy allows you to generate 7 arcane power with every Electrocute even if you don't get any crits.
2. Astral Presence gives you another 20 arcane power buff and 2 arcane power per second.
3. Conflagration increases the parties damage dealt to mobs by another 15%.
Third: Attributes each class will want to look out for.
Monk: Nothing in particular, spirit per second would be nice for spamming Cyclone Strike.
Barbarian: Anything that will keep him alive longer. Armor, Vitality, Strength, Resistances. As well as damage dealt per hit to go with Tough as Nails.
Witch Doctor: Just damage, lots of damage.
Wizard: Arcane power on crit, crit, and more damage.
Fourth: Final thoughts.
I know this is a lot to read, and I don't really expect many to actually reply to this, but I just thought it was an interesting idea to build for the entire group rather than each individual. Any comments are appreciated. These builds also assume that mobs in inferno take quite while to defeat.
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My place really was here. I was too foolish and stubborn to notice. But, what I truly hoped for then was here. Why do I always realize it When I've already lost it.
Very good idea! I fully support it! If Inferno difficulty is going to be somewhere near the Uber Tristram difficulty from D2, then I don't see a reason why a setup like this won't work!
Cleave (Gathering Storm) with Seismic Slam allows for a lot of control with a slow and a knockback. And with Relentless, spamming Seismic Slam will also provide a bit of survivability until you can grab a health globe or regen back up.
If you are planning to use Leap Attack as an initiator, I like Iron Impact over Call of Arreat, with the range of Threatening Shout's Taunt larger than the improved Leap Attack range for gathering enemies. If you're looking for another way to control mobs around you, I'd go with Ground Stomp (Wrenching Smash), but you lose the mobility of Leap Attack.
Does Rend's debuff stack? If so, I could see it being a much better Fury spender.
Personally I would rather have 4 balanced chars than have a char each with a defined role. Here is why. In the endgame you will need to focus gear on the skills you want to use. So you may still have flexibility, but to be best of the best, you will need to invest in gear sets. So if you make a specific play build, you will require other players builds to be effective. If you don't have those builds, you will need to respec maybe which unless you have a respec gear set, will lower your overall performance. If your group has a defined tank and the other players are not equipped to handle excess damage, your whole group may wipe where as 4 balanced chars have a better shot at survival if one goes down.
Massive damage on AOE spells will have cooldowns so the AOE/CC attacks/spells you can spam will not have tons of damage. All characters will need a single target high damage attack/spell or be rendered worthless when it comes to elite/champion mobs that give off damage everytime they are attacked. Imagine AOE spamming a pack of lightning enchanted elites? Talk about a quick group wipe. People who do this will only anger the rest of the group. Crowd control will be (it better be) less effective against bosses/elites/champions at the end game, or the endgame will be pretty cheezy.
All available character types do have an inherited skill set. Barbarians will be able to take alot of damage while still doing a good deal of damage. The monks I think will be able to absorb a lot of damage as well since they can heal, but dealing damage won't be their strong suit if they focus on healing. I am really interested in how the Monk turns out and how people will use him. The Demonhunter and Wizard will probably be focused on ranged dps eventhough there are other playstyles available. Being ranged, not sure how effective the monks heals will be for them as it appears many of the monks heals are location based around the monk. Ranged players might not be within the circle enough for it to matter to them. The witch doctor is also kind of an unknown to me. I really have not looked hard at his skills. I was never a fan of that head throwing up animation. Also I wasn't ever really a necro fan and witch doctor reminds me of the necro. I'll take a better look at him in a bit.
Even with the inherited skill sets, I think all characters will need a balance of attacks and damages. I think all characters would be wise to have a high damage single attack/spell, an AOE/CC spell/attack and the AOE massive damage attack/spell with its longer cooldown. Having at least one defensive skill will probably be needed too. That leaves 2 other skills to play with plus passives. Some of those skills need to be used to use a wide variety of damages types too. If you specialize in an Ice wizard, congratulations, you just gimped you character. Some mobs will be immune to at least one type of damage in hell, elites sometimes had 2 immunes (i hope hell is just as hard as hell was in D2.) I'm guessing inferno regular mobs could be immune up to 2 damage types and elites could have 3 immunes. So In my opinion, any character wanting to be efficient in inferno is going to want at least 4 damage types. I believe the damage types are cold, fire, arcane, poison, and physical. You are gonna want your gear set to focus on 4 of them.
The OP stated that it would require 3 players with those builds. For me, these are my friends that I play with. When we group, we have a common goal (be it Bosses or Rare packs) and we work together to maximize our potential in fighting these.
A Barbarian that focuses on control and survival isn't rendered worthless against a boss because he's using Cleave (120% WD) over Frenzy (110%) or Leap Attack (125%) over Ancient Spear (185%). His goal isn't to maximize his DPS, it's to allow his group to maximize theirs. In the same way you say that crowd control should be less effective vs Inferno bosses, elites, and champions I say that debuffing should be necessary. Coordinating a group to provide each of these is much harder than having 4 individual builds that are independent of each other.
Show me a solid build where a barbarian has high damage single target, AoE CC, and Massive damage AoE with a defensive CD and 4 damage types. I'm also curious what comp of all four classes in a balanced approach that you think is more optimal.
Personally I would rather have 4 balanced chars than have a char each with a defined role. Here is why. In the endgame you will need to focus gear on the skills you want to use. So you may still have flexibility, but to be best of the best, you will need to invest in gear sets. So if you make a specific play build, you will require other players builds to be effective. If you don't have those builds, you will need to respec maybe which unless you have a respec gear set, will lower your overall performance. If your group has a defined tank and the other players are not equipped to handle excess damage, your whole group may wipe where as 4 balanced chars have a better shot at survival if one goes down.
Massive damage on AOE spells will have cooldowns so the AOE/CC attacks/spells you can spam will not have tons of damage. All characters will need a single target high damage attack/spell or be rendered worthless when it comes to elite/champion mobs that give off damage everytime they are attacked. Imagine AOE spamming a pack of lightning enchanted elites? Talk about a quick group wipe. People who do this will only anger the rest of the group. Crowd control will be (it better be) less effective against bosses/elites/champions at the end game, or the endgame will be pretty cheezy.
All available character types do have an inherited skill set. Barbarians will be able to take alot of damage while still doing a good deal of damage. The monks I think will be able to absorb a lot of damage as well since they can heal, but dealing damage won't be their strong suit if they focus on healing. I am really interested in how the Monk turns out and how people will use him. The Demonhunter and Wizard will probably be focused on ranged dps eventhough there are other playstyles available. Being ranged, not sure how effective the monks heals will be for them as it appears many of the monks heals are location based around the monk. Ranged players might not be within the circle enough for it to matter to them. The witch doctor is also kind of an unknown to me. I really have not looked hard at his skills. I was never a fan of that head throwing up animation. Also I wasn't ever really a necro fan and witch doctor reminds me of the necro. I'll take a better look at him in a bit.
Even with the inherited skill sets, I think all characters will need a balance of attacks and damages. I think all characters would be wise to have a high damage single attack/spell, an AOE/CC spell/attack and the AOE massive damage attack/spell with its longer cooldown. Having at least one defensive skill will probably be needed too. That leaves 2 other skills to play with plus passives. Some of those skills need to be used to use a wide variety of damages types too. If you specialize in an Ice wizard, congratulations, you just gimped you character. Some mobs will be immune to at least one type of damage in hell, elites sometimes had 2 immunes (i hope hell is just as hard as hell was in D2.) I'm guessing inferno regular mobs could be immune up to 2 damage types and elites could have 3 immunes. So In my opinion, any character wanting to be efficient in inferno is going to want at least 4 damage types. I believe the damage types are cold, fire, arcane, poison, and physical. You are gonna want your gear set to focus on 4 of them.
Anyway, thats my thoughts. Happy slaying guys.
What he said, except there are no immunes in D3
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
Noob question here, since frost nova doesn't do any damage nor slow time, does flash of light affect them or would I have to use damaging spell like arcane orb?
Noob question here, since frost nova doesn't do any damage nor slow time, does flash of light affect them or would I have to use damaging spell like arcane orb?
I'm not sure I understand your question but let me know if I'm wrong. I don't know if you could apply both at the same time but when a monster is frozen they can't do anything anyways so it would be more efficient to cast flash after they unfreeze.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
Noob question here, since frost nova doesn't do any damage nor slow time, does flash of light affect them or would I have to use damaging spell like arcane orb?
I'm not sure I understand your question but let me know if I'm wrong. I don't know if you could apply both at the same time but when a monster is frozen they can't do anything anyways so it would be more efficient to cast flash after they unfreeze.
Say I get flash of insight, and use meteor, it applies the extra %75 additional damage since metoer obviously deals damage. But since frost nova just freezes the target without doing damage, will flash of insight deal %75 additional damage when casting frost nova. I message bashiok about it just to get a blue confirm.
Also having problem with chain lightning and prodigy. stats when you deal damage with a signature spell, you gain 4 ap http://us.battle.net...passive/prodigy , using chain lightning, hitting up to 6 targets, will I gain 24 ap (still damaging creatures) or just 4.
The OP stated that it would require 3 players with those builds. For me, these are my friends that I play with. When we group, we have a common goal (be it Bosses or Rare packs) and we work together to maximize our potential in fighting these.
A Barbarian that focuses on control and survival isn't rendered worthless against a boss because he's using Cleave (120% WD) over Frenzy (110%) or Leap Attack (125%) over Ancient Spear (185%). His goal isn't to maximize his DPS, it's to allow his group to maximize theirs. In the same way you say that crowd control should be less effective vs Inferno bosses, elites, and champions I say that debuffing should be necessary. Coordinating a group to provide each of these is much harder than having 4 individual builds that are independent of each other.
Show me a solid build where a barbarian has high damage single target, AoE CC, and Massive damage AoE with a defensive CD and 4 damage types. I'm also curious what comp of all four classes in a balanced approach that you think is more optimal.
If you have the same 3 friends that play with you everytime you want to use a particular character, that seems fine. But in life people can't always be there. If a buddy or 2 can't make it, now if you want to play your defined role, you have to recruit someone else to take their spot that is going for the same build(s.) It seems almost like by trying to use a defined role, you are putting unnecessary restrictions on yourself on who with and when you can play. As far as attack/damage %, those will be influenced by the gear you get. The base damage may change via affixed attributes by either percent of damage or adding a damage type. I remember the IK set giving good damage across all the damage types.
As far as debuffing, I agree it probably will be necessary but I don't really know how it will work in inferno so I stayed away from that topic. I don't know if debuffing should be stackable(but with cooldowns, maybe it could, I am clueless) and I don't know the cooldown lengths on all the various debuffs. As far as what would be an optimum group of balanced players? I don't think it should matter which 4 of the 5 classes you use if they are all balanced. For that matter, I feel 4 of the same class should do fine as well. Why? Because all classes should be able to solo the content. The difficulty should scale as so 4 of the same class could defeat the content.
This doesn't mean you won't need teamwork. You will need an organized group to defeat the toughest enemies. I just prefer to have 4 balanced characters that are flexible enough to handle any situation vs 4 characters that want to use the same predefined role for every set of enemies.
As far as immunes being out, I didn't know that. I liked the mechanic even though it was frustrating to have to either leave monsters or use a less effective skill. I figured with the skill flexibility in D3 immunes would have just been one more thing to plan for but be less of a nuisance than in D2. Not sure how I feel about them being gone yet.
Not trying to knock on the OP, group builds are fine and if you want to do that by all means. Theoretically at this point each class needs damage and use of a couple of utility spells to survive so bringing this concept to multiplayer shouldn't change. Everything will have that much more HP if you’re not doing damage you’re not helping yourself out. Kill fast as possible if things get rough you have 4 characters that can spam a CC move, it should be more than sufficient.
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
I would be looking at a chain combo IF flash of insight doesn't affect slow time and frost nova since they dont do damage. if there are 5 enemies grouped up, use slow time (time warp (20% more dmg)), frost nova (deep freeze(15% chance to critically hit)), and use meteor (meteor shower) and of course having Familiar up for the extra 15% and conflagration for an extra 15%. dealing (if my math is right) 1,575 per meteor or 1811-1812 (if it crits) per meteor
Yah I totally failed on your question (I was thinking of a different ability, it's taking a bit to memorize all of them), sorry I'm having a rough day. Honestly I don't know but I don't think anybody knows at this point some of these complex mechanics have only potentially been tested by Blizz and until there is a release and people can actually try these mechanics (since Beta is limited) all we can do is theorize
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
I'm not really sure what the deal is with all the 'group' stuff. Feels like people expect the game to be a lot like most MMO's out there. Granted, I can't speak from fact either as I too have no idea for example how difficult Inferno will be, but I feel pretty safe in saying you won't need a group with specific specs to get through it. That's pretty much against what Diablo has been in the past. Of course it's a new game and all, but the game's always been about hack&slash, killing mobs in as fun way as possible. And we've already heard Blizz say time and again they want players to customize and play how they want, rather than how they should. This leads me to believe a lot of builds will be viable. Sure, some specs will be easier than others but I don't think many group-oriented stuff will be needed at all. More so because the game is doable both in Single player and multiplayer. Needing a group to get through Inferno would be plain silly. I dunno, but it just gets on my nerves a bit that people seem to keep trying to fit D3 into a gametype like WoW or other MMOs, like that other thread about Damage meters for example...
I'm not really sure what the deal is with all the 'group' stuff. Feels like people expect the game to be a lot like most MMO's out there. Granted, I can't speak from fact either as I too have no idea for example how difficult Inferno will be, but I feel pretty safe in saying you won't need a group with specific specs to get through it. That's pretty much against what Diablo has been in the past. Of course it's a new game and all, but the game's always been about hack&slash, killing mobs in as fun way as possible. And we've already heard Blizz say time and again they want players to customize and play how they want, rather than how they should. This leads me to believe a lot of builds will be viable. Sure, some specs will be easier than others but I don't think many group-oriented stuff will be needed at all. More so because the game is doable both in Single player and multiplayer. Needing a group to get through Inferno would be plain silly. I dunno, but it just gets on my nerves a bit that people seem to keep trying to fit D3 into a gametype like WoW or other MMOs, like that other thread about Damage meters for example...
True, but if you think about it, as a wizard perspective view, slow time and familiar benefits the group. As of right now, I'm sticking to the wizard class just because I've been playing sorc since Diablo.
I dunno, but it just gets on my nerves a bit that people seem to keep trying to fit D3 into a gametype like WoW or other MMOs, like that other thread about Damage meters for example...
I think I feel the sameway, that why my previous 2 posts were kind of long. I do think making group builds can work, I just think its unnecessary and could lead to frustration. To be honest, I am going Wizard first and I don't even have plans on which skills or builds I may have. I just gonna go by feel as I play. Whatever feels best, is what I'll do. As for my second char, probably barb or monk but it will depend on the gear I got while playing my wizard. Eventually I will play all 5 classes but I am not sure how much I will fiddle with my WD.
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First: Here are the builds and basic descriptions of their roles.
Monk: Healer/Support
Edit: Barbarian: Tank
Witch Doctor: Support/DPS
Wizard: DPS/Support
Second: In Depth Descriptions.
Monk: He overall wants to debuff the enemies, pull them closer together, and heal the group.
Skills:
1. Crippling Wave with Concussion is a great debuffer that reduces their attack speed, movement speed, and damage done.
2. Sweeping Wind with Inner Storm is mostly useful for its spirit generation, but also has a nice AoE effect which fits well with the rest of the builds.
3. Dashing Strike with Blinding Speed is essential for this build. It allows him to move to any part of the field of battle that he needs to be and gives him a nice dodge buff with the rune.
4. Breath of Heaven with Circle of Life is a great heal that synergizes well with his second passive.
5. Mantra of Conviction with Intimidation increases damage taken by the enemy and reduces the damage they do.
6. Cyclone Strike with Eye of the Storm is what makes the monk indispensable for this group. He wants to pull all the enemies together so the rest of the group can AoE effectively. I was torn between Eye of the Storm and Implosion for the rune on this because I'm not sure on the yardage just yet.
Passives:
1. Resolve fits his role of debuffer reducing the damage enemies do even further.
2. Guiding Light is amazing with this build. It should be up almost 100% of the time because Breath of Heaven has a 15 second cooldown.
3. Seize the Initiative is just for survivability, because he's going to be in the middle of the fray.
Barbarian: His main role is to tank as much of the damage while still buffing and debuffing.
Skills:
Edit: 1. Cleave with Gathering Storm is there to keep mobs CCed as much as possible, and the AoE damage is pretty nice as well. I miss the old Gathering Storm rune though.
2. Rend with Bloodlust is also chosen for the heals, but he also needed a fury spender other than Threatening Shout.
3. Threatening Shout with Demoralize makes everybody love the Barb in the group, he pulls them in and keeps them on him so others are free to do as they will without worrying too much about being instagibbed. And it has a nice 20% damage debuff!
Edit: 4. Leap Attack with Iron Impact is useful for a nice armor bonus for the beginning of the fight for initiating and is nice for generating a bit of extra fury at the beginning for that first Threatening Shout. I chose Iron Impact over Call of Arreat because Threatening Shout has a 9 yard greater range.
5. War Cry with Invigorate is an amazing buff that helps the entire team be a bit more tanky.
6. Revenge with Provocation is another skill that will help him lifesteal off of enemies and should top him off every time it procs.
Passives:
1. Tough as Nails is your physical damage reducer that also works well with the tons of thorns damage you'll hopefully have built up.
2. Relentless is a just in case precaution for when you do happen to get low.
3. Superstition is your non physical damage reducer that has a fair fury generator bonus.
Witch Doctor: He's an all around hero that will debuff, buff, and do great damage.
Skills:
1. Firebats with Hungry Bats will be his main spamming spell which will be spammed and will actually cause him to regenerate mana while he's using it due to Vision Quest.
2. Acid Cloud with Slow Burn will be his main AoE spammer that also applies the Bad Medicine Debuff. I know this skill is getting a lot of hate right now, but with this build it will hopefully be fairly spammable and will do the full 275% weapon damage from the dot.
3. Soul Harvest with Swallow Your Soul is a great buff to intellect, giving him a 650 int buff for 30 seconds that also will allow you to spam Acid Cloud even more.
4. Wall of Zombies with Dead Rush is going to do tons of damage in a radial area that I prefer to Pile On.
5. Fetish Army with Fetish Ambush is going to do tons of damage and should probably be popped against uniques/elites. With Fetish Ambush I can see this skill doing upwards 2000% damage over it's full duration.
6. Big Bad Voodoo with Slam Dance is a great buff that increases attack speed and damage of all allies.
Passives:
1. Bad Medicine is an amazing debuff that will be affecting all the enemies the entire battle with Acid Cloud.
2. Tribal Rites is there so you can spam Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo even more. I was torn between this and Grave Injustice, but I'm not sure if I'll be close enough/want to risk it/will have enough gold/healthglobe radius.
3. Vision Quest is extremely good, boosting your mana regen from 25 m/s to 75 m/s at all times allowing you to keep spamming your Acid Clouds and regenerate mana through Firebats.
Wizard: He's mostly here for the massive AoE damage, but also has some nice utility with Slow time.
Skills:
1. Electrocute with Surge of Power is only here for arcane power generation. I chose this over Magic Missile with Attunement because of the attribute "generate arcane power on crit." If you have any amount of crit then electrocute will overpower Arcane Missile with Attunement for arcane power generation.
2. Meteor with Meteor Shower provide the massive AoE that all of these builds are set around.
3. 4. and 5. all go together in one combo. The Wizard will Teleport in with Reversal, use Frost Nova with Deep Freeze to get a beautiful crit buff for 12 seconds and freeze enemies for 3 seconds, use Slow Time with Time Warp for a nice enemy attack speed debuff/ damage taken debuff, then activate Teleport with Reversal again to take him back to the original point.
6. Energy Armor with Energy Tap is for the nice armor buff and a great 20 arcane power buff.
Passives:
1. Prodigy allows you to generate 7 arcane power with every Electrocute even if you don't get any crits.
2. Astral Presence gives you another 20 arcane power buff and 2 arcane power per second.
3. Conflagration increases the parties damage dealt to mobs by another 15%.
Third: Attributes each class will want to look out for.
Monk: Nothing in particular, spirit per second would be nice for spamming Cyclone Strike.
Barbarian: Anything that will keep him alive longer. Armor, Vitality, Strength, Resistances. As well as damage dealt per hit to go with Tough as Nails.
Witch Doctor: Just damage, lots of damage.
Wizard: Arcane power on crit, crit, and more damage.
Fourth: Final thoughts.
I know this is a lot to read, and I don't really expect many to actually reply to this, but I just thought it was an interesting idea to build for the entire group rather than each individual. Any comments are appreciated. These builds also assume that mobs in inferno take quite while to defeat.
I'm looking at something like this: http://us.battle.net...RTYS!eVU!cccYYb
Cleave (Gathering Storm) with Seismic Slam allows for a lot of control with a slow and a knockback. And with Relentless, spamming Seismic Slam will also provide a bit of survivability until you can grab a health globe or regen back up.
If you are planning to use Leap Attack as an initiator, I like Iron Impact over Call of Arreat, with the range of Threatening Shout's Taunt larger than the improved Leap Attack range for gathering enemies. If you're looking for another way to control mobs around you, I'd go with Ground Stomp (Wrenching Smash), but you lose the mobility of Leap Attack.
Does Rend's debuff stack? If so, I could see it being a much better Fury spender.
Massive damage on AOE spells will have cooldowns so the AOE/CC attacks/spells you can spam will not have tons of damage. All characters will need a single target high damage attack/spell or be rendered worthless when it comes to elite/champion mobs that give off damage everytime they are attacked. Imagine AOE spamming a pack of lightning enchanted elites? Talk about a quick group wipe. People who do this will only anger the rest of the group. Crowd control will be (it better be) less effective against bosses/elites/champions at the end game, or the endgame will be pretty cheezy.
All available character types do have an inherited skill set. Barbarians will be able to take alot of damage while still doing a good deal of damage. The monks I think will be able to absorb a lot of damage as well since they can heal, but dealing damage won't be their strong suit if they focus on healing. I am really interested in how the Monk turns out and how people will use him. The Demonhunter and Wizard will probably be focused on ranged dps eventhough there are other playstyles available. Being ranged, not sure how effective the monks heals will be for them as it appears many of the monks heals are location based around the monk. Ranged players might not be within the circle enough for it to matter to them. The witch doctor is also kind of an unknown to me. I really have not looked hard at his skills. I was never a fan of that head throwing up animation. Also I wasn't ever really a necro fan and witch doctor reminds me of the necro. I'll take a better look at him in a bit.
Even with the inherited skill sets, I think all characters will need a balance of attacks and damages. I think all characters would be wise to have a high damage single attack/spell, an AOE/CC spell/attack and the AOE massive damage attack/spell with its longer cooldown. Having at least one defensive skill will probably be needed too. That leaves 2 other skills to play with plus passives. Some of those skills need to be used to use a wide variety of damages types too. If you specialize in an Ice wizard, congratulations, you just gimped you character. Some mobs will be immune to at least one type of damage in hell, elites sometimes had 2 immunes (i hope hell is just as hard as hell was in D2.) I'm guessing inferno regular mobs could be immune up to 2 damage types and elites could have 3 immunes. So In my opinion, any character wanting to be efficient in inferno is going to want at least 4 damage types. I believe the damage types are cold, fire, arcane, poison, and physical. You are gonna want your gear set to focus on 4 of them.
Anyway, thats my thoughts. Happy slaying guys.
A Barbarian that focuses on control and survival isn't rendered worthless against a boss because he's using Cleave (120% WD) over Frenzy (110%) or Leap Attack (125%) over Ancient Spear (185%). His goal isn't to maximize his DPS, it's to allow his group to maximize theirs. In the same way you say that crowd control should be less effective vs Inferno bosses, elites, and champions I say that debuffing should be necessary. Coordinating a group to provide each of these is much harder than having 4 individual builds that are independent of each other.
Show me a solid build where a barbarian has high damage single target, AoE CC, and Massive damage AoE with a defensive CD and 4 damage types. I'm also curious what comp of all four classes in a balanced approach that you think is more optimal.
What he said, except there are no immunes in D3
I'm not sure I understand your question but let me know if I'm wrong. I don't know if you could apply both at the same time but when a monster is frozen they can't do anything anyways so it would be more efficient to cast flash after they unfreeze.
DEEPS!
DEEPS!
DEEPS!
DEEPS!
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Say I get flash of insight, and use meteor, it applies the extra %75 additional damage since metoer obviously deals damage. But since frost nova just freezes the target without doing damage, will flash of insight deal %75 additional damage when casting frost nova. I message bashiok about it just to get a blue confirm.
Also having problem with chain lightning and prodigy. stats when you deal damage with a signature spell, you gain 4 ap http://us.battle.net...passive/prodigy , using chain lightning, hitting up to 6 targets, will I gain 24 ap (still damaging creatures) or just 4.
Here are my two builds im working on atm http://us.battle.net...YQgl!eTc!aaYbZa and http://us.battle.net...YQgO!eTc!aaYbZb
If you have the same 3 friends that play with you everytime you want to use a particular character, that seems fine. But in life people can't always be there. If a buddy or 2 can't make it, now if you want to play your defined role, you have to recruit someone else to take their spot that is going for the same build(s.) It seems almost like by trying to use a defined role, you are putting unnecessary restrictions on yourself on who with and when you can play. As far as attack/damage %, those will be influenced by the gear you get. The base damage may change via affixed attributes by either percent of damage or adding a damage type. I remember the IK set giving good damage across all the damage types.
As far as debuffing, I agree it probably will be necessary but I don't really know how it will work in inferno so I stayed away from that topic. I don't know if debuffing should be stackable(but with cooldowns, maybe it could, I am clueless) and I don't know the cooldown lengths on all the various debuffs. As far as what would be an optimum group of balanced players? I don't think it should matter which 4 of the 5 classes you use if they are all balanced. For that matter, I feel 4 of the same class should do fine as well. Why? Because all classes should be able to solo the content. The difficulty should scale as so 4 of the same class could defeat the content.
This doesn't mean you won't need teamwork. You will need an organized group to defeat the toughest enemies. I just prefer to have 4 balanced characters that are flexible enough to handle any situation vs 4 characters that want to use the same predefined role for every set of enemies.
As far as immunes being out, I didn't know that. I liked the mechanic even though it was frustrating to have to either leave monsters or use a less effective skill. I figured with the skill flexibility in D3 immunes would have just been one more thing to plan for but be less of a nuisance than in D2. Not sure how I feel about them being gone yet.
True, but if you think about it, as a wizard perspective view, slow time and familiar benefits the group. As of right now, I'm sticking to the wizard class just because I've been playing sorc since Diablo.
This will probably be my solo frost spec http://us.battle.net...PjlO!WUX!YYcaac or http://us.battle.net...PjlO!WbX!YYcaac
I think I feel the sameway, that why my previous 2 posts were kind of long. I do think making group builds can work, I just think its unnecessary and could lead to frustration. To be honest, I am going Wizard first and I don't even have plans on which skills or builds I may have. I just gonna go by feel as I play. Whatever feels best, is what I'll do. As for my second char, probably barb or monk but it will depend on the gear I got while playing my wizard. Eventually I will play all 5 classes but I am not sure how much I will fiddle with my WD.