Hey, thanks for sharing! I've been a bandwagon bear-build user through almost 2 difficulties. I hit Inferno this morning and it felt like hitting a brick wall. This build answers a lot of the shortcomings of the bear build (which is still insanely good against bosses), namely the lack of CC / snare and the close-range requirement.
Honestly I'm really happy about this, as the bear build is fun sometimes but not my style of play; this build is far closer to the kind of build I ran in Normal / NM when anything worked and you could do what felt fun.
I'm hoping to see some success with this build; I've got 15k DPS and 38k life and am lucky to beat 1-2 elite packs in Act 1 before starting to infinitely and instantly wipe. I've also spent too long playing with big DPS 2H styles, as the long cast time locks you in place which is suicide when mobs are 1-2-3 shotting you.
EDIT: Someone above was asking about how this worked on bosses, and my thinking would be if you're just progressing / clearing content I'd swap it all out for a standard 2-minute bear build, but for farming (i.e., can't lose Neph stack) this still seems like it'd work pretty well.
You're going to lose a little DPS but a really nice 1H (i.e., one with Reduced Level affix (=insane DPS) with a stout shield with +INT and +VIT is the best combination I've found so far. A great OH will let you wank off about your marginally better DPS or that you found one that takes 2 seconds off x or y cooldown, but I'll take 1000 armor and 2000 HP and blah blah now that I'm hitting champ packs in Hell.
Just an update everyone, looks like with the rolling maintenance tonight they included a hotfix for this, it no longer spawns a resplendent chest after the first run or so.
Good point Nuvian, it could be a big disaster if they throw it out there and things like this (and even worse, to be sure) come out of the woodwork overnight.
The devs literally said that anything can drop anything, it's all a matter of percentages and odds. Do you like your odds better farming this chest in Act 2 (not Act 1, you don't even know what you're talking about) Inferno or trying to down really brutal champion packs that might not even have a better chance to drop the elite-end legendaries? In the time to kill one nasty champion pack in Inferno you could hit this chest 2-4 times. Even if you're right, you're wrong.
Yeah, they have very, very good loot tables, don't kld yourself.
Even if they never dropped a legendary or rare, they consistently drop good gems / artisan pages, which is OP enough without the rares and legendaries that do indeed drop.
I don't see how this is any different from classic Diablo farming.
It's not, which is why it's crummy and how we know to a pretty good degree of certainty that it's not 'working as intended'; the devs have stated over and over D3 is not supposed to function the same way (i.e., farming one area / boss forever).
Yeah, but you actually have to at least fight and kill those champion packs.
I'm looking more forward to Inferno, where this will be stupidly broken. You can conveivably run past even champion packs in the very short trip from the WP to check for this, and farm an exceptionally good loot table with almost zero danger / effort. It may not be broken in Normal / NM but it's going to start looking that way in Inferno very quickly.
Yeah, I tried out this Dire Bats / Vision Quest build, and once you get the hang of working with cooldowns and Vision Quest it's pretty effective, but definitely not how I like to play; the Bats are such a monstrous mana dump. I still feel like Dart is a more sustainable / consistent DPS for single targets backed up by Swarm or Acid Cloud for AOE, they're more cast-and-forget. I've been working more with a 'mana-less' build that uses lighter / more mana efficient skills to let me do things like take the +20% damage increase (30% mana cost increase) passive.
I don't think it's OP because they're so mana heavy and working with vision quest can be a bit tricky to manage, especially in really rough champion pack engagements.
[UPDATE]: Looks that Blizzard hotfixed this tonight during maintenance. A great stop in the right direction I think, big kudos to them for being so on top of it with the fix.
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I've been debating saying anything because I don't want tons of people suddenly taking advantage of it, but I realize it'll become widespread knowledge eventually and I'd rather Blizzard correct it now if they deem it worth messing with.
This isn't a bug or exploit, just probably not something that is 'working as intended'.
In Act 2, take the waypoint 'Path to the Oasis' (or whatever it's called at the oasis entrance).
Immediately scope out the area to the NE of the oasis entrance. You're looking for the mini-dungeon event entrance labeled 'Ransacked Cellar' (you might see 'Rotting Cellar' as well in the same spot, it's not the one you're after).
Go down and there's a very fast little fight and an NPC opens up his basement, there are two chests -- 1 normal and 1 resplendent that always has good loot; I tend to get 2-3 blues, sometimes a rare, at least 2 gems and 1-2 artisan pages every time. There's a resplendent chest in this cellar 100% of the time.
I'm pretty sure this pops up somewhere in the oasis every single generation, but it often shows up very close to the WP entrance which makes checking for it there very quickly very easy. Quite simple to check for it, run it if it's there, and then TP, exit game, Resume game, check again. You can do it 12-15 times an hour without even trying to be fast.
I don't think it's quite gamebreaking but it obviously lets you pile up some nice drops very quickly. I'm worried about more spots like this becoming known / farmed / botted, so here's to hoping Blizzard tweaks this ASAP.
CE is gorgeous but I'm broke and lucky to be getting even the normal edition right now. Digital copy all the way, if I can't have a CE there's no reason not to have the digital ready to play the minute servers go live
Eh...without getting really gritty into your numbers it feels really under-estimated. From beta experience the ~30mins / level is low even getting up toward 9-12. Obviously the first couple levels go quickly and will average down the longer numbers, but not -that- severely. I don't think it's off by a huge margin I just think it 'feels' low. 11 hours to 21....Hmm. I'm just not sure about that.
This kind of theorycrafting feels a bit ill-advised until we have more actual data to work with.
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Honestly I'm really happy about this, as the bear build is fun sometimes but not my style of play; this build is far closer to the kind of build I ran in Normal / NM when anything worked and you could do what felt fun.
I'm hoping to see some success with this build; I've got 15k DPS and 38k life and am lucky to beat 1-2 elite packs in Act 1 before starting to infinitely and instantly wipe. I've also spent too long playing with big DPS 2H styles, as the long cast time locks you in place which is suicide when mobs are 1-2-3 shotting you.
EDIT: Someone above was asking about how this worked on bosses, and my thinking would be if you're just progressing / clearing content I'd swap it all out for a standard 2-minute bear build, but for farming (i.e., can't lose Neph stack) this still seems like it'd work pretty well.
Even if they never dropped a legendary or rare, they consistently drop good gems / artisan pages, which is OP enough without the rares and legendaries that do indeed drop.
It's not, which is why it's crummy and how we know to a pretty good degree of certainty that it's not 'working as intended'; the devs have stated over and over D3 is not supposed to function the same way (i.e., farming one area / boss forever).
I'm looking more forward to Inferno, where this will be stupidly broken. You can conveivably run past even champion packs in the very short trip from the WP to check for this, and farm an exceptionally good loot table with almost zero danger / effort. It may not be broken in Normal / NM but it's going to start looking that way in Inferno very quickly.
Also, in case they decide they don't want to fix it, I just wanted to share the trick.
I don't think it's OP because they're so mana heavy and working with vision quest can be a bit tricky to manage, especially in really rough champion pack engagements.
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I've been debating saying anything because I don't want tons of people suddenly taking advantage of it, but I realize it'll become widespread knowledge eventually and I'd rather Blizzard correct it now if they deem it worth messing with.
This isn't a bug or exploit, just probably not something that is 'working as intended'.
In Act 2, take the waypoint 'Path to the Oasis' (or whatever it's called at the oasis entrance).
Immediately scope out the area to the NE of the oasis entrance. You're looking for the mini-dungeon event entrance labeled 'Ransacked Cellar' (you might see 'Rotting Cellar' as well in the same spot, it's not the one you're after).
Go down and there's a very fast little fight and an NPC opens up his basement, there are two chests -- 1 normal and 1 resplendent that always has good loot; I tend to get 2-3 blues, sometimes a rare, at least 2 gems and 1-2 artisan pages every time. There's a resplendent chest in this cellar 100% of the time.
I'm pretty sure this pops up somewhere in the oasis every single generation, but it often shows up very close to the WP entrance which makes checking for it there very quickly very easy. Quite simple to check for it, run it if it's there, and then TP, exit game, Resume game, check again. You can do it 12-15 times an hour without even trying to be fast.
I don't think it's quite gamebreaking but it obviously lets you pile up some nice drops very quickly. I'm worried about more spots like this becoming known / farmed / botted, so here's to hoping Blizzard tweaks this ASAP.
This kind of theorycrafting feels a bit ill-advised until we have more actual data to work with.