DiabloFans

Just wanted to chime in as well after watching the common gearing mistakes, it might also be worth noting that the crafted dread shield can be a nice choice if you get lucky.

My current best
960 armor
28% block
2794-3704
76 vit
50 all res
8% block
health globes +2255

I should rephrase my post a little I suppose, my earlier comment was not saying that no attack skips armor but rather was mearly saying that the idea of "armor pen" itself was unlikly. At any rate I noticed a few things that were a little different than I thought I understood.

I'm not sure how I missed this the first time but it was there when I rechecked, damage reduction on the character tab is increased by armor and makes no refrence to type. Leaving the assumption that its a flat % on all damage. Also Physical Resistance intrigues me to no end. I would think that finding gear with this stat would become primary to a melee character on higher difficulties.


Damage Reduction
Physical Resistance
Cold Resistance
Fire Resistance
Lightning Resistance
Poison Resistance
Arcane/Holy Resistance

Crowd Control Reduction
Missle Reduction
Melee Damage Reduction


So many little questions just from this, which don't really require answers I'm just typing thoughts;
does the barb shout that gives 50% res add to Physical Resistance?
does the monk skill that makes all res equal to your highest res work for physical also? (kinda op imo)
i've seen posts about armor losing value as it increases, if its a flat reduction then that makes a TON more sense now
is D3 going to use the -restance at higher difficulties like D2?

I'd like to hope that blizzard has put enough thought into armor pen at this point to realize not to rely on it. Especially since from what I've noticed, before taking class skills into account everyone gets the same armor from gear. Rather then adding armor pen to enemy attacks they could simply increase the damage but make it an attack thats more likly to hit melee classes (the ones that do get armor skills).

Being more on topic, the build I have in mind focuses more on crit/killing enemys for health return so I'm in favor of strength. Hopefully vitality will only be a side thought to decide if I can kill fast enough vs incoming damage but at higher gear levels I would prefer str and vit on my gear.

I know dual wielding increases attack speed by 15% but I was under the impression that you alternated between MH and OH, at least for the rage gen skill. Granted your rage spenders will hit for less but you should be able to generate rage faster and use more of them to compansate.

Went and tested, fury,cleave and hammer of ancients all alternate between weapons. Would see no reason that the other skills wouldn't as well.