You can check my gear and stats on my twitch (couldn't post urls here for some reason, says I need 10 posts but I do?)
I'm generally happy with the way my stats turned out. I felt a little short of everything but that was to be expected.
It took me about 3 hours to finish Act 3, killing 21 elite packs in the process. I had to skip at least 7 elite packs, some of which were double packs, while some of the others were like elite tremors with shielding etc.
The biggest problem was that I had 0 Life on Hit, 0 Life Regeneration and 0 Lifesteal, so I depended entirely on potions, revenge, and health globes for sustain. Using the Ignorance is Bliss rune allowed me to stay in with Wrath of the Berserker, but I had to make several trips to the town healer to top up. I also died about 30 times (total repairs were about 150k)
The easiest boss was Azmodan, while the toughest were Cydaea's spiderlings Ghom was easy due to overpower/crushing advance (with secondary amulet), and Siegebreaker presented no threat. I also did Belial with the same gear and it was very easy, though I suppose the real problem with the fight is the enrage timer, which I did not reach.
Tomorrow (June 25th) at 10PM EST I'll be attempting the 3rd edition of the Million Gold Challenge. In this challenge, I will put away all of my current gear and shop on the auction house for a completely new set, with a budget of only 1 million gold. Using this new gear, I will attempt a full act farm of Act 3. I will try to have as much DPS as possible, even though it is an expensive stat to maximize.
I've done this challenge twice before, before the 1.0.3 patch. In the first one I had the assistance of pre-nerf Tyrael, and the second edition was a group challenge with 2 barbarians and 2 wizards. I believe it is finally possible to do it solo as a dps barb and hopefully I can make it happen tomorrow
I've done these challenges for several reasons. I think it's useful to prove that you don't need 20+ million gold in order to do inferno, and also my auction house strategies should be quite helpful for those players that need upgrades but don't have very much gold. Finally, I think my playstyle and tactics may be of help to those players that have similar or even better gear but still struggle with the content.
Currently I'm using Overpower with the Crushing Advance rune. It is good for two hidden reasons: First, the damage that is reflected is actually a damage reduction. Instead of 100 to you, it's 70 to you and 30 to them. Second, each tick of reflected damage also triggers life on hit. The coefficient is small, but standing in molten (super fast ticks) I was able to regen 4k hp per second!
I dropped War Cry for it, but I think most of you are probably better off changing something else. Especially if you play in groups!
Also, I removed Brawler for Superstition. Brawler is weak against ranged packs and that's mostly what gives me trouble. Meanwhile, I was a little bit too squishy without War Cry, so adding Superstition was the perfect fit. I feel pretty good now during the farm, and I die about 5-10 times over 90 minutes on a full clear of Act 3. (Buffed stats: 450 all resist, 6.2k armor, 60k hp, 60k dps without wrath)
Patch 1.0.3 has drastically changed the game, to the point that most strategies that have been developed for barbarian are no longer optimal. The focus now is on DPS and clearing speed, not survivability.
First, I'll talk about the optimal farming strategy, and then the builds you can use to complete them. The Nephalem Valor Buff change means that bosses will drop less loot, while elite packs after the 5th will drop a lot more. This rewards a farming strategy that kills as many elite packs as possible in a single run. Therefore I recommend that your farming run consist of entire act farms, maximizing the proportion of elites that are killed with 5 stacks of valor.
Act 4 farming is bad because it is so short. There are only about 10 elite packs in the entire act so only a few will be killed after the 5th stack. Whimsyshire is also inefficient, first because it only has a few elite packs and also because of the magic find change; it does not affect clouds anymore (didn't get a single blue when I tried it.)
Therefore the best farming routes are full clears of acts 1, 2, or 3. Since a full clear involves killing about 30 elite packs and several bosses, it could take up to 2 hours to complete. In the interest of efficiency I recommend you farm the highest act you can while using a dps strategy. The drop rate change means that farming act 1 in 90 minutes using a dps strategy will be more rewarding than clearing act 2 in 3 hours using a tanking strategy. The most efficient farm in the game will be the fastest completion of act 3.
Survivability requirements have dropped drastically. I was able to drop my EHP in half while tripling my dps and still clear act 3 without too many issues. Currently I clear act 3 in about 2 hours, killing 30 or so elite packs and all 4 bosses, which translates to about 4 full backpacks of loot and 50-60 rares. My stats are 7k armor, 700 all resists, 60k hp, and 40k dps, further boosted by brawler and berserker rage.
I was able to get such a high DPS by stacking as much Crit hit chance and crit hit damage as I could. Currently at 46% and 289%, respectively!
Arcane enchanted seems to be the most deadly affix right now, especially when paired with affixes that constrain your movement.
I'll also share the build I use but first I want to talk about build diversity. It is no longer necessary to use a cookie cutter tank build, but you'll probably want Wrath of the Berserker with the Insanity rune and Revenge with Provocation, as they are our most powerful skills. You can satisfy the meager defensive requirements in any number of ways, whether using passives, high EHP gear, War Cry, Ignore Pain, or even using a shield. Yes, sword and board is no longer necessary, 2h and DW are just as viable!
I currently use:
Wrath of the Berserker(Insanity): Once you are over 30k dps you can kill act 3 packs within the 15s duration, which makes this skill amazing.
Revenge(Provocation): Very strong and reliable skill, gives you both sustain and strong aoe damage. Practically a requirement unless you are using a whirlwind or ranged build.
Ignore Pain(Ignorance is Bliss): I chose the lifesteal rune, even though it is nerfed in inferno, because my high dps gives good returns. When I pop Wrath of the berserker I do about 500k aoe dps, which means 4% lifesteal gives me back 20k hps! That's better than an extra 2 seconds duration.
Leap (Iron Impact): One mobility skill is a good idea, and leap doubles as a defensive cooldown. I also like that I can take shortcuts by leaping over gaps and walls.
Frenzy(Sidearm): Still the best single target dps skill for this build. Also provides some bonus aoe damage! Excellent for small packs and boss fights.
War Cry(Impunity): Still a great defensive option, I chose to keep it and replace my defensive passives because war cry is just so good
Passives:
Berserker Rage: I don't have any fury spenders so this is an easy 25% more damage.
Ruthlessness: Ties in well with the crit hit chance/damage build.
Brawler: Being surrounded by enemies is where I want to be. Massive 30% increase, but stops working as you kill a lot of stuff.
I want to replace Brawler with Weapons Master (Axe/Mace) because of the crit strategy and also because Brawler is useless against ranged elites. Just gotta find the right weapon!
Check out my stream for a demonstration or to ask questions
I'm happy to report that we were successful and killed Cydaea and Azmodan with 5 stacks of nephalem valor
The entire farm took just under 1 hour, which is a respectable time considering the gear limitation. Our elite range was actually higher than I expected, we killed 5/6 packs encountered.
The last video, showing the boss kill of cydaea and azmodan will take a few hours more, the boss fight got split into two parts by the twitch recording (different parts of the archive) so I need to do some work to make it presentable. If you can't wait, you can go watch the stream recording at:
Hey guys, you might remember me from the original million gold challenge, where I took my barb with just 1 million worth of gear through my farming routes for acts 1, 2, and 3. However, Tyrael was nerfed shortly thereafter, so I wanted to redo the act 3 video. This time, we'll be doing it in a group of 2 barbarians and 2 wizards, each spending only 1 million on the auction house.
I wanted to redo act 3, mostly because of the Tyrael nerf, but also because:
1) The availability of items has changed on the ah so the best items to buy right now are a little different.
2) We'll be using a cool group build, which may be quite useful for undergeared players.
3) I've discovered a lot of other tips and tricks I wanted to share
If you're interested in watching the stream live, tune in at 4:30 PM EST on 16/06/12
Kortiah, I tend to chase Succubi down with furious charge and leap, and soak up a few hits with ignore pain if it means doing damage to them. They are most dangerous if you're fighting other enemies because the debuff will wreck you, but I find that their own attacks are a little weak.
I've been boosting my dps ever since the Tyrael nerf, and it's currently at 18k. With my current gear I can complete the Siegebreaker run in 25 minutes, which is pretty good. You can check one of my runs here:
The gear requirement has gone up a lot, you actually need badass gear to do Act 3 now. I realize that a lot of you may now be unable to complete the run due to enrage timers, which sucks, but I think that we can work around that.
First, I suggest you guys try to play multiplayer. Since they also removed the increased damage from additional players, it is now viable to tank in a group. You may want to change a few skills, in particular Ground Stomp is great. Others you can try are Threatening Shout and Seismic Slam (Strength of Earth). Seismic slam is amazing against normal mobs but really struggles against elite packs, as they are immune to knockback. Also I found out the hard way that the little flowers in whimsyshire are immune as well.
Blizzard is also changing the loot tables soon, such that top tier loot will drop in Act 2. So being stuck there won't be the worth thing in the world!
Oh, yesterday I also did a full solo clear of the game s a sanity check. Starting at 5 stack Siegebreaker, I went down and killed Cydaea, Azmodan, then Iskatu, Rakanoth, Izual, and Diablo, rolling 5 stacks the whole way. It took me around 2 hours, but I did get 4 bosses worth of 5 stack loot so it was still good. In particular Cydaea and Azmodan are close to each other, so getting 5 stacks for them may be worthwhile. I will try this route again today.
I got a relatively cheap amulet with 490 LoH, and made sure my weapon had a socket for the +300 life. It's funny how a weapon with +300 LoH will cost millions more than one with a socket. It's hard to say what to sacrifice for it, because the biggest obstacle is the increased cost; either you can afford it or you can't. I've beaten the entire game without LoH so it's not *necessary* but nevertheless it is a very strong stat.
Hey guys. A few people have contacted me saying that their are stuck on Rakanoth Inferno and asked for a guide. This boss can be quite the gear check, but after messing around with it for an hour I came up with a strategy that I felt was quite effective.
To emulate a lower gear level, and forestall comments that I was only able to do this because of my legendaries, I removed my helm of command, justice lantern, and string of ears and did the fight with empty slots instead.
Here is the build used and full fight with commentary:
Vallerian: your shield is holding you back. Get a Sacred shield with 25%+ block chance and then boost it with helm of command.
Have you tried using my build? I wrote a guide here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5594211428
Norsemang: I suggest you regem strength to vitality, at least 50k is a nice amount to have. Also boost your block chance with justice lantern/helm of command when you can afford it.
The first 100 points of dexterity are really valuable, you get 0.1% dodge per point for a total of 10% dodge. After that it drops precipitously to 0.025%, and gets lower still at higher levels. You only have 67 dexterity naturally so it's worth it to get one piece that has dex.
The auction house is allowing the trade of crafting items again, and exquisite essences are selling for more than 1800 each. So I'm changing my recommendation to salvaging all your level 60 blues, until the essence price drops to around 400 lower than the blue's vendor price.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
You can check my gear and stats on my twitch (couldn't post urls here for some reason, says I need 10 posts but I do?)
I'm generally happy with the way my stats turned out. I felt a little short of everything but that was to be expected.
It took me about 3 hours to finish Act 3, killing 21 elite packs in the process. I had to skip at least 7 elite packs, some of which were double packs, while some of the others were like elite tremors with shielding etc.
The biggest problem was that I had 0 Life on Hit, 0 Life Regeneration and 0 Lifesteal, so I depended entirely on potions, revenge, and health globes for sustain. Using the Ignorance is Bliss rune allowed me to stay in with Wrath of the Berserker, but I had to make several trips to the town healer to top up. I also died about 30 times (total repairs were about 150k)
The easiest boss was Azmodan, while the toughest were Cydaea's spiderlings
Tomorrow (June 25th) at 10PM EST I'll be attempting the 3rd edition of the Million Gold Challenge. In this challenge, I will put away all of my current gear and shop on the auction house for a completely new set, with a budget of only 1 million gold. Using this new gear, I will attempt a full act farm of Act 3. I will try to have as much DPS as possible, even though it is an expensive stat to maximize.
I've done this challenge twice before, before the 1.0.3 patch. In the first one I had the assistance of pre-nerf Tyrael, and the second edition was a group challenge with 2 barbarians and 2 wizards. I believe it is finally possible to do it solo as a dps barb and hopefully I can make it happen tomorrow
I've done these challenges for several reasons. I think it's useful to prove that you don't need 20+ million gold in order to do inferno, and also my auction house strategies should be quite helpful for those players that need upgrades but don't have very much gold. Finally, I think my playstyle and tactics may be of help to those players that have similar or even better gear but still struggle with the content.
Come check it out live on my stream!
http://www.twitch.tv/zrave
Also, look for the videos to be uploaded later to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/zravex
Also guys I wanted to announce another million gold challenge, dps edition. I'll use 1m gold to make a full dps set and complete Act 3.
Come watch it live on my stream at 10PM EST on June 25th
http://www.twitch.tv/zrave
Currently I'm using Overpower with the Crushing Advance rune. It is good for two hidden reasons: First, the damage that is reflected is actually a damage reduction. Instead of 100 to you, it's 70 to you and 30 to them. Second, each tick of reflected damage also triggers life on hit. The coefficient is small, but standing in molten (super fast ticks) I was able to regen 4k hp per second!
I dropped War Cry for it, but I think most of you are probably better off changing something else. Especially if you play in groups!
Also, I removed Brawler for Superstition. Brawler is weak against ranged packs and that's mostly what gives me trouble. Meanwhile, I was a little bit too squishy without War Cry, so adding Superstition was the perfect fit. I feel pretty good now during the farm, and I die about 5-10 times over 90 minutes on a full clear of Act 3. (Buffed stats: 450 all resist, 6.2k armor, 60k hp, 60k dps without wrath)
First, I'll talk about the optimal farming strategy, and then the builds you can use to complete them. The Nephalem Valor Buff change means that bosses will drop less loot, while elite packs after the 5th will drop a lot more. This rewards a farming strategy that kills as many elite packs as possible in a single run. Therefore I recommend that your farming run consist of entire act farms, maximizing the proportion of elites that are killed with 5 stacks of valor.
Act 4 farming is bad because it is so short. There are only about 10 elite packs in the entire act so only a few will be killed after the 5th stack. Whimsyshire is also inefficient, first because it only has a few elite packs and also because of the magic find change; it does not affect clouds anymore (didn't get a single blue when I tried it.)
Therefore the best farming routes are full clears of acts 1, 2, or 3. Since a full clear involves killing about 30 elite packs and several bosses, it could take up to 2 hours to complete. In the interest of efficiency I recommend you farm the highest act you can while using a dps strategy. The drop rate change means that farming act 1 in 90 minutes using a dps strategy will be more rewarding than clearing act 2 in 3 hours using a tanking strategy. The most efficient farm in the game will be the fastest completion of act 3.
Survivability requirements have dropped drastically. I was able to drop my EHP in half while tripling my dps and still clear act 3 without too many issues. Currently I clear act 3 in about 2 hours, killing 30 or so elite packs and all 4 bosses, which translates to about 4 full backpacks of loot and 50-60 rares. My stats are 7k armor, 700 all resists, 60k hp, and 40k dps, further boosted by brawler and berserker rage.
I was able to get such a high DPS by stacking as much Crit hit chance and crit hit damage as I could. Currently at 46% and 289%, respectively!
Arcane enchanted seems to be the most deadly affix right now, especially when paired with affixes that constrain your movement.
I'll also share the build I use but first I want to talk about build diversity. It is no longer necessary to use a cookie cutter tank build, but you'll probably want Wrath of the Berserker with the Insanity rune and Revenge with Provocation, as they are our most powerful skills. You can satisfy the meager defensive requirements in any number of ways, whether using passives, high EHP gear, War Cry, Ignore Pain, or even using a shield. Yes, sword and board is no longer necessary, 2h and DW are just as viable!
I currently use:
Wrath of the Berserker(Insanity): Once you are over 30k dps you can kill act 3 packs within the 15s duration, which makes this skill amazing.
Revenge(Provocation): Very strong and reliable skill, gives you both sustain and strong aoe damage. Practically a requirement unless you are using a whirlwind or ranged build.
Ignore Pain(Ignorance is Bliss): I chose the lifesteal rune, even though it is nerfed in inferno, because my high dps gives good returns. When I pop Wrath of the berserker I do about 500k aoe dps, which means 4% lifesteal gives me back 20k hps! That's better than an extra 2 seconds duration.
Leap (Iron Impact): One mobility skill is a good idea, and leap doubles as a defensive cooldown. I also like that I can take shortcuts by leaping over gaps and walls.
Frenzy(Sidearm): Still the best single target dps skill for this build. Also provides some bonus aoe damage! Excellent for small packs and boss fights.
War Cry(Impunity): Still a great defensive option, I chose to keep it and replace my defensive passives because war cry is just so good
Passives:
Berserker Rage: I don't have any fury spenders so this is an easy 25% more damage.
Ruthlessness: Ties in well with the crit hit chance/damage build.
Brawler: Being surrounded by enemies is where I want to be. Massive 30% increase, but stops working as you kill a lot of stuff.
I want to replace Brawler with Weapons Master (Axe/Mace) because of the crit strategy and also because Brawler is useless against ranged elites. Just gotta find the right weapon!
Check out my stream for a demonstration or to ask questions
www.twitch.tv/zrave
Also, I'll be uploading new guides for 1.0.3 content to my youtube channel!
www.youtube.com/zraveX
TL;DR: Blow stuff up
The entire farm took just under 1 hour, which is a respectable time considering the gear limitation. Our elite range was actually higher than I expected, we killed 5/6 packs encountered.
Videos will be showing up today at my channel:
http://www.youtube.com/zravex
The last video, showing the boss kill of cydaea and azmodan will take a few hours more, the boss fight got split into two parts by the twitch recording (different parts of the archive) so I need to do some work to make it presentable. If you can't wait, you can go watch the stream recording at:
http://www.twitch.tv/zrave
www.twitch.tv/troqt
I wanted to redo act 3, mostly because of the Tyrael nerf, but also because:
1) The availability of items has changed on the ah so the best items to buy right now are a little different.
2) We'll be using a cool group build, which may be quite useful for undergeared players.
3) I've discovered a lot of other tips and tricks I wanted to share
If you're interested in watching the stream live, tune in at 4:30 PM EST on 16/06/12
http://www.twitch.tv/zrave - barb pov and shopping for both barbs
http://www.twitch.tv/troqt - wiz pov and shopping for both wizards
videos will be uploaded later to http://www.youtube.com/zravex
Kortiah, I tend to chase Succubi down with furious charge and leap, and soak up a few hits with ignore pain if it means doing damage to them. They are most dangerous if you're fighting other enemies because the debuff will wreck you, but I find that their own attacks are a little weak.
I've been boosting my dps ever since the Tyrael nerf, and it's currently at 18k. With my current gear I can complete the Siegebreaker run in 25 minutes, which is pretty good. You can check one of my runs here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_yi1k6X8fQ
The gear requirement has gone up a lot, you actually need badass gear to do Act 3 now. I realize that a lot of you may now be unable to complete the run due to enrage timers, which sucks, but I think that we can work around that.
First, I suggest you guys try to play multiplayer. Since they also removed the increased damage from additional players, it is now viable to tank in a group. You may want to change a few skills, in particular Ground Stomp is great. Others you can try are Threatening Shout and Seismic Slam (Strength of Earth). Seismic slam is amazing against normal mobs but really struggles against elite packs, as they are immune to knockback. Also I found out the hard way that the little flowers in whimsyshire are immune as well.
Blizzard is also changing the loot tables soon, such that top tier loot will drop in Act 2. So being stuck there won't be the worth thing in the world!
Oh, yesterday I also did a full solo clear of the game s a sanity check. Starting at 5 stack Siegebreaker, I went down and killed Cydaea, Azmodan, then Iskatu, Rakanoth, Izual, and Diablo, rolling 5 stacks the whole way. It took me around 2 hours, but I did get 4 bosses worth of 5 stack loot so it was still good. In particular Cydaea and Azmodan are close to each other, so getting 5 stacks for them may be worthwhile. I will try this route again today.
To emulate a lower gear level, and forestall comments that I was only able to do this because of my legendaries, I removed my helm of command, justice lantern, and string of ears and did the fight with empty slots instead.
Here is the build used and full fight with commentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bif2dhcHBmE
If you haven't already, check out my barbarian guide:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5594211428
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyvmLPchIt8
Vallerian: your shield is holding you back. Get a Sacred shield with 25%+ block chance and then boost it with helm of command.
Have you tried using my build? I wrote a guide here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5594211428
Norsemang: I suggest you regem strength to vitality, at least 50k is a nice amount to have. Also boost your block chance with justice lantern/helm of command when you can afford it.