WD is amazing DPS as well, when decently geared, and has a "tanking" option with the bears (depends on what you want to farm of course)
I think someone's already addressed that the WD and the "bear" build is viable for farming goblins, but as for clearing through anything but Act 1 you're in for some serious trouble. Zombie bears has way too short of a range to be viable in Acts 2, 3, and 4.
Witch doctor can progress through acts, but its very slow/painful/frustrating because you're going to die...a lot.
Just wanted to clarify that Zombie bears does not actually tank any mobs after Act I.
I'm sure most of you have either seen or heard of the Treasure Goblin farming that's been happening in both Acts I and II. You can find one in Act I in the Dark Cellar right before going to Adria's Hut, and you can find one in Act II right after going through the Aqueducts.
On the frontpage of diablofans there was a video about Daish farming the goblin in Act II but very little information about it (found here). I had been farming the Act I goblin for a while and my friend found that exact spot a few days before it was posted on the frontpage. I think this spot is incredibly good for farming and is much easier and more rewarding than trying to farm the Nephalem Valor buff in Act II and beyond.
I did some tests to try and find percentages of spawn rates and drop rates. I was playing my Witch Doctor with 160% MF and 23k damage. My main hand and off-hand were the only pieces that didn't have MF gear on them so I could keep my damage high enough to ensure that the goblin was killed if I saw it. I chose 160 MF because I believe that's a reasonable amount of MF gear that any class could have and still be able to have the damage throughput to kill the goblin.
First, how to get to this spot. Unfortunately if you're still having trouble with Act II it's going to be very difficult to get to this spot as it's fairly far into the Act. If you are able to progress through Act II, you can find this spot by selecting the first or second part of Quest 8: The Black Soulstone. Once you're in the game, take the Waypoint to the Ancient Path and continue right until you reach the top of the stairs and get a checkpoint. From then on you'll be able to resume the game at that checkpoint and farm much faster than going to the Waypoint everytime.
The goblin can spawn anywhere along the path from the Waypoint to the top of the stairs. The only problem is that there is a plethora of mobs that can also spawn there. As a Witchdoctor I had to expect that I was going to die fairly often because going alone is very dangerous work for me. Nonetheless, I did 100 tests, and here are the results:
I actually did 103 tests because 3 of the times there were Elite packs or Unique monsters that I couldn't kill with some ease and so I left the game before making sure there was or wasn't a goblin.
So, out of 100 games--
The goblin spawned 27 times. Making his spawn rate most likely somewhere between 25 and 30%.
I got an elite pack 3 times, a rare mob/pack once, and a Unique monster 5 times, so 9% of the time there was a somewhat nasty mob that might or might not be killable depending on your gear/class.
With 160% MF the goblin dropped 64 Blue items and 26 Yellow items.
There is a 64% chance per run to receive a blue item and a 237% chance per goblin to receive a blue item.
There is a 26% chance per run to receive a yellow item and almost a 100% chance per goblin to receive a yellow item.
If anyone cares, of the yellow items I got 11 weapons and 15 armor pieces. 5 of the weapons were level 60 required and 9 of the armor pieces were level 60 required. I only care about this because most of the weapons in Act II are going to be inferior to blues in Act III & IV because most people don't look at the stats and only the damage modifiers. Thus the armor is more important to me because of the possibility to have good stats on them whereas most of the time the weapons are useless even with good damage modifiers and stats.
This whole process took me a little over 2 hours. It took me a little extra time because I was being a little more cautious about making sure I got the goblin if he was there and also cataloging the data, but it wasn't really that much slower. So, on average, it probably took me about a minute per run. At 27% chance per run to receive a yellow that accounts to roughly 1 rare every 4 minutes if you average 1 run per minute. I don't have data for farming the Nephalem Valor buff in Act II because, frankly, I can't do it very well at all on my Witchdoctor so this is a great alternative for me.
This may be somewhat useless information to most, but I hope it showcases how good of a spot this is to farm and to take advantage of it before it eventually get's nerfed.
Edit: Some considerations -- this will inevitably be much better to do this as a group of people all making their own games, but remember that Magic Find is shared among the group, ie. one person with 150 MF and one person with 0 MF will average out to 75 for both. Also, the health of mobs in Inferno is increased by 110% per person so if everyone in the group is barely able to kill the goblin alone you might have some difficulty doing it as a group.
I'll be honest, I haven't paid attention to myself doing it since launch, but I know that I've seen videos from beta where people were able to dodge the plague pools.
I think you could go into some lower difficulties and tried to find some desecrating/plague mobs to test it.
It's not as simple as that. You need to acknowledge what stats you already have to determine which would be most beneficial. For example, if you have 1k vit but only 100 str or int, then one of those will most likely give you the biggest boost. If everything is equal however, I don't know the formulae so I'd have to see, but I would fathom a guess that str would be the most beneficial.
This is the best answer. Most likely you have a lot of vitality/str/all res and not a lot of dexterity (as that's how most barbarians in inferno tend to lean toward in gearing). In that case, dexterity would give you the most in regards to defense per stat and would be the most beneficial if you had to make that choice. You have to look at the stats as adding small numbers to defense as a whole rather than something as simple as "more dexterity means more dodge so I have a higher chance to dodge the 100k blow". That's not how stats work in Diablo.
60 WD currently farming Act 1 of Inferno. I can solo the Butcher and all of the trash leading up to it as well as farm it with a group of 1-3 other people just fine.
The added damage from the OH makes going 1h an easy choice for me. Since I use the bears, I need to be able to run in close to mobs, spam bears and run out quickly. When I was running Dire Bats and would cast+move kite the mobs the extra damage from the 2h was nice, but for what I'm doing now 1h is my main priority.
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I think someone's already addressed that the WD and the "bear" build is viable for farming goblins, but as for clearing through anything but Act 1 you're in for some serious trouble. Zombie bears has way too short of a range to be viable in Acts 2, 3, and 4.
Witch doctor can progress through acts, but its very slow/painful/frustrating because you're going to die...a lot.
Just wanted to clarify that Zombie bears does not actually tank any mobs after Act I.
4
On the frontpage of diablofans there was a video about Daish farming the goblin in Act II but very little information about it (found here). I had been farming the Act I goblin for a while and my friend found that exact spot a few days before it was posted on the frontpage. I think this spot is incredibly good for farming and is much easier and more rewarding than trying to farm the Nephalem Valor buff in Act II and beyond.
I did some tests to try and find percentages of spawn rates and drop rates. I was playing my Witch Doctor with 160% MF and 23k damage. My main hand and off-hand were the only pieces that didn't have MF gear on them so I could keep my damage high enough to ensure that the goblin was killed if I saw it. I chose 160 MF because I believe that's a reasonable amount of MF gear that any class could have and still be able to have the damage throughput to kill the goblin.
First, how to get to this spot. Unfortunately if you're still having trouble with Act II it's going to be very difficult to get to this spot as it's fairly far into the Act. If you are able to progress through Act II, you can find this spot by selecting the first or second part of Quest 8: The Black Soulstone. Once you're in the game, take the Waypoint to the Ancient Path and continue right until you reach the top of the stairs and get a checkpoint. From then on you'll be able to resume the game at that checkpoint and farm much faster than going to the Waypoint everytime.
The goblin can spawn anywhere along the path from the Waypoint to the top of the stairs. The only problem is that there is a plethora of mobs that can also spawn there. As a Witchdoctor I had to expect that I was going to die fairly often because going alone is very dangerous work for me. Nonetheless, I did 100 tests, and here are the results:
I actually did 103 tests because 3 of the times there were Elite packs or Unique monsters that I couldn't kill with some ease and so I left the game before making sure there was or wasn't a goblin.
So, out of 100 games--
- The goblin spawned 27 times. Making his spawn rate most likely somewhere between 25 and 30%.
- I got an elite pack 3 times, a rare mob/pack once, and a Unique monster 5 times, so 9% of the time there was a somewhat nasty mob that might or might not be killable depending on your gear/class.
- With 160% MF the goblin dropped 64 Blue items and 26 Yellow items.
- There is a 64% chance per run to receive a blue item and a 237% chance per goblin to receive a blue item.
- There is a 26% chance per run to receive a yellow item and almost a 100% chance per goblin to receive a yellow item.
- If anyone cares, of the yellow items I got 11 weapons and 15 armor pieces. 5 of the weapons were level 60 required and 9 of the armor pieces were level 60 required. I only care about this because most of the weapons in Act II are going to be inferior to blues in Act III & IV because most people don't look at the stats and only the damage modifiers. Thus the armor is more important to me because of the possibility to have good stats on them whereas most of the time the weapons are useless even with good damage modifiers and stats.
This whole process took me a little over 2 hours. It took me a little extra time because I was being a little more cautious about making sure I got the goblin if he was there and also cataloging the data, but it wasn't really that much slower. So, on average, it probably took me about a minute per run. At 27% chance per run to receive a yellow that accounts to roughly 1 rare every 4 minutes if you average 1 run per minute. I don't have data for farming the Nephalem Valor buff in Act II because, frankly, I can't do it very well at all on my Witchdoctor so this is a great alternative for me.This may be somewhat useless information to most, but I hope it showcases how good of a spot this is to farm and to take advantage of it before it eventually get's nerfed.
Edit: Some considerations -- this will inevitably be much better to do this as a group of people all making their own games, but remember that Magic Find is shared among the group, ie. one person with 150 MF and one person with 0 MF will average out to 75 for both. Also, the health of mobs in Inferno is increased by 110% per person so if everyone in the group is barely able to kill the goblin alone you might have some difficulty doing it as a group.
Also, here's the build I was using while doing this. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZUQPk!bVW!aaabba
Happy hunting!
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I think you could go into some lower difficulties and tried to find some desecrating/plague mobs to test it.
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This is the best answer. Most likely you have a lot of vitality/str/all res and not a lot of dexterity (as that's how most barbarians in inferno tend to lean toward in gearing). In that case, dexterity would give you the most in regards to defense per stat and would be the most beneficial if you had to make that choice. You have to look at the stats as adding small numbers to defense as a whole rather than something as simple as "more dexterity means more dodge so I have a higher chance to dodge the 100k blow". That's not how stats work in Diablo.
0
0
Right now I'm using a 559 DPS 1H-er w/ 183 int and Mojo offhand with +57-220 dmg and 70 int.
This is my current build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fjUQPT!ZVU!caZbbZ
The added damage from the OH makes going 1h an easy choice for me. Since I use the bears, I need to be able to run in close to mobs, spam bears and run out quickly. When I was running Dire Bats and would cast+move kite the mobs the extra damage from the 2h was nice, but for what I'm doing now 1h is my main priority.