I've had similar thoughts on the matter (regarding act3 vs act1).
If you go with relatively useful MF gear for Act1, I'd say 225% is pretty good (300% with NV is what I'm sitting at). That makes your ilvl63 rate 19.2%
If you go with 0 MF (for ease of comparison) to do Act3, you only have the 75% NV.. so your ilvl63 rate is 28.5%
It is a substantial difference, for sure, at around 9% more for Act3.. I guess it boils down to what you prefer and what you can handle. If you're dying more than once to certain affixes, perhaps Act3 is too slow. If Act3 is cake for you, then have fun.
MF has nothing to do with what ilvl items drop. That's completely and solely dependent on what act you're in. 0% MF or 400% MF, Act 1 will yield the same percent of 61s, 62s, and 63s. It's just that a lesser percentage of them will be rare if your MF is lower.
The unfortunate part is that belial's enrage is pretty much game over as you really can't DPS while running away from the explosions and I've seen it cover the entire walkway High DPS with lower survival skills are usually needed for bosses like that.
If the explosions start to cover everything and there's clearly no way to avoid them, that's the enrage. It's something like 5 minutes I think. I can manage Belial just before enrage on my defense barb, though I had to dual-wield because I was getting about 600k off before enrage with my 9-10k dps. DWing brought it to like 11-12 and that was enough. 10k ar and 850 res means you don't have to dodge anything except meteors but it takes ages.
I'm pretty sure I hit the enrage on Ghom too, but I just barely had enough LoH/regen to not care about it.
Whats "mere" about those stats? I finished act 4 with that... Elites and all. I agree though, boss kills are useless when you want to show that a build works.
Mere being that the last time I checked, Act 3 and 4 (and I think a lot of Act 2) would whomp all 46k of my hp away in an instant, much less give me any chance to proc a revenge and surround myself with enough to counter-heal. But it sounds like I should try again if you claim to clear A4 with it.
I should also note that I did it with 9k dps.
EDIT: Just checked, and yeah, unless you have millions in gear to up your dps to ludicrous amounts, you didn't clear A4 with those stats.
Pretty much what Noctus78 (I'm a derp) said. I'd heard Ghom gave people trouble but I figured out a way past it on my crappy barb. Even Azmodan was a complete pushover with a mere 1200 LoH, 750 res and 11k armor.
These "boss kill" strats are fairly worthless except to people struggling to get past that boss to the next act. If you are struggling to kill a boss, champion packs are going to walk all over your face and you probably shouldn't be moving to the next act anyway.
I know for sure it doesn't much matter that I got past Ghom and Azmodan because white mobs in A4 crush my soul.
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MF has nothing to do with what ilvl items drop. That's completely and solely dependent on what act you're in. 0% MF or 400% MF, Act 1 will yield the same percent of 61s, 62s, and 63s. It's just that a lesser percentage of them will be rare if your MF is lower.
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If the explosions start to cover everything and there's clearly no way to avoid them, that's the enrage. It's something like 5 minutes I think. I can manage Belial just before enrage on my defense barb, though I had to dual-wield because I was getting about 600k off before enrage with my 9-10k dps. DWing brought it to like 11-12 and that was enough. 10k ar and 850 res means you don't have to dodge anything except meteors but it takes ages.
I'm pretty sure I hit the enrage on Ghom too, but I just barely had enough LoH/regen to not care about it.
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Shows how much time I spend on these forums. I'm not used to names not being right above the pic, I guess.
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Mere being that the last time I checked, Act 3 and 4 (and I think a lot of Act 2) would whomp all 46k of my hp away in an instant, much less give me any chance to proc a revenge and surround myself with enough to counter-heal. But it sounds like I should try again if you claim to clear A4 with it.
I should also note that I did it with 9k dps.
EDIT: Just checked, and yeah, unless you have millions in gear to up your dps to ludicrous amounts, you didn't clear A4 with those stats.
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Pretty much what Noctus78 (I'm a derp) said. I'd heard Ghom gave people trouble but I figured out a way past it on my crappy barb. Even Azmodan was a complete pushover with a mere 1200 LoH, 750 res and 11k armor.
These "boss kill" strats are fairly worthless except to people struggling to get past that boss to the next act. If you are struggling to kill a boss, champion packs are going to walk all over your face and you probably shouldn't be moving to the next act anyway.
I know for sure it doesn't much matter that I got past Ghom and Azmodan because white mobs in A4 crush my soul.