To witches: are you guys stacking health, health/es, es with CI?
I'm nervous to stack simply ES and go CI with the recent nerf to ES, but I'm worried about having too little HP for chaos damage in merc.
To witches: are you guys stacking health, health/es, es with CI?
I'm nervous to stack simply ES and go CI with the recent nerf to ES, but I'm worried about having too little HP for chaos damage in merc.
Dumac said:Anyone else feel like they hit a wall on Act 3 Cruel? The difficulty spikes up tremendously. Those damn vipers...I don't even want to try the sewers. Docks aren't too bad but...
I don't know if I should just farm Docks first or what.
Damn i'm starting Act 2 right now with my Templar level 16 and those freaking monkeys are hard to beat and on top of that they swarm you...
I have really bad luck with drops since i'm lvl 10, only bad stuff drops that I don't care like wands, staves, velvet armor...
I'm currently using 1H+Shield but have some nice rare 2H weapons in my stash. I think it's time to let out the big guns!
Well, finally beat cruel oak on my hardcore blood-magic summoner witch. PITA of a fight, his ridiculous leap attack does about half my hp in a hit and he seems to spam it constantly as long as there are other targets to hit, and since i'm a summoner and I need my pets, that is just about always. Well, I found out he is still limited by line of sight. Beat him through a long war of attrition by summoning skeletons while running around in circles around a wagon in his area. Took forever, but eventually he died. This was at level 51. Yes, it should have been able to kill him at 45 or so, but being a caster summoner sucks vs oak apparently.
Anyway, after finally beating oak it was like the floodgates were lifted. Cleared pyramid with little trouble, killed vaal first attempt without even having any close calls, very easy fight as a summoner. Went straight into Act 3 and cleared crematorium in about an hour and sent piety running.
So, I had some doubts about my build, but they are mostly gone. Apparently oak is just a bitch of an enemy and other than him I can handle anything else just fine.
To respond to the above question re: hp or energy shield, I mostly wear armor/es gear, and my current balance is about 2200 hp and 300 es. I run blood magic and % based health regen nodes, so I need to stack lots of hp, and I also use iron will so I need Str to increase my spell damage, which in turn adds further hp. I like the extra buffer offered by the energy shield I have, but I don't think I'd sacrifice anything to buff it further at this time.
As far as DPS stats, mostly I rely on skeleton/minion life/minion damage/spell totem and my zombie/added fire damage/monsters flee gems, but I also use Fireball & Arc with faster casting, increased lightning damage, iron will. DPS on the character sheet with my damage gear is 790 for fireball and 400~ for arc, but those numbers are always deceptive. Lately I've been playing it safe and running with 75% resists across the board, this puts my damage down about 25% lower.
Brutal with melee.. i keep ICE nova (personal favorite) or some other AOE spell for those swarms of ankle biters. of course depending on your melee you have AOE swings too. SO far a Shadow with bowosion arrow and fire trap... I think i have my favorite combo (depending allot on build). I love my poison Arrow.. so much I know its going to get nerfed..
A real easy way to beat Oak, and Kole for that matter, is trap + totem.
For Oak, get behind the tent on the left, drop a trap in Oak's LOS to the right of the tent, and then drop a totem on it. While he jumps onto it, move around the tent in the opposite direction, and repeat. Took a little bit, but I easily soloed him without getting hit by his jump more than once.
Had a strange experience last night. Had this rare map with 'patches of fire/no health or mana regen/2 bosses/bosses do extra damage', and opened up the map by the party options (S). Had a bunch of people join my game, but they were in a different map than mine. While I was in my Dunes map, they were in a Dried something map.
Then I joined other map games, and had no portals to the map everyone was on... I don't get it.
Yeah, Oak was a giant PITA for my summoner on cruel (SC). Haven't gotten to merc yet.
Also, your build sounds cool. I didn't know iron grip worked for projectile spells as well.
Good to know... i just realized last night I had a +18% Iron Will drop a while ago and I had it tucked away in the stash. Didnt bother to use it since my DPS calculations all went down.Iron Will rather than Iron Grip. Same concept, but Iron Will is for spells while Iron Grip works on bows, and I don't think there is a keystone for Iron Will, only support gem.
It's actually terrible at first, as it reduces your cast speed dramatically and is actually a DPS loss, but as you level it up the reduced cast speed gets less and less. At my level it's about a 25% net buff to damage to use it, and it'll just get better as I raise my strength and level the Iron Will gem.
I think eventually I will drop the whole summoning aspect and play as a tanky nuker, I feel that I am spreading my passive skills a bit too thin, but probably not for another 10-15 levels.
Good to know... i just realized last night I had a +18% Iron Will drop a while ago and I had it tucked away in the stash. Didnt bother to use it since my DPS calculations all went down.
I may plug it in now to get some levels...
If you have a build with any significant amount of strength, it should offer a huge damage buff at the higher levels.
I'm at 356 Strength w/ current gear. My (0% quality) Iron Will gem is at level 12, which is 8% reduced cast speed.
Without Iron Will, Fireball is 494 dps, with Iron Will: 684 dps. 37% increase.
Best part is, Iron Will is a 0 mana cost increase support gem, so this is like a free increase in damage. Actually, it's even better than that. The reduced cast time means I am actually casting fewer fireballs and doing more damage, effectively reducing mana spent.
With 18% quality, your gem is even better. It gets a flat 13.5% spell damage increase above and beyond the strength bonuses.
Iron Will rather than Iron Grip. Same concept, but Iron Will is for spells while Iron Grip works on bows, and I don't think there is a keystone for Iron Will, only support gem.
It's actually terrible at first, as it reduces your cast speed dramatically and is actually a DPS loss, but as you level it up the reduced cast speed gets less and less. At my level it's about a 25% net buff to damage to use it, and it'll just get better as I raise my strength and level the Iron Will gem.
I think eventually I will drop the whole summoning aspect and play as a tanky nuker, I feel that I am spreading my passive skills a bit too thin, but probably not for another 10-15 levels.
If you have a build with any significant amount of strength, it should offer a huge damage buff at the higher levels.
I'm at 356 Strength w/ current gear. My (0% quality) Iron Will gem is at level 12, which is 8% reduced cast speed.
Without Iron Will, Fireball is 494 dps, with Iron Will: 684 dps. 37% increase.
Best part is, Iron Will is a 0 mana cost increase support gem, so this is like a free increase in damage. Actually, it's even better than that. The reduced cast time means I am actually casting fewer fireballs and doing more damage, effectively reducing mana spent.
With 18% quality, your gem is even better. It gets a flat 13.5% spell damage increase above and beyond the strength bonuses.
well im still very low level, ~35 so i dont have much to my build at all. and its my first char so im sort of all over the place. im sort of a summoner ice nova witch, either way not much strength in build at allIf you have a build with any significant amount of strength, it should offer a huge damage buff at the higher levels.
I'm at 356 Strength w/ current gear. My (0% quality) Iron Will gem is at level 12, which is 8% reduced cast speed.
Without Iron Will, Fireball is 494 dps, with Iron Will: 684 dps. 37% increase.
Best part is, Iron Will is a 0 mana cost increase support gem, so this is like a free increase in damage. Actually, it's even better than that. The reduced cast time means I am actually casting fewer fireballs and doing more damage, effectively reducing mana spent.
With 18% quality, your gem is even better. It gets a flat 13.5% spell damage increase above and beyond the strength bonuses.
That is the kind of thinking that leads to World of Warcraft and D3 super-simplified skills and talents. The fact that it is hard to determine the "optimal" spec is seen as a plus by the fans, as it gives the game depth and rewards theory-crafting and experimentation.
Respec limits are related to that. If you can simple respec easily, then the rewards for finding a cool spec is less because anyone can easily copy you with little effort.
Sorry I disagree. Honestly, I think WoW has better gameplay than this game and I don't even like WoW. I honestly don't know how you can claim the gameplay is deeper here. Its different but its not really deep.
Sorry I disagree. Honestly, I think WoW has better gameplay than this game and I don't even like WoW. I honestly don't know how you can claim the gameplay is deeper here. Its different but its not really deep.
I could somewhat understand the complaints about the respecing in Diablo 3 as those were the actual skills, but here its all just passive and mostly stat buffs so I think that argument falls really flat. Even D3 I think that's way down on the list of problems with the game. Likewise here, this game has many bigger flaws which just makes this system even more baffling since that stuff is even more obvious and yet they act like the limited respecing and their system is some major features.
In my opinion, people arguing that this really adds complexity are just delusional. Instead of spending the time making the pointlessly complex thing they did here they could have actually made the gameplay itself deeper. It would be just as hard for the people that like figuring out the "optimal" way to go, and would make it a lot better for others.
That's why I said the whole genre is just mediocre and needs some overhaul of the base gameplay.