On May 29 2012 18:40 TheYango wrote: Realistically, I think Barb is the class that's the closest to progressing at the rate Blizzard actually intended for people to progress through Inferno.
It's also worth noting that the 2 classes that didn't need to be hotfixed are the ones that were revealed first, and probably were in development the longest.
Another question: how are people valuing shield block % as a stat on shields? How much should I be willing to pay/what stats should I be willing to give up for a good block %/block value? I've been thinking about this more and I honestly have no idea how to value the stat, even though its pretty clear that it's a good stat.
Kripp said that block is good because even when you block a hit, it can still trigger skills such as Revenge. So it's somewhat better than dodge, but you still take damage from blocking, especially from strong mobs that hit like a truck. However, since it's very item-specific, I would look at all-resistances first. A 10% change in block chance will not be as important as a 5% change in resistances, for example, especially on barb who gets and extra 50% from shout.
I might be wrong, since I didn't do the maths, but looking at my shield (19% chance / 2k-3k block amount), it doesn't seem like something that I should value more than the +40 resistances or +9% life it has on it.
Edit:
On May 29 2012 18:58 Dead9 wrote: block% is really really good it depends on what you're fighting and how good your other gear is but 20% block on a good shield is gonna reduce the damage u take by like 10~20%
...how do you figure? I mean, block doesn't completely negate the damage, only a (small) chunk of it, especially on inferno where elite mobs hit with over 10k easily. So it's 20% chance to block 25% of that damage, in the case of my shield at least.
And yes, the block chance happens after the attack has gone through the resistances/armor, so it's reduced, and then further reduced by block, but even so, I have had 10k+ hits show up several times in various encounters, even in act1.
The great part about block is that is scales with everything else. Damage is mitigated by armor and resistance (and % modifiers) before subtracting the block value. Which leads to fully blocking harder and harder hit the better your gear gets.
On May 29 2012 16:28 TheYango wrote: Hmm, where should I start for Alcarnus runs? Getting 5 stacks for Maghda seems hard, not because the mobs are hard (they are), but because it seems hard to find a starting place that allows me to actually find 5 doable champ packs before I get to Maghda.
It seems I keep finding purple-named Uniques (found like 5 on this run) but no champions.
whats your gear and build? reading some of your previous posts i think we are somewhat similar... but i just cant do act 2 at all the regular mobs are troublesome but i can get through, however elites are a totally different story and i just melt to them
My gear: The legendaries are Kymbo's Gold, String of Ears, and Band of Fallen Heroes. The band was a drop, and the Kymbo's/String both cost less than 500k each.
My resists are still on the low side--that's the most obvious thing for me. Armor could also use a boost. My Helm is the only slot that doesn't have any resist all, so I'm looking into upgrades that don't lose too much of my other stats. Weapon DPS is about 820--could probably push more stats out of my weapon if I were willing to spend more money on it. I've been trading with friends for more Amethysts, so hopefully I can upgrade both the helm and weapon gems (the life on hit for higher-level Amethysts starts to get pretty good). I was wondering about shield block earlier as well, mostly because my shield gives a comfortable amount of Str/Vi/ResAll, but has a pretty poor block %. Aside from that, I feel like I should only really expect incremental upgrades until I can progress further.
As far as A2 goes, as I mentioned before, most hard packs depend on what monster type it is: - Dark Berserkers and Fallen Overlords just hit me really freaking hard. I can tank the normal hits, but when either does their long backswing hit, it does like 3/4 of my HP, and I don't have time to recover from that. Obviously it means I have to try and dodge it, but thats hard if Fast, Vortex, Jailer, etc. are in play. Trying to burst them down with the double 2 min CDs sometimes works, but you have to be careful because if you die, you have to wait 2 mins to try again. Plus some mods like Extra Health, Shielding, or Teleport just make that impossible because their base health is already really high. - Wasps are just a bitch. Even if I play perfectly, and dodge all the projectiles, it takes too damn long to chase them down and kill them. I don't know how Blizzard thought making ranged enemies that move faster than the player, and are stun resistant in Inferno would make for fun gameplay, particularly when combined with movement impairing mods.
Most everything else I've gone up against so far is doable, though stuff like Unholy Thralls can take a few tries. Overall the difficulty feels about like what Skeleton King runs felt like on my first few attempts (die a lot, but manage to get 5 stacks if I skip smartly, and really look exhaustively for doable champions to kill). I expect there to be a lot of troublesome enemies if I advance further, which is why I've been focusing on trying to clean up my build/gear/general play on Alcarnus runs.
hm we arent too different in stats, i have higher hp and armor, you have higher resist and damage, but the differences aren't by huge margins i wonder if it is the way i am approaching act 2 as opposed to act 1, i never really had too many problems for act 1 because i geared up right after killing diablo and selling my crap in the AH.
also our skill build is the same except you have earthquake where i have charge with the healing rune maybe ill give that a shot
The strength of block with better gear is that you will fill the hit table with stuff that is not a full damage hit. Especially in better gear, let's say 40% dodge 30% block, with 3k block value, and mobs hit for 15k(with better gear this gets less and less)
You'll have a 50% chance to mitigate 20% of an attack, or roughly 12.5% increase in TTL(time to live). To get an approximately equal amount via armor would take ~550 armor in average gear and around 550 resist all(assuming 5k base armor and 500 base resistance). Especially since block is an intrinsic stat on shields(does not cost affix slots), it's essentially extra somewhat unreliable mitigation.
Yango, aren't you supposed to dodge the backswing hits? Dark berserkesr have a really long and easy to run away from, fallen overlords are a bit harder but they only do it when they sat around screaming for 5 seconds. On monk I can't tank them either without serenity but I didn't think you were supposed to.
On May 29 2012 18:58 Dead9 wrote: block% is really really good it depends on what you're fighting and how good your other gear is but 20% block on a good shield is gonna reduce the damage u take by like 10~20%
...how do you figure? I mean, block doesn't completely negate the damage, only a (small) chunk of it, especially on inferno where elite mobs hit with over 10k easily. So it's 20% chance to block 25% of that damage, in the case of my shield at least.
And yes, the block chance happens after the attack has gone through the resistances/armor, so it's reduced, and then further reduced by block, but even so, I have had 10k+ hits show up several times in various encounters, even in act1.
i haven't had anything hit over 5~6k in act 2 (except berserkers overhead) and a good shield blocks a solid 3k~5k damage
I have a pretty stupid question. But I'm a lvl 54 barbarian. And after watching alot of streams I realized that a lot of other people can hotkey their spells to whatever place they want. And I cant?? Is this something that gets unlocked? or do you have unlock it by buying? please give a reply!
On May 29 2012 19:37 Slayer91 wrote: Yango, aren't you supposed to dodge the backswing hits? Dark berserkesr have a really long and easy to run away from, fallen overlords are a bit harder but they only do it when they sat around screaming for 5 seconds. On monk I can't tank them either without serenity but I didn't think you were supposed to.
I just said you're supposed to dodge them, but a lot of mods just make that hard.
Having to skip Fallen Overlords and Dark Berserkers on any movement-impairing mod is quite restrictive on which packs I can do.
When an item gives both +Vitality and +% Life, which one gets factored in first, and which one gets factored in second (as, mathematically, it makes a difference)?
I'd test it out myself, but I don't have an item that gives both affixes.
Tested life on hit ratios of Barbarian skills, so posting them for anyone interested: + Show Spoiler +
Weapon Throw = 100% Weapon Throw with Bounce 33.4% each Leap = 33.4% Ground Stomp with or without Wrenching Smash = 25% Furious Charge = 33.4% Cleave = 50% Ancient Spear = 95% Ancient Spear with 3 hooks = 33% Piercing Ancient Spear = 50% Leap with extra range = 20% Overpower = 34% Rend = 33% Rend with extra range = 25% Seismic Slam = 33% Seismic Slam with smaller AoE = 50% Bash = 100% Frenzy = 75% Earthquake = 17% (?) Hammer of the Ancients = 66% Hammer with Rolling Thunder = 0% (against single enemy) Hammer with Smash = 80% Revenge = 33%
How does it work: lets say you have 1000 life on hit, and you hit 1 enemy with frenzy. You regen only 750 HP because frenzy has 75% ratio. Now let's say you hit 20 enemies with Ground Stomp, you regen 5000 HP because while ratio of Ground stomp is 25%, it gets multiplied by the amount of enemies you hit.
Im not sure on the Earthquake or the axe that shoots from Sidearm Frenzy, would be great if someone more patient tested it.
Interesting that Ground Stomp procs Life on Hit even though it doesn't do any damage.
The bottom end ratios are worse than I expected. This more-or-less confirms that lifesteal is the way to go with Seismic Slam-based builds because the life on hit modifier is so low.
Are you sure on that? Let's say you have 10K attack damage (way more than average barb, this stat would get you to 20K DPS probably), Seismic Slam with smaller AoE has 255% weapon damage ratio, so thats 25500 damage. Now divided by 5 for inferno penalty, that's 5100, let's say that you also have 12% lifesteal (the most you can ever get IIRC - very hard to obtain). That's 612 life per enemy hit. 612 life per enemy hit is not a lot. You need 1224 life on hit to match that, Now considering there are quite a few good weapons with 900+ hit on life, that is not as bad as perfect lifesteal rolls on both rings, amulet AND a weapon. If you can get up to 15K weapon damage then I can see it being good, but it is a really really really expensive investment. Also note that if you used wider-range Seismic Slam, it would be even better for life on hit - under otherwise same circumstances you would need only 1116 life on hit to match 12% lifesteal.
On May 29 2012 23:13 Scip wrote: Are you sure on that? Let's say you have 10K attack damage (way more than average barb, this stat would get you to 20K DPS probably), Seismic Slam with smaller AoE has 255% weapon damage ratio, so thats 25500 damage. Now divided by 5 for inferno penalty, that's 5100, let's say that you also have 12% lifesteal (the most you can ever get IIRC - very hard to obtain). That's 612 life per enemy hit. 612 life per enemy hit is not a lot. You need 1224 life on hit to match that, Now considering there are quite a few good weapons with 900+ hit on life, that is not as bad as perfect lifesteal rolls on both rings, amulet AND a weapon. If you can get up to 15K weapon damage then I can see it being good, but it is a really really really expensive investment. Also note that if you used wider-range Seismic Slam, it would be even better for life on hit - under otherwise same circumstances you would need only 1116 life on hit to match 12% lifesteal.
Bear in mind that Seismic Slam-based builds generally seem to shoot much more aggressively for DPS than the conventional tank builds. I agree that they're more gear dependent, but I don't think the build is good to begin with unless you have the necessary funds to gear it anyway.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FawxH.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ixwJV.jpg)
