General Tips for harder difficulties

As Blizzard have said, the real game or Diablo 3 experience starts to begin on the higher difficulties after normal mode. In line with it, here are some general tips to follow:

1) Do not rush in the act (unless the player is already level 60 or have a plan like Azmodan farming*)

After completing normal mode, many players just tend to go berserk and rush into everything as they think their new goal is to reach inferno as fast as possible. As such, they all try to skip enemies, run through the act without really killing anything. Rushing through an act lets players lose a handful of experience, gold, possibly good items and achievements. I believe it would be in the players' best interest to hit level 60 faster for unlocking all skills and passives, have more gold and items rather than not.

2) Check each champion/elite monster group's abilities before engaging them

Players should be more cautious in higher difficulties when engaging champion and elite monster groups. They are now a significant threat rather than just another easy kill found in the dungeon or map. Often times I see players just rolling through the dungeon and not being cautious of the elite attributes and suddenly they die because they failed to check that the champion pack was vortex, waller, plagued, and frozen. Dying sets the players back with gold and time, and I can testify that everyone will spend a lot of their gold and time dying in inferno difficulty.

3) Increase the levels of the jeweler and blacksmith artisans

This is a good investment for higher difficulties as most of the gems and equipment that the player would have will come here. There is really no disadvantage of leveling these artisans other than losing gold and some pages, tomes (used for higher artisan levels) which are all easily obtainable again. As an additional note, I believe all characters of the same type (hardcore or softcore) made in an account share the same blacksmith and jeweler levels so it is kind of like a one time investment.

4) Use the auction house

This is probably one of the best tips I can give for players who are already at the higher difficulties. Using the auction house allows the players to get more items for themselves, find good bargains, and sell their unwanted items for more gold. All it takes is just to familiarize themselves with how the auction house works and spend a little time in the auction house.

5) Strike a balance between defensive and offensive skills

I cannot really give everyone the best skill build for each class as there are numerous viable builds in higher difficulties. Striking a balance between offensive an defensive skills would be the best way to go for higher difficulties as it allows the players to survive and do good damage output as well. It would be best for the players to find out what builds they like and how they plan to mix and match skills.

*azmodan farming is running azmodan and going to act 4 in nightmare difficulty and resetting that quest again and again as it provides a good amount of experience.

These are all the tips for now. I will continue these general tips in another post. Readers and viewers can submit their tips also at the comments below. Have fun playing Diablo 3.