Patch 1.0.3

Well patch 1.0.3 for Diablo 3 is up. There are a lot of changes here and there and I have a mixed feeling about this update. Basically this is a short summary of the patch and my personal thumbs up or thumbs down with regards to the changes.


+ crafting costs reduced (this actually made crafting weapons/armors slightly viable rather than just a forgotten aspect of the game)
+/- monster damage reduction (well I don't really have any problems here since I am able to survive inferno but for everyone out there having a hard time, this is just good for everyone but it also screws the challenge that inferno brings)
+monster damage would not scale when in a party (this would probably be helpful for melee classes, as ranged classes would not mind the damage if they cannot be attacked)
- attack speed nerf (though I don't really use attack speed items that much for my character, I think this would be bad for other classes)
- no more items from vases, destructible objects and such (this is probably to prevent all those vase and chest farmers and frankly I'm  quite disappointed in this. Even in Diablo 2, everyone with just a bit of a small luck can come across a legendary item dropped from an urn or vase and that was just the epic moment of joy)
- repair costs (seriously ridiculous especially if the player dies quite a lot which happens when they overextend in places where they are undergeared)

(edit, I realized that I have never  published this at the time of patch 1.0.3 release, lol)

Diablo 3 Wizard Inferno skill build

Since I rolled my first class as a Wizard, things have been great even in inferno mode. Some skills that were hotfixed here and there (force armor) kinda slowed my pace in inferno since I had to fix my gear and stats in order to cope with the changes. As such, I barely had the time to make wizard inferno skill build. But things have been stable as of late and now I can give it out for all wizards who are having a hard time in inferno. Perhaps the build I will post might be overused and overheard already but nonetheless here is the skill build that I use.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#ZlXROQ!dWX!bbabYY

Basically as a wizard in inferno, without twinked gear from the AH, blizzard and venom hydra would be the way to go. As stated in numerous posts in forums, they are pretty much the best skill choices if the wizard does not have a very big amount of damage or health pool and high resistances. In the build that I use, I have two defensive skills which are generally all purpose so most if not all of the monsters in the game would have a little rougher time trying to get the wizard killed. Basically I have diamond skin with crystal shell rune as the lifesaver skill when the teleport skill is on cooldown or when the character actually gets stucked (yes that happens quite a lot with those waller + desecrator  monsters and damage over time does not trigger teleport to be instantly be on cooldown). Most of the time, if the wizard gets hit, the cooldown of teleport will be reset thanks to illusionist passive  and hopefully the player has enough arcane power to teleport away. As such the teleport skill with fracture rune will basically be the bread and butter escape skill. Some may have noticed that I took the fracture rune despite the decoys having little effect on the monster AI. True enough though, most monsters just ignore the decoy and still chase the player but these decoys provide a little collision area for the monsters to slow them down and the chance of them being attacked instead of the real player, that alone makes it quite okay to use. If fracture rune is not to your liking, it would be okay to replace it with other runes as it is the teleport that you really want and the rune is like icing on the cake. For another skill slot, I have energy armor with force armor rune (even after the nerf). Force armor is still a beast even after the nerf, the wizard just now needs to have a bit of health pool to make force armor work. Now for the primary left click skill, I took ray of frost as a personal preference. Most of the time, I just use blizzard and venom hydra to clear normal monsters, but some tough monsters like those mallet lords, fallen overseers and the like tend to survive, so an additional damage over time would bring them down before they get a chance to get close to me. Clearly some may prefer other skills such as magic missile with seeker rune and that would be really up to the player, but I suggest trying out ray of frost as it has worked out for me with no big issues on resource management. For the passive skills, I have illusionist which would help cope with the long cooldown of teleport (to reset it when needed, this has probably saved me millions of times), cold blooded over glass cannon for two reasons, one is that I have two cold spells in my arsenal (blizzard and ray of frost), two is that sometimes that extra 10% damage taken would be bad for a wizard without good gears but if you plan to change ray of frost for the primary left click skill, I would probably take glass cannon instead of cold blooded. For the last passive I have astral presence for resource regen and better management.

The general playstyle of this wizard build is kiting. It would be quite impossible if the wizard would not kite, unless you have about 100,000 DPS and 1000 all resist in which case the player need not read this as he would not have any troubles with playing inferno mode except maybe those soul lashers in act 3 or charging monsters in act 4.  If there are any questions regarding kiting, I have a previous article which covers it here on my blog.

That's all for the skill build, and hopefully it has helped you out in inferno mode and keep playing Diablo 3.

Diablo 3 Inferno Equipment Check

Playing in Diablo 3 inferno mode can be a quite a challenge and possibly frustrating. However, as a rule of a thumb, the difficulty and frustration levels increase drastically when the player progresses too far while being underequipped. It is important for players to stop and farm a bit more gold or items in order to equip themselves better to prepare them for the next act or arc of the act. Here are five essentials that players need to consider in their equipment especially when they are playing in inferno:

1) Weapon Damage / DPS

Without a decent and hefty damage, players would probably struggle here and there. Killing mobs or elites would be a pain if they take around thirty minutes to kill rather than just five. The longer the battle drags on, the more chances the player makes a mistake and eventually leads to his/her demise.  

2) Vitality

More vitality means more hitpoints. As the game suggests, lose all of it and the player is dead. In inferno, a vast majority of monsters deal very strong damage, without decent vitality (i.e. 20k~30k hitpoints for ranged or  40k~60k for melee) the player would get one-shotted by these monsters. Aside from vitality, the player should have some form of resistance in order to fully negate being one-shotted (discussed in #3).

3) All Resistance

The all resistance stat is pretty much one of the most important stats to have on armors in addition to vitality as they improve not only the player’s resistance to elements but also physical resistance. Having a tremendous amount of vitality without resistance would simply be a waste as the damage the monsters deal increase exponentially through acts.

4) Armor

This is one of the seriously underestimated stats in the game that actually helps quite a lot in inferno. Increasing the armor of the player would reduce damages coming from all sources. In reality, I personally believe it would be impossible to dodge all attacks even with a ranged class, hence increasing armor would be the next best thing to all resistance and vitality.

5) Critical Hit Chance

Increasing critical hit chances enable the player to deal burst damage to monsters which usually helps during elites, act bosses or that significantly annoying room with 99999 monsters. Though critical hits are chance based, increasing the chances would significantly boost damage output which makes killing monsters easier.

 There are other notable stats for equipment that can be valuable such as movespeed, resource regeneration, increased max resource, and the like which I did not really include as this is a general equipment check in inferno.

General Tips for harder difficulties part 2

If you are having a hard time in Diablo 3 past normal mode, here are some tips that you can follow:

1) Try playing in a party

Despite increasing the damage, and health of monsters, playing in a party has a lot of benefits. In a party, I find it easier to play through the levels and somehow manage to survive longer or not even die at all. This is probably because of the skills of each class working together bringing down tough elite packs instead of the usual kiting or running and dying when skills are all on cooldown. In addition, playing in a party allows players to resurrect each other hence giving another chance for all those mistakes, misclicks or just plain bad luck that could happen versus act bosses such as Belial in hell and inferno.

2) Repeat farming areas that are easy to do

If the player is having a hard time progressing especially in inferno, it is best to farm on the easier places to gear up and get more gold. For example, inferno act 2 is way more difficult than inferno act 1, so it might be a good idea to run a few skeleton kings rather than trying to progress to act 2 where all of the monsters simply hurt the player a lot and take a lot of time killing. This is a Diablo game, so much of the end game content revolves around farming for good items and perhaps PVP when it is implemented.

3) Skip monsters or elites that are very difficult to kill (in time the player will have his/her revenge)

People say that experience is the best teacher, and true enough I have had quite a lot of crazy elite fights that feel next to impossible to do. For instance, I have faced a bat boss with molten, plagued, vortex, invulnerable minions, horde. They were literally all over the place; it became next to impossible to target the main elite while trying to avoid lava trails and poison pools and getting sucked right next to them. I do like a challenge and so after more than 10 deaths, the boss finally died. However, I believe this is cost ineffective as the time it took me to kill the boss and the gold lost due to repairs compared to the mediocre loot that the boss dropped was totally not worth it. The only saving grace was the fact that I have beaten a crazy ass boss, and that is all. If the player has unlimited supply of gold, then by all means go ahead, but for everyone else, it would be best to skip them or try to run past them, if not just reset the game. I believe once the player has better or top of the line gear, then they could possibly beat all these near impossible combinations without much struggle.

4) Be wary of the surroundings

In Diablo 3, there are a lot of traps and nasty surprises that await the player at every corner. It is best for the player to slowly proceed through the map or move carefully rather than running at full speed and recklessly setting off traps or luring more unseen monsters like burrowing leapers or imps. Believe me, nothing is more annoying than dying to a nasty trap or environmental trap such as the slime spewer found in act 2 caves. I probably have died countless number of times to that in inferno where it usually 1-hit kills my wizard.

5) Save up on gold

Sometimes players tend to forget their gold is limited. They tend to splurge over items that are not really too important or buying a lot of crafting materials that they do not even need yet. Surely, it would not be a bad idea if the player has a lot of gold but more often than not, they do not. Always remember to have spare gold for repairs, crafting, removal of gems or that great deal that can be found at the auction house (I actually found quite a lot of great items at the auction house, but I could not afford it as their prices were around 200,000 and above but very cheap for their worth).

Thanks for spending time to read this post and have fun playing Diablo 3.