Hey Everyone,
I’ve completed Nightmare and moved on to Hell. I’ve taken a new policy under consideration. Purchase a “reasonably” priced weapon off the AH to start each new difficulty and if the average DPS of weapons increases by 100 or more during the play through, purchase an upgrade. I was suffering through Nightmare with sub-par weapons because I was sticking only to what I was getting from drops and I just wasn’t getting anything really sweet for my level.
After getting a serious upgrade as a gift, at no request of my own, but my appreciated all the same, I was reminded how much more difficult I was making things for myself. I knew I was making it a bit difficult, but using a 70 DPS weapon in Act III of Nightmare was definitely much slower than using a 155 DPS weapon. Since my main goal is to get to 60 and work on Inferno, I think it’s more important to move quickly through these earlier difficulties.
While I still like to do the end of act bosses without a follower, just for fun, I’m focused on progression. I’m playing through Hell with the enchantress, I played through nightmare with the scoundrel and I played through normal with the templar. This way I’ll have a nice feel for how each one performs in a variety of situations.
Aside from the general increase damage and health that comes along with the higher difficulty, there are some interesting new mechanics to be dealt with. The most challenging one for me especially with my wonky build was the immune minion mechanic. This was such a challenge because my usual approach to elites and rares is to kill the minions with some focused fire and then use the health globes to help sustain me while I finish off the main mob. These were so tough for me because you have to focus down the main rare and being a squishy wizard, let’s just say I had to find a solution.
My solution was to switch from Archon to Mirror Image and I eventually settled upon the explosive rune. I augmented the setup with the passive that refreshes the MI cooldown if struck for 15% of my health. This works well when combined with the Energy Shield runed to help mitigate incoming damage to a percentage of max health.
These explosive images combined with my hydra and some careful use of diamond skin/spectral blades combos and disintegrate kiting, I was able to overcome. It wasn’t the best way, but it worked pretty well over all.
Another tough thing about Hell seems to be how frequently Rares and Elite packs are positioned near to one another. Quite a few of these spawns are very tough on their own, but combining two or three together usually spells a quick and painful death (followed by several more).
Things were much improved when I was exposed to the extensive skills menu option. I had no idea I could change assign defensive skills to other keys. Since then, I’ve gone for a much more survival focused build. I am using Hardened Diamond Skin, Teleport with images, Explosive Mirror, Energy Shield with percent damage mitigation, Shock pulse with lightning monster, and hydra on the right click.
My damage output potential has gone down quite a bit, but I get some decent frontal AoE from the lightning monster and the hydra is definitely strong persistent damage. On the other hand, I can survive so many more situations that would otherwise kill me and the explosive mirror images actually add quite a bit of good AoE as well. This build is quite fun and I highly recommend it at least for soloing. Look for a video to come up talking a bit about the extensive mode and highlighting how awesome some of these combos can be. Now the hard part is becoming, how do I use all the awesome abilities I want at once?!?
Until next time!
Stay safe out there!
~Aten