Act 2 Inferno Gearing Question

[SpecterX]

Hi All:

I have some questions about where I should go with my gear at this point. I'm stuck on Belial and can't seem to make much progress (P2 is where I'm stuck). I've come to the conclusion it has to be my gear so I've been farming etc found nothing, but have made some money. With that money though, I have no idea what to upgrade and really how much to spend since a lot of stuff seems to be quite over priced on the AH (IE: Andy's Helm with +Dex Primary).

My current build is: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...XVT!aYe!YcZZcZ

For gear, right now I have a significant amount of MF due to farming, however, only a couple pieces are different from my "norm" gear:

Helm: 67dex, 60vita, 25FR, 13AllRes 1OS: Topaz
Shoulders: 130dex, 61vita, 14MF
Amulet: 23MaxDmg, 108Dex, 124Vita, 36MF
Chest: 55dex, 128 Life/Sec, 16MF, 3OS: 3x Flawless Square Emeralds
Hands: 104Dex, 145Vita, 28Crit Hit Dmg, 55 Life/Sec
Belt: 79Dex, 23AllRes, 43ArcRes, 16MF
Bracers: 80Dex, 19MF
Ring1: 52Dex 15IAS
Ring2: 64Dex 15IAS
Legs: 49Dex, 34ArcRes, 11MF, 2OS: 2x Flawless Square Emeralds
Boots: 103Dex, 51Vita, 22PhyRes, 12Move
MH: 2HXbow:991DPS 1OS: 1x Flawless Square Emerald
OH: 71Dex, 10Disc, 13IAS 1OS: 1x Flawless Square Emerald

I'm not of fan of 2HXBow, but a friend found it and gave it to me and it was a huge upgrade. I'd much prefer a Bow, but not sure if that is my biggest need. With the gear my stats are:

Str: 187
Dex: 1353
Int: 132
Vita: 572
DPS: 27191.80

Using "non-MF" gear changes my stats in 3 slots by:

Chest: +27Dex -128 Life/Sec -16MF
Legs: +30Dex -11MF
Bracers: +69Dex -19MF
Amulet: +19Dex +6.5Crit Chance -23MaxDmg -127Vita -36MF

Putting non-MF bumps me to. ~31-32K, cannot log into game server right now - servers going down - for exact dps.

My gold is around 5M, I'm able to farm Whimsyshire - not efficiently but I'm able to, but I would like to move forward and kill Belial and work A3.

Any advice? Where should I be looking to upgrade first and what stats do you feel would be most beneficial? How much would be the max spent on item(s)?

I tried posting on Blizz Forums which the post got buried so figured I'd ask advice from old D2 Forums. Appreciate the help. Thank you in advance.

[lucidlore]

What exactly is your problem with phase 2 ? Are you not killing the adds fast enough ? Are you running out of discipline to ss to avoid the snakes ? I assume you're running the normal sharpshooter build with ss/preparation ? Is the dps number you posted with or without sharpshooter ?

[SpecterX]

Hi Lucid,

I'm not running Sharpshooter and DPS I posted is without it.

Problem I'm running into mostly is running out of Disc. Using Disc primarily to avoid his "teleport punch" seems no matter how "quick" I am to move he'll always hit me (might be latency issue not sure). There are other times I've not been able to get snakes down quick enough (avoiding snakes).

Even when jumping into A3 with friend to play with him a little, it seems my DPS is quite low. Is that DPS normal? A lot of videos I've watched and other posts I've read around people are running 37K+ DPS and killing Belial.

[Nifelhein]

Get the passive that allows you to regain discipline on critical hits instead of tactical advantage and see how it fares, it works a lot better with a faster weapon, but should also give you more discipline to try the fight.

[lucidlore]

Ok, since you told me those numbers are not sharpshooter-inflated, it confirms my hunch that your gear is fine. In fact it's actually really good for act 2. The only thing i can see that needed an obvious upgrade is the helm and the belt, and even those won't have a monumental effect on your killing ability. And as i suspected, you're being discipline starved. You need discipline to ss to avoid those snakes. You will probably have to change your skill build. My suggestions:

1) Run preparation with backup plan, if you haven't already done so.
2) Change your passives and squeeze in at least vengeance somehow.
3) If you have decent crit chance, throw in nightstalker.
4) If you are still running out of discipline, then add the 10% disc reduction talent - i forget what its called, something focus ?
5) If you are having problems with the snakes after you pop out of ss, run impale with impact rune.

Having enough discipline to survive this fight is key, and you need numerous ways to recoup your discipline. As you kill the snakes, they will drop health globes, and gobbling them up will help to refill both your hatred and discipline. Also, i used impale with impact the entire time i was in act 2 and 3 for the snakes and phase beasts. Once a snake invises and charges you, smokescreen and wait for him to come out of hiding. Once he does, smack him in the face with impale until you stun him - you should still be in smokescreen and it should only take 1, maybe 2 shots to stun him. Basically, if a snake charges you, smokescreen and impale is what keeps you from getting 1 shotted. With your numbers you should be able to do this fight.

In regards to gear, you have quite a bit of money for someone still in act 2 inferno. I didn't have that much till a few days ago and I've been in act 4 for almost a week. You should start to think about what kind of build you want to play your DH long term and start hunting down gear that suits that build, since any gear you buy from now on would require a substantial financial investment. Your numbers are fine. You should only spend a few hundred thousand on armor upgrades and save the bulk of your income to invest into a nice weapon -- a 1k+ dps bow with good stats will have a much more substantial effect on your dps than any other equipment slot. Once you have a good weapon, then you can splurge on luxury items.

[SpecterX]

@Nif: I'll try with Nightstalker when servers come up.

@lucid: The way I "want" to play is incredibly expensive from what I read (want to use 2x 1HxBow). My DPS is a "little" inflated by Archery & Steady Shot. I'm not sure what constitutes as "10 yards" but I don't think I'm getting that "benefit" 100% of the time on Belial. During the fight I'm trying to stay stationary as much as possible so I can make sure the snake die with NT don't know how often I'm in the vicinity of health globes.

[lucidlore]

10 yards is incredibly short. 10 yards is the range of fan of knives. If a mob is within 10 yards of you in inferno, you should either be dead or running.

[Dave Null]

I killed inferno Belial a few days ago. It took a couple of hours of attempts though. I'm just going to repost my impressions from another forum, so you can get some hinters. This is certainly not the only way to kill Belial, but it worked for me:

My DH stats:


HP: 36K
DPS: 42k or so, w/o Sharpshooter
Resists: about 120


With these stats, the snakes and the boss would 1 shot me half the times in phase 1 and 2. Getting hit with anything in Phase 3 is always 1-shot.


Phase 1 wasn't too bad. Scoundrel worked best for me, because he blinds a couple of snakes right off the bat. I stayed in the right corner for this phase and it often helped that the last snake would spawn in the opposite corner and wouldn't aggro on me, so I had time to just stand there and wait for discipline to replenish and Sharpshooter to reach 100%.


Phase 2 is a dps check. Here's the trick: kill that last snake in the corner that didn't aggro on you with the damaging caltrops. The best part is that the caltrop doesn't reset your Sharpshooter, so you can unload a few 100% crit Nether Tentacles on the boss straight away. He needs to be taken down to like 25% (he goes in p3 at 20% or so) before he starts summoning snakes. This was the most difficult part, it's very chaotic with boss constantly charging you. This will be a LOT easier though with some gear upgrades.


Phase 3 is very tense too. Boots with 12% movement speed are pretty much mandatory. During p2-p3 downtime I also switched my dps bracers for the Lacuni bracers for an additional 7% movement speed. Still, I'm really glad that I went for +max discipline gear, it helps a lot with Smoke Screen uptime. I'm running with 57 discipline total right now. It's huge help when kiting mobs too.


Skills:


Hungering Arrow - Devouring Arrow
Elemental Arrow - Nether Tentacles (these are OP, they hit Belial's body multiple times in p3)
Smoke Screen - Lingering Fog
Caltrops - Jagged Spikes (for this fight only, usually it's Torturous Ground for kiting)
Preparation - Battle Scars
Marked for Death - Mortal Enemy (not enough dps in p2 without it, I usually go with Rain of Vengeance - Stampede for kiting)


Archery, Steady Aim, Sharpshooter

[yertle]

Hi Lucid,

I'm not running Sharpshooter and DPS I posted is without it.

Problem I'm running into mostly is running out of Disc. Using Disc primarily to avoid his "teleport punch" seems no matter how "quick" I am to move he'll always hit me (might be latency issue not sure). There are other times I've not been able to get snakes down quick enough (avoiding snakes).

Even when jumping into A3 with friend to play with him a little, it seems my DPS is quite low. Is that DPS normal? A lot of videos I've watched and other posts I've read around people are running 37K+ DPS and killing Belial.

Tip on this: His teleport/charge is fixed distance. Figure out the exact distance, and position so that he charges past you, start moving before he finishes the charge so he never gets near you. Doing that I was able to clear phase1/phase2 with almost entirely caltrops, and only a couple of smokescreens to take out snakes (I went into p3 with nearly full disc and prep unused.) Also, when he starts casting his missiles in p3, you should immediately drop everything and pump as many tentacles as possible into him before it ends. You'll be able to get p3 during his second channel at latest doing this.

The build I used was http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#aRYXTV!YeT!YcaZZa
Sharpshooter felt like it made a gigantic difference in my damage output and ability to burst snakes on that fight (~33k DPS before).
I picked up Bat Companion just for Belial because the hatred regen is pretty sick (I felt the only time i was in risk of being overwhelmed by snakes was when using hungering arrow to regen) and I didn't need any other skill.

[Freddeh]

I killed belial with around ~32k dps on my DH, ended up using a mass hatred regen build due to the same problem yertle had: Dev arrow shots leave you kinda wide open to snakes/belial in this fight. So instead of caltrops I used both marked for death with the hatred regen, and bat companion. This let me spam nether tentacles almost constantly during p2 and p3, and he died in p3 for me just after the first channel. The hardest part by far was getting through p2, having to do everything perfect, dodge most of his teleports with SS (it CAN be dodged normally, but you have to know you're going to do it, or be quick on the trigger if you wait), and not tunnelvision so much that you miss the snakes.

GL!