Beating Inferno with Bad Gear

[Enso]

A 7k heal is a 7k heal, doesn't matter if you have 20k life or 40k life and lowering your health does not change that. Vitality is a buffer, but as long as you are not dying and can react to the damage with the appropriate skills then you can get by with less. It also takes up some of the item budget, so if you can get by with less vit then you can stack more of other stats which is what the the OP is suggesting with his guide. I'm sure if Odegar was offered 50k bonus life he would not turn it down because "it would make my heals look smaller on my health globe."

Yggdrasil pretty much nailed what I meant. It has nothing to do with "how big your heals look", but simply that having higher resists makes the health that you do have harder to take away, so the 7k you get from that heal lasts longer. Of course I would take 50k more life if I could have it for free, but since stat budget is limited and one must make choices, I traded most of my vit for resistances, LpSS, and life regen. My max health was cut in half, but my survivability increased tenfold.

[Odegar]

Glad it's workin' out for ya Enso

I'm sure if Odegar was offered 50k bonus life he would not turn it down because "it would make my heals look smaller on my health globe.

U DONT KNOW ME!

All of the principles laid out in my guide comes from years of tanking/healing in MMOs. Namely WoW and Everquest. I've always been a mitigation junky as it multiplies heals and health.

[bladesofwar]

Odegar thanks so much for this guide, this gives me a lot of really good ideas, Im really excited to try these out!

[funkd]

Nice guide thanks for the info, I ve been meaning to make a post about what I have discovered in game but have been to busy playing , this is my 1st post here, so please if you notice any errors please let me know and greetings to all .
I finished inferno 2 3 weeks ago (with a barb and DH) with no LOH very little regen, no life per spir, 1100 all res (with warcry- bout 770 unbuffed), 10k armour (with keen eye) 30k HP, 18% movement spd , 1.98 attacks per sec 25k DPS and we had to skip a few packs in act 4 too.
My build is;
Deadly reach - keen eye
Serenity- Ascension
Breath of heaven -Blazing wrath
Mantra of conviction - overawe
Sweeping Wind -Cyclone
Mystic Ally - Air
Usual Passives - resolve, one with everything , Seize the initiative.
I use the same build in groups and solo. Enchantress is my follower of choice for the armour and CC.

I noticed your comment regards crit and crit damage thought I better post my own experience regards improving DPS on the cheap.
I am currently in decent gear a lot better than when I finished inferno, I have 36% crit -255% CDB, my main hand is a blue 900 dps with 80% crit damage gem, offhand is 616 DPS with socket(150vit,150dex,125% crit dam)-which is more dps than my 900dps 67% cdb 1h.
I also swap in a really fast 1.5spd -741DPS dagger with a 400loh gem - 2.9% steal- 150dex- 81 vit for really nasty packs in act3.

Deadly reach was hard to swap to after FOT I leveled with but I am a convert now, I can line up 5-6 mobs and hit them all, go through invulnerable minions, stand out of ground AOE and still keep cyclones spamming, stand behind my pet and reach the /tar all while increasing effective health by 200% (50% amour increase=200% more effective health on my spreadsheet)
I find ally so much more useful than blind, I don't have much spir regen and so many times the 100 spir has proc'd and saved my ***. Also it's AOE does a ton of damage and picks up more mobs than the the other Allies, this is helpful in groups as I play support /main assist, pick the tar for the DPS to focus and keep the squishys alive. Air ally also is a great meat sheild for nasty champs. Just the fast that evry elite isnt /tar you is also great, it usually picks up 2 and tanks them for the fight.
15% damage thats always up is too good to pass up on BOH, but the majority of my damage comes from sweeping wind/ cyclone procs, bugs in act 2 get hit 3 x by each 1 no matter how far away they are, I regularly see it crit for 10-12k a tick.
Rest of the build is straight forward, passives cookie cutter if you have any questions please ask I will try to answer them.
I have used life steal for quite a while, despite the LOH cheerleaders - even though its nerfed to 20% in inferno, when your DPS>25k you get about 100 heal per 20k damage (with 3% LS) and I constantly crit for 60-80k.
Mantra of conviction is the only way I can clear act3 without skipping any packs. Evasion worked for some, (I never use Healing mantra myself) but conviction lets me kill things 48% faster and I find they don't hurt me as much when they are dead. It's also great for monks role in a group cause you can turn your DH's 150 K spike trap crit into a 225k crit .
So now to the crit crit damage, I was stuck around 15k and couldn't afford to spend 500billion gold to upgrade my main hand, but for very little cash I can get crit instead of dex on a few items ( I have a godly ammy with 8.5%crit-14%life-129dex-68res all-129str). I then bought a 900 dps main hand with a socket for about 1.5mill and put 80% crit dam gem in it, and farmed the off hand I mentioned above.
My base DPS is now 35k with blazing wrath up, I buff it to 45-55k with mantra of conviction, then Mystic ally adds between 5-7k dps and when I have 5+ cyclones up that hit things all over the screen mobs die twice as fast.My gear is a little better now and going to 50-60k HP with the mitigation I mentioned makes those arcane/fast/jailer/molten a lot easier.
In act1 I kill most elite/champs in under 10 sec solo, I get cyclones up after 3-5 secs then wait to see if I need to bubble, cyclones are constantly coming out hitting everthing 3 times, they are by far the best offensive skill I have used and they scale with your crit/CDB. I also prefer kill speed over 350mf and 5k damage. If you cant loot it theres no magic to find unless you like doing repetative chest runs but after 1.03 they arent worth the time imo.
In act2 elites/champs are dead b4 my CD's are over so 20-30 secs solo. Bugs are shut down fast because my movement speed allows me to keep multiple cyclones up most of the time as I move from group to group. The Ally is also a great sponge for those nasty poison bees that wipe you out when you 1st step foot in act2. At the moment act2 is the most efficient for farming at my DPS level, I would need around 45k base to do act3 as fast.
Some packs in act3 I need to kite, soul lashers with electric/reflect/illusionist/arcane (you know the 1s )are still above my gear level and I die from time to time when 60 clones trap me on a bubbling desecrate and my CD's are down.
Also I just killed ghom post 1.03 today with a DH, man that took some practice and 40k gold in repairs , :( , but was fun when we got him.
If your interested in my gear I could probably post screenshots or links in game, post a reply.
Out of time so I hope this helps guys, good luck .

[Elly]

I'm not playing a monk but I hadn't considered binding the move key. I did it earlier though (went for R) and it's proving really useful. Good tip.