Patriarch Melmoth, Toad Tank

[Doctor Clock]

Patriarch Melmoth the Toad Tank Inferno clear


Attributes:

Strength: 146

Dexterity: 193

Intelligence: 1148

Vitality: 1299

Armor: 5172

Damage: 10834.82

822 Resist All
942 Physical Resist
20% Block
12.3% Dodge

57,634 HP
1436 LoH

Gear

In case you can't see the picture, my gear was focused around stacking All Resist, Armor, Vitality, and Intelligence. Life on Hit came from my weapon, amulet, and rings.

Skills:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...UXd!UZc!baacYZ

Plague of Toads (Rain of Toads)
Hex (Hedge Magic)
Mass Confusion (Unstable Realm)
Spirit Walk (Healing Journey)
Horrify (Frightening Aspect)
Soul Harvest (Siphon)

Passives:

Vision Quest
Jungle Fortitude
Bad Medicine

Hireling: Enchantress

Charm/Powered Armor/Disorient/Mass Control

Thoughts

This character turned out to be not at all what I expected when I started, but precisely how I like a character to be. Slightly quirky, yet effective.

I wanted to start Diablo 3 with a summoning class as I thought it would allow me the ability to observe and learn from a safer distance some of the mechanics and workings of the game. This proved true all through Hell, but summons don't fare as well in Inferno, which left my intended build (summon heavy) inefective.

After doing some searching, I came upon a guide based around the fairly high Life on Hit returns of the Rain of Toads rune. I liked what I saw so I went with it. The going was slow, but a lot of fun.

Enrage timers on mini bosses were troublesome. With Siege Breaker and Rakanoth, I had to drop Bad Medicine (20% damage reduction on poisoned enemies) for Pierce the Veil (20% damage increase, 30% mana cost increase). Enrage timers on boss packs were actually not a problem as I had enough Life on Hit to negate the extra incoming damage.

I had to skip three boss packs in my playthrough. One was a Horde, Vortex, Jailer, Arcane pack of Golgors in Act 3. A pack of Invulnerable Minion, Molten, Morlu Emissaries. I didn't see the rest of their stats as I ran the other direction immediately. Lastly, a Shielding, Extra Health, Jailer, Descerator Corrupted Angel unique pack. I just could not put a dent in his health even after all the minions were dead.

The Enchantress proved to be very helpful. Charm and Mass Control were much more effective than I thought they would be and mitigated a lot of damage. Her Powered Armor ability also stays active if she dies. That alone made her useful in my opinion.

He was fun to play and farms fairly well as I don't have to worry about dying much in Act 1 or 2. In total, I think I spent around 15 million gold on his gear. His belt and chest armor I found myself, and the rest are filthy GAH items. If you are patient and are willing to spend the gold, it is a fun character to make.

Thanks for reading.

[NacRuno]

Nice read Doc, and big congrats for posting the fist pat of D3. Very good use of the defensive skills and nice to see a tanking WD. I liked how you managed to display every relevant information in those two screenshots.

Is it possible to post a link to the guide you used? I thought all the guides around were focusing on splinters and/or zombie bears for WD. What would you say is a good number for life on hit to make this build efficient? Also was soul harvest still giving you a nice dmg boost with your stats or did you mainly use it for the heal?

[BaronScarpia]

Congrats on your pat!

The 20% block was necessary or the shield was there to carry int, vit, all res? Also, how much armor do you have w/ enchantress? Very nice tank build. It's sad to see pets dying so easily from hell on. My summoner is only on act 1 hell and uses dogs as explosion material against elites (to speed up things). Gargatuan ain't doing a great job holding mean stuff to make phantasm viable anymore, so I'll have to change my road to something else. And a zombie bear just don't sound "ok" imo.

I'm trying to move fast until lvl 60, when I'll take a look at what I have and see where to go). Also, I have a sword somewhere with 700 DPS, 700+ Loh, 100+ int iirc (I bought it with int by a freaking accident, since I was planning to use it on my barbarian). Maybe I will test the frogs. How much LOH do you think is necessary? The 1k range can work?

Also, I'm glad to know you still have the bonus from enchatress if she is dead. Death seems to be her thing now, with mf rings/ammy.

[Doctor Clock]

@Nac: Here is the guide: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/top...2459114?page=1

Shocking that I found something useful on the official forums. I only had 550 LoH up until Ghom. The latter part of Act 3 and Act 4 things start hitting really hard, so you need 1k + LoH unless you have a lot of HP/resists. Soul Harvest was used for the damage and because I needed 5 cooldown abilities. With a 5 stack my dps went from 10k to 16k, which is significant. The damage boost plus the mini heal made it a must in my opinion, even against 1 on 1 bosses.

@Baron:

I set 20% as the minimum amount of block I would use. I'm sure I could find a shield with 12% block and identical stats and not notice a difference, but 20% isn't too expensive and is a nice round number. 5.1k armor is with the Enchantress. I think I have 4.7k unbuffed. For LoH, see above. If I were to regear this character on a similar budget, I would buy a magic amulet with 500-600 LoH and forget about LoH on rings. Rings are expensive and don't provide a significant increase to LoH.

That sword you have could be used to beat Inferno, depending on how much Int you get on other pieces of gear. You need about 14-15k dps to beat Siegebreaker's and Rakanoth's enrage.