starting up a baba?

[Zaran]

hey all, so imagine you got a baba who just finished hell and is level 60, but lets pretend it doesnt have any items at all, and its time for inferno.



what would you buy and how would you spec the baba, if you had a max budget of, 1-2 million gold ?


(for act 1 inferno and beyond, mostly mf purposes, but no need for mf gear, lets just assume 5 nv from killing elites, but then we have to be able to kill them without dying all the time ourselves)


basically asking for cookiecutter gear and build tips on a budget I guess ?


thanks,

[Bringer]

Well. Im real tired and about to go to sleep, and this post is a horrible disorganized mess. But it contains my advice, and reading over it a few times i see nothing lacking but good formatting. Im also realizing im using 'and' too much, but this is all very stream of conciousness and i just kept remembering things to add.

Generally speaking i consider 1 point of all resist to be worth 2 points of str or vit, and i think good starter items have a total "point worth" of around 250

For your helmet you want a socket (ill call a helm socket ~130 points) with at least 40 all resist. Then either some crit chance, vit, or str. Whatever you can get.

For your shoulders try to get at least 40 all resist, and a combination of 150 points total of str and or vit, more is better, this is sort of a minimum.

For gloves i would recommend prioritizing getting crit damage and crit chance. 25%/6% or so, and then either 40+ all resist, or around 100 points combined of str and vit. It shouldn't be too expensive (its getting all three thats expensive). If you can find some gloves that have crit fixes, some str/vit, and physical or fire resistance for cheap, those would do you good.

For bracers try to get crit chance, all resist, and some stat, str/vit. Consider each points of crit chance to be worth around 20 'points'

For both pants and chest i would recommend getting maximum sockets on them starting off, because it gives you flexibility to gem your str or vit up if you find some is lacking once you get your gear together. In general hard stats on these two pieces tend to favor vit instead of str. I would consider each socket to be worth around 34 'points'. For the rest try to fill in all resist and some vit.

Belt favors str. Try to get around 180+ str on belt, you should be able to also get some vit and some all resist on there

Boots, run speed is critical. I always just filter for 12%, though 11 or 10% would be acceptable. Consider 1% runspeed to be worth 10 points on boots. So for the remaining points just do the usual, try to get some all resist, str and/or vit


Fire and physical resist are both more important than the other resists, and if you see a piece of gear with some on it, feel free to consider each point of those as worth sacrificing some str or vit for. Id say 2 points of these resists are worth a stat point. Poison and arcane are always kind of useful, and while i wouldnt go out of my way to get them, if you have some on gear its certainly helpful. Lightening and frost are pretty much useless, your all resist will keep you covered there.

For a shield i would reccomend again, crit chance. Generally any thing that can have crit fixes on, you should make an effort to get some on. You also want your shield to be good at blocking, 25% or better. High blocking, good crit chance, and the rest is just whatever you can find. Stat or all resist are nice, but shields with good block, crit, and all resist are expensive. If you can find a blue 29% block shield with 8 or so crit chance for cheap, you could just use that, it would be pretty good. You can also get life% on shield which could be helpful. But really, high blocking chance is the most important shield stat.

And i do reccomend you start with 1h+shield. Dual wield needs more expensive one handers, and it needs two of them. 2-handing can work if you want to go down the rout, but expect to die more often, every now and then i get the urge to 2-hand and realize its more trouble than its worth.

For a weapon, set your filter to this:
socket
life on hit 301 (to filter out people who just put cheap 300 loh gems in that socket)

then alternate the last filter between str and vit, looking for whatevers the best deal.

You want to aim for around 700dps with 300+ life on hit and a socket, with preferably some amount of stats, for your first inferno weapon. A little less dps is okay, particularaly if you can get str. With the lowish str values you will have when first starting inferno id say each 100 strength is worth around 30 weapon dps. Of course vit on weapon means you can socket str gems into your armor.

Ideally you want to hope that you have around 1k/1k str/vit when you are done with all this, thats a good starting point. 1k vit with an amethyst in your helmet should give you around 40k life, which is great for acts 1 and 2

If you have a reasonable amount of LoH on jewelry, say 500 total, you can ignore LoH on weapon, but LoH jewelry is expensive so its something you will need to find or get lucky on.

And speaking of jewelry. I would recommend again trying to get some crit fixes on your rings and amulets. Both can have crit chance and crit damage. Getting both fixes is usualy expensive, but getting one per item and then hopefully some small amount of all resist or some str or vit is possible.

Jewelry is really expensive and you just kind of go with what you can find. If it comes down to it you should be able to buy blues with decent amount of stat and some other favorable fix.

I do recommend you get some additional LoH somewhere on your jewelry. People make a big deal about LoH, and it is overated, there are plenty of people who do just fine with no LoH at all. Plenty of well geared people. You are not well geared, and while massive LoH stacking as your defensive strategy becomes an inescapable spiral and i would recommend against focusing on large quantities of LoH, some LoH is really helpful, as is some life regen. Id say a total of 500 LoH between weapon and jewelry is a good target.


This is the general guidelines i used when first gearing myself, and it worked out fine and i could do act 1 inferno easily. I ended up only spending around 300k That was some time ago, but the general consensus is that starting gear is even cheaper now, so hopefully you will be able to get such items.

With the above items you would even be able to complete act 2, though it would be somewhat difficult. It took me a few mil worth of gear before i could farm act 2 with out dieing a lot. And as far as gear upgrading, you just want more of the above =P

Also getting 100 dex is a good idea, for an easy 10% dodge. A lot of items annoying have str/dex on them, so you will probably end up with around 100 dex anyway, but its useful so dont feel bad about it, and if i had less than 100 dex i would seriously consider trying to bump it up to 100. And if you get a really good deal on a high dex item that can even help. 100 dex is 10% dodge, 300 is 15, and 500 is 20.

And of course, spend time and look for the 1d:12h and 1d:11h deals. If its old its probably overpriced. Apart from the weapon you shouldnt be spending more than 200k on any of this stuff, and many pieces you should be able to snag for under 100 (shoulders for example)

The weapon I don't know. Ill admit the weapon i started with was only 600 dps. It worked fine, things have gotten cheaper since, and ive snagged 750 dps socketed 350 LoH 200 str weapons for 1 mil, so im assuming 700 dps socketed 300 loh weapons with 'some' str or vit should be a few hundred K, but whos to say whats there when you will be looking? 600 dps weapon is enough for act 1 if thats all you can find.

ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE I CAN"T BELIEVE I FORGOT THIS!
Get at least 6-7 gold/life orb pickup radius. It will save your life, it will keep you from even realizing your life is in danger in the first place. It will make picking up gold easier. I personally run with around 15, this is the most underrated stat in the game.

[Axamas]

To Bringer :
Great post, thanks.

[Zaran]

great post man, really appreciate it

[CubsAce38]

Bringer, awesome post. Thanks. I'm just starting act 3 and I appreciated it

[lanceuppercut]

ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE I CAN"T BELIEVE I FORGOT THIS!
Get at least 6-7 gold/life orb pickup radius. It will save your life, it will keep you from even realizing your life is in danger in the first place. It will make picking up gold easier. I personally run with around 15, this is the most underrated stat in the game.

+1

i can't believe how much i miss the pickup radius, on my DH i have +10 and my barb had 0 and it was awful going around trying to pick everything up even missing stuff that i had walked over, walked over!

ended up going out of my way on the AH amd picking up a +5 and its a less aggravating time all round now.