Can you top this?

[celanian]

I ran into the nastiest monster pack ever last night. Act 3 Phase Beasts with Fast, Horde, Extra Health, and Reflect Damage. Needless to say after dying in about .000001 seconds, I restarted.

What was the nastiest combo that you've run into?

[Elly]

I'm still in NM so I've that joy to look forward too. The first day I played I remember saying to flux how much I liked Vortex, it was so cool that they dragged you to them....couple months later I'm not such a big a fan of it.

[Tilitoon]

Yea usually Vortex coupled with any Molten / Arcane is deadly. Add Waller or Jailer to that and they are extremely difficult for ranged classes.

But recently the deadliest combo I've seen was Fast / Knockback / Fire-Chain on small spiders. Even with my DH it was nearly impossible to move out of the way, they quickly surrounded me and killed me with the fire chains. I asked for a friend to help me (he has played a lot more than I did) and when he saw them he died within 2 seconds and loled, it was impossible.

[Such Violent Storms]

Fast/Fire Chains/Waller/Arcane Enchanted anything. The Rare waller forms 3 walls around you, effectively imprisoning you. Fire Chains AI automatically tries to surround you, you can't kite with walls everywhere and the fact they are fast makes it even mroe impossible. Arcane Lasers are everywhere, you often find yourself stuck behind a wall and eating a laser to your death. Having to kite around walls and lasers with fast enemies chasing you is literally impossible. I even switched to tanky gear, running 1k LoH and high resistances, still hopeless.

[Flux]

Really anything with Fast and Waller is doom for a DH, especially once you're in Inferno. Other mods can make it worse, but when any 2 or 3 hits will kill you, and the monsters are faster than you can can block your path, it's just hopeless.

I've tried a lot of varied builds on my DH in Hell and Inferno, and while I'm self found so way down on the gear power rating, I really don't see how a Hardcore DH could be viable in Inferno, playing solo. Without good damage mitigation, no way to escape wallers, and bosses ignoring most stuns and slow effects, it does not seem doable against a good % of potential boss mod combos, and while you can prosper against maybe 75% of random bosses, and another 15 or 20% are very dangerous but you can survive with some skill and luck and no mistakes, there's that 5% that are just impossible.

I mentioned this on the last podcast, but a recent game in Inferno, in Queen Araenae's Caverns, I got fast, waller, mortar, invul minions spiders. And there was absolutely no chance for survival. I saw them and instantly ran, smoke screen and preparation and more smoke screen, dropped some caltrops, with fast run boots... and after about 12s I was out of discipline and they caught up to me (me being invisible and caltrops didn't slow them down at all) and killed me in two hits. And there was nothing I could have done any differently to surrive, and I don't know of any skill or equipment improvements that would have let me survive, absent like a 2m damage Ball Lightning, that could have floated through the spiders and killed the boss.. But how could I have survived long enough to shoot that, in those narrow cave levels, since with any proximity I was going to be boxed by waller, and killed by mortars or spider hits in .5 seconds?

I join many players in finding no win scenarios not a lot of fun in video games.

Maybe that's just how Blizzard designed the game, and as the game's real glass cannon the DH isn't meant to have the ability to survive some encounters, but I'd like some skill/rune options to enhance survivability. I guess the 3s of SS might have come in handy pre-nerf, and that was probably overpowered and cheesy as it allowed invulnerabilty, but hotfixing it away and providing nothing in return seems a stupid fix.

Imagine a skill that worked something like Diamond Skin? Maybe a rune effect in Vault that would turn it into a leap that could get over Waller? Some kind of skill (requires xbow/shield equipped?) that would enable damage mitigation to survive more than 2 or 3 hits? Obviously you'd be trading off DPS for survivability, but that's the whole point; to give players some other options. And yes, obviously manual stats or some similar system would help; imagine a DH with 3000 vit instead of 1000?

[lanceuppercut]

^^ vault going over walls, I'd take it!!

Its a shame blizz nerfed EF firing thrugh waller walls, the DH is entirely screwed if vortex then walled in. Come n blizz what are our options, spam SS and pray the wall comes down before you run out of disc? Gtfo!

[Coolhwip]

^^ Absolutely untrue, you just gotta learn how to effectively use the tools your class has been given.

My DH tank can stand in the middle of 2 packs with a combination of desecrate/plague/molten/arcane/lightning/fast/reflect affixes while enraged. I regularly take noobs in pub games all the way from act 3 to killing Diablo, tanking everything for them. GimmickClass tanks better than most barbarians

[Tilitoon]

^^ Absolutely untrue, you just gotta learn how to effectively use the tools your class has been given.

My DH tank can stand in the middle of 2 packs with a combination of desecrate/plague/molten/arcane/lightning/fast/reflect affixes while enraged. I regularly take noobs in pub games all the way from act 3 to killing Diablo, tanking everything for them. GimmickClass tanks better than most barbarians

Can you make a video please, showing how you do it, and also your gear, which I hope you didn't spend 10 million golds on it ?

Question : Why didn't they make the walls breakable ?

I join Flux in the group of people that do not enjoy the "impossible to kill" bosses. Actually, I wouldn't have mind if they would have intelligently designed the rare spawns instead of making it completely random. For example, in the example Flux mentioned, the game knew the HP of his character, it knew it couldn't withstand 3 hits of those mobs, why didn't they change the amount of damage they do ? Why didn't they reduce a little bit the speed of those minions ? They could lower the drop rates a little when they downgrade the difficulty of the mobs, but at least all of them would be killable. This system would also scale very well, for example the better gear you wear, the rare mobs would slightly get tougher and give better loot. They already tweak the monsters on certain levels for example, they don't move directly to the player and attack at the exact time they reach the player. They explained this on a Blizzcon panel, they have already learned that this was not fun, they could have gone a bit further and dynamically tweak the rare / champions depending on the strength of the players. Especially since they included NV. If I encounter a pack that is impossible to kill with my current skillset I can't change them because I'll lose my NV, I have no other choices than to skip them, honestly it's not fun at all when it happens.

[Virility]

Really anything with Fast and Waller is doom for a DH, especially once you're in Inferno. Other mods can make it worse, but when any 2 or 3 hits will kill you, and the monsters are faster than you can can block your path, it's just hopeless.

I've tried a lot of varied builds on my DH in Hell and Inferno, and while I'm self found so way down on the gear power rating, I really don't see how a Hardcore DH could be viable in Inferno, playing solo. Without good damage mitigation, no way to escape wallers, and bosses ignoring most stuns and slow effects, it does not seem doable against a good % of potential boss mod combos, and while you can prosper against maybe 75% of random bosses, and another 15 or 20% are very dangerous but you can survive with some skill and luck and no mistakes, there's that 5% that are just impossible.

I mentioned this on the last podcast, but a recent game in Inferno, in Queen Araenae's Caverns, I got fast, waller, mortar, invul minions spiders. And there was absolutely no chance for survival. I saw them and instantly ran, smoke screen and preparation and more smoke screen, dropped some caltrops, with fast run boots... and after about 12s I was out of discipline and they caught up to me (me being invisible and caltrops didn't slow them down at all) and killed me in two hits. And there was nothing I could have done any differently to surrive, and I don't know of any skill or equipment improvements that would have let me survive, absent like a 2m damage Ball Lightning, that could have floated through the spiders and killed the boss.. But how could I have survived long enough to shoot that, in those narrow cave levels, since with any proximity I was going to be boxed by waller, and killed by mortars or spider hits in .5 seconds?

I join many players in finding no win scenarios not a lot of fun in video games.

Maybe that's just how Blizzard designed the game, and as the game's real glass cannon the DH isn't meant to have the ability to survive some encounters, but I'd like some skill/rune options to enhance survivability. I guess the 3s of SS might have come in handy pre-nerf, and that was probably overpowered and cheesy as it allowed invulnerabilty, but hotfixing it away and providing nothing in return seems a stupid fix.

Imagine a skill that worked something like Diamond Skin? Maybe a rune effect in Vault that would turn it into a leap that could get over Waller? Some kind of skill (requires xbow/shield equipped?) that would enable damage mitigation to survive more than 2 or 3 hits? Obviously you'd be trading off DPS for survivability, but that's the whole point; to give players some other options. And yes, obviously manual stats or some similar system would help; imagine a DH with 3000 vit instead of 1000?

It is just this frustration that had me nearly quitting the game. I did not feel I had a chance against many of these elite pack modifiers. Enter EquiLa's post regarding real tanking, not the 2 handed-hit shadow form for life leech-4 piece Natalya's tanking. Take a look. It works.

I use to dread elite packs in A2, now I hunt them and win. I would avoid closed areas because I could not kite, now choke points are my friend-line them up, keep traps spammed, grenades etc. it is amazing. I am not using a 4 set bonus, there is no exploit of a bugged skill-unless you consider a Dh killing elite packs with 25k dps and living a bug. If the elite pack has the shielding mod or invul mod, I look for white mobs to add in to leech off of while I repositon to go after the unshielded, vulnerable guy. It took me a while to lean to repositon out from molten, desecators, I can handle a couple of arcane sentry's, not 6 or 8, but 2 or 3 I can handle. I like being walled in with the elite on top of me. I am now winning way more that I use to. I still die but the difference is that I know I can go back and kill the elite pack, I did not have that feeling as a far ranged fighter after IAS was reduced, now I fight short range.

I am having fun. I just hope there are no upcoming "improvements/buffs" to spoil it.

[butchie]

Invulnerable minions + Fast + Extra Health + Reflect phase beast, that was probably the worst pack i ever ran into...