Inferno

[GoToadGo]

how many anti-range elite abilities are there?

- Fast is rough(impossible if the mob is fast naturally as they simply swarm you, even with snares and run speed increases).
- Mortar is rough.
- Teleporter is rough.
- Invulnerable minions is basically impossible for a wizard, as all that happens is the invulnerable mobs run IN FRONT of the champion making him impossible to hit.

That's pretty much all I can think of. I had a horrible Butcher run earlier where every pack had fast. Sad times

[Bronze_D]

generally though unless you need to grab a neph stack, if the mix is bad we'll just lead them to one section of the map that are safe and either lose them off there or suicide, either way as long as the pack is out of the way, we'll just continue onwards if it's not possible to burst them one by one.

for invul minions though, you have 2 options as ranged...

1. is to use CC on them, stun, fear, or anything you have because they are only invulnerable to damage and not immune to the CC effect.
2. use attack that are penetrating, celestial orb, piercing orb, etc and what not (not penetrating by chance but naturally penetrating attack that will always penetrate, these attack simply coast through and will not be stopped by the invul minion) or wide area AoE blast.

incidentally, mortar sounds like an anti ranged mechanic but in practice since the mobs ALL can mortar you the end result is that you are going to get smashed either as a melee or ranged if u can't dodge it, for ranged dodging it is straightforward (though not exactly always feasible depending on the map), for melee however what typically happens is that the minions who are spaced apart from each other are fully capable of mortaring you regardless of which minion you target or the boss itself.

they effectively cover each other with overlapping field of fire and if you have to engage them in melee range, the only thing that can't hit you with the mortar is the one you engage directly, while his minion or buddies rain shell on top of your head.

[GoToadGo]

You sure about them not being immune to the CC? As whenever I get shielded mobs they seem to keep running at their regular speed no matter what I throw at them. Switching skills to piercing orb will reset your stacks too, which isn't ideal. Generally if I get a pack with it I'll avoid them like the plague.

[Bronze_D]

i use attack that pierce all the time, as in it's part of my standard build for farming inferno with the wizard because it's functionally very good to have a penetrating attack... NO ONE change build mid run naturally.

and invulnerable minion affected by CC is true (full CC not snares), you can test it yourself using something that is spammable.

the problem is that in inferno all of the enemies have gigantic CC resistance, but they are not immune... they can be feared, stunned, or hell they can be even hexed and turned to chicken, etc..., you just can't damage them, but the CC duration will be very short depending on what type of CC.

in the case of snares, the duration seems to be incredibly short that we can't really see any perceivable slowdown on their speed, but on the rest of the CC form (not snares) the effect is obvious when it triggers.

[aetherfox]

Lol, anyone who says Mortar is an "anti-ranged" ability has obviously never played a melee character. As a Ranged it is so much easier to dodge because you fire and move when you see the shells start firing.

In melee, you have to stand still to hit the mob, and thus eat full mortar attacks from the other 3 elites if you want to DPS. You could do something incredibly retarded like run in, hit the mob once, and run out again, but you don't have anywhere near as much freedom of movement to dodge the mortar attacks, and you lose all your frenzy stacks.

The majority of abilities that Ranged players claim is "anti ranged" affect melee a lot worse. Similar story for Invulnerable: if you think Wizards have it tough, you haven't seen how a Barb has to deal with it. Mob collision can make it impossible to even reach the Elite you need to kill, and you're gettting hit / feared / stunned / knockback by a crowd of minions. The only way is to cheese it with WoTB+EQ but that comes with its own attendant problems by using 1/3 of your skill slots on a long cooldown.

[Novocaine]

If you're in melee range a mob with mortar it will never hit you.

[aetherfox]

If you're in melee range a mob with mortar it will never hit you.

His 3 friends will. And you have no way to avoid it unless you want to stop doing damage.

For ranged, you can see the shells coming, move, keep shooting.

[Bronze_D]

pretty much, since all elites comes in pack of at least 3, you hit one with melee range, his 2 other buddy lob the mortar straight to your face because the minimum range for the mortar is quite short, you either are right up to their face and they miss or take one step back and get clipped by the mortar and you can't exactly be up to their face for all of them all the time, not even with the vortex stomp.

it's possible to tank them though with massive armor and resist and rotating DR skills up to Act2 at least.

Act3 is where the number starts to get pretty ridiculous and one direct hit salvo without DR move will likely spell the end of you even with gears with the maximum roll for defensive stat.

which is why super sprint barbarians are preferable now, they bypass the weakness of any other melee build that requires them to stop moving to apply damage that spells death against these things.

[Yurtles]

Azmodan is a damn joke compared to Belial, took me 2 tries whereas Belial was more like 5 hours. Doesn't seem right.

[GoToadGo]

Azmodan is a damn joke compared to Belial, took me 2 tries whereas Belial was more like 5 hours. Doesn't seem right.

Belial is REALLY latency dependent whereas Azmodan isn't. Act 2 is just horrible all around really.

[skitzor]

just went through act 2 as a monk with a barb friend. had to skip around 4 elite mobs throughout the whole act, and smashed through belial on our first try.

[Marius]

Azmodan is a damn joke compared to Belial, took me 2 tries whereas Belial was more like 5 hours. Doesn't seem right.

Belial is REALLY latency dependent whereas Azmodan isn't. Act 2 is just horrible all around really.

Even at 220-250 latency I've got the achievements for not getting hit by him.

It's a jump puzzle. As long as you practice, he's very predictable with a set pattern.

I can't really see why he'd be so more difficult on inferno, since his attack pattern doesn't change. The bigger issue is his phase 2, which is the most dangerous phase, but that's more or less a DPS question.

[RaTTuS007]

Pretty much because getting hit by anything on him pretty much 1 shots you, im guessing, i havnt taken a hit from him so i can't really tell haha.

[revengous]

I learnt quickly how to dodge his poison explosion aoe attack, im usually the only person out of 4 still alive by the end of it

[aetherfox]

An update here - I am finally able to kill Siegebreaker (Act 3) on my Barbarian. The gap from Act 2 to Act 3 was even bigger than Act 1 to Act 2... or maybe it was just more expensive and thus slower to bridge the gear gap.

I had to trade DPS to HP as realistically items with both great dps and defense were too expensive (instead of a 120 STR / 120 VIT armor I would end up having to buy a 80 STR / 160 VIT piece)

I finished Act 2 with about 650 Resist All, 40,000 Hit Points. To get to the point where I can comfortably do a 5NV Stack Siegebreaker run, I needed 850 Resist All and 80,000 Hit Points, which took a significant amount of time. The Siegebreaker fight itself was really easy so I put on some DPS gear for him dropping my HP down to 60,000.

I am not sure about how much more gear I would need to finish Act 3... I'm assuming 100,000 hit points and 900 Resist All.