f13.net

So, having run into a couple of fun combos in nightmare so far on Champions / Elite packs, I was wondering what joys I should expect when eventually reaching Hell and possibly Inferno, and to that end I wanted to ask if anyone knows a good resource that might list all the known Affixes out there.

Thought maybe we could also use this thread for tips and tricks for dealing with that pesky group with the "rip your face off" set of 3 or 4 affixes that makes you shudder just thinking about them.

Molten Arcane Jailer

Might as well kiss your ass goodbye. <shudder>

Instead of trying to get completely out of the way of arcane lasers I like to try and juke, dodge and limbo them. This often ends poorly.

+Void

On Nightmare, not having any problems--until I hit some of those wasps in the desert that were firechain freezers. Plus they were sending their usual miniswarms of death. That took me about twenty minutes and it was a close shave a bunch of times.

'Invulnerable Minions' plus anything is a headache. Vortex I've noticed you can get around (if you're kiting) by hanging around a corner or trying to get some kind of tiny obstacle that doesn't break LoS and the vortex won't pull you all the way in, you'll get stuck on the obstacle. Mortar, depending on the mob either you have to dodge them like a pro if the mob hits too hard or just go up into their face because the mortars have a minimum range. For kiting molten/plagued/electrified are all my best friends because they don't do anything outside melee. Teleporter mobs you can dodge if you can anticipate when they'll teleport, same thing with Jailer, the immobilize duration is pretty short. Waller mobs generally are easy, half the time their walls impede their own progress, very rarely do they manage to throw one up that traps you inside with them. The aboslute worst packs as a kiting mofo are the mobs that are naturally fast with a teleport or speed affix. Those I just say.. F this and skip past them.

Horde, Nightmarish, Frozen, Fast

And they are ranged creeps. Permadisable.

I'm having real trouble in Hell with Shielding.   Mainly just because it makes things very hard to actually kill while kiting, which means I have to be a little riskier and move in to shoot while the shields are down, which leaves me open to all sorts of pain.  Not really sure yet what the best way to deal with this is yet.   

Shielding just means it takes longer to kill as long as your kiting is working indefinitely. Having a circular path to follow is very handy though not always available. Sophismata; the Enchantress has a ranged deflect ability, although it has a short duration it still helps.

Invulnerable Minions is easily the worst for me.  Other than that it's more about the base mob type.  Things that summon, move really fast, burrow, or charge all suck ass.

Vampiric Shielding Extra Health.

Not dangerous... just impossible to kill. Spent 20 minutes with one the other day, it couldn't kill me, I couldn't kill it. It was like watching 2 vanilla WoW paladins duelling. Gave up and ran away in the end.

I had a similar combo on some beasts in Act1 the other day and was going to post it.   After finally escaping, I just avoided that area.

I had two groups together one was motar and that stupid laser spinning wall of death thing and the other was the one that sucked you in to them and some kind of PBAOE. You must stand close to mobs to kill them but if you do you die lol. I can see some areas of just having to restart if you get some really bad combo of abilities on an elite pack.

Vortex Arcane Shielding Moarter Jailors!

On the flip side, sometimes you get HORDE, ILLUSIONIST, EXTRA HEALTH, HEALTH LINK.  :awesome_for_real:

Molten, Extra fast, waller was hideous in Hell Act 1... I need better gear.

Today I met Vortex Arcane, which was amusingly painful. Dodge, dodge, sluuuurp dead.

Molten Vortex Bladewraiths were fun as a monk :(

We had some Fast Fire Chains imps tonight - imps are already inherently fast, so when they get Fast they are REALLY fast, and it was pretty entertaining just getting clotheslined over and over by the fire chains since imps also tend to run around like spazzes in general.

Just ran into some Molten Vampiric Dervishes in Act II NM that I couldn't kill on my level 40 Monk. Had to bring in my level 38 DH to kill them :awesome_for_real: :oh_i_see:

The banes of my kiting strategy..

Extra Health, Reflects Damage
Jailor, Mortar

Just ran into a pack of <Molten Vampiric Fast> Scavengers just across the bridge after the Blacksmith event in Act 1 Hell, literally couldnt do a thing to them before they ripped the entire party to pieces.  Not to mention that Scavengers are already pretty fast by themselves....

Invincible minions molten mortar jailer.........fuck you blizzard...fuck you.

Any and all arcane turrets are fucking stupid - couple that with waller and molten or even immune...

Jesus wept.

I am certain it's going to be invulnerable minions that makes me rage quit this game.

This times a thousand.

Wizard, level 51ish, just getting into Hell diff.

Mortar - die horribly.   :oh_i_see:

Pretty much everything - Blizzard Blizzard Blizzard Poison Hydra while bravely running away.  Truly compelling gameplay, that.

Invulnerable minions, jailer, plauged, arcane.

Bend the fuck over if you're melee.

I actually squeaked one out today on this very set up. After it was done, Lyndon remarks, "That how we do it in Kingsport!" To which I replied, 'Yeah, running around pissing our pants and crying like a little girl while we try not to melee.' Thank god for Call of the Ancients and Seismic Slam.

Molten, Waller, Jail, Arcane.

Die, rinse repeat. give up.

Also anyone know what Avenger does?

Enrage timers in Diablo make me hate Blizzard.

Avenger makes each one tougher as the other ones die.

Cheers Tasty,

Why enrage timers?! It's so wow, people should be allowed to play retarded and have 100k hp and take an hour to kill Champion packs if they want to.

Shielding and Invulnerable minons are massive cock stabs as it is, why the enrage timers!?

Some Vampiric mobs aren't doable for melee classes anyway why make it a guarantee mob skip?

/rant

If the best way to kill a monster and get loot was to hit yourself in the head, players would do it.  You have to stop us from torturing ourselves, or we'll do it.  Haven't people learned that by now?

Just ran into some Mortar Vortex spider thingies (fast by default) in Act II NM that I couldn't kill on my DH cause it was in the very tight flooded caves and got pinned by the exit. Had to bring in my Monk to kill them :oh_i_see: :awesome_for_real:

Not hard, but hilarious: ran into illusionary dervishes in a very small room today. Amusing as hell to watch while running the other way.

Evil: Invuln Minions + Jailer + Mortar on a melee heavy mob. Or molten/fast/shielding on burrowers. Shielding is a neat idea, but lasts entirely too long for being immune to control effects as well. But Invuln Minions is my leading cause of death. Well, #2 behind Treasure Goblins.

I don't even bother hitting goblins anymore in Hell. No way can I get them down quick enough before they port out with 1/8 hp...which then leaves me with an angry mob of everything in the zone. It hurts me, but I ignore them now.  :why_so_serious:

Just ran into my new favourite combination on Nightmare Difficulty on my Wizard:  Arcane Enchanted Mortar Mele Mobs.  I can only Imagine the possible pain on Hell if you got Arcane Enchanted Mortar Jailor or Arcane Enchanted Mortar Vortex on a naturally fast mele critter.   Adding another for inferno just makes me die a little inside.

Never.

If you watch your AOEs or just pull the mobs around them backwards the goblins will just sit there and ignore you.  They don't aggro like normal monsters so you can clear an area THEN deal with them.  I thought everyone knew that.

My companion likes to aggro them, which means I get to tear off after them while ignoring everyone else. :P

I don't have the patience to clear the whole zone before I play chase the chicken. If the goblin is at the end of a hall or in a smaller space... sure, I'll have a go, but they are normally for me, found near a pack of mobs and like Sjofn says, Lyndon likes to play duck hunt with anything in range.

I always chase. Always always. It helps that my pets often clog them up so they can't run though.

Nightmare is fairly easy overall but WOW are those tongue lashing guys in the keep areas in Act 3 are nasty when they've got obnoxious properties.

Jailer Heralds of Pestilence.

That is all. ><

I am pretty sure those are my least favorite monsters in the game WITHOUT affixes.

I used to feel like I was kiting, in fact I will just go with that vs say running my ass off to not get bombf*cked and pray my hydra / blizzard combos will take them out over time.  Its kind of sad that my winning strategy is basically keep the mob completely off my screen if I want to win. 

After Nightmare I started to feel this pretty seriously on my barbarian... I've lost that loving feeling for D3 as a result. 

You guys are just not grinding the earlier acts / difficulty levels enough. :why_so_serious:

I'm in Act 3 Hell and using a weapon that dropped for me. The only reason I'm not using all drops is I wanted to test a very specific thing where I stacked thorns up to a crazy level so I hit the AH for that. I have gotten plenty of usable drops if I was going for a less silly build though - I honestly am not seeing the drop upgrade problem at all post-Normal (and pre-Inferno). I'm also not feeling the need to kite much except for particular crazy affix combos - that could just be a pet class thing though.

There are sample size issues on both sides of the argument, of course.

Hit my first enrage timers last night.

Mortar Vampiric Arcane Plagued in Wortham, the three that spawn right before you go into the church - where you have to kill them in order to advance the quest line  :oh_i_see:  After running around the loop long enough in the village they finally went down.  I love how the enrage just kills you remotely with a damage over time effect.  Venom Hydra, 2kdps follower, 20k personal dps and one full item durability of deaths.

Second enrage was Fast Mortar Vampiric Fire Chain skeletons, hit the enrage while trying to get them far enough off the spawnpoint so they wouldn't agro anymore.  Just avoided them henceforth, attempts to deal damage were comical.

Enrage timers on the champ packs is pretty WTF, I have to say. I can see it on bosses, I guess, but random out in the game world stuff?

I will say that after doing Act 1 stuff up to the Butcher in Inferno, the fact they have shifted basically all the difficulty to the trash packs is mind-bogglingly stupid.

Bosses need a buff, the elite packs need a nerf. I know part of what they wanted from the game was to keep people from farming bosses, but it really throws a monkey wrench into the spokes when I'm running away from a glowing pack of Bees, but I'm kicking the Skeleton Kings ass by standing there.

Oh and I can't beat the Butcher because I'm tanked up, but he has an enrage timer.  :oh_i_see:

Enrage timers in D3 are just fucking retarded. I don't mind them hugely in WoW, but in Diablo 3? Fuck that.

I seriously doubt I am going to do inferno at all. It sounds aggressively unfun.

I don't plan on it until they retune it down to something reasonable.  Hell is stretching it for me with some of the combinations I've ran into.  My WD pet build was rendered useless before I even got to Leoric.

I've died so many times in Inferno with my DH buddy it's lost all meaning. We'll simply try to pull tougher groups back to spawn points so we can zerg from death spam.

It's not aggressively UNFUN, but most of the fun comes from the comedy of working with someone else on vent and going, "OH FOR FUCKS SAKE INVULNERABLE MINIONS, COME ON. NOPE, NOPE, NOPE I'M DONE. THAT'S IT. FUCKING DONE."

Yeah my plan is to treat Hell Diablo as basically 'game done!' Which honestly is farther than I ever got in D2 anyway. Inferno is obviously not for everybody, but I don't think it needs to be.

I just view starting a new game to get away from annoying champion packs as the culmination of my superior kiting technique.

Ha!



Yes, I was so amused by your post, I needed to post just that in response.

I have to agree with Paelos, the game is stupid and retarded in many ways in Inferno, but playing with your friends just washes away a lot of the pain when you laugh at them dying and then they lure more Elites as revenge.

Actually I realise now Diablo3 has a lot more with Eve than D2... Crazy player market, mathdps, fuckton of grinding and bad network issues...  :awesome_for_real:  :ye_gods:

Inferno seems entirely unfun. I may try and beat act 1 for laughs.. but beyond that Act 3 Hell seems like the top level of fun for me (dislike act 4, thematically)

Calapine can attest that I use smoke screen to occasionally say Nope to elite packs. I did find that you can bug out invuln minions by kiting the boss far enough from his pals then killing him. You wind up with random perma invuln minions scattered around the map who didn't die with their friends <3

Well, I just discovered a new Affix I had never seen before: Missile Suppressing

Makes me glad i was on my monk, and not my DH.

Missile Suppression is pretty hilarious with something like Ball Lightning or Nether Tentacles.  The projectiles basically stand still in the field and you bait the mob to move into the 7-8 that stack up.

I ran into that on my DH. I believe my reaction was: "WHAT?!"

Inferno Act I isn't horrible. Act II is.

It doesn't help that gear for Inferno costs a ridiculous amount of gold per item. One thing would cost magnitudes of hours of farming in comparison to upgrading in Hell. I don't understand how there can be so many pages of Inferno gear for sale at ridiculously high prices. I've completed Act I Inferno on monk a couple of times, but stuck on the Spider Queen on WD. I need better gear for each but frankly I'm waiting for changes - either the prices to drop on gear or a change in horrible elite packs.

I have found a couple of nice things in Inferno, but for sale, not for use. Nothing for 60.

It's actually a free kill affix, like Illusionist. Most Wizard abilities aren't impacted, and the DH's two primary attacks (ball lightning and nether tentacles) get slowed down and thus cause extra hits.

Just started Hell and the first cellar I go into in ACT I has a bubba the redneck zombie unique in it with 3 immune to damage minions.  Not sure how a squishy wiz is supposed to kill that shit in one of the smallest rooms in the game.  I suppose eventually my DPS will be high enough to disintigrate his ass before I run out of health and diamond skin.  Maybe it is time to ditch the magic find gear.  I was thinking of stacking attack speed and damage.

Edit: Moved inferno talk to the inferno thread. Apparently there is one.

I've hit a few enrage timers so far but they aren't quite "game over" states I expected them to be. Elite pack enrages seem manageable if you've taken out some of the pack before they enrage. If you die, at least the dead ones stay dead. Boss enrages (I've only seen butchers) are more serious, but if a boss has lived that long you're doing something wrong. Typically with my group this meant that dps had been dead for most of the fight, and we were unable to rez them. That said, it's also not an instant wipe.

Last night I had (in Hell obviously):

Shielding-desecrator-jailer on a pack of heralds of pestilence.

/wrists

Molten Immune Fast Knockback Champions on Act II Inferno pretty much were close to impossible with my WD. Took me 30 minutes.

About 95% of the time when I get Invulnerable Minions I park them in some out-of-the-way spot and move on.  Not worth it.

I skip a lot more champion packs in Inferno now, there are just some things that hit too hard or kite my medium gear monk that make it not worth it.

I've read that Whimseyshire Inferno is the place to go to farm so my goal is to get to Act 3 to get the new recipe and tear up Ponys and Teddies for my phat lewts.  :drillf:

I got a Unique Mob Tremor out in the fields part of Act 3, which had Invulnerable Minions.  Thing wrecked my monk like 4 times before I managed to get it somewhere out of the way and avoid it from then on.  Worst part was when my freaking companion aggroed the thing from off the screen and pulled it back onto me once while I was trying to get past where I had left it the first time.

My new favorite from last night... In Hell, out getting Kuell's blood. I come across one of those nice gold elite golems that climbs up from the ground along with the little mini-me minions. I counted 8 mini mes...all invulnerable. And the gold mob, plagued, molten, invulnerable minions. His MO was to surround me with his minions so I couldn't move, drop his green pool of fuck this along with the molten shit, and then proceed to pound on me. Dead in less than 20 seconds.

But seriously, 8 invulnerable minions? Fuck right off with that.

I had the same but on a Naga (the ones that vanish once you get too far away and are quick as fuck).

During my stay in Hell I had:

teleporting mob (one of the things at the End of Act 3), plagued, molten, invulnerable minions
naturally fast mob with invisibility (Nagas), mortar, [molten, plagued, arcane enchanted], invulnerable minions (all three combinations)

and my all time favorite

naturally fast, naturally hard-hitting mob, shielding, mortar, invulnerable minions. That I had to avoid.

In my personal experience the random number generator in my games has a fondness for "fuck you  DH" affixes and especially "invulnerable minions"

I'm looking forward to Inferno, when they can stick another affix to already ridiculously hard combos.

Not only do they stick another affix on it, they add another so you now have 4 elites in a pack.

IIRC the recipie only shows up after you beat either Diablo or the guy before him who drops the plans, so you basically have to finish act four.  I might be wrong.

Or find someone with an act4 waypoint for farming ghosts (people advertise selling the waypoint for like 10-25k on the official trade forum) and you can buy the pattern right away

Got up to Inferno Diablo last night and bought the pattern then.  Haven't killed him yet.  Not sure exactly when it appeared there but it's pretty late in the act.

The pattern becomes available as soon as you get the quest to kill Diablo.