Ranged: non-glass cannon = doable ?

[Bugg]

Hello,
I`ve finished A2 inf(i am WD), and it was hard. The invisible snakes were a major pain. Also everything that was Fast and that I could not slow / kite, I had to avoid.
I would like to progress to A3. BUT:

Is it possible / has anyone tried to build a Wiz / WD that has enough resists/life so that he can take a few hits? I don`t want to go full dps, and just die when something looks at me. Is this doable as ranged? What resists are needed for A3 ?

thx!

[Kaesebrezen]

It's impossible.

Barb/Monks have an additional 30% damage reduction, and they still die rather fast.

[Bugg]

so my options are, continue and die every time something hits me or re-roll ?

[Deleted]

so my options are, continue and die every time something hits me or re-roll ?

Its the same pretty much on every class unless ur uberlootgeardzomg

[Deleted]

so my options are, continue and die every time something hits me or re-roll ?

or play coop with a decent barbarian who can block a lot of the mobs off and make the game more enjoyable. with no more damage scaling there's no reason not to play coop to be honest.

[Bugg]

true, the only problem is that my two friends who played barb now are leveling 2 DH...

i`ve tried public games, but when we had a barb he just stood there and shout, and run away from mobs

maybe things will change once 1.03 hits...

[Soopa]

i`ve tried public games, but when we had a barb he just stood there and shout, and run away from mobs

maybe things will change once 1.03 hits...

To be honest, I don't blame them. 30% just doesn't feel like enough. I bought a ton of gear off the AH when I hit 60, focusing more on defense than offensive stats and I've been one-shotted many times. In Act 1.

[Thatwsntmilk]

i`ve tried public games, but when we had a barb he just stood there and shout, and run away from mobs

Running away and waiting until mobs die from pets or npcs is the only way to survive as melee (if you don't plan to buy act 4 items to clear act 2).

[Apellosine]

To be honest, I don't blame them. 30% just doesn't feel like enough. I bought a ton of gear off the AH when I hit 60, focusing more on defense than offensive stats and I've been one-shotted many times. In Act 1.

your gear must not be very good, when my Barb hit 60 I bought a bunch of defensive gear, 7k armour, 400-500 resist all, 38k HP and still maintained ~4k dps. Between this, the right build and playing right you should be ok to farm Act 1 at least, Act 2 is a bit different and getting up to 600-800 resists, 9k+ armour and some more dps is really required.

Frenzy (+Sidearm), Revenge (+30% proc rate), Furious Charge(+Heal), Ignore Pain (+7Secs), Leap (+300% armour), Armour Shout (+50% more resists).

The idea here is to always have dmg mitigation up when you are in combat, whether it is your leap buff or ignore pain. If both are down and you can't continue to stand still, then furious charge out and kite until they come back up. Otherwise you can stand still and spam revenge + frenzy, leap on cd, ignore pain on cd, chained back-to-back, keep up your shout. Or save Ignore pain for points where you might get frozen or blocked in with no leap/furious charge up.

Using this build i can stand in the middle of champion packs with fire chains, molten and plagued fairly well, arcane enchanted + desecration are still pains but leaping/charging out of them works well. champion packs of ranged mobs aren't worth the time you invest in killing them. Also don't kill non-yellow/non-blue mobs straight up that may be around you as they provide fodder for revenge heals and also furious charge heals while you go without doing much damage at all.

[Deleted]

I think it is perfectly obvious that ranged classes can be built around survivability, instead of just glass cannon. I haven't looked at witch doctors but I have seen plenty of people post their builds and gear, wizards and demon hunters, who have managed to make it work. The primary problem though, is that it is incredibly expensive. We're talking tens of millions worth of gear. If you thought melee classes have a tough time with it, it is even worse for ranged classes because we lack the 30% DR, so we need even better gear than they do, to reach a comfortable spot.

I've been looking into it quite a bit lately for my DH, as I am now progressing in act 3 and have a very descent amount of dps. What I want now is to retain that dps and build survival stats around it. So far though, I haven't found a single piece below 1 million mark and most, even minor survival upgrades, are as high as 4-5 million per piece. Hopefully 1.0.3 will bring some welcome changes to the situation.

But yes, to answer your question, I believe it's possible for all classes to not just run but beat inferno in survival gear.

[Bugg]

wow
thx for your input.

[Santti]

Very much doable. I'm doing it myself at the very moment as DH. I have some 57k health and 500-600 all resistance. Can farm act 2 with quite few deaths. Don't have all that amazing gear, either. Don't think Blizzard intented ranged to go all out on damage.

[Beace]

I have a survival focused wizard. Some stats:

44k hp
900-1000 resists
7.4k armor
15k dps

I killed Diablo Inferno a week ago, and can usually keep up 5 valor stacks in act 2-4 (not against Diablo though, he takes too long to kill, and I need to change build).

So yeah, it works.