I actually never paid attention to block nor focused on it at all. Not a big deal tbh. My end-goal for gearing is to dual-wield anyway.

I'd like to be the first (or first I've seen) to say that LOH is not 100% essential to progressing and/or solo'ing all of Inferno.

I'd also like to remind that when choosing between Mantra of healing (w/Time of Need) vs Evasion + Hard target, you should check your current stats to see what ends up better.
Currently with my Monk (5700 Armor, 1010 all resists) Evasion + hard target comes ahead in pure mitigation, not to mention the extra dodge.


I'd also recommend Earth spirit for some bosses, namely Inferno Diablo, for its ability take a hit and actually prevent quite a lot of damage. There are ways of fixign the AI to force Diablo to attack it and dramatically reducing the damage you take due to that.
I usually swap out Blinding flash for this, and also use 7ss for any fight where the immunity during duration is nice (once again - Inferno Diablo)

I find these to be absolutely essential with little room for adjustment
Fists of Thunder (choice of rune - I like quickening)
Breath of Heaven (choice of rune - though Blazing wrath heavily recommended)
Serenity (Peaceful repose)
Mantra (obvious)

I still prefer sweeping wind over ally, but I tried out Conviction for the first time since Hell... and it makes a huge difference. I had been using MoE + Hard Target because I was scared of dying, but I like Conviction way more. And it gets even better if you are in a party with a high DPS class.

Get in line. ;P I've been saying this throughout the thread. LoH is a nice to have, and is primarily a DPS and quality-of-life improvement. It isn't the be-all, end-all survivability stat that so many people have made it out to be.



I've played with both, and I find Ally to be more useful in late A3 and throughout A4 because it's really good at distracting and taking out ranged casters. I imagine that as gear gets better, this becomes less important and Sweeping Wind will win because of its inherently higher DPS than Fire Ally.

I think Buffjesus mentioned upthread that he runs with Ally and Sweeping Wind, sacrificing Blinding Flash instead. (though for me, the choice between BF and SW is a no-brainer)

This post was edited by irimi on Jun 15 2012 03:04pm

When you get to the point where DPS doesn't matter and surviving is easier (not to mention the future buff to repair costs) I'd much rather save on death than knock 30 seconds off a rare pack from using Sweeping wind vs Ally. I don't even want to think about Diablo without ally soaking up literally half of the incoming damage.
I find that my damage is more than sufficient (over 30k on a Monk is pretty respectable) without sweeping winds for bosses, but I couldn't imagine trying to farm rares / running mf packs without it.



This pretty much hits the nail on the head. I have 0 LOH and 0 Life/spirit spent (I do use transcendance though) and have no problems keeping myself up through sustained damage. 90% of the damage in the game is avoidable anyway.

/e stats http://i.imgur.com/fLBnb.png

This post was edited by Solamaroq on Jun 15 2012 03:00pm

Ally never seems to help me at all. Rather it hurts me because I don't have the AoE capabilities that I get with Sweeping Wind and I get swarmed easier with summons/illusions, etc.

That's true, though I usually find FoT+Thunderclap to be enough for crowd control and escape (knockback & tp). Illusions also generally mean a lot more LoH, so they don't bother me nearly as much as they used to, now that I have ~800 LoH. As I said above, I think once you have enough gear to deal with ranged attacks from Succubi, Subjugators, the meteor guys in A4, the spear guys, and the Occultists in A3, you'll be better off with Sweeping Wind just because of the AoE DPS. For now, I still find Fire Ally useful for soaking fireballs.

I just want to give another shoutout to Sweeping Wind Firestorm though - I think it's one of the more overlooked/underrated runes in the game, because everyone's so fixated on the omg-high-DPS of Bladestorm. Firestorm is especially great with Deadly Reach kiting when you don't yet have the gear to go head to head with some of the melee mobs in A3/A4. It also offers far better crowd control / AoE dps than Bladestorm does, if that's one of your primary reasons for using Sweeping Wind.

This post was edited by irimi on Jun 15 2012 03:07pm

Ally is for single target / boss fights. There are much better options for rare packs simply because ally is a derp and stands in every single AOE dropped by rares. It's absolutely gamebreaking on Diablo though.

think something wrong with my build O___O i cant get past anything after seigebreaker

The Tower of the Damned is kind of the brick wall of A3. (As is Tower of the Cursed and Core of Arreat.) I remember my first run through, I just ran the hell out of most of those zones whenever I encountered an elite pack that was too tough to handle (like elite Phasebeasts or Soul Rippers).

The area is meant to be a huge gear check before you can progress to A4. The thing is that if you can't farm the Tower/Core, you won't have the gear to even walk past the gates in A4.

This post was edited by irimi on Jun 15 2012 03:54pm