In any case, I've seen a lot of screenshots of people who are successfully farming A3/A4 as well as posts of people who are saying "Why can't I get there even though my gear looks as good as or better than yours?"

The common thread tends to be:

-- too much HP/AllRes, not enough armor (every successful build I've seen involves 6k armor minimum; too many fail builds have like 40k or 50k hp with no mitigation)
-- too much HP/AllRes, not enough DPS (every successful build I've seen involves a minimum of 14k dps unbuffed; too many fail builds have like 40k or 50k hp with like, 10k dps)
-- or, the complete opposite -- too much dex/DPS (like, 1600 dex WTF?), but no resists and no armor

So I'd say for Act 2, shoot for 25-30k HP, 5.5-6k armor, 500-600 res, and then focus on improving your DPS. And for the love of god, use a skill build that's tailored for A2 and not for A1 or A3/A4.

The thing with AllRes is that it's nice to have for increasing your margin of error (like dodging those mages in the ZK tombs), but lack of it can be somewhat overcome with skill (in A3, with the fallen shaman and birds, you very quickly learn to dance/dodge fireballs even while surrounded by melee). But you simply cannot overcome the physical damage you take for being in melee range or the fact that you don't do enough damage to take out elite packs 1 mob at a time before you either die from an unlucky hit or from the enrage timer. That's where the gear check portion of the Acts come into play -- if you can't take a hit from mobs that aren't supposed to one-shot you (but under reasonable circumstances are supposed to hit you), you are either undergeared or improperly geared. But if you're getting hit by stuff you can and should avoid (wasps, fireballs, red and green stuff on the ground), then that's just a matter of skill.

This post was edited by irimi on Jun 7 2012 12:35pm

This. So much this.

So this for only act 2, but not the other acts?

"So I'd say for Act 2, shoot for 25-30k HP, 5.5-6k armor, 500-600 res, and then focus on improving your DPS. And for the love of god, use a skill build that's tailored for A2 and not for A1 or A3/A4."

Was gonna use this as my standard ^^

Yeah. The requirements for all those things are going to naturally go up for the higher acts - with resists and HP being the most noticeable increase in requirements.

I think a lot of people see just those stats for people who are clearing A3/A4 (LoH, HP, Resists -- generally in that order of prioritization) and think that that's all they need. But they completely ignore the fact that you have to have those things *on top of* the DPS and mitigation that they have... and that, in fact, those ignored stats are in some ways more important because they tend to scale more slowly as you progress through the acts, and are thus closer to the baseline that you need to get through where you are *now*.

This post was edited by irimi on Jun 7 2012 12:49pm

Yay i more than meet all those reqs. fact of the matter everything in Act2 hits hard. Even white mobs... yay i can kill white mobs easily enough.
Elites are can kill with effort, but they hit so hard even with all those stats... like he said, it comes down to skill too. Sadly, as a melee class we have to kite just as much as ranged, but WE honestly have to be a lot more skilled at it since we have to also get into melee range to KILL things. It is a fine line to dance upon, and certain elite pack combinations i just end up skipping. I have over 5k armor prebuffed, and nearly 8k after buffs... and still get hit like a mac truck, so its all relative.

This post was edited by Batou079 on Jun 7 2012 12:56pm

Try FoT with Thunderclap sometime. My strategy for getting through A2 when I was less geared (and in some ways, it's still my strategy now for the harder elite/champ packs when farming A2) was to maximize my DPS with FoT+Thunderclap whenever my cooldowns were up, and then kite until the cooldowns came back up. For the easier affixes, FoT+Thunderclap also meant that I could just DPS/LoH through the damage, even with just 200-300 LoH. The teleport in Thunderclap is *huge* as a gap closer when dealing with mobs that you generally want to be away from. They make wasps trivial, and allow you to close in on those spinning blade guys immediately after a blind.

And yes, skipping/resetting/parking harder elite packs is part of the progression game too. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

And for folks who are overgeared with mitigation but not so much on DPS, you can always switch to Mantra of Conviction to compensate. Or if your gear is so shitty that you can't survive any hits at all even with Mantra of Evasion up, you might as well use Conviction to maximize the DPS you have while your ~8-second Flash+Serenity combo is up. That's what I did for awhile (though admittedly not for very long cause I still died a lot from fail kiting).

This post was edited by irimi on Jun 7 2012 01:06pm

Can anybody tell me how I should improve myself? I am having a lot of trouble in act 2 inferno



I know I need better res, DPS, and life steal but I just dont have the gold to improve >_<

Is there a better set of skills that work for A2?

I did read above me, just thought I would ask for more opinions

This post was edited by AnotherDeadHero on Jun 7 2012 01:28pm

What should I look for in a shield? I see people using Storm shield, but that cost alot... I want something that works.

You kind of answered it yourself. You need more resistance. Keep farming act 1 till you get either a few useful items you can use, or a few items you can barter/sell.

dual with 1k loh on each > shield

RES RES RES at first

dmg is fine but ur res sucks balls

use shield if u cant afford 2 amazing weapons

aim for more loh