Farming Inferno Post Patch 1.0.3

So as most of you know patch 1.0.3 hit today, and we were given the attack speed nerf, various class nerfs, a huge boss buff, and a smoothing of the difficulty through acts 2 through 4. If you've been following my blog you know that I am a Witch Doctor. Well, I'm actually a Demon Hunter, and I was farming Act 3 inferno the day I hit level 60.

This is after a few hours of farming. We started at the sub-quest in Act 3 called The Second Heart, and we would progress through the Tower of the Damned, kill Cydaea, and then kill Azmodan. This was very profitable before 1.0.3 came out. I did one of these runs solo tonight, and I found some of the various elite packs to be pretty easy still, and with a 5 stack of NV I was getting 1-3 rares per pack. When I killed Cydaea I only got one rare. Same with Azmodan. This leads me to believe that the best farming method is to either start on the Kill Azmodan quest, and just visit every single waypoint looking for easy elites, or starting just before Siegebreaker and playing out the rest of the act.

This is actually a screenshot of my old build before the patch, but since they nerfed Nether Tentacles I have switched over to Ball Lightning. This is the only change that I have made. I don't see a lot of people using Shadow Power - Gloom, but it really shines on reflects damage packs, and Siegebreaker who now has reflects damage. I'll leave you with a couple of tips for the act 3 bosses that I have done post patch.

Siegebreaker: Siegebreaker now has reflects damage. If you incorporated Shadow Power - Gloom in to your build you should DPS Siegebreaker mostly when you have Gloom up. You can get away with a little outside of Gloom as long as you won't one-shot yourself. Just kite around until you get the discipline for Gloom. With good damage he should still die fairly quickly.

Cydaea: I had a lot of trouble with this boss at first because as part of the patch they improved the AI of her spiders. Since the spiders would one-shot me I had to play flawlessly, and get lucky with spiders not hitting me. I put her in the top left corner of my screen and burned her with Ball Lightning and Devouring Arrow to about 25% when she went up. The thing that kept me alive in the spider phase is that I was popping Gloom as I ran around, and I was hit by a few spiders, but Gloom mitigated a lot of the damage and allowed me to live. After she came back down I ran them to a corner, and shot a few Ball Lightning down the line of spiders. Got her to about 2% and did another phase two the same way as above, but used Smoke Screen at the end of it just to be safe. Takes some practice, or upgrading some of your most glass cannon items to live long enough.

Azmodan: Had to fight through two pool phases as I didn't have enough DPS to kill him before the second one. Same as it used to be before the patch. I dodge the meteors over Smoke Screening them because sometimes I have bad luck with pools, and I need the discipline for that. Try to lead him around the edge of the room, and leave the pools that way as well so you don't end up boxed in. Rinse and repeat for the next phase and then collect your one rare.

Hope these boss tips were helpful. Honestly, kill them once post patch just to show that you can, and then farm elites. The bosses aren't worth the new headaches that they provide, and the reduced number of rares that they now drop with 5 NV.

Witch Doctor Solo Kill Inferno Diablo and Act 4 Strats

I'm sure that most of you have seen the nerfs that are going to hit Inferno difficulty in patch 1.0.3. When I read that it motivated me to stop farming Act 2 goblins, and doing Siegebreaker runs, and to instead focus on clearing out the rest of Act 4. When I last was progressing I had just killed Iskatu and hit up the checkpoint right afterwards. I did not want to cheat and get the waypoint from anyone so I repaired my gear, hired my good friend Kormac, and headed to heaven to beat back the minions of hell.

Rakanoth
Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#fTUYQP!VUX!cZZbZb

So I gave this guy a couple shots using my standard Splinters build. It didn't go so well because I couldn't quite dps him down fast enough even with Slam Dance. I hate to admit it, but if you look at the above link I specced Vision Quest Zombie Bears because I couldn't think of any other way.

It is important to run up towards Rakanoth at the start of the fight. I tried not doing this and he just charges you right off the bat. It's important that you don't waste Spirit Vessel when Rakanoth is at 100%. One you see him walk towards you run in to the little nook on the right side of the stuff blocking the way out. Turn towards Rakanoth and pop Big Bad Voodoo and Fetish Army and just Bears him until he dies. Ideally your Spirit Vessel will eat the charge. I used my Spirit Walk at 25% and finished him off. With this method it was actually pretty easy.

Izual
Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZUYRX!VZW!aacbZY

I probably wiped to Izual the most out of the three Act 4 bosses. I tried my standard Splinters build, which did more than enough damage for the fight, but I couldn't survive in that spec. The room-wide freeze attack would proc Spirit Vessel, and Spirit Walk could not avoid it. I tried kiting him until Spirit Vessel cooled off, but Tyrael kept pushing him to the second freeze.

You may have noticed a rather unconventional build. Well, I just so happened to get a nice rare Sacred Shield with all resist and intelligence on it. I put that on, and before he would freeze I would summon my Zombie Dogs, and Horrify for the armor buff, and I was able to take the hit. A few tries I ran in to the problem of living through the room-wide freeze, but getting stuck on top of a regular freeze and proccing Spirit Vessel anyways. Once I made it past the first freeze I went full burn on him, and it was no problem.

Diablo
Build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aZUeRX!VWX!aacYZb

So strangely enough I wiped less on Diablo than I did on the other two bosses. I think Diablo took me about 6 or 7 tries. I never died in phase 1, and the first time I made it to phase 3 I won.

Phase 1:

Simple phase. As long as you don't walk near any of the edges in the room Diablo will not use his teleport. This include the outer edge of the room as well as the edges around the crystals in the middle. If you avoid these he will not teleport and you then do not have to deal with getting melee'd by him. Once you take away his port the rest is easy. Keep Haunt up when you can, but don't put Diablo on screen. You want him off screen, and you want to use the mini map to aim your Splinters at him. Get him close to 50% and you will transition.

Phase 2:

This is where all of my wipes happened. This phase is the reason why I picked up Grasp, Hex, and Horrify. As soon as the phase starts Diablo will spawn a clone of you. This happens again at 66%, and 33%. When the clone appears use Hex immediately, drop a Grasp on him, and start using Splinters. When he comes out of Hex for the first time use Horrify. He shouldn't go anywhere because he's standing in Grasp. He should get Hexed again, and then be dead. Spirit Walk if you see fit to survive.

Remember what I said about teleporting and edges? Well it's true in phase 2 as well, but it's a lot harder to move around since the room isn't shaped like a giant circle. You cannot touch the edge of the cracks in the middle of the room, the small cracks that come out of them, or the edges of the room. I did this on accident a few times, and you can generally Spirit Walk out of his melee before it hits you. I actually procced Spirit Vessel when I got careless at 20% in phase 2 and had to play super careful. Let the cinematic cut-ins play out if you need Spirit Vessel to cool down.

Phase 3:

So the main difference between this and phase 1 are that your heart rate is probably super elevated from getting out of phase 2, and he does a giant breath attack. If you are keeping him off screen like you did in phase 1 then the breath will not even be an issue. I never even saw him do it, but I could hear him doing it. Keep your cool in this phase, and don't take any risks. Do damage when you can, and when you get him a bit below 10% you win. I tried to spam my screenshot button, but apparently I didn't get any of the screenshots.

Here's a picture of my stats that I had through the whole act. It certainly helped make the fight quicker, which allows for less mistakes, but it's certainly not needed to have this much damage. As long as you are avoiding the edges and doing safe damage it should be no problem. I would wager that a Wizard could employ this strategy using Hydra and Magic Missile and do just fine. Let me know if you guys have any questions.

Inferno Whimsyshire

It's been a little bit since my last post, and I've primarily been occupying my time with goblin farming in Act 2. I know, it's incredibly boring, but it was an easy mechanism for me to use to gear up my character. I've improved most of my gear and was looking for something fun to do (instead of working on Act 4 progression). My wife and I decided that running Whimsyshire on Inferno might be neat. We cleared parts of Act 1 until we had a five stack of Nephalem Valor, and then we headed in to the rainbow land of ponies. We cleared everything except two elite packs that we accidentally stacked on top of each other. Whoops!

After that run I wanted to see how well my good friend Kormac and I would fare in there, so I headed back in to Act 1 alone and grabbed a quick five stack from the dungeons in the cemetery. It was a little more tedious to clear out Whimsyshire alone since the sole focus of every mob was on me, but I got a lot of kiting practice. At times I was wishing I had an ability like Hydra because I was running in circles so much. I did end up clearing every mob, and then put on my magic find gear and ran around looting clouds. Afterwards I joined up with some friends (see above) and we cleared the whole place again. I got a legendary crossbow from a cloud (yay legendary weapons), and much to my surprise it was yet another Hellrack. I have three now. Where is all the legendary jewelry!?

These are my new stats, and the ones that I was using to clear Whimsyshire. I also have a necklace with 6% movement speed so I can actually hit 23% which helps a ton with kiting. It's a about a 1700 damage loss for 4% poison damage and run speed. This damage allowed me to burn down minions, and a champion out of the packs fairly easily allowing me to kite a smaller pack most of the time. It really is noticeable when your damage starts to get that high. I have friends in Inferno that if I added their damage together would still have less than me so a lot of Act 1 exploded when I was gathering my stacks.

This is the spec that I was running. Poison Dart with Splinters is my only damage ability. It hits pretty darn hard now, and casts extremely fast. I also have Grasp with Unbreakable because kiting is king and it's probably the best snare in the game. Spirit Walk with Healing Journey because I don't have mana issues. Wall of Zombies is a newer addition to my arsenal. I just started using it the other day, and I have to say it's pretty awesome. Regular mobs cannot go through it so it completely blocks them. I have it runed with a snare so even if something can go through it they still get slowed. I also found tonight that if I wall in a champion mortar pack in a choke point I can spam darts from offscreen the whole time because they can't mortar me. Every time wall came up I made sure to hit them with it in a choke point, and they melted. Hex because sometimes things get really close and you just need to turn them in to a pig. Horrify is probably the one skill I could get rid of. It's my 'things got to close' backup for when everything else is down. It comes in handy when you have one champion left because you can snare, pig, and fear the thing and pretty much stand in it's face and burn it. I may swap it for something else in my next run.

So that's essentially the build I was running to farm ponies. My goblin farming build is similar. Swap Hex for Fetish Army and swap Horrify for Big Bad Voodoo - Slam Dance. I was running with 12k HP, 25k damage, and 210% magic find and had no issues killing anything on goblin road except elite/champion packs. I'm going to give Siegebreaker farming a shot. Siegebreaker himself is a joke and I can kill him easily, but reliably getting a five stack in Act 3 can be quite the challenge. Stay tuned!