Author: Jaime Wolf  <q2b6>    187.158.125.117 Use this link if you want to link to this message and its entire thread of discussion. Post a Msg
Date: 6/4/2012 10:00:30 AM
Subject: RE: Decked out barbarian

I got ninja'd by Sim, this is terrible.

Inferno mode consists of 3 stages: The first occurs during the first act where you actually have to start playing the game right, you can't just stand around a desecrator's fire or you're gonna get killed in less than a second. Melee classes will need to invest a bit of time on act 4 hell to get some decent armor so they can survive long enough to acquire some decent drops in act 1 inferno, they don't need anything fancy. This is also the one point where ranged classes can actually gear up defense and resistance to a point where it matters, they can actually take a couple of hits and come out of the encounter just fine. However either melee or ranged can't get too careless and avoid the really obvious sources of damage that they would take for granted on lower difficulties.

The second stage comes around during act 2, and this is the part where lots of people are quitting: Melee classes that would struggle with elite packs on act 1 will start struggling against regular mobs here if they don't have very good gear and a very specific build, life on hit will be the only viable way of fighting in the traditional tanky manner that melee classes are usually associated with and to get a good weapon that has those capabilities currently costs 4 million gold in average. This is also the part where ranged classes can forget about trying to build up armor and vitality, the more powerful mobs will be hitting you for twice your life pool and they will need to rely squarely on defensive and evasive skills, as well as having to kite every single thing that doesn't drop in the first 2 seconds of a confrontation.

Then comes the third stage, during the opening moments of act 3 where the game is at its most difficult, those regular mobs that would give you problems during act 2 now come in droves and hit even harder, melee classes hoping to get through this need about 20 mil worth of very specific gear and the game will still consist of them dying every 5 minutes due to circumstances that are beyond their control. Ranged classes are at their absolute squishiest here, pretty much anything short of a swipe from the lowliest enemy will kill you in one hit from here on out.

But think about this: In order for melee classes to properly beat act 2, they need gear that only drops in act 3. If using gear from act 1, your only hope of getting through act 2 is by pretty much skipping every single elite mob fight or pairing up with a ranged class, which is how all the gear that is currently in the auction house was originally acquired, people just bum rushed through to the end game and used exploits to get a shitload of excellent drops which they then put up on the auction house, those exploits have been already patched but the damage had already been done.

Ranged classes can get away with shit armor because hey: They're gonna get one shotted anyway and at the late stages you need every single bit of damage you can muster so who cares what your damage mitigation is? The one thing they need is a really good weapon, decent reflexes to know when to pop the defensive skills and enough dps to drop whatever is endangering them before the discipline/mana pool runs dry, so they at least have it a bit easier than melee classes but still, it gets old getting one shotted by that single errant fireball you never even saw coming.

The way Blizzard intends to fix this is by moving away from the damage spike, instakill crap they currently have going on and towards a constant damage drain type situation where melee classes can make good use of life steal and life on hit, and ranged classes will actually have a small window of opportunity to pop a defensive skill and not get instantly nuked like they do now.