Diablo 3 Blog Guide

Wizard Inferno Guide submitted by Arktem.

My experience includes Diablo 2 Hardcore for 5+ year. WoW Hardmode Raiding for 5+ Years, US 4th). And currently Act 4 Inferno on Diablo.

For those wanting a Video of how this works, or just want to chill and watch a stream, my stream page is located below.

www.twitch.tv/ArkD3/

Keep in mind as you are reading this that things CHANGE depending on if you are with a group or if you're solo. Many strategies, gear choices, and specs are far more viable in a group environment.

I wrote this all very quickly and probably missed a lot of stuff. I'll be happy to edit more/Fix some if people find it useful. If people get butthurt about "Mathcraft" for any of my recommendations below I will be happy to include numbers to support any of my claims.

Build

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#alQSOR!XYT!cYYZYb

Basic build, that is useful for any and all situations. Some people prefer to replace Blizzard with Arcane Orb + Temporal Flux. Both are 100% viable, and both have their pros and cons.

Blizzard gives you a lot more control over mobs, basically it's the "Safe Route".

Arcane Orb gives you more Damage, but you have to be much more careful.

Everything else should basically stay the same in nearly all situations. Diamond skin, while very strong early on, loses a lot of it's usefulness simply because it does not scale. The only time it can be useful is for Reflect Damage mobs, which can easily be dealt with by having a few extra pieces with + Life on Hit (Note, this isn't % Life Steal), and swapping to them when the need arises.

Gear

Boots - Every single boot you buy should have 12% movement speed. Nothing else matters.

Weapons -

2h - Two Handed weapons are superior damage over 1h/oh Combo, but they have the disadvantage of being much slower animations.

1h - have the advantage of having much faster attack animations, which in a kite spec is extremely important.

Please note if you are not using a signature spell, which I don't personally recommend, then you should always go with a strong 2h if you can get your hands on one.

Guide continued after the page break..

Stats

Vitality - Get 30k, maybe a bit more, then focus on other stats.

All Resist - Your number 1 defensive stat. Far more important than Vitality, assuming you have around the 30k mark.

IAS (Increased Attack Speed) - Far from useless as others seem to say. Anyone who has done testing with it knows the value of it. If you are not running a Signature Spell then IAS loses much of it's value, but again there really is no reason not to have a signature spell.

With a signature spell, and more specifically a kite solo spec, IAS is a god send. Being able to cast spells while kiting, and not lose any movement time, is absolutely amazing. I would highly recommend this stat to anyone who primarily does Solo Kite strategies.

INT - More damage is always good, but it also has an increased advantage of giving us All Resist which is HIGHLY valuable.

Crit Chance - Now that the Critical Mass build has been nerfed crit has lost much of it's appeal. With that said, once you reach about 15% crit, which isn't very difficult, it has the bonus of making Crit Damage Highly valuable.

Crit Damage - With a semi decent Crit chance, 10-15% crit damage is a very good stat to have. With 15% crit the value of having an Emerald (+70% crit damage) greatly outweighs the DPS value of a single Ruby (Bonus damage).

Magic Find - Do not have any magic find stats on your main gear. Assuming of course you don't have something better. Instead get together a strong Magic find set to keep in your bags at all times. When a boss/Last mob is about to die, swap really fast to your magic set.

Farming Spots


*Save yourself some time and pain and just skip act 2.*

Act 1 - I personally skipped all of act 1 and went straight to act 3. I just don't find the loot to be of any use, especially considering the AH. With that said many people choose to farm "The imprisoned Angel" and work their way towards Butcher.

Act 3 - Siege-breaker runs. First start a game on "Kill the Siege-breaker" and then teleport to the Bridge. This will give you "Tyrael" as a companion. Once you have him teleport to the Bridge of Korsikk. The mobs in this location are very easy to kite, as well as generally not having many "Bad Combos". This is by far my favorite place to farm. Once you reach a 5 stack kill Siege-breaker.

Inferno Farming Tips / Guide submitted by mvtsc2.

This is my guide for Act I or II Inferno Farming. I myself run these as a Barbarian but these runs work for any class.

First some tips:

Diablo III Patch 1.0.2a – v.1.0.2.9858 (5/31/2012)

General

Tooltips for the following class abilities have been updated to reflect changes made in patch 1.0.2 and previous hotfixes:

Demon Hunter

Smoke Screen (Skill Rune – Lingering Fog)

Monk

Fists of Thunder (Skill Rune – Quickening)

Mantra of Healing (Skill Rune – Boon of Inspiration)

Wizard

Energy Armor (Skill Rune – Force Armor)

Nigel Cutthroat has recently fallen on hard times and will now drop lower quality items when slain

Gold and quest experience rewards for replaying "Heart of Sin: Get the Soul of Azmodan" have been reduced

Gold and quest experience rewards for replaying "Heart of Sin: Go to the Keep" have been removed

Auction House

The maximum duration for posted auctions has been reduced from 48 hours to 36 hours

Diablo 3 Core of Areat Gold Farming Guide submitted by adalon.

So if you don't mind really repetitive easy fights, there's a decent farm for gold as a monk (you could easily do this as other class, but I did it as a monk). Pulls approximately 300k/H with potential for more (I only have 190 GF).

You do this on nightmare since you can clear it crazy fast and the difficulty:gold ratio doesn't scale that much better in Hell.

This is the build set-up I use: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#aeXjik!abY!aZbbZc

It's all about stacking massive damage/AoE

You just start at the core and run to the end and you'll hit a checkpoint, but don't go into Azmodan's lair.
Stack GF and Pickup Radius as well as get some movespeed boots. If you can get your damage high enough, you basically 1hit everything in the area and 2 hit champs.

Start at one end, clear to the other end but don't pick up anything. The items that drop won't be good enough to justify it. Just keep running. The pickup radius will continue to grab gold while you run by and save you time. Open the chests and run. You don't even have to wait for it to hit the ground if you have ~40 increased pickup radius.

You should be able to clear it in about 80 seconds + 10 seconds to leave the game. It easily pulled me 5-6k a run.

I'm sure there are other areas that can do this, but The Core is a straight line and easy enough with very easy enemies when you're lvl 50+. There's probably better item/gold farm somewhere else, but this is mindless and can help grab you that 950dps weapon to start farming A1i more efficiently.

Treasure Goblin / Pygmy / Bandit / Seeker Drop Rate Spreadsheet Submitted by Pyrophobiac.

Over the past three days I've killed hundreds of treasure midgets, and discovered there are 4 types, Bandits which are black/white, Seekers which are red, Goblins which are gold, and Pygmys that are blue.

We noticed that the drops tended to be slightly different for each so we decided to get some data to confirm our suspicions.

Data for about 35 kills are below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnQSTGSAQofVdGhaM1pZQWQ5S0xRTy1FaW1mRnZJd3c#gid=0

Since the data sizes are relatively small, we can't draw too many conclusions, but two things that are obvious are this.

First, Seekers have a high tendency to drop gems, but as a result tend to drop slightly less gold and items.
Second, Bandits tend to drop more tomes, but as a result drop less gold and items.

In our data set, pygmys and Goblins are indistinguishable, but over the next day or so I'll take more data points.

TLDNR: Four types of treasure midgets: Bandits which are black and white and tend to drop more tomes, Seekers which are red and tend to drop more gems, Goblins which are gold and tend to drop items and gold, and Pygmys which are blue and tend to drop more items and gold.

Wizard Farming Guide submitted by UkiyaEJL.

• Port to Royal Crypts, get +GF gear (200 is optimal) and use Ice Armor runed with Frozen Storm Rune, use said skill to break pots.  And also get +pickup radius.

Video:

Thanks to Breenns for submitting this small Witch Doctor tip on pets scaling beyond Nightmare.

For those who think the Witch Doctor pets don't scale well after Nightmare, I'm still using them super effectively in Hell and Inferno. It took some messing with stats.

Pets don't scale with vitality or dex. But they do scale with armor (str), physical resistance, and of course life regen with the right passive.

Shifting away from vitality towards those stats as well as getting an appropriate shield really made them worth while for me in hell.

As for Inferno, I Shifted to Res + Str in Act 1 Inferno and it's going alright...

Gargantuan is tanky enough to keep me alive.