Anyone else find A3 nearly unplayable with 4 melee?

I've got about 120M in gear PER monk, running 4 monks. Act 1 is a cakewalk, act 2 I take damage occasionally, act 3 I get flat out raped. I don't know what I'm doing wrong here, I've tried literally every build I can think of/researched and still I get straight up owned. The problem? -- Affix abilities...

Apparently they claimed to have nerfed the 4 man damage that the mobs do (which since the last hotfix there is an insane BUFF to inferno mob damage http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/ ... 785?page=1 ) but honestly the fact that mobs can cast 4x the amount of abilities if you have 4 guys alive is just stupid. Desecration = near instant death for me EVERY-SINGLE-TIME, Generally arcane as well.

I'm geared well, there's no question about it. I have 30+k hp, 15-25k dmg, 45% dodge, 950-1k resists, 55-60% block, 980-1500+ LOH & 2.6-2.9% Leech, 1.7-1.8 attack speed, 30-32% Crit, 180%++ Crit DMG, 4.8-5k Armor, all unbuffed... However no matter how hard I try; these 2 abilities will always lead to my death, why is this? I have 120-150M worth of gear on 3 and 400m++ worth of gear on my main monk, does it matter? nope. I've tried dual wielding as well (which I survive longer due to the increased attack speed and life on hit as well as dodge % increase.

What's funny is every single time I try to fight one of these elite packs with arcane or desecration they spawn 3-4x as many on the ground meaning I have to move almost non-stop because it stacks so fast. However if I die with 2 or 3 the spawn rate of it slows down and I can finish with the remaining 1-2 monks -- how stupid is that? Farming act 3 with anyone one monk is easy, any 2 is no problem, 3 is almost impossible, 4 is a waste of time/money sink. Their physical damage doesn't do squat to me, neither does ranged, however their affixes are so over-the-top that it makes playing with more than 2 people in your group pointless.

What are your thoughts? Is ANYONE farming act 3-4 with 4 characters WELL? Meaning actual farm runs where you don't wipe at least 1-2x per pack? Anyone? If so what classes are you using? How much $ in gear do you estimate you have? I don't see why it's so damn hard with this kind of gear to progress still in act 3. I can't even imagine trying to get magic find gear to do this, it's quite honestly a joke. I've never struggled so hard to attempt to farm with a group in a game that is supposed to be co-op.

I'm on the verge of liquidating 100% of my monk gear and going back to solo DH farming, not that gear is worth farming at all anymore, it's all about gold farming, getting lucky crafting, or playing the AH, so lame, it's not a wonder all the high end stuff has gone up as far as 10x the value in the past 2 weeks or so -- not very many people are farming gear anymore, the amount of items on the AH are dropping at an insane rate too.

I remember back in D2 grouping was actually viable, better than soloing, fun... /sigh

/discuss

Curious, since im new to this.. You have to have a different Character for each Slot when using ISBoxer? You cannot use the same character, like I thought u could, ie 1 Barb x 2-4x?

No sir, you can use the same class, it would be really hard using different classes with the hotbar setups XD

Your armor is too low my friend. Like i've said first focus on being able to survive, forget dps, to a point when you can at least stand in 2x desecrate/plague/molten or take 2 arcane beams without dying instantly. It is impossible to dodge those things, like you said there is 4 times the spells. By being able to survive half of those, and dodge (by moving) the other half you will be able to deal with those packs.
What I suggest is buy few pieces of hear with 500-700 armor on them, shield with 1.5k armor, have at least 6k+ unbuffed armor. Get serenity for those O shit moments when you have more than 2x spells on you. When you get a tiny break try to dps as much as you can.. with one elite dead your task will be alot easier, with two dead it will be in the bag. Also look at your abilities.. Crippling wave + concussion + resolve passive = almost 50% their dmg reduced.

I mean I die to elites with those elemental dmg affixes at least 1-2 times, and farm is pretty slow. But my gear is worse than yours, I think you just need to get that armor and change your playstyle abit and you'l be fine. Have faith in your monks!

You can only have so much armor without picking and choosing rares specifically with armor bonuses on each piece to get higher than that (in doing so you lose out on any sort of special gear like string of ears (all have at 18-20% melee reduction). Armor is not the solution to the fact that desecration is an insta-gib when they cast more than 5 instances of it on top of each other. 1k extra armor won't mean I survive that desecration spawn rate. Did you see where it said "if I die with 2 or 3 the spawn rate of it slows down and I can finish with the remaining 1-2 monks"?

I have tried serenity, I have tried using the ability that adds 50% armor. Standard damage is not the issue, I can literally just use my attacks and stay full hp no issues what-so-ever. It's the arcane and desecration that is the issue, add that with any sort of CC and it's game over virtually every time.

Any chance you could make a video of you doing it or let me join you for a run and actually see you do act 3 mobs with desecration?

Here is a screenshot of my unbuffed tank gear, my other 3 are slightly more tank and less dps.

http://www.cakesandcameras.com/d3/stats.jpg

Resistances can go up another 100 or so if I swap out 7 crit on my boots bonus. I have a 100/100 dex/vit nat ring though and it's pretty sexy for damage. Anyway, taking hits isn't the issue, it's surviving the arcane/desecration that seems to exist on 70%++ of all elite packs and spawn at insane rates with 4 people stacked and running around on top of each other that's the problem. =( Any combination of frost + desecration or arcane, or walls + desecration or arcane, or vortex + desecration or arcane is basically GG.

If they don't have these combinations I mow through them without any problems at all, it's just the insane level of stacked dots + inability to get away together that tear me a new one.

Did you notice the part where I mentioned I survive longer dual wielding than I do with a shield? 9/10 times if I use dual wield on my main and the rest shield; my main lives longer than my tanks due to the increased LOH from attack speeds.

On a side note; nevermind, it seems that act 3 is seriously broken atm... Guess we wait for a week or two for them to fix their game again.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/ ... 785?page=1

After some tweaking I managed to pull out 9.6k armor and 1.4k res all on my monks. What this gave me is I can take any affix on its own in Act3- I dont die from arcane beam, can stand in molten and plague, dont have to even move for frozen. But even with these over the top stats desecrate kills me. 0 stack desecrate is worse than molten or plague. 2/3 stack is same as standing on top of arcane beam. Act3 just requires godly stats. Defensively I do have godly stats, but they are nothing unless you have also godly dps. My 13k dps is enough if I stand on one spot and aoe whole pack down. But in Act3 standing in 1 spot is impossible. If I had like 30k dps + overwave spam I think Act3 would be farmable. For now I'l just screw around with spec and spend my time in AH

You could consider throwing a Tanky barb into the mix Threatening shout/Warcry for Group resists is hard to beat, not to mention everything else it can bring to the table. I haven't tried mixing my barbarians with monks yet; my motherboard fried so I have not been able to fully dive into 4 boxing Inferno act 2 yet on my barbs. I figure if your weakest geared character can clear act 3 then you should be able to four box just fine, that's my thoughts at least and I generally base what I should be doing on what the weakest can handle.

I've moved onto 4 witchdoctors and I'm doing fine in act 3 now, even with the stealth buff to affixes. Basically if you have to take hits you're looking at 250M +++ per character to gear up, more around 350M+++ if you want to not have to kite like a madman. Damage is everything and a really high dps LOH weapon is insanely expensive, needing 4 of them is extremely unrealistic. Basically 4 melee is not worth doing in my opinion. The game is broken on MANY levels though, I have never seen or heard of any team doing farming runs with more than 2 people. I've seen some mediocre attempts with 3, but zero 4 man farm runs without having 3 ranged + 1 tank. NOW? I don't know of anyone who does anything with melee in act 3 with the stealth buff that isn't either constantly kiting desecration as monk, or using the extremely OP Barb skills (LOH WW Barb).

Either way; this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about; http://imgur.com/a/RW8QA (That's not even act 3... You get stuck on mobs like that in act 3 you basically have to quit now, losing your 5 stack in the process...)

Minions + Desecration (or arcane) + 4 man = uninstall worthy, especially since the stealth buff to affixes. (Note the screenshots above were with 1 person only, hence the follower)

I don't know what blizzard was thinking with so many aspects of this game. I really genuinely want to enjoy it, however there are so damn many road blocks and/or lack of gear on a regular basis that I'm finding it extremely hard to maintain any level of genuine interest in even logging on anymore. I was hoping quadboxing would resolve this for me, however it's basically just 4x the moneysink (gold)... =(

I spent about 1 million gold and took my barbarian (solo) from hitting level 60 to straight Act two clear. Now we are talking about act two, but my point is you don't have to get the insane items to do act three/four. Have you tried doing stun/freeze items on all characters and spam aoe? I have not tried this on my barbarians but revenge/whirlwind would be interesting to see if the packs stay locked down. I can full clear with my barbarians act one, but have not had the time to work on act two lately. Sadly my backup computer has FPS spikes so melee is not very comfortable, I'm back to my witch doctors now, I want to try wizard/DH soon. My roommate's barbarian actually has slightly better gear than my act two barbarian and clears all the way to Diablo with issues sometimes. As I've said before though if all of your characters can clear the content solo like cake then you should be able to four box it. That's how I test my limits to see if any of my toons are lacking at all.

My tip for you if you're worried about gold is get a cheap gold find set and smash through stuff as fast as you can with radius pickup. I would do it with four witchdoctors and spam Acid rain or even Ghost bomb (mana efficient), I would recommend getting a Pony staff; mine is upgraded to Inferno. When I'm tired I do that and probably make about 1-1.5 million gold an hour, I normally ignore loot unless I see a legendary.