Anyone else find A3 nearly unplayable with 4 melee?

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)... =(

In my experience, a game I don't enjoy solo, I won't enjoy multiboxing. The one exception to that rule has been LotRO. I enjoyed it solo enough to buy six copies of Moria, but quickly burned out trying to get my team to do what I wanted.

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.

I can clear act 1-2 with a 500k solo barb np. act 3 with any solo character that has ~5m or less. We're talking 4 man, not 1 person as a barb of all classes, XD. The hp increase warrants WAY better gear than just a few mil in a 4 man clear of act 3. I don't know where you've actually been in act 3 but if you can clear act 3 fairly quickly with 4 man anything spending less than 100M total by all means show a video to prove it. Otherwise just saying 1 man that can do it solo can do it with 4 identical characters is silly -- that's far from realistic with the changes to affixes.

Have you even played act 3 lately on a quad box? Show some vids, not just saying you've done it. =) If you read through the posts you'd see I clearly stated what's up with the affixes lately (desecration and arcane). With 4 people up they spawn them WAY faster than with 1-2 guys alive. With 4 people in the game I generally have a couple die instantly, if I KEEP those 2 dead I can then finish the pack with ease because the spawn rates slow WAY down -- because of this alone I seriously doubt that you've actually played act 3 with quad boxing simply because you would recognize the spawn rate changes of such affixes between 1 guy clearing act 3 and 4 trying to clear act 3.

Ontop of that I've said multiple times that my monks have 100-250+ million gold invested per character and still have lots of issues. The gap between clearable with 1 person and 4 people is so huge it's not even worth lumping them in the same comparison chart. I have 4 lvl 60 witch doctors, 4 lvl 60 Monks, 2 lvl 60 Barbs (1 HC), 4 lvl 60 DH's, and 1 level 60 Wizard. Barbs take the least amount of gear to do act 3 without question. Damage gear is expensive, barbs you could probably do act 3 with only purchasing a decent LOH weapon and any random gear you find along the way, though those builds are bound to be nerfed shortly.

Pardon me for giving my two cents. I only stated what I've done with melee classes; as for ranged I've cleared partway through act four never actually finished it due to lack of gear and time. I've killed diablo with my friends while farming, it's much easier than quad boxing, I'm more than aware the amount of gear you need when you quad box. I was only stating you can get amazing items for far less than what you claim. I made the majority of my money buying items very low and selling them very high to the idiots who think they need 300M+ in gear to play this game. Also if you're farming act 1-2 there is no reason why you can't make enough or upgrade your characters as you clear. You have to farm 4x more to get each character equal to a solo character, then you have to farm 4x more to make it work with ISboxing to give your self slack, the rest is micro management, visual awareness and thinking outside the box.

If your setup is not working and you can answer every question you ask then go roll something else. I only put barbs on the shelf due to random FPS spike issues, luckly I have four Witch Doctors to fix that problem till I fix my main PC. My barbs run exactly the same way as my WD's do, only difference is Whirlwind moves your character giving me my issues. If i had my main PC backup and running I would refocus on my barbarians since four of them are stronger than my WD's when geared up, I have zero faith in running monks it's the most gear heavy class to ISbox and not very practical to begin with when you should be playing with Barbarians if you want to melee. Monk is by far the most difficult class to play, you see more Barbarians in Hardcore for a reason: they don't die. That is all I was trying to explain but you can keep assuming I'm an idiot and don't quad box.

I never said or assumed you were an idiot, I was merely pointing out that yes, you DO need 200m++ in gear to quad box monks efficiently.

but my point is you don't have to get the insane items to do act three/four."

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.

Honestly neither of those even come close to applying to monks bro. WD's? maybe. 4x monks? nope. These comments were what made me question whether or not you have done act 3 with more than one person. It's one thing to fight a boss or something, but to do elite runs with 4 people in act 3++ it is a gear check, nothing more, nothing less. As melee you have to survive as well as dish out dps if you want it to be worth farming. Sure you can go pure tank, however it's going to take you 5+ mins per elite pack which is simply poor farming.

Sorry if you took offense to that, however if you have more than one monk trying to do act 3/4 it is 100% a gear check, saying it's not is obviously showing you've never tried it. =)

Barbs do not = monks. Barbs are WAY easier to survive with, meaning it takes a lot less gear to still dish out decent dps too. Your comments just seemed like you were saying something along the lines of "you're doing it wrong and you don't need that kind of money, if you can do it with any 1 of them you should be able to do it with 4" -- which is simply not the case. =)

Either way you should re roll, even solo play monks bitch more than solo play witch doctors, can't imagine trying to play four of them. That's the only reason why I kept saying Barbarian, no point in killing your self over trying to make that setup worth it unless you're a pure enthusiast when it comes to four boxing monks; I personally don't like having a defeatist attitude and I would probably try my best to make that work as well. If you can farm better with Barbs or WD's do that so you can better gear your monks. Five minutes to kill one pack versus not killing any packs at all. You can at least change passives and abilities around to pull out more dps.

At the start I was considering doing 3 Barbs and 1 Monk, that only makes the monk and the three barbs even stronger. I'm not sure if the monk has abilities that aoe at a very rapid rate but it should not matter, two barbarians spamming whirlwind and revenge keep most elite packs locked down as it is with proc gear. Witch Doctors take a very long time to kill packs as well, if you're looking to just blast through everything maybe consider doing Demon Hunters or Wizards, which I have no opinion on since I'm yet to level those to 60 as well.

At any rate if you're still stuck on your monks then I will stop giving less painful ideas .

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.

I can clear act 1-2 with a 500k solo barb np. act 3 with any solo character that has ~5m or less. We're talking 4 man, not 1 person as a barb of all classes, XD. The hp increase warrants WAY better gear than just a few mil in a 4 man clear of act 3. I don't know where you've actually been in act 3 but if you can clear act 3 fairly quickly with 4 man anything spending less than 100M total by all means show a video to prove it. Otherwise just saying 1 man that can do it solo can do it with 4 identical characters is silly -- that's far from realistic with the changes to affixes.

Have you even played act 3 lately on a quad box? Show some vids, not just saying you've done it. =) If you read through the posts you'd see I clearly stated what's up with the affixes lately (desecration and arcane). With 4 people up they spawn them WAY faster than with 1-2 guys alive. With 4 people in the game I generally have a couple die instantly, if I KEEP those 2 dead I can then finish the pack with ease because the spawn rates slow WAY down -- because of this alone I seriously doubt that you've actually played act 3 with quad boxing simply because you would recognize the spawn rate changes of such affixes between 1 guy clearing act 3 and 4 trying to clear act 3.

Ontop of that I've said multiple times that my monks have 100-250+ million gold invested per character and still have lots of issues. The gap between clearable with 1 person and 4 people is so huge it's not even worth lumping them in the same comparison chart. I have 4 lvl 60 witch doctors, 4 lvl 60 Monks, 2 lvl 60 Barbs (1 HC), 4 lvl 60 DH's, and 1 level 60 Wizard. Barbs take the least amount of gear to do act 3 without question. Damage gear is expensive, barbs you could probably do act 3 with only purchasing a decent LOH weapon and any random gear you find along the way, though those builds are bound to be nerfed shortly.

You are such an angry little nerd. Everytime you cried about how you cannot accomplish something with your team in this thread, someone replied with suggestions - yet you rush back in and mouth off why it cannot be done in roflstomp fashion.

Let me save you the hassle of replies, just put aside your team and give up, this is too hard. You said it yourself, it cant be done, no use wasting your time. Nope, none, thanks...

Amen.