2.0 mixed setup (Barbarian, 2xWizards, Monk) and thougths...

For those who like mixed setups, here is what I have been running till now :

Barbarian : http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/b ... Yce!cZcaZc
Wizards x2 : http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/w ... ZcW!cbccbY
Monk : http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/m ... Vbc!aZcZZZ

The purpose of this is to benefit from multiple auras and complementary skills. This has been a good team prior to loot 2.0, and is still a good team now. Of course I can't have the Wizards perma-freeze everything anymore, but still.

With this team I can have very high « All resistance » and high Life Regen from the auras of the Barbarian and the Monk.

Also the reason I made this combo is the stun, incapacitate, drag opponents into AoE damage mechanism. This has been a well-known way of dps and XP since the early ages of online RPGs... BTW my Wizards stack 2 different modifiers on « Slow Time » so the team can have benefits from both +10% speed and +10% damage, and since « Slow Time » is permanent now (duration 15s and cooldown 15s), why shouldn't I use that ?

Unfortunately my dps has always been low, it's mainly because every good items I found untill now, I sold at the RMAH. It's fun how this paid me back for my Diablo III copies, IsBoxer anual fee, end even some of my gear upgrade ! But now with the AH closing (and most of the gear being bound to account anyway) I guess I'll keep my stuff. Right now I can run Torment III with no problem with only 100 to 150k dps per character. I'm not high in Paragon levels neither (110-120), since I have been mostly playing Path of Exile during the last months.

And then...

Despite my best efforts, I found out that magical damage from Torment IV and higher is absolutely unsustainable. Even with the Barbarian and Monk being in the 1200 « All Resistance » range, and Wizards being close to 1500 (due to high intelligence), there is no way I can survive multiple stacks of magical damage (which is not a problem in Torment III where I can basically be sitting duck and AoE dps), even with my Monk healing like crazy and debuf-ing opponents. And since I sacrified some of my dps on gear for some « All Resistance »... Finally I have bad dps and useless resistances.

Then I tried a team of 4 Wizards (the basic « Frozen Orb » template). With the self-buffs I can push their poor to average gear to 140-180k dps, while my « All resistance » is down to 850 approximately... but now I can run Torment IV with no problem. I eventually tried Torment V but it takes too long because of my current lack of dps.

What can I say ? It looks like Blizzard doesn't encourage us to think and build complex teams. Nothing's better than brute force after all.

Can you show any video from your play?

Hum I have to figure out how to record a video on my computer. I'm kind of a noob about that. But why not, so that I can keep memory of what I'm doing, show it to my grand children when I'll be old etc

I use https://obsproject.com/ it's nice, and very easy for use.
Hardware support for nVidia cards, so no problems with records.

What can I say ? It looks like Blizzard doesn't encourage us to think and build complex teams. Nothing's better than brute force after all.

The problem is not Blizzard but your setup. It's 100% defensive but there's not much damage scaling here, no synergies. Sure, you have CC to remain safe, but what good is CC if the fight takes too long. Elites will always win when the fight extends too much. Minions spread all over the place, casting nonstop AoE spells and since you are multiboxing, you don't pay 100% attention to each character and eventually one will go out of sync or simply die cause it was standing on top of Arcane, Molten, Poison, etc. Once that happens, it's a matter of time til your whole party dies.

Barb is not that good IMO for parties. The only reason I will use it will be if I wanted to add the Sprint Force March and maybe Ignore Pain, but I doubt it. A Witch Doctor adds a ton more versatility to the party. Pets can tank for your party, drawing attention from your casters while it has a nice arsenal of heavy DPS buffs and CC. Big Bad Voodoo is huge. 30% DPS and attack speed means a TON of DPS. Add on top of that Mass Confusion Paranoia for another 20% DPS + having them fight between each other. And to wrap it up, Cyclon Strike Implosion + Inner Sanctuary Forbidden Palace + Exploding Palm The Flesh is Weak + Mantra of Conviction + Crippling Wave Breaking Wave! Forget it, no elite pack can stand that kind of damage. Monk should be ZDPS with a nice Sledge Fist so you stun all the time without the need of skills, or just use Wave of Light to stun AoE.

Obviously your Wizards need to use DPS spells. Disintegrate, Arcane Torrent, Frozen Orb, Archon, etc. Quite honestly, you don't need huge DPS. My accounts are better geared and can do CotA runs T6, clearing the dungeon with the elite included. T4-T5 on any area depending on how fast I wanna go. My setup goes like this:

Wizards: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/w ... YgZ!ZYZcZc
WD: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/w ... aTf!ZcYacb
Monk: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/m ... bXU!cYZacY

Depending on the map, I change Disintegrate for Frozen Orb (with a Thunderfury is INSANE!). Wizards stack Arcane or Cold Damage items. WD stacks Poison and Monk just stacks AR/Armor/Vit/Life.

If you don't boost your DPS, it won't matter how much toughness you have per character. My Wizards can't stand much damage, but I don't care as long as I kill fast. WD and Monk will provide good CC and some damage mitigation for them to clear the pack fast. White mobs die very fast with Exploding Palm. Elites can be tricky. The only combo that rapes me is Electric + Nightmarish. I have to kite all over the place to kill those or skip them.

To have a better idea of what I meant, here is a video I recorded a couple weeks ago:

http://youtu.be/tWl4l1H8v1U

It was my old setup but still shows you want I meant with synergies for DPS. Since then I've improved in gear, paragon levels and changed a few skills, making T6 viable, tho T4-T5 are far more efficient in terms of farming. T6 only for CotA runs.

I'm really looking forward for a full Zuni set for my WD so I use replace Dogs with Fetish Army. Maybe a Mask of Jeram with Tasker and Theo, stack Physical Damage and watch those 1M crits flow. A lot of things can be done with multiboxing. Basically, see how top clans work, how they build their parties and try to do the same with multiboxing. Going with 4 chars of the same class is easy but very inefficient. Once again, is not all about DPS. My Monk has 15k DPS only, but boost the party DPS by a lot. Pretty much RPG #101, DPS + tank + support.

If you still want to go with a more defensive approach, I rather use 2 Barbs with Ignore Pain in round robin using that item that extends the time. No idea if that item applies to the party rune too, but that will still give you a LOT of time where you don't receive much damage. A single skill with 2 chars and you have 5 more skills on each char to do damage. With D3 2.0 and Loot 2.0, there are a lot of build changing items you can try to improve your damage or survivavility. RoS has a lot of potential.

Interesting.

I tried the Voodoo + Archon combination (actually playing WD x1 and Wiz x3), of course it's powerful but what I don't like is that you have to wait 120s to do it again. So when you kill an elite pack and then meet another (which happens in your video), you are just sitting ducks till your timer is up again.

Right now I prefer Slow Time x2 which is both +10% attack speed and +10% damage (let's say about 20% damage) and it can be permanently refreshed. Or Slow Time x3 with the stun effect in third bubble, which is a nice thing. Eventually you can stun on cast if the edge of your bubble hits a target. However I noticed that the tooltip says "Enemies are stunned when they enter or leave area", but they actually can be stunned only once, so if they are stunned when they enter they won't be when they leave. Doesn't work with teleporting dudes, either.

Also if I play Barbarian it's because my main was a Barbarian... Now that the Paragon levels are account-wide, it doesn't matter. I'll try (and have already tried) other combinations, and as you pointed out it showed that my Barbarian is the weakest toon in my team at the moment. It was the strongest before, because of Paragon levels and better gear. Also I'll have to figure out what a Crusader might add to the crew

The most important part of your post (to me) is about the Monk, which I don't play well I know (I never really played solo Monk), but since he recently looted a TF and that fist weapon with a lot of stun... I need him to have a more important role in the team. I noticed that I'm using him as sort of a prime healer with Breath of Heaven and Mantra of healing, while you don't use those and he is a pure dps enhancer instead in your team.

About Ignore Pain, I was using it in a former build, but since then I tried different things, like Ignore Pain + Grim Harvest which works very nicely on packs of mobs (it sort of rains health globes when you cast it) but it's less efficient on elites (and I don't remember that I ever dropped a legendary from that). But I might use it again if I transform my Monk to a pure damage-enhancer as you do.

Anyway, as you stated before, 2.0 stuff and incoming RoS stuff is very different, so I'll have to re-balance and re-think everything again

Nice exchanging point of view with you.

BBV resets very fast with Grave Injustice as passive, so its almost never on cooldown. Archon yes, but I only use it with certain elites, not all the time so there's no sitting duck situation really. For the most part, Archon is not really needed. Also, it really depends on the run. If it's a short run like CotA where there's 1 pack, Archon is perfect, but if I'm going to clear a whole act, I may not use it in my build. And even if it's a whole act clear, you will have Archon available for more than half of those packs, which still makes it a great choice.

Slowtime is good, but if it's used for stun, you might wanna mix it with Mirror Images for example, so the duplicates also cast it and the whole screen is filled with bubbles. Maybe even use a Gesture of Orpheus to cut the cooldown and pretty much spam it. Something like these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... RLXA#t=794

Not my style at all tho. In the current state of the game, Wizards are the ones that can output the most AoE damage by far and using a wizard for CC is a waste IMO. At least for now that they are extremely effective for damage, I use them purily with damage skills and 0 CC. My main Wizard can have up to 650k sheet DPS and does great in any kind of run T6. If i move those same items to my WD, regardless of sheet DPS and build, it's a disaster on T6.

And yes, the key to most effective parties now a days is a good ZDPS monk. I learned how to play that build when doing Decaying Crypts was the only way to level your 10 chars to paragon 100. That char is a great support char and DPS enhancer. On my main, I already have it with a full Blackthorns set + a Countess Julia's Cameo amulet so it can tank over anything without a problem. In the video I was still using Wave of Light so it didn't matter if Archon was up or not. Cyclone Strike + Wave of Light and I will have the whole pack stunlocked. BBV + Palm + Hex + Crippling Wave will take care of it in now time. Getting the new sledge fist is my objective now (Legacy + New = 70%+ stun) so you completely forget about stun skills.

Anyway, good luck

Hey guys, I'm retired but still lurk around.

Devile is right that WD > Barb for synergies and general crowd control.

I used to use two mice and have a very tanked out monk with 4000 LOH on my left hand as the driver and my others hang out in town until everyone is gathered and the affixes are on cycle. And then it goes - banner/BBV/Mass confusion/awe/+Arcane Destruction...and I used tranquillity as a get out card.

Not sure what the game is like now but being able to play your 4th character independently of your main DPS pile is a massive investment but its ultimately worth it.

[MiRai]

Hey guys, I'm retired but still lurk around.

I went to watch your videos a few months ago to show off your skills to someone else and saw that you had taken them all down. I was sad.