Diablo 3 Builds - Build Ideas For PvM & PvP In Diablo 3

“Act 1 is so boring why should I farm it?”

Why farm Act 1 when all the other acts in Inferno all drop better items? Two reasons: First, in order to farm the other acts you need better gear and second, Act 1 is easy compared to the other Acts.

“Okay, I’ll give you act 1 is easy but how does that help me if I cannot get the best gear?”

Keep in mind, in a recent post, we explained that most players are not yet level 60. These up and coming players will be craving gear to complete inferno mode. Great gear can drop in Act 1 currently, it’s just not the best. In time, your gear will sell which will allow you to grow a decent pool of change for playing the Auction House or buying better equipment.

More importantly, in an upcoming patch Blizzard is changing the way drop tables work. Gear quality is based on ilvl tiers. The three highest are ilvl 61, 62, and 63. The higher the ilvl , the better the item type and more stats can spawn on a higher ilvl item. That doesn’t mean an ilvl 63 rare will always be better than an ilvl 61 rare because bad combinations of stats can always spawn, but the potential for higher quality stats are increased on an ilvl 63 rare than a lower one.

Currently these tiers are confined to different acts in Inferno.  Act 1 gets ilvl 61, Act 2 gets ilvl 62, and Acts 3 and 4 get ilvl 63 with Act 4 getting a higher chance to drop ilvl 63 than Act 3. In the upcoming patch, Blizzard is diversifying the drop rates of  ilvl 63s. Instead of each act being the only location for that specific quality, the lower acts (Act 1 and Act 2) now have a chance to drop the best gear.

Act 1 will now have a 2% chance to drop ilvl63 items, Act 2 will have a 4% chance, and Acts 3 & 4 will have an 8% chance. But just because Act 1 has a lower chance doesn’t make it a worse place to magic find. Since the potential exists to drop ilvl 63 items, including their unique counterparts, what matters is speed and efficiency. If you can clear Act 1 more than four times faster than Acts 3 or 4, you’re actually better off magic finding that area instead of Act 3 and 4. And that doesn’t take into account the potential of failing a run due to unique monsters, which would be higher in the more difficult acts.

“Okay You’ve Convinced Me Act 1 is Great, How do I do it?”

Luckily if you’re rolling a Wizard, you have a natural affinity to running the narrow hallways and defeating the tightly packed mob groups of Act 1.

Here it is

This build excels at kiting packed mob groups. It works because it maximizes AoE damage but still stays highly mobile.

A quick example of all three offensive spells demonstrates this:

Lightning Blast runed Electrocute is taken as a signature spell. This quick-to-fire spell allows continuous AoE dps when you’re out of arcane power. It casts fast enough to allow a cast-and-move strategy. If you don’t like Electrocute you could also use Piercing Orb runed Shock Pulse for the same effect.

Venom runed Hydra is the pinnacle of the kite and AoE damage style build. It’s damage is AoE and it works while you’re running. Set it at maximum distance of your character when starting a battle and refresh it as close to your character as you run.  This tactic ensures you are maximizing the mobs time spent in the poison damage.

Finally, Celestial Orb runed Arcane Orb is a beast of an AoE spell. The celestial effect allows for the orb to continuously pass through mobs, maximizing the damage potential in rows of unique monsters. Its high Damage to Arcane Power allows you to kill quickly, and as an instant cast spell, it excels at cast-and-move strategies.

Your defensive options are really play style choices, but I highly suggest Force Armor runed Energy Armor. It gives you a lot of room for mistake making and drastically increases your effective health.

Diamond skin is my preferred defensive cooldown.  It allows you to deal with tight situations or stand and blast mobs health down before they can kill you. If you don’t like either feel free to use any of the other options.

As for passives, I try to maximize the potential for this build. Glass cannon does more damage at the effect of lowering your effective health. Since most of your time you won’t be taking hits and instead will rely on heavy offense, this passive is a no brainer. Astral Presence minimizes the drawback for using Energy Armor and increases your dps through higher arcane power regeneration. Finally, Temporal Flux maximizes your kiting potential by allowing your Arcane Orb to provide a slowing effect on hit, and since your orb will generally hit every mob, it’s highly worth the spot.

“Wow that’s awesome, but now what do I do?”

Go out and Magic Find, duh!  Actually a lot depends on your current gear situation. If you just got to Inferno and you are finding yourself struggling, there is nothing wrong with going to Act 4 Hell and farming up a bit better gear.

However, as soon as you can, attempt early level boss runs. The goal is to get yourself enough gear so you can solo run Skeleton King. You will pick up five stacks of Nephalem Valor and then kill the King. Rinse and repeat.

Once that run becomes easy, the best option becomes to run the Butcher Quest with the same mindset. Five stacks of Valor, kill the Butcher and reap your rewards.

What do you think of the build or the upcoming item changes?  If you try the build or have suggestions, let us know in the comments!

It’s time for another exciting, exhilarating, and overly tardy addition of “Judge That Build”. Please, keep your squeals of joy to a minimum. Today we’re going to do a twofer. Oh, wow, twofer is actually recognized as a word. Totally thought I’d get the red squiggly line there.

Our first build is Extreme Dodge, created by Sbrubles. Here’s what Sbrubles has to say: “Uses skills to stack dodge to 86% or more, depending on the crit. hit chance. Dash into a pack with Dashing Strike, use Cyclone Strike to draw enemies near, fists of thunder 3x followed by 7-sided strike. If things go wrong, use Breath of Heaven to heal and fear enemies away. Dash away, repeat.” Though this sounds solid enough and I’m sure the survivability would be there, I don’t know if the dodge chance would actually come out to 86%. My guess is that percentages are multiplicative, not additive. Or, if they are additive, they follow a curve.

I don’t have numbers backing me up, so I can’t completely dismiss that this may indeed be correct. But that would also leave you very invulnerable for the few seconds all of your buffs are active. I suppose that’s the purpose of this build, though.

I love the Dashing Strike / Cyclone Strike combo. Not only does it allow you an easy way to collect up enemies and quickly kill them, it also lets you pull mobs off your squishier allies. This latter teamplay is coupled nicely with Mantra of Evasion which will definitely aid fellow players in survivability.

Exalted Soul with Transcendence is also a nice mix. In fact, I’ve been using this in most of my builds. It doesn’t work great for everything, but it’s good for most. Having extra Spirit is always handy, and getting healed for performing actions you would anyway is even better. Sixth Sense blends nicely with the dodge theme and also allows you to build up Critical Strike, an offensive stat, but still keep high defenses.

Though I haven’t personally tested it, I could see where this build would probably do well into the higher reaches of Inferno.

Created by Aaron B, our second build is called 2 Handed Devastation. I love how inventive these names are. Here’s what Aaron has to say: “Honestly, things will die so fast you won’t need much more. Leap into battle pulling mobs towards you, cleave them all in a sweep and whirlwind the rest into disaster. For those left, send them to oblivion with critical hits and sheer overpowering force. All while gaining lifesteal.”

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this playstyle, I doubt this build would work well beyond Act 1 Inferno. This is only a guess, however, as I do not have a barbarian this level. If someone has a different experience than my assumptions, feel free to let me know.

The reason I think it would die repeatedly in Inferno is because it simply isn’t defensive enough. The lifesteal helps, to be sure, but that only gets you so far. Granted, I think most things would die really, really fast. I also think this playstyle sounds like a blast, mostly due the Call of Arreat rune on Leap combined with Whirlwind. And seeing all the explosions of blood from your critical hits, something greatly aided by Killing Spree on Overpower, would be cool.

However, while all those things may sustain your life for a little while, you’d need more in the higher reaches of Inferno. Lifesteal only goes so far; Armor, Resistances, and mobility are extremely important later in the game.

We recently went over the more effective spells from 1 – 30 group play.  In this second installment, we’ll examine 30 – 60 still from a group play perspective, but with specific highlights of key single player abilities.

Levels 30 – 39

At thirty you finally get your last actual spell, Archon. It allows you to turn into hyper damage dealing wizard with unlimited Arcane Power. You are only given three attacks under its duration. The first is a ray-like attack that’s stronger than Disintegrate, the second a melee attack that deals more single target damage than the ray, and finally an AEO blast at your character’s location. It’s an extremely powerful move and with enough mobs around has a fairly long duration.

For group play you get the best AoE rune for Disintegrate, Chaos Nexus. It creates mini-tendrils that deal 40% weapon damage. It absolutely decimates mob packs! You also obtain the passive Cold Blooded which makes frozen or chilled targets do additional damage from cold spells.  It allows for all sorts of neat frost oriented builds blizzard and ray of frost being the best of all of them.

During these levels you also receive two runes to signature spells that make them attractive options for both group and single play. Piercing Orb and Lightning Blast make both Shock Pulse and Electrocute go through enemies. This allows for higher damage AoE in group play, and for continuous kiting mob packs in group play. Combine these signature spells with the earlier passive Prodigy for the ability to gain Arcane Power.

You also receive the rune Venom Hydra which makes your Hydra do insane single and AoE target damage. It’s a staple for Inferno play and I’d take it if you are focusing on group play, but Nightmare and Hell don’t require that kind of kiting that is needed for inferno. You can always pick it up if you feel that it fits your playstyle.

40 – 49

The first rune with possible use is the Deep Freeze rune for you Frost Nova. It gives you a 15% critical chance boost if you freeze 5 or more enemies with your Frost Nova. The rune lends itself for group play which allows you to more easily set up offensive oriented Frost Novas. If you use Frost Nova and play in groups I would choose this over any of the other options.

Blizzard also gets a great rune in Frozen Solid which gives it a chance to freeze mobs in place. This gives a strong defensive boost to an offensive AoE spell. It works extremely well with solo wizard play by increasing your ability to kite. Cast a frozen solid runed blizzard, run and fire from a distance. Rinse and repeat.

Fracture is a solid option for the defensive – or offensive if you like to get into monsters faces – teleport. After casting, it creates two copies that take aggro and survive after a couple of hits. It seems that these copies run into battle which is actually a nice AI feature and they can take a couple of hits, even on inferno mode. While I don’t actually use teleport, if I were to use it this would be the rune I’d use. Play-styles vary, so if teleport is a defensive skill of choice then try fracture and see how you like it.

The most useful passive is Temporal Flux which gives a slowing effect to all of your arcane spells. This synergises really well with Arcane Orb, which is my main spell of choice for solo play.

 50 – 60

At 50 you get access to arcanot which allows your familiar to return 2 arcane power per second. This synergises really well with Disintegrate. If you focus on group play, where disintegrate excels, try combining arcanot with Power of the Storm.

At 51 Frost Nova gets an arguably better offensive boon via Bone Chill which gives a flat 15% damage boost to all targets under Frost Nova’s effect.

The other major offensive rune option is Celestial Orb, which allow Arcane Orb to pass through targets and deal damage to everyone they pass through. This essentially allows Orb to mimic Frozen Orb of Diablo 2. Combined with Arcane Flux it is my spell of choice in both solo and group play.

Defensively we get the coveted Force Armor rune for Energy Armor. While recently nerfed it still is an amazing spell and is highly suggested on all builds in inferno. After nerf: If you have 20,000 life Force armor absorbs 20,000 dmg (100% of wizard max life). Attacks that originally would 1 shot you, will still one shot you. But it drastically increases your longevity and you’ll now really want to think about stacking your Vit.

At 60 you get Improved Archon which increases your damage, and if you use Archon it’s probably the best rune option.

As for passives, the best one of this group is Unstable Anomaly but I feel it is bettered by earlier options.

Note on Gearing Up your Wizard
Wizards are masters of kiting. Blizzard, Arcane Fluxed Celestial Orb, Venom Hydra and the myriad of defensive options allow for you to kill enemies that are not even on your screen. Therefore, wizards have the luxury of maximizing their offensive stats over defensive ones.

If you cannot solo any area of inferno focus in the later acts of Hell. The Nephalem Valor is an amazing boost to magic find, so always try to clear unique mobs when possible.

You’re going to want to learn the Auction House as its the fastest way to build your gold for purchasing a solid weapon. The difference between a 600 dps weapon and a 1k dps weapon is the difference from clearing act 1 inferno solo or not.

In gear, always focus on intelligence and health. Int is the best way to increase your damage while Vit gives you a larger cushion of life which means Force Armor will absorb even more damage with less risk of being one-shotted.

What are some of your thoughts on the spells and runes of the wizard class? How have you played yours? Leave your comments below!

Compared to the other bosses on Inferno difficulty, Azmodan is by far the easiest to defeat because he can be killed with a variation of builds and/or gear. Whether you’ve been stacking vit/resists or want to continue as a glass cannon, defeating Azmodan to get access to Act 4 is entirely about movement and reaction times.

Build – Mouse over for a preview

This build will allow the Witch Doctor to burn down a large percentage of Azmodan’s health before he has the opportunity to begin casting lazers. While Pierce the Veil increases the cost of spells, the mana return from the Rain Dance skill rune is more than enough to sustain chain casting Zombie Bears during phase 1 and the initial stages of phase 2. Once Big Bad Voodoo has stopped, switching to Poison Dart with the Splinters skill rune will be the primary attack until BBV has refreshed.

Spirit Walk with Jaunt and Horrify with Stalker provide the WD with 2 ways of increasing run speed – both very useful in this fight. While you may be inclined to use these to run away from Azmodan’s meteors, it’s important to note that it’s a time based attack and will not simply land on you because you’re near it.

By using BBV at the beginning of the fight, you can avoid the first meteor by using SW and side stepping any future ones. Running away simply reduces the initial amount of DPS you’re able to lay on him while BBV is up. The Tribal Rites passive will ensure it’s refreshed sooner so that you can finish him off quickly towards the end of the fight – which can become difficult if you’re not prompt in destroying his gateways that spawn minions (or if you choose to ignore them).

The speed boost from the Stalker skill rune is just enough to allow you to move out of the rain of bones/body parts AOE he casts – you’ll get a moments warning prior to him casting it if you look carefully at the ground.

The most difficult part of the Azmodan fight is avoiding the pools he casts. While at first it would appear they are cast directly under your feet, that’s really not the case. The first 3 pools are untargeted and random – continue DPSing Azmodan during this. Once the 3rd pool is about to finish enlarging, you should move away and begin a 5 second count down.

The trick to not getting stuck in the center of his pools is to change your direction at the very last moment (essentially every 5 seconds). The pools will then appear where you would’ve been had you not quickly changed your direction. It may take you a little while to get the hang of it but it is very simple to avoid. Running to outside and turning direction back towards the center is also helpful in reducing the amount of ground the pools take up. SW and the Horrify/Stalker speed boosts will give you a small margin of error should you mess things up.

Given the Azmodan fight is about quick movement and reaction times, it’s far more dependent on these 2 things than which build you’re using.

A few days ago Blizzard posted about their upcoming patches and in this post we got access to some great information and statistics. If you want to start seeing your gold amount sky rocket, you’re going to need to listen closely and be ready to put the strategies you’re about to learn into action.

You may be asking yourself – how am I going to see my gold sky rocket? Do I have to be a certain level?  Why do I need a lot of gold? Well we are going to get you thinking like a master auctioneer. So what did Blizzard say that you can use to help you in your gold conquest?

Pretty much what’s being said is that the majority of players haven’t progressed beyond level 30. Basic knowledge tells you that 80% of players are looking to upgrade their items that have a level requirement of 30 or below.

When you go to the Gold Auction House, most of the items that you find are with level requirements of 50-60. While these include the best of the best items that can be worth millions for the lucky few that find them, it’s still important to remember that big sales can be made in other categories and should not be forgotten. But what we’re here to tell you is that these high level items shouldn’t not be your whole portfolio, especially with the stats we provided above.

The potential for great demand is there: times of peak traffic – like weekends – indicate more casual players are playing more. As casual players have a tendency to play less and don’t have time to farm, they are more likely to utilize the GAH, and are in that 1-30 bracket. If you want to save time and money on finding out the best times to sell these low level items, check out this guide that has done all the hard work for you.

Just take a look at this screenshot of low level items that have been selling the past week. These are all rings or amulets with a required level of 15 or less:

The low level items sell for a decent amount and most of all they sell fast. They also appeal to the experienced player leveling a new character and are essentially twink items for such users. We get this information from Blizzard as they also posted that:

This is one of only many ways to make HUGE amounts of gold or real money from the GAH & RMAH (when released). But the key to being a successful master auctioneer is having a wide range of strategies acting on them when the time is right.

But don’t waste your time and money trying to figure them all out; all the strategies have been put together for you. Imagine 24 hours from now you were a gold millionaire. Well, for several members of this guide, it actually happened and you can learn from them!

Click here to learn more.

Having trouble fighting Diablo in Nightmare? Well, I put this build/guide together to help you move onto hell and that much closer to end game Inferno. With Diablo I had to think of a way to slow him down while hitting him with the most DPS, so I came up with the build below. For this build you must reach level 51

Build – Mouse over for a preview.

Mouse 1 – Magic Missile with Charged Blast skill rune.
Mouse 2 – Ray of Frost with Snow Blast skill rune.
Skill 1 – Diamond Skin with Crystal Shell skill rune.
Skill 2 – Frost Nova with Bone Chill skill rune.
Skill 3 – Familiar with Sparkflint skill rune.
Skill 4 – Slow Time with Time Warp skill rune.

Why These Skills

The main reason I wanted to find a build that would slow him down was because you NEED to keep moving while fighting Diablo in all 3 phases and having these slows helped me a lot while giving me a chance to blast him with some huge DPS with Snow Blast.

Frost Nova with Bone Chill was the first skill I would throw down on Diablo and was used every 12 seconds to keep the 12% increase in damage while frozen or chilled by Frost Nova bonus. Frost Nova was also a great skill to use on Diablo because if timed right you can interrupt the attacks coming your way like his bone cage because if you get caught Diablo will crush you and it is almost always certain death. A small tip to stay alive if you get caught in this cage, is too either activate Diamond Skin or have the health pots hot key ready to mash.

Slow Time I found was good to use in conjunction with Frost Nova. As I said before with this Wizard build, I was going for slows to keep Diablo’s movement and attack frequency down to a minimal but keeping a high damage output. With using Rune skill Time Warp then blasting a Frost Nova this will give you a total of 35% more damage.

Diamond Skin with Crystal Shell is a skill that I use all the time with my play style. I don’t normally play with a lot of defense so having this skill helps me out of a lot of troubling situations. It’s a pretty simple strategy with this skill, while fighting Diablo all you have to do is use it every time it’s available but having your timing down is important. You’ll want to use this skill when getting up close to use FN & TW. The one critical thing you have to remember is to have it ready to use when you enter phase 2, the reason for this is your shadow clone is going spawn right away and if your armor is not ready to use the clone will rock your socks.

Ray of Frost with Snow Blast is a great skill to use for its high damage output getting to 280% over 1.5 seconds as cold, this is going to go really well with our Cold Blooded passive which we’ll talk about very soon. I also like using this skill because of how easy it is to use on single targets and adds a 30% movement reduction. The main strategy behind this skill is to be spamming it the second you use FN and TW to take advantage of the 35% increase in damage we talked about before.

Familiar with sparkflint is a skill you don’t really need to think about just cast and let it do its 20% weapon damage as arcane while also giving you a 12% increase in damage to all attacks while its active(5 minutes).

Passive Skills

Evocation is a must have since your relying so much on your CD skills, so having all cool downs reduced by 15% will help this build a lot.

Cold Blooded is the core Passive to this build because of the synergy it has with Ray of Frost, it will be your main attack you will be using on Diablo together with Frost Nova which will add additional 20% to your RoF.

Glass Cannon works for me as it plays into my build for high DPS. Plus, I don’t really see a better Passive that would work into this build.

By using this build I was able to slow Diablo down for my teammates and I was still able to deal a large amount of DPS to be a viable player. If you don’t mind getting in close and dirty to help your mates this is the build for you, it’s the build I used to make my way to hell.

Our long war ends today.

If it’s not the jumping frog like creatures, it’s the wasps that’ll get you – welcome to Inferno Act 2!

My approach to moving through Act 2 as a Witch Doctor slightly differs than the build used in Act 1 and that’s because having an additional slow is quite useful.

Build – Mouse over for a preview.

Why These Skills

Some of the trash mobs in Act 2 move much faster than the ones in Act 1 and to that end, giving up the mana regen of the skill rune Swallow Your Soul for the slow of Languish when using Soul Harvest means the Witch Doctor now has 2 methods of keeping mobs slowed.

Languish used in conjunction with Spirit Walk works as a great defensive slow when multiple jumping frog like mobs attempt to attack you. Use both as you run away for a quick and effective escape but ensure you begin the habit of using SH first followed by SW second as you begin to move away as it’s good practice for the trash mobs of Act 3 which will often immediately kill the ghost you leave behind when using SW (this ends the effect).

Grasp of the Dead is a good offensive slow for casting on wasps or other fast movers but you should cast it where the mobs are going to be and not where they currently are. If you cast GotD directly onto a wasp, it only needs to move half the distance to get out of your grasp where as if you cast it in it’s path, it will travel through the entire area of GotD which gives your group plenty of time to kill it (8 seconds). You can run at it’s exit point and use Languish as an additional slow if it’s going to escape.

Just like Act 1, the primary attack used for Act 2 is Zombie Charger with the Zombie Bear skill rune but you might run into 2 problems – Magdha and Belial.

Magdha – Bears are effective here but you need to keep a keen eye out for when she begins to cast her wasps. Due to the short range of bears and inability to move until it’s completed it’s casting animation, you will sometimes get stuck in a situation where the wasps are headed towards you yet you’re unable to move for a moment. Taking a stick and move approach works well or just continue chain casting while playing in a 4 man group. If she does cast wasps in your direction, please ensure you don’t run it through the group and get them killed in the process (raging)!

Using this build will carry you through all of Act 2 until you reach Belial.

Killing Inferno Belial As A Witch Doctor

Build – Mouse over for a preview.

Zombie Bears are super effective for phase 1 and 2 of Belial as they tear down the snakes and Belial himself quickly but become effectively useless in phase 3 due to Belial standing behind a ledge which the bears cannot travel over. I’m not sure if this is a bug or intended but because of this, swapping out GotD for Poison Dart with the Splinters skill rune is required. This means you will only have the slow of Languish left, use it effectively by hitting large groups of snakes instead of single targets.

The key to using this build is burning both Big Bad Voodoo and Fetish Army prior to starting the event so that you only need to use SW and SH to maintain the 300% regen of Vision Quest. If you use BBV and FA during phase 1 of the fight, it won’t have refreshed in time for phase 2 – you’ll need both to burn Belial down quickly before becoming over run by the snakes that spawn. FA acts as a good barrier against the poison balls he casts as they’ll surround him. They can 1-2 hits of it so ensure you move to a different angle when he kills some.

Using Jaunt (increases duration of Spirit Walk by 3 seconds – 5 second total) as the skill rune for Spirit Walk ensures you can get away for longer during all 3 phases. If you’re comfortable with it, you can change back to Honored Guest for the mana regen although I found the extended duration of Jaunt to be useful as Belial is a difficult fight for players who experience high latency (250ms average for me in Australia) as you need to immediately move to avoid his ground pound in phase 3.

Avoiding the puddles of exploding poison is also fairly straight forward by moving around the platform as a U turned on it’s side – hug the outside from one end to the other and then hug the inside as you move back the other way. Phase 3 is arguably the easiest of all the phases but due to it’s length and nature of Belial 1 shotting you, it can be quite frustrating but is more than doable (even on higher latency). My best advice is just to remain calm and slowly move from the poison pools to a clear spot – don’t sprint ahead and run around like a headless chicken – it’ll just get you killed.

If you’re struggling to maximize and sustain high DPS as a Witch Doctor in Inferno Act 1, this build will have you killing trash quickly, tearing apart Champion packs for that juicy 5 stack Nephalem Valor and killing The Butcher in under 2 minutes.

Sounds good right? It is!

Build – Mouse over for a preview.

Why These Skills

The foundation of this build is based upon a single, high damage skill (Zombie Charger with Zombie Bears – 236% weapon damage as poison) and a range of active/passive mana regen skills which support chain casting ZC for lengthy periods of time. ZC is ideal for Act 1 Inferno as it’s cone effect allows you to damage a large number of mobs while at the same time, it remains an excellent single target DPS skill – something you’ll need if you want to kill the Butcher on Inferno in under 2 minutes for the “A Brief Butchering” achievement.

ZC has a short range which means you’ll often be within reach of melee but that’s OK. Spirit Walk and Spirit Vessel provide you with a means to escape or survive death. The SV passive procs when you receive a fatal blow – it will heal you to 10% while leaving you invulnerable for 3 seconds – which is a lot of time to continue casting ZC. Combine that with a health pot and then SW, you can effectively stand within range of melee and chain cast ZC to your hearts content.

Due to ZC having such a high mana cost, Vision Quest – which provides 300% mana regen while 4 or more skills are on CD – is a must. Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo (with Slam Dance as it provides a 30% damage boost to the group) each have a lengthy 2 minute CD which means you’ll only need to focus on keeping 2 spells on cool down.

The other 2 skills you’ll want to keep on CD while not using ZC are Spirit Walk and Soul Harvest. The Spiritual Attunement passive (increases your maximum mana by 20%) has good synergy with the Honored Guest skill rune of SW as it returns 15% of your maximum mana while active. Soul Harvest increases your Intelligence and thus your damage and it’s not difficult to keep 5 stacks of it up a majority of the time. You can use SW to dash into a large group of mobs, grab 5 stacks with SH, run out and begin casting ZC – and it’s not uncommon for ZC to crit in the 50k range when doing this.

Killing The Butcher In Under 2 Minutes

This is more than doable with a PUG – you don’t need a team of 4 exceptional players to pull this one off but you do need to maximize your DPS at every moment of the fight. Before the fight even starts, you’ll need to teleport back to town and use the way point to go to the cemetary. Ask your group to queue up the event and when the other 3 have accepted, run into a pack of 5 mobs with Spirit Walk and then use Soul Harvest to get 5 stacks and click accept – you’ll be ported straight to the Butcher.

Because Fetish Army and Big Bad Voodoo each have a 2 minute CD, you’ll want to burn both skills at the same time and begin chain casting your bears. When you’re getting near 0 mana, use Grasp of the Dead and Spirit Walk so that you can maintain 4 skills on CD and continue receiving 300% mana regen from Vision Quest.

Remember, the Butcher will give you a clear indication of which direction he will use his abilities a moment before he does, all you need to do is side step and continue casting ZC. Because ZC has a short range, you need to react quickly to avoid being one shot. If you do mess up, the Spirit Vessel passive will save you once but with a 90 second CD, you don’t want to rely upon it. Rezzing people is difficult and means 50% of the groups DPS has been lost (1 dead and 1 person stopping DPS to rez you). You can kiss the achievement goodbye if that happens.

Because ZC uses 236% of your weapon damage, it’s essential you have a good weapon in the 1000 DPS range. These are currently selling for around 1-2 million gold; expensive!. If you don’t have the gold, I suggest you check out this gold guide which will teach you how to buy/sell/trade your way to acquiring large amounts of gold quickly or simply wait a few weeks until prices begin to drop on Inferno quality items.

For those of you still sitting on the fence on whether to buy the game, let me say two things: Find a more comfortable seat—fences are no place to seat—and buy D3 now! Why? Imagine if we could take Christmas, pumpkin pie, cute puppies, the smell of a new car, a supermodel, Taco Bell, and a La-Z-Boy recliner, condense them into a glove, put that glove on Will Smith, and then let him bitchslap you with it. Yeah, that’s D3 in a nutshell.

For the intelligent folk out there that have already bought the 9th wonder of the world, I salute you. And since I’m one of you, I salute myself. I haven’t quite worked out the logistics of it.

The point I’m getting at (finally) is that I know why most of you fine folk are here. Let me say thank you for coming. We’ll be posting build analyses weekly in the hopes that, as a community, we can weed out the bad builds and usher in the good ones. Yes, without actual theory-crafting, some of this insight is subjective, but I’ll try to be as objective as I possibly can. That being said, if I post something that you know to be utterly wrong, or your experiences differs greatly from my conclusions, I would appreciate it if you let me know in the comments below. Hopefully you do it in a constructive way, but even saying, “Hey, stupidface, this ain’t right” works too. Just know that If I had feelings they would be hurt.

With a whopping 254 votes (as of this writing, though the number keeps increasing), the “Rapid Death Rocketeer” build is by far our highest voted build thus far. Twincannon created it, and here is what they have to say: “Combines Ballistics rocket skills with a Rapid Fire / Marked for Death combo. Mortal Enemy generates 3 hatred for each attack, and Rapid Fire shoots quickly. Put down a Turret, Caltrops, get max hatred and then Rapid Fire until you’re empty (or Cluster Arrow for big packs).”

To be completely honest, I’m trying to find holes in this build but I’m not coming up with much of anything. With the rune and the Grenadier passive, Grenades generates a massive 8 Hatred per attack, not to mention the Hatred that is generated through Mortal Enemy or Vengeance. The rune on Caltrops helps you lock down an area no problem, while Sentry lets you kite and kill with equal ease. Cluster Arrow and Rapid Fire both provide heavy single target damage to take down those tougher mobs, though their runes also provide a good amount of multi-target damage (as does Sentry’s rune). This is all tied together with the Ballistics passive which increases the damage of all the rockets by 50%.

The ONLY worry I have for this build is the potential lack of Discipline, but I guess you have to sacrifice somewhere. Plus, I’m not even sure if this would be much of a problem. You’d probably have Caltrops out the most, which is only 6 Discipline, followed by Sentry, 10. But that still leaves with you nearly half of your maximum Discipline per fight. That’s at least two more traps if needed, and that doesn’t include the regeneration that will come from collecting health globes through Vengeance. Marked for Death would be saved for champions and bosses, and in that case you could probably sacrifice a Caltrops or two if need be.

This build is wonderful. A strong 4/5.