I’ve been able to successfully run Siegebreaker farms in Act 3 with only 400(55% resists) all resist and fairly low armor mitigation(65%). Come in here to learn the strategies I use to survive massive hits in Act 3 Inferno without having to stack resists to an insane level.
Equipment I’m using in this video – please click like to reveal
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Kiting
Kiting is a MUST for difficult elite packs. I find molten/waller/jailer, desecrator/waller/jailer combos to be especially troublesome. Fire chains and shielding mobs can also be difficult. As you play you’ll build a good feel for the types of mobs that will almost certainly kill you if you try to stand toe to toe with them.
Kiting defined:
- Kiting means the deliberate act of running away from a mob in order to escape their attacks. In most games kiting is normally reserved to ranged classes(mages, archers, etc.) but in D3 kiting is also a necessary tactic that melee classes need to employ in order to survive some difficult encounters.
Kiting examples:
- Molten mobs – you want to kite against molten mobs so that they do not surround you and trap you in lava. The best strategy against molten packs is to run a short distance, about half a screen or less, and then hold your stand to attack key and let the elites come to you. Hit them for one to two seconds and then move another short distance away and let them come to you again. If you continuously do this molten packs should not have the time to surround you, and thus you should avoid standing in lava.
- Desecrators – The same idea as molten, you want to move every second or so, don’t even wait for them to cast fire. The actual damage portion of the desecration debuff doesn’t go into effect until about half a second after the graphic displays on your computer, so if you move every second you should ensure that you’re never standing in damaging fire.
- Plague – Plague mobs require a larger kiting distance as they’ll fill the screen with more poison. If your resists are high enough or you have enough life on hit sometimes you can just straight tank the poison as it does much less damage than molten or desecration. But the same theory applies to plague, run away, stand to attack, wait for them to come to you, and then run away again when they cast poison.
- Waller/Jailer – Waller/jailer mobs that don’t have molten/desecrator/plague affixes aren’t really an issue for Monks and with good life on hit/lifesteal, and resists you should be able to just tank them. However these can be DEADLY when combined with one of the aforementioned affixes. So when you run into molten/waller, desecrator/waller, or god forbid molten/desecrator/waller/jailer(maybe just skip these :P) you will again want to kite. The key here is to only go in and attack AFTER the mobs have cast their walls/jails. You will pick up a pattern on how often they cast(it’s usually every 3-5 seconds), and you should stay away from these mobs if you know they’re due to cast a wall/jail soon. This way you can avoid being trapped into fire.
Kiting Tips:
- Bind your click to move key. Mine is bound to space-bar. Normally when you click, if there is a mob there, you will go attack that mob. If there is not a mob, you will run in that direction. This can get really deadly when you’re surrounded. So click to move, no matter whether there is a mob there or not, you won’t attack, you will only move. This is great when you’re surrounded or fighting mobs with big hitboxes(belial). You can just hold down click to move(mine is bound to spacebar) and move your mouse in the direction you want to run, thus avoiding deaths where you accidentally attack a mob when what you really wanted was to move out of the fire.
- Use doorways and bottlenecks to your advantage. This is especially useful against hordes, illusionists, and elite mobs that do a ton of natural damage(like the 2handed skeleton guys in Act 3). To do this, run away and wait just on the inside of a doorway and hold stand to attack. As the mobs come to you they’ll be funneled through that doorway so now only one or two can attack you rather than all of them. If they get past the door and start to surround you, just run away to another doorway.
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Rotate your cooldowns!
Against really difficult elite packs I find not only do I need to kite, but I also need to rotate cooldowns. This sometimes means not going in and attacking unless I have serenity up or at least having a potion/breath of life up before going in to attack. For example on fire chains mobs often I’ll just run away until my serenity is off cooldown, then go in and attack, and when I start taking damage from firechains pop serenity and do four more seconds of damage before running away again.
For more d3 monk builds visit the Monk builds page here. Check out this post for my favorite 1.0.3 farming spot. Click here for more articles related to health and fitness. Get good karma and great free items by visiting the “good karma” forums here.