Playing the different classes, it seems the Strength classes are a bit swishy. Using the Meta builds for Barbarian and for Crusader, I seem to die a lot.
For some reason, Wizard, Demon Hunter and Witch Doctor are all tough as nails.
Playing D&D it was always the other way around. Intelligence and speed characters were always glass canons, with the Strength based characters always drawing fire to keep the enemies off of the spell characters and long-range ones.
I am guessing, I may be missing some crucial build parameter.
As far as I remember, Barbarian is quite tanky, if it feels squishy perhaps you skipped some crucial power on the build, such as Band of Might. It is widely known that Crusaders are a bit of fragile but they have a few tools under their belt on top of amassing high amounts of healing to regenerate any scratch. The negative side is, the defensive buffs that Crusader can utilize require you to combine them (ie. one stable and one snowball effect) as if it is a puzzle, or need mass healing for you to regenerate and stack the buff as you get hit.
As for Wizard and Demon Hunter classes feeling more durable, could be explained with easier sustain and access on some of their defensive buffs; WoC only require DH to shoot any Hatred generator for 50% DR lasting 5 secs and Karini only need Wizard to stay distant for a massive 80% DR lasting 5 seconds. Compared to that, Barbarians have BoM ring offering 80% damage mitigation for 8 seconds as long as they can cast the specific skill, and Crusaders usually activate LoV- Unstoppable with Crimson to have around 50% damage mitigation for 5 to 10 seconds.
I look at some of your characters. A lot of them have secondary resist. Where your DH as more all resist. What happens is on using secondary resist you could have some of the resist very low vs some very high.
You really should balance them out. Resist really doesn’t starts to work till you get to 1200 or 1300 on resist. When I build any character I always try to get as many items I can with all resist.
I have a rule I follow #1 Resist, #2 armor & #3 damage. I you can’t stay alive you can kill. Most every body does that backwards. #1 Damage, #2 armor & #3 resist. Yes in this game damage is a big deal. But all the damage in the world will not help if you have other two low.
And this varies by class. Str/dex classes want to stack resistance as you get armor from your mainstat. I rarely roll armor on my str/dex characters. The opposite goes for int classes. They get resist all naturally from their int, so they just need to stack armor and not worry so much about resist all.
For me, I try to stack as much damage/cdr on my jewelry, weapon, gloves, and offhand. Helm gets cc and skill modifier if applicable. Bracers get cc, elemental, main stat and either vit or res all/armor. Shoulders get ad/cdr if applicable then main stat and either vit or res all/armor. The rest get main stat, vit, res all/armor, life % in that order.
I have been trying to follow the recommendations from Icey and from Maxroll. I am not sure if they are always right. Checking some of the builds on the Leaderboards, shows some very different stuff.
Anyway, thanks for the tips. I will try to rebalance some of my classes and see if that helps. The other thing is needing to get the Band of Might on my Barbarian. I just have not found one this season so far.
Do a bunch of Visions and upgrade a lot of rare rings. If your barb is slow on farming or not able to do T16 efficiently, run your best farmer. Not too hard to stack up a few 1000 dbs that way and the 3 basic mats. 1500 dbs and 3000 of the other 3 mats gives you 60 ring upgrades, should get a band of might pretty easy from all that. Once you get that, your barb won’t feel very squishy at all.
As for the guides or copying LBs, sometimes you need to tweak a bit, especially with the LB ones as many of those function at 5k+ paragon and don’t work as well at 1k paragon.
Another thing I will do once I get 1500+ paragon is put a couple hundred points into vitality instead of main stat if I feel squishy and the power is fine.
The class with Akarat Champion Prophet is not squishy…it could be that whatever meta build you are following is neglecting certain things in favor of more damage, and is expecting you to somehow not get hit ever. Most meta builds are not the best version of the character’s build. They’re just the template/cookie cutter that with perfect play and perfect fishing along with a dose of skill and luck, can produce the best result. Since that’s the very much the exception to the rule, you’re supposed to take the meta build you are following and make it better to fit your own goals and playstyle.
With the altar and varying themes I don’t find much need for looking at, or prioritzing, secondary stats unless I have two or more items with the same, optimal primary affixes. Sometimes there might be secondary affixes that are undesirable (like fear on a weapon).
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have fire bracers and ring with lightning skill on AoV because that ring is Stone of Jordan, which allows any/all elements to be used with equal effectiveness.
As for follower, I hardly pay attention to or care about them whatsoever. If I ever truly wanted to tryhard, I guess I’d look at their skills and gear for more than 1 second.
But yeah, I said what I said and I stand by it. Sorry that you would rather try to nitpick me (and being wrong in the process) than try to understand my point.
Yes I understand what you are saying and agree. But the thing is if you use to many secondary resist you could have one under a 1000 and one that is maybe is over 2000.
Say the one that is under 1000 is poison and the other one at 2000 is cold. The poison he’ll die most all the time. There is a lot people that don’t really look at the whole build. To see why I die from poison damage.
You may want to have Resistance to All even for just one equipment for intelligence classes actually at some point. Why? Because you may not be able to diverse single resistances at your secondary enough, may lack melee/ranged/elite damage reduction and only All Resist offer Holy resistance (hint: Raiziel’s Holy nova is terrifying, consider tanking it with a defensive Potion or tap T for Homing Pads) as a hidden stat.
Back when we had Firebird Mirror Image, I remember those stacking some resistance for the survival of clones but I guess now no intelligence class build can ever spare space for it because they need skill damage bonuses.