Decided to write a blog post to commemorate this 'achievement' and the journey it took to get there. I decided to look thru my old screenshots. As some of you may remember, the old inferno was VERY hard with the level of gear available at the time. I was pretty much stuck at the wall of Act 2 for the longest time, with those BEEZ (no, not gold) completely destroying me. Even after tweaking my build and getting this sweet sweet mace from a pot:
Back in the day, IAS + Life on Hit were "end-game" affixes. None of this crit damage shenanigans! Like most Monks at the time I was specced into : Ascension, Sweeping, Ally, Overawe, Keen Eye, and... Lashing Tail Kick! Knockback because we were so squishy was almost necessary. Remember String of Ears, Helm of Command, and Talrasha's Chest? 100% required for Inferno!
So that was my gearset to tackle Inferno past Act 1, and I zerged my way thru Act 2 and got to Act 3. Splat. Those Invulnerable Minions were my bane. My "strategy" was basically to summon my ally, Deadly Reach behind him until he dies, and fall back until dead. Super slow with my 22k dps. So I decided to cash out again, knowing the increased attack speed nerf was incoming and the RMAH had just opened up and knew I had to sell my decent "ias" items before they were worth way less. Mission Successful - + Show Spoiler +
- note how nerfed it was after 1.03!
So now that I was completely nerfed from 3 attacks per second to 2; and 28k dps to 20k - I was again stuck at the Act 3 roadblock again. I'd farm the Act 2 bridge elite until he was nerfed: + Show Spoiler +
And then did Crypt of the Ancients & Warrior's Rest for a while way before it was cool to: + Show Spoiler +
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Whenever I got an Act 3 capable gear slot, I'd just sell it on the RMAH instead.
But eventually I decided I could find a set of gear that a) wasn't worth anything on the RMAH and b) could beat Inferno.
Here were my stats on that fateful day:
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And my mediocre gear came in the form of a OWE-centered, life-per-second, and miserable dps
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And Big D finally fell:
And of course immediately afterwards, I went and sold off anything worthwhile; like the sword! + Show Spoiler +
So after finally 'beating the game', there wasn't much else to do cept level other characters, and I went ahead and leveled every other character to 60, trying WW barb, Wiz, and eventually WD and DH. When 1.04 came out I was working on DH and almost decided to make that my main... until they decided to completely nerf DH tanking proc rates, and I went back to my Monk. So I had to gear and spec my monk back up to Act 3 farming capability and finally was able to drop Deadly Reach for Fists of Thunder.
Now that new legendaries were good, and Act 3 farming was normal, I decided.. man now it's time to look cool! Especially since it was better to group for Uber farming. And thus I ended up using Devil's Tongue and Hallowed Defenders:
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I farmed mostly on MP5 for keys, then grouped up for MP7/8 and decided I wasn't going to keep rolling the dice after this one:
Then I saw a video posted of a Monk doing a speed Act 3 run sometime around October of last year using a Tailwind build. It was one of the many "I can do Alk runs in X time" type, but actually worth looking into. Shortly after.... I was hooked. This was before spirit regen gear spiked in price, and was able to pick up a very nice Xeph amulet for 2m that I thought was actually overpriced at the time. Sadly I finally parted ways with it a few months back ( + Show Spoiler +
) I also went the unconventional route of using a pair of Shenlongs with 2+ spirit regen each! It was plenty enough regen to maintain Tailwind and good enough to Act 3. At my highest, I think I was almost at 28 spirit regen/sec slamming bells left and right. (weak, weak bells of course - good enough for mp0!) By this time, I was no longer using any gear worth anything on the RMAH so my tradition of cashing out before each patch stopped happening. I did make one last nice payday taking advantage of the 1.08 gold bug, but that's another story! + Show Spoiler +
And so, the grind began. Paragon level after level, dropping pieces of MF and the addition of crafting and the fail that was "brawling" until I began approaching the fabled 100. I was down to one MF peice, and had crafted two nice MF amulets ( + Show Spoiler +
) but sadly I will never be able to craft a trifecta. I grinding most of my time in Act 3 MP0 or Vota MP1. All the way up to paragon 85 when I decided to possible gear for MP8+ to prepare for the grouping buff of 1.08.
Around plvl 85, I began not wanting to gain xp, and dropped the ruby from the helm, and hoped to make it to 1.09 before hitting 100.. Unfortunately that didn't happen and now I am 100. If you have made it this far, you must really bored. Thanks for reading!
Bonus: In 100 Paragon levels, I have gotten only 3 double-legendary drops: + Show Spoiler +