zircon

Well hey, who says you have to use the exact same instrumentation as the original?

I soloed through Siegebreaker. Woo go me!

61 votes so far, although technically we have 166 (!) incomplete responses. Make sure that you remember to follow through and finish your votes!

Act 1 was pretty straightforward. Act 2 is obviously a big step up, but doable. Act 3 is total hell though; duoing with Zero's Demon Hunter makes things easier (though still extremely hard). There are a few ways to build. In all cases, you should try to have a lot of resistances and high dexterity (for DPS + armor). I would never let my resistances go below 500 in any build. Main attack options: * Deadly Reach w/ +Armor: The range on this is amazing, and +50% armor is basically up all the time. Excellent in all acts, almost a necessity for Act 3, and definitely if you are tanking for the group. * Crippling Wave w/ -Damage: Worthwhile for it 360 AOE and damage reduction effects, not a bad option for main tank but not as viable later on when the +50% armor will benefit you more. * Hundred Fists w/ Windforce: Very high damage output and ranged attack. Good for farming or if you don't need more tankiness. * Fists of Thunder w/ +Dodge or Teleport: Good options for an Aspd heavy build, eg. you need more spirit generation or have a lot of Life on Hit. Good for dual wielding in particular. I ran this on Act 3 dual wielding for a bit but I think you really need VERY good gear to make it work that far (eg. a LOT of life on hit). Other skills: * Serenity w/ increased duration: This is a necessity. * Breath of Heaven w/ +Damage: Very nice for boosting DPS and self-healing, of course. Another necessity. * Blinding Flash w/ increased duration or +Damage: I prefer +Damage since my items are mainly defense-oriented and I need more damage. This one is extremely good but possibly swappable for other skills IF you can survive without it. I generally can't, unless I'm farming Act 1. * Mystic Ally w/ Earth Ally: +10% HP and taunts enemies off you. Very useful, I can't live without it in Acts 2/3. * Sweeping Winds w/ any rune: For farming or if your DPS is just too low, this can be a good option, particularly if you're running high crit. Bladestorm (+Damage) is a good one for really boosting your output, while spirit generation at max stacks is good if you are spamming your spells. I personally have tried this but in Act 3 you can't stay in melee range for too long, so I haven't been able to really make it work for me. It would be good with Fists of Thunder w/ teleport though. * Various finishers: I used these throughout the entire game, but as of Inferno, I can't spare the slots. I know some Inferno Monks use various kicks for the stun/knockback properties or +dodge, but I don't. Aura Options: * Mantra of Healing w/ Time of Need (+Resists): Amazing survivability bonus for the whole party. My preferred aura, generally. * Mantra of Evasion w/ Hard Target (+Armor): Another option. Armor does reduce all damage, so it's hard to say which is better. Dodge is a little to random for my tastes, but the activation bonus is really nice. * Mantra of Conviction w/ Overawe: If you're fairly tanky and/or farming Act 1, this ability is very strong. +24% damage for the team or +48% in short bursts is insane. I've run this in groups with success. Passives: * Dex -> Armor: Necessary, I can't live without it. * One with Everything (the resists one): Same as above. * Transcendence (Spirit -> Life): I used this quite a bit. If you run a mostly passive/defensive build like me, you will have spare spirit, enabling you to spam your aura for bonus heals. Not as effective if you are going vit over resists/armor, but you shouldn't do that anyway. * Beacon of Ytar: I've tried it, but w/o another healing source, it's tough to run. Can work if you have Life on Hit though. * Resolve (-Damage): Very nice in groups and in Act 3. This is what I'm currently using. Gear: * +Single resist, +All resist, +Dex, +Vit: These are all very important stats. It's usually not too hard to find gear pieces with at least +30/+30 resists, the tricky part is getting good dex/vit too. * Attack Speed on rings, amulets, gloves: Get it if you can, since it improves your spirit generation, but don't sacrifice too much defense. You should be able to get at least your preferred single resistance while looking for this. * Life on Hit: If you can get 400-500, this is worthwhile to stack and give you some real sustain in combat. * Weapon: A blue weapon with 700-800 DPS is not super expensive (100-200k or so), and you can probably get a nice fat +50-100 dex bonus on it too. A rare weapon with the same DPS and stats like Life on Hit or Vit will be much more expensive, so try to get a good blue first. Good numbers to shoot for: * 20-25k HP * 500 all resists, unbuffed * 10k DPS, unbuffed * 4000 armor, unbuffed In Act 3, I have 30k HP, almost 17k DPS, 4700 armor and 750 resistances - and there are many WHITE mobs who can do over half my health in one shot. Having buffs from my aura, deadly reach, etc. do help but at this point you can't face tank everything (as you definitely can in Act 1, and more or less can in Act 2). In terms of follower, I use Enchantress for her CC and buffs. Get her a strong 2h weapon for cheap (<50k) and then int/vit items (not usually too expensive, or you can just find them). Mine has about 1800 DPS and 50k HP, which is nice. Strategy: This advice applies mainly to Acts 2/3. In Act 1, you don't need to be QUITE this careful. Clear methodically. Go slowly and pull mobs in as small numbers as you can. Once they start running toward you, your Ally/Enchantress will hopefully engage. Get in as many hits as possible at range. As soon as you get aggroed, Blind them and keep attacking. If you see your HP dropping, hit your Breath of Heaven and/or aura activation. If you're still dropping then activate serenity. Usually this will have bought you enough time to clear a pack. If not, you may need to potion and keep going. If EVERYTHING is on cooldown, time to run and get single hits in while you can (eg. while your followers are tanking things). Try not to be hitting something and maxed on spirit at the same time. Use your Aura, if nothing else, for the activation bonus. However, you should never drain your spirit to the point where you can't use Serenity. That's bad. Fighting champions/elites: Can be easy or hard depending on mods, of course. I find Fire Chains to be extremely difficult to deal with. If they're of a particular mob type, I have to pull them or remake (eg. fast spiders, shielding, vortex). In Act 1, they're not too bad. Desecrator can be dealt with because there is a delay between when the animation appears on the ground and when it starts doing damage. Plagued can be safely attacked with Deadly Reach beyond the actually damaging AOE. Invulnerable minions is VERY hard unless you can do a substantial amount of damage while Serenity + Blind are up (that's about 7 seconds of, in theory, uninterrupted DPS on your part). In Act 3, my strategy is even more conservative. If they are very damaging (desecrator/molten, for example, or just a naturally damaging monster type) I will get in their face and pop Serenity up front to unload DPS. Then, as soon as that runs out, I will Blind and continue to hit them. Then I'll generally run around, getting hits in where possible, recasting my Ally, and healing where necessary, then repeating once Serenity/Blind are up again. This works the majority of the time, though not ALL the time unfortunately. Hope that helps. I agree that Monks are pretty difficult to play, but it IS doable if you're patient. I have around 70 hours of total playtime so I haven't been an insane farmer or anything. My most expensive item (an amulet) cost about 500k gold, everything else was much less, between 50-150k. Now that I have over 900 buffed resistances, I'm looking to tweak my defensive stats to optimize them, for example with String of Ears which provides both Life on Hit (sustain) and reduced damage from melee attackers.

Act 3 Inferno is insanely brutal. I can kill champ/elites maybe... 25% of the time, and white (trash) mobs are easily as strong as Act 1 elites. I've had my gear totally wrecked several times and I have yet to complete the first quest. Very very very brutal for a Monk. So far I've been using my very defensive build which, although possessing a respectable 19k DPS, is just not enough to tank like I did in the earlier acts. Fallen Shaman are also a huge problem since they sit in back and run away, making me wade through tons of lethal mobs in the process. At the moment I'm trying an attack speed build with more emphasis on offense and dodge, in the hopes that I can just kill stuff before it kills me. My overall DPS is down but in return I'm getting way more spirit regeneration and some life on hit. If that doesn't work either, I might just have to gear up further...

Yeah, that's very true. Thinking of overall team comp is what enables M5 to dominate so hard with weird picks. Anyway, Zilean's bomb is one of the most damaging, high-range and guaranteed-hit harass skills in the game. No other support comes close in terms of harass potential. Rewind 2x Bomb is THE strongest harass in the game. His ult also enables extreme mindgames and ultimately allows one of your carries to have a free, enhanced guardian angel. In a teamfight, Zilean can speed up and slow down multiple people in a very short period. He has very high (for a support) damage output with bombs, and his ult is always useful. Nunu's ult is a wildcard that might never land, so without it he has basically two skills on longish cooldown: single target buff and single target nuke. That's not a whole lot of utility. Giving your AD carry another few seconds of domination, on the other hand, can easily end a teamfight.

Zilean as a hard support is reasonably effective. He has good utility and is similar to Nunu in that he is very aggressive. I think he's underplayed for no real reason.

Evelynn: Too many reasons to count. Twitch: OK other than dumb stealth mechanic. Katarina: Too easily countered; a mage that needs to be up close and has no tankiness. Akali: A little too all-or-nothing. Brand: Overnerfed. Orianna: Overnerfed. Ezreal: Too much skill for not enough payoff. Kayle: Jack of all trades, master of none. Gragas: Hard to use for minimal payoff. Garen: Very easily countered, minimal utility. Nasus: Easily countered, weird all-or-nothing mechanic. Veigar: Same as Nasus. Wukong: Maybe not underpowered, but SO BLAND Talon: On the overnerfed side still. Poppy: Hard to fit into a team despite having decent skills. Master Yi: In the right direction but suffers from the same problem as other melee carries. Sejuani: Really weak jungler and toplaner compared to others. LeBlanc: Too much earlygame, not enough lategame. Heimerdinger: Mana costs too high to be useful. Irelia: Overnerfed? Karma: Mana costs way too high for things others can do better. Twisted Fate: Outshined by too many others. Miss Fortune: Same as TF. Keep in mind these are varying degrees of underpowered-ness...

No, Followers don't make anything harder - that's one reason why soloing is sometimes easier than grouping. Also, it's pretty easy to find really good follower equipment. A good 2h enchantress weapon to put her DPS at like 1500-2000 and add 100vit is maybe 30-40k gold. Follower items, rings and amulets with int/str/vit are also usually very cheap. My Enchantress now has something like 46k HP. Between that and the mystic ally, she has saved me a number of times.

Narrated patch demo video!

Yep, that was awesome. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to do it. I was able to solo just about all of Act 2 otherwise; no gimmicks, only had to restart or kite elites a couple of times. My gear is worth <3 million total. Ended up with about 17k dps, 28k HP, 900 resists and 5000 armor (8000 buffed).

Production-wise, it's a little on the muddy side - I would try to bump some of those low-mids and mids down, while brightening up stuff like the snare and bringing the lead guitar out more. The rhythm guitars are of course awesome You might try a different tone on the lead guitar as well to make it even more distinct (and/or different EQ). Also, any reason why the drums are panned so much? I would put them dead center but then the overhead/room mics should provide some stereo space. Does that make sense? Arrangement-wise, main thing I would suggest is making room for some kinda breakdown so it's not that huge wall of sound the entire time. When you give a mix like this a breather, it makes coming back INTO the wall of sound more powerful.

Unless people are all highly geared I feel like grouping in Inferno makes things harder. Every player increases monster HP by 110% and damage by 15%. I'm up to the Zoltan Kulle blood gathering quest now as solo, and I still die fairly frequently (usually to combos like Fire Chains + Illusionist... really anything with Illusionist and mobility). Adding more damage seems like it would be unmanageable unless someone is giving me 30k DPS or more.

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Have you considered Life on Hit mods? One of the reasons I can stay alive as Monk is because I can rotate my abilities and spam healing while I'm fighting (no spirit = no healing). If you don't have that kind of self-healing, maybe life-on-hit would be good. Also, I have to play carefully. I try to clear an area of whites as much as possible and pull blues away from unexplored areas so that I can run around as necessary. I definitely do spend some time running and waiting for Serenity (invulnerability) or blind to be up, interspersed with a few ranged attacks. Generally, I can't beat Illusionists unless they have really easy mods. Fast/Vortex with Fire Chains is next to impossible, and champion Wasps are also very hard unless they have no mobility affecting skills.

Lulu has been nerfed, actually. But others that were definitely not OP at release include Fiora, Skarner, Yorick, Volibear, Shyvana, Ziggs and Viktor. The relatively OP ones within the last 6-8 months include Ahri, Graves, Varus (maybe), Darius, Talon. Others like Nautilus, Wukong, Leona and co. were balanced.

I believe it's region-free, so anyone can play with anyone. I'm SLOWLY progressing through Act 2 Inferno on my Monk, solo. I have about 27k HP, 14k DPS, 900 resists and ~8000 armor. I can kill most champ packs. The tricky part is that you need a lot of DPS as well as many survivability/CC tools. You can't JUST be a tank because you will die anyway, and glass cannon doesn't work for melee.

He's using a trademark in his domain name, as his business name, and as an artist name. It would be a pretty easy case for the clothing company to win. Nothing that the clothing company is doing is unreasonable. They have a trademark and they're protecting it - it's not like "Mike Row Soft" where it's just phonetic, but it literally uses the exact same made-up word that was trademarked. That word is distinct enough that it can be easily protected. It doesn't matter that Brad isn't in the same industry or isn't (necessarily) making money. Like I'll be honest, once I have my trademark for zircon 100% registered (it's been sent off), if I see the "zircon" metal band get high in the search rankings I'd probably ask them to change their name.

There is now an AMA up with the musicians of the bundle on Reddit. Feel free to check it out, ask questions and of course, upvote the thread if you like it http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ufxhi/we_are_the_musicians_of_the_game_music_bundle_3/

Correct, however it's not a huge advantage unless you get gear with both +all and +specific. So, something with +40 lightning is good, but +20 all +40 lightning is better. Otherwise, your total resist numbers are not going to be higher than they would be otherwise.

True that heals don't scale, and armor/resists are usually better for EHP than vitality... however it's easier to find large chunks of vit on some pieces of equipment. 200+ vit is possible while 200+ resists on a single piece isn't. I'm now at about 535 base resists myself and almost 25k HP with around 4800 armor. I'm spending 150-200k for each new piece of gear. I'm hoping by the time I've upgraded everything to level 60, I'll be at 600+ resists unbuffed and 30k HP.

Yeah, I suspect there are other possible options too, but that's just based on what I've read on Reddit. Combo strike build with Overawe (+24% dmg to monsters, +48% on activation) might work too, if you run Crippling Wave w/ Mangle and Fists of Thunder for +dodge. My build is currently: * Deadly Reach +50% armor * Blinding Flash with +holy damage on activation * Seven Sided Strike with reduced cooldown (faster champ/elite kills, temp invuln) * Serenity with extended duration * Breath of Heaven with damage buff * Mantra of Healing with +resists buff I've tried using Mystic Ally and she just gets blown up immediately, doesn't seem viable at the moment. However there's definitely room for experimentation here.

Loving Act 1 Inferno so far. I have about 11k dps (13k w/ self-buffs), 4.8k armor (~7k w/ buffs), and 600 resists. It's a good progression over Hell, although obviously I geared up for it. I've even found several pieces of great equipment in my progression so far, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to keep moving. Of course it seems like there is really only one viable Monk build right now, which is basically all defense. Just rely on auto attacks for damage and rotate defensive spell cooldowns, hope you don't die in between. Tricky stuff. I'd be curious to see if a dual wield combination strike build could really tear it up, focusing on very high dodge chance and mobility. As it stands the hardest elites tend to be ones that are either Fast, Teleporter or Waller with ground abilities like Plagued or Molten. Stuff like Damage Reflect or Mortar isn't bad.

Get your mechanics down in a custom bot game. Select Sivir bot as your only opponent then go bottom and practice. I've been able to do about 93 cs by the time the clock hits 10:00. So, if you get less in a real game, it means your focus is being taken away by harass, etc, so you can work on that. If you can't get anywhere close even in a bot game, then it's time to practice timing! Realistically, if you can get 70cs in 10, that's good. By 20 mins, 150 cs is another good goal.

Doesn't matter that they don't have "prophetik music", since "prophetik" is a made up word it's distinct. You can't make "Microsoft shoes" or "coca-cola music" as Suzu pointed out.