Do you have to skip some monsters in Inferno?

Was trying act 2 inferno last night with my Monk who has just under 700 resist all, and about 6k armor, 20% block, 30% dodge all unbuffed. And then my barb friend joined and war cried bumping all these defensive stats up by a heap. From memory it was above 1000 resist all, and around 10k armor. My hp is a bit low though at 24k.

Now, we entered a cave where there was a champion pack who had plague, and a boss with arcane and shielded minions (who also cast arcane)

Neither of us could survive more than 3-5 hits (us hitting). I read in forums that some monsters you just have to skip and run from.... that's so unsatisfying though. It is true? Or are we just not powerful enough?

Solution 1:

Yes, it is true.

If you are farming / questing alone then there will always be very hard champions. For ranged characters the worst affixes usually are "Fast", "Vortex" in combination with "Molten" and "Damage Reflect", while melee characters have to struggle with "Fire Chains", "Arcane" and "Plague".

There are even some "normal" monsters that are very difficult. For Demon Hunters everything that attacks you instantly from off screen, like Lacuni Huntresses is quite bothersome.

What I am trying to say is: There are certain monsters or affix combinations that are very nasty. Some of these are so powerful that you cannot kill them or it is such a huge investment of time and money (death) that it is not worth it. Either skip them or just create a new game.

This problem is way better if you have a well balanced party, for example 1 Warrior, 1 Monk, 1 Wizard and 1 Demon Hunter. Then the other characters will kill the champions without your help, even though it might take longer.

It gets worse if the whole party struggles with the same affixes, like in your case.

Solution 2:

There are certain affix combinations that are exceptionally challenging and when they occur in the "wrong" circumstances (eg a waller in a tight hallway against a demon hunter/mage).

At present the conventional wisdom is that you absolutely cannot beat all comers. There was/is a thread on the Battle.Net to report exceptionally hard affix combinations so they can be reviewed.

Solution 3:

Arcane, in general, is simply incredibly hard for melee classes at the moment since the damage from the beam hits hard, often (there is absolutely nothing you can do if you are sitting on top of the center of the beam as a melee if you can't move out of it), and cannot be blocked/dodged.

The only way to survive arcane is to fight in an open area and move around a lot to dodge the beams. However, if you factor in other considerations such as teaming them up with frozen, jailer, or nightmare, arcane becomes almost impossible to take down via melee.

There are a few things you can do to make it slightly easier, however.

As a monk you have several ways of handling arcane:

1. Move. If you see the arcane ball land on the ground, try to get out of its area of effect right away. In some cases this may not be possible, which leads to:
2. Serenity. This is always the go to skill to use when you are stuck and cannot get out. At the very least you can use this to buy you a few seconds to navigate around and also it breaks freeze/jailer which is quite useful.
3. Inner Sanctuary. When you are body blocked in, this thing can kick things back and give you the room to run away out of arcane. I like to use the 35% damage reduction rune with my IS which allows me to tank through some arcane.
4. Life on Hit. You need to have very high life on hit to even consider tanking through a single sweep of the beam. If there are multiple beams, I highly recommend doing #1.
5. Seven Sided Strike. If you have this skill on your bar you can pop it just before the beam sweeps through you to completely dodge the damage.
6. Lots of healing. The monk has the ability to heal themselves at a much higher rate than a barb, which can counter the effect of 1-2 beam sweeps. Try to find yourself a fist with built in transcendence (50+ life per spirit spent) and life on hit (or a socket).
7. Lure some of the minions away and take them on one at a time. This is very time consuming.
8. Get a ranged character to help you out. 2 Melee characters means some combinations are just super annoying to the both of you but having a mix of melee and range can mitigate a lot of the combinations.
9. If all else fails, just run away, drop an inner sanctuary at a choke point and retreat.