How do you kill Izual on Inferno, after Patch 1.0.4? Let’s take a look…

Hello again, and welcome back! I’m still testing a few of our Demon Hunter skills that were recently buffed in 1.0.4, but I wanted to do a quick post on soloing Izual. Pre 1.0.4, I was having a hard time with this fight, and while the patch did change some things, it didn’t nerf the fight in any way.

So what changed? We received some decent buffs, and the 1.0.3 build benefited nicely from them. I’ll go into more detail when I write out the 1.0.4 guide, but for now, here’s the short and sweet version:

• Evasive Fire - damage increased from 125% to 130%
• Impale - damage increased from 250% to 265%, and Chemical Burn had it’s damage increased from 125% to 220%
• Smoke Screen Choking Gas - now does 700% weapon damage over 5 seconds and Weapon damage % is no longer based on attack speed
• Vault  Trail of Cinders – now leaves a trail of fire behind the player dealing 1500% weapon damage over 3 seconds

The Build

Patch 1.0.4 Solo Inferno build preview 2 - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/demon-hunter#fZdhXV!ZTY!bZcccb

Again, I haven’t finalized this build, but I was testing the new rune for Chemical Burn, Smoke Screen, and Vault and managed to get some good progress without any major gear upgrades.  Try them out, they’re really nice for Act 3 and 4 farming as well as boss killing!

The Fight

Izual is a one phase fight, and here are his abilities:

• Frost Nova – AOE freeze with a huge radius that happens about every 30 seconds.  You will get hit by this while you’re kiting him, but it’s not a big deal as you can Smoke Screen out of it.
• Adds – Izual gains 2 demon adds about every 30 seconds.  These can be problematic, as they have a charge ability that normally 1 shots you.  The key here is to use the terrain on the map and keep them out of  direct pathing line of sigh (in other words, stand behind one of the pits and don’t stand infront of them).
• Frost Orbs – this is the same effect as the elite ability “Chilled”.  Basically, about 8 orbs spawn then explode in about 2 minutes.  Just keep moving and you’ll be fine, or Smoke Screen if you get frozen.

The main problem in this fight pre 1.0.4 was handling the adds while continuing to kite Izual.  Izual moves fast, so you need be on it.  Kiting him around the pits on the map is key, and remember to turn and DPS him when you’re able to.  And since we’re talking about kiting, this is where Trail of Cinders comes into play.  If you watch the video, you’ll notice he closes in on me a few time, at which I vault out, leaving the Trail.  This does pretty good damage to him, not as good as Cydaea, but it’s highly effective.  Smoke Screen’s Choking Gas helps add some damage to Izual and his adds as well.

While you’re kiting, remember to try to keep up Chemical Bleed on Izual and keep a set of Spike Traps up that you can kite him over.  Other than that, Vault out when he gets close to you, or Evasive Fire backflip if you’re low on Discipline and Prep is on cooldown.

Finally, this kill was done in myd gear, which can be best described as “wonderfully average.”  It’s shown at the end of the video, but I’m using a 1k DPS bow and I have roughtly 2k Dex, 37k health, sub 200 resists, ~95k DPS with Sharpshooter, and ~44k DPS without.

Leave me a comment if you have any questions or would like to see other kills.  Thanks all and I hope this helps!

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.