Season 22: Clone Wars!

[Orbert]

Honestly, I will likely revisit it once I get a few more characters going/done.  Last night I did the thing where you fix up a weapon and offhand with Gems of Ease and run a character from Zero to 70 in one sitting.  So now I have a Wizard babe who wants to try out the new(ish) Typhons build.

It's good to have goals.  It's just that they have to be meaningful, and doing things just to do them isn't my style.  I actually need to get something out of it.  A Stash Tab is worth it.  Getting a new Pet just seems kinda silly.  Most of the Pets (to me) are pretty pointless and/or downright bizarre.  A book that follows you around?  A chest that follows you around?  Various ugly things which are also kinda distracting?  Nah.  I like the teddy bears.  Red or white, depending on my mood at the time.  Plus, there's something oddly humorous about facing down the lords of Hell and their minions with your trusty teddy bear running around, invincible and oblivious to everything else going on.

[mn4nu]

I started a hardcore wizard the other night after not playing this game since season 17.  I promptly got him killed in about 5 minutes, Yay!!!  Then I started him again and now I've got him to 70 and paragon 150ish now.  I am still amazed how easy it is to start a character and get them nearly complete within a few days, well complete enough to run T6-8 that is.  Basically all I'm doing now is running rifts and GRs to get gear.  I lack a lot of good complimentary gear for the Typhon set, so I just run around in T7 rifts casting hydras and things die.  Eventually I want to be a Tals Wizard explosive blast speed build and continue rainbow goblin hunting.  I'm not really going for the season journey since I have all the stash tabs already and I don't care about the other rewards.  I am having fun and that is all that matters now.  I am sure it will get boring in a few weeks, much the same as it always does after a new season starts.

[Orbert]

While playing my other Seasonal characters, I "accidentally" managed to acquire three different Crusader items with boosts to Blessed Hammer.  Two Flails and a Shield; I don't remember their names.  One makes them faster, one makes them do more damage, stuff like that.  Anyway, it occurred to me that I've never done a Hammerdin in D3 (partly because they're not Paladins anymore, so I'm not sure what you call them), so I decided that even though Crusaders aren't my favorite D3 character, I'd try a "Hammersader".

With three Gems of Ease now to help out with levelling, she hit 70 pretty quickly, and was soon grinding for gear.  Yet another Flail dropped, this time it makes your Blessed Hammers bigger.  I had to start cubing some of these, and got the Achievement for cubing x powers.  I don't even know what the number is, since I didn't really look that closely, having decided not to bother with Guardian.  But okay, now I'm 5/6 of the way to Guardian.  I guess I really need to reconsider Boss Mode.  It will bug me forever if I don't do it and leave it at 5/6 done.  (Apparently I was okay with leaving it 4/6 done, but 5/6 is not acceptable.  I'll always know that I could've just done "one more thing" and gotten it.)

Not asking for advice, although it's certainly welcome.  I'm assuming the faster character would be the best one to do it; in this case the Gears Demon Hunter because of the insane speed you get from Momentum, or maybe the Tempest Rush Monk.  There's some combination that cranks your Sweeping Wind up to 13 stacks and adds 5% movement speed per stack, so she really flies.

I'll probably make a list, just to organize which bosses are in which acts, in order to jump as quickly as possible from one to another.  Then off we go.  This could be interesting.

But first I need to finish my Hammersader.

[mn4nu]

I like reading your posts Orbert.  Sounds like you are making good progress with the Hammersader!

[Orbert]

Thanks.  I know we don't get a lot of traffic here these days, but I still feel the need to share my D3 exploits, and (to me) Reddit is for reading, not posting.  I'm glad we still have GO.

I finally got a 5th piece of "The Light" Crusader set (I forget the full name) which cranks up Hammer damage.  I needed the boots and pants, and this was shortly after Hammer Jammers dropped, so I think she's set for a while.  If the pants drop I'll probably do some cubing and/or swapping around.  Ran a T13 Nephalem Rift, and she's kinda squishy, which is kinduv rare for a Crusader.  Usually only extreme negligence will get them killed, but she got one-shot by one of those charging beasts, which was annoying.  So I'll probably do some enchanting, but first I gotta get some more Death's Breaths.

[syn]

nice, Orbert!

here's a plug for speedy WDs. you can get 5% increased speed per stack from soul harvest which can be boosted to 10 stacks with sacred harvester. but even better, you can get 100% increased speed a couple different ways: angry chicken set, or from spirit walk/severance rune, which can get a great duration bonus from the shukrani mojo. i switched to the soul harvest and spirit walk runes and had a fine time. obviously item dependent, but there are a few paths.

i'd guess it'd be straightforward with a dreadlands DH as well, but no idea about the monk option you mentioned.

i finished guardian the other day, and now am using the book pet. have had a few other primals drop: an oculus ring that i put on my templar, and a traveler's set amulet that seemed like a no-brainer to equip right away. nice to get primals that aren't useless! finished a GR100 today, but it was stressful. noticed a bunch of WDs on the leaderboard have rubies socketed in their armor, and several others have gone to amethysts or back to topaz-- lots of variation but not many diamonds. i switched from primary stat to diamonds over the past few seasons, which seemed pretty standard, but maybe i need to rethink that.

edit: since you're already building a crusader, a steed charge thorns build might be a much faster route. probably equivalent speed to the others, and you'd probably accumulate the needed items while you're looking for your hammersader gear.

[Orbert]

I used to use diamonds a lot.  I like Resist All, maybe because I play mostly ranged characters, so melee isn't an issue but elemental damage is.  Maybe it's just psychological, but I seem to survive better with diamonds as opposed to amethysts.  Usually as the character is growing, I put everything into main stat and dealing damage, then at higher levels things seem to change and monsters do (relatively) more damage, so I have to switch things from damage to toughness.  Or again, maybe that's just my perception.

[mn4nu]

If the pants drop

LOL!!!

noticed a bunch of WDs on the leaderboard have rubies socketed in their armor, and several others have gone to amethysts or back to topaz-- lots of variation but not many diamonds. i switched from primary stat to diamonds over the past few seasons, which seemed pretty standard, but maybe i need to rethink that.

Don't rubies wind up giving you armor?  That is probably smart since I think with so much Int from being a WD your resist all numbers are suffering from diminishing returns at this point.  I get why people would try to add armor from the rubies or life from amethysts.

EDIT: Oh yeah, congrats on the GR100 too.  That is awesome!

[mn4nu]

Well, my wizard just died.  I had completed a GR74 and was interacting with Urshi to level a gem.  A monster was still alive and it was one of those that is bugged so that it is invulnerable.  I didn't even see it until it was too late.  My cheat death had already popped and my hydras were down, so my defense was shit when it hit me.  What a dumb way to die.  I am disappoint.

[Orbert]

That blows.  Sorry to hear.

On a slightly related note, there are a number of monsters which spawn other creatures when they die, which is annoying in Greater Rifts.  Those corrupted angels that turn into bats, the exploding fat guys with the worms, etc.  When the Rift Guardian shows up, everything is supposed to die to clear the stage, but they didn't take these guys into account so their spawns are still around.

Another fun one is those round pits in the Chamber of Suffering, where zombies come out.  If I see I'm nearing 100% and I'm by one of those pits, I move.  It's annoying as heck trying to deal with Urshi while those stupid zombie keep coming out.

[syn]

Well, my wizard just died.  I had completed a GR74 and was interacting with Urshi to level a gem.  A monster was still alive and it was one of those that is bugged so that it is invulnerable.  I didn't even see it until it was too late.  My cheat death had already popped and my hydras were down, so my defense was shit when it hit me.  What a dumb way to die.  I am disappoint.

that totally sucks. happy to run some rifts to help you level and gear up again, if you want.

[syn]

noticed a bunch of WDs on the leaderboard have rubies socketed in their armor, and several others have gone to amethysts or back to topaz-- lots of variation but not many diamonds. i switched from primary stat to diamonds over the past few seasons, which seemed pretty standard, but maybe i need to rethink that.

Don't rubies wind up giving you armor?  That is probably smart since I think with so much Int from being a WD your resist all numbers are suffering from diminishing returns at this point.  I get why people would try to add armor from the rubies or life from amethysts.

it makes sense. i didn't put much thought into it and was on autopilot after playing barbs and DHs for so long, so just went for diamonds. switched some of them out. base toughness went down but maybe it's better once the set bonuses are factored in. got up to GR105, though.

[mn4nu]

GR105 hardcore is incredible.  Congrats!

[Cluck Kent]

Wow, GR 105 HC. Congratulations!

mn4nu, dying while Urshing sucks. Commiserations.

You guys make me wanna stop reading this thread and go play. I've made 4 chars this season...so far. I started off with the Wizard because I loved the Hydra Wiz and was curious to see how much the changes affected play. I understand Blizz wanted to move this build away from channeling, but I never really used it much that way to begin with. I found that I could cruise T16 incorporating in 2 pieces of Sage and the Hydras would destroy everything with very little need to channel much at all. And I haven't been doing much higher GR grinding these days. So, because the new style requires a bit more work, I didn't really like the changes at first. Now I've adapted and discovered I can still use Deathwish for an instant damage wallop instead of having to stack 10 spectral stacks from Fragment of Destiny so it's still my go to T16 DB farming build.

Then I started a DH because I love the DH and the Gears set is so powerful and so fast it's great for bounties and GRing. But then I saw the Necro was kicking butt on the leaderboards and it was a build that didn't incorporate a giant cooldown and 4 second window of key blasting so I wanted to try that out it didn't take me long to remember that the Necro playstyle and I just don't agree.  But we'll see. And lastly I wanted to build a support Barb so I could help a buddy play higher GRs. I've been having a really difficult time finding the Band of Might. So I keep dying...

[Orbert]

I'm kinda the same about Necros.  They're kinda different, kinda cool, but something about them doesn't quite work for me.  I've built some pretty fun ones in the past, but they took a lot of active key-mashing.  I've heard that they're fun again this season.  Maybe next.