Various Thoughts

Turns out my build had a crippling flaw: Minion and mercenary damage do not contribute to the Shadowblight passive. I have no idea why I thought they did since the tooltip clearly omits them.

Changes to address that were:

• Skeletal Mages switched to Cold and sacrificed.
• Aldkin and Varyana swapped for Varyana (Attack Speed) and Raheir (Unstoppable on Impairment)
• Greaves of the Empty Tomb swapped for Ebonpiercer and Empowering Reaper swapped for Conceited.
• NaguVex runeword swapped for NeoGar.
• 6 points taken out of the Sever tree and added to Stand Alone and Memento Mori.
• 3 points out of Imperfectly Balanced and into Hewed Flesh, Necrotic Carapace, and Blight.
• 1 point removed from Enhanced Reap and added to Decompose.
• Control, Scent of Death/Darkness, and Bloodbath/Territorial swapped for Abyssal, Scent of Death/Control, and Bloodbath/Darkness.
• Chaos Unleashed & Decimating Desecration swapped to A Beast Cornered & Marred Guard.

My damage has now shot into the stratosphere while the playstyle has remained the same (just spamming Blight instead of Sever) and all challenges except the “Kill Lilith in T4 difficulty” have been cleared. Not sure if I’m going to stick with A Beast Cornered though since I don’t like having to keep using potions when there aren’t any trash mobs around to leech off of.

Just recently made it to Torment IV difficulty with all the Champion tier and below rewards acquired in Diablo IV‘s tenth season.

This season seems to be a notable step down from the previous, as not only are the seasonal items lackluster (the same old uniques just locked to a different slot) but there are less seasonal abilities and there’s not much variety to them. I had to really struggle to find a third relevant lesser power for my build and none of the four main ones were a great fit either. Less subjectively, the new chaos monsters are incredibly low quality and look as though they’re missing their textures/shaders.

The new Infernal Horde boss meanwhile has little point in existing in his current state. You’d need to have at least 1100 aether and no interest in the non-equipment chests in order to make fighting him worthwhile… which is not always possible to accomplish regardless of how powerful your build is. Well whatever. It’s there for those that want it I guess.

As mentioned earlier, I decided to go with a self-made Necromancer build and ended up with:

• Paragon 176, all Ancestral gear; Chaos Unmaker chest & Greaves of the Empty Tomb uniques. All Masterwork 12 except the helm, amulet, and 1 ring (which are at 8 since I hope to replace them). Eventually plan to acquire The Grandfather Mythic greatsword if the rune drops cooperate.
• Cursed Aura, Torturous, Blighted, Empowering Reaper, Damned, Decay, & Hardened Bones affixes.
• NaguVex and LithLum runewords with double Topaz in the armor and double Emerald in the weapon. Jewelry is 1 Diamond and 2 Skulls.
• Control -> Wither/Amplify -> Frailty/Gravekeeper -> Scent of Death/Darkness -> Bloodbath/Territorial paragon boards/nodes, all at level 46.
• Armor at 1k with 75% Fire/Poison/Shadow Resistances & 65% Lightning/Cold Resistance. 9k Life, 42% Attack Speed, & 60% Crit Chance
• Extra Bolt Shadow Mages & Warriors/Golems Sacrificed for 10% Crit Chance and 15% Attack Speed.
• Aldkin (Shadow) and Varyana (Attack Speed) mercenaries.
• Chaos Unleashed with Decimating Desecration, Erupting Chaos, and Accelerating Chaos (so Shadowrift has 100% uptime).
• Abilities
  • Rank 1 Enhanced Reap, Supernatural Blight, & Abhorrent Iron Maiden
  • Rank 5 Paranormal Sever, Abhorrent Decrepify, & Supreme Soulrift
  • Rank 1 Crippling Darkness & Shadowblight
  • Rank 2 Hewed Flesh & Necrotic Carapace
  • Rank 3 Imperfectly Balanced, Necrotic Fortitude, Titan’s Fall, Death’s Embrace, Amplify Damage, Precision Decay, Coalesced Blood, Reaper’s Pursuit, Gloom, Terror, Finality, & Inspiring Leader

Basically, all I have to do is constantly cast Sever while popping Soulrift whenever it comes off cooldown. Blight and the two curses are handled by the equipment affixes while I pretty much never have to re-summon the skeleton mages. It’s a very simple and straight-forward build that deletes normal enemies and elites quickly and painlessly. Bosses in T4 take a bit longer but should go much smoother once I hit paragon 200 and have the rest of the key offensive nodes acquired.

As it so happened, there was little more than a week left in the season when I picked the game up. A discovery which rather quickly derailed my plans of leisurely 100% clearing each area as the main quest sent me to them, as I had to rush through that in order for the season quest to even become available.

Worked out well enough in the end though as by this morning everything was unlocked that didn’t require real money to buy and all rewards below the final tier were claimed except one (the Whispers Bounty one, as ancestral boxes simply never appeared).

As mentioned earlier I was using a Thorns Barbarian build which pleasantly enough could be played straight through the game from level 1 without issue. Ended up at Paragon 170 with two nodes at 45 and the other three at 15, all ancestral gear masterworked to either level 4 or eight depending on how close it had to the ideal stat spread (except the chest which is just basic Razorplate). It currently breezes through most of T3 aside from a few particularly stat-inflated bosses (Astaroth is a slog) and even basic T4 if you don’t mind grouping stuff up before engaging and/or boss fights dragging out.

My main takeaway at this point is that the story writers very much seemed to be longing for the times of Diablo II; this felt very much like a sequel to that. There’s almost no mention of III besides one throwaway reference to Leah hidden at the end of this season’s artifact gathering questline. Meanwhile, the gameplay devs seemed to have been jealous of Grim Dawn since “The Pit” is just a far worse Shattered Realm (added in the Forgotten Gods expansion) and Infernal Hordes are a simplified Crucible.

Future plans involve making some kind of homebrew Shadow-damage necromancer build that I can take my time developing and exploring with when the new season starts in a few days. I’ve always enjoyed the leveling journey more than any kind of endgame play, and nothing I’ve seen here so far (Pit, Infernal Horde, Helltide, Echo farming, Undercity) makes this game look like an exception.