Various Thoughts

Diablo IV‘s eleventh season changes various things up:

• Map rewards have been folded into seasonal rewards and an equipment affix.
• Seasonal ranks have been decoupled from the individual challenges (you now only need to complete certain dungeons and hit Pit level 75 to get all account-related rewards).
• The Pit’s been seasonally overhauled to be notably more hectic and always have you facing off against Belial.
• Equipment now has four random affixes and can have a single non-random temper affix added to it.
• Tempers are no longer limited and can roll a greater affix.
• Physical and elemental resistances have been made more complicated (but are no longer hard-capped).
• A season-specific equipment enhancer was added that turns every item into a unique (meaning you can’t modify it afterward).

There are also minor changes like a new world and undercity boss, Helltide blood maidens getting replaced with Duriel, and masterworking getting condensed. As for the seasonal storyline, all that’s there this time around is a short paladin-related quest and Azmodan showing up in the last capstone dungeon.

At the start of Torment 4 right now at Paragon 180 with three of my five nodes at 46, and didn’t have any trouble getting here. I had planned on making a wolf-focused Druid as my first character this season and nothing in the patch notes altered that plan:

• Skills
  • Rank 1 Claw & Innate Blood Howl
  • Rank 5 Primal Shred, Ferocious Wolf Pack, Brutal Ravens, & Supreme Lacerate
  • Rank 1 Heart of the Wild, Neurotoxin, & One With Nature
  • Rank 3 Wild Impulses, Digitigrade Gait, Predatory Instinct, Backlash, Ancestral Fortitude, Vigilence, Feral Aptitude, Call of the Wild, Clarity, Envenom, Defensive Posture, & Quickshift
• Spirits: Stag 3, Eagle 1 & 4, Wolf 1, Snake 3
• Companions: Raheir + Varyana
• Paragon: Territorial, Lust for Carnage/Fang&Claw, Ancestral Guidance/Wilds, Untamed/Shapeshifter, Heightened Malice/Spirit
• Equipment
  • Doombringer Sword, Mad Wolf’s Glee Chest (NaguOhm), Storm’s Companion Legs (Sapphire)
  • Ancestral Helm (IgniWat & Spirit Bond), Gloves (Stampede), Boots (Metamorphosis)
  • Ancestral Totem (Emerald, Moonrage), Amulet (Skull, Shepherd’s), Rings (Diamond, Alpha & Unsatiated)

Originally the idea was to claw things and then use the Ravens/Wolves whenever they came off cooldown… but with the wolf spirit bonus neither of them ever go on cooldown to begin with. So for general area clearing I ended up with a playstyle of casting Ravens twice, Shred to return to werewolf form and refresh Quickshift’s bonus, then back to Ravens. Tossing out a Wolf whenever I run across an Elite or particularly dense monster pack. For lair bosses the play is Lacerate (immediately cancel) -> Howl -> Ravens -> Wolves -> Shred, then alternate between Wolves and Shred/Howl.

This character is basically done now, so after getting the other paragon nodes to legendary I’ll move on to making my second character this season (a Hakan Rogue). Once they’re also up to T4 I’ll figure out which one I want to clear the 75th Pit level with (probably the Rogue).

Ended up trying both Necromancer minion variations and the Bone one came out on top. There’s just too little synergy between Overpower and the other minions to recommend using the Blood Lance version (that it would be useless post-season also played a role).

Bone Minion Necro

• Abilities
  • Rank 1 Enhanced Reap, Dreadful Bone Prison, & Plagued Corpse Tendrils
  • Rank 5 Paranormal Bone Spear, Abhorant Decrepify, & Supreme Bone Storm
  • Rank 1 Hewed Flesh, Grim Harvest, Necrotic Carapace, & Kalan’s Edict
  • Rank 2 Necrotic Fortitude
  • Rank 3 Fueled By Death, Titan’s Fall, Skeleton Warrior Mastery, Amplify Damage, Death’s Embrace, Death’s Approach, Skeletal Mage Mastery
    Coalesced Blood, Golem Mastery, Finality, Inspiring Leader, & Hellbent Commander
• Paragon
  • Gravekeeper, Cult Leader/Deadraiser, Hulking Monstrosity/Warrior, Scent of Death/Golem, Bone Graft/Mage
• Minions: Skirmishers 2, Bone Mages 1, Bone Golem 2
• Mercenaries: Rahier (Resistances) & Any
• Seasonal Powers: Alter the Balance, Grim Reapers, Unstable Power, Crazy Brew
• Equipment
  • Chaos Ring of Mendeln Head (NeoOhm), Hardened Bones Chest (Topaz), Grasping Veins Gloves, Blood Moon Breeches (Topaz), Chaos Lidless Wall Boots, Reanimation 2H Scythe (NaguVex), Occult Dominion Necklace (Skull), Conceited & Damned Rings (Diamond)

Main issues are that getting the minions to target what you want them to is incredibly difficult (although Corpse Tendrils with the extended area Temper helps with that), and having to constantly replenish the supply of Skeleton Mages is annoying.

Post-season changes would be to replace the head with Occult Dominion, the boots with Metamorphosis, the weapon with a 1H Vehement Brawler scythe and Lidless Wall, the conceited ring with a Ring of Mendeln, and swap the amulet affix to Reanimation. Also, the chest slot is meant to be a Shroud of False Death, but I’m currently both 1 rune and 1 Spark short.

After that build was finalized I moved on toward making a new Barbarian in the mold of that Deathblow one, which turned out more fun to play.

Arsenal Barbarian

• Abilities
  • Rank 1 Combat Frenzy, Strategic Rallying Cry, Fighter’s Rupture (2H Slash), Fighter’s Mighty Throw (2H Blunt)
  • Rank 5 Violent Double Swing, Power War Cry, Supreme Wrath of the Berserker
  • Rank 1 Pressure Point, Raid Leader, Thick Skin, Concussion, & Unbridled Rage
  • Rank 3 Warpath, Imposing Presence, Martial Vigor, Guttural Yell, Aggressive Resistance, Pit Fighter, Slaying Strike, Defensive Stance, Counteroffensive, Wallop, Invigorating Fury
• Paragon
  • Dominate, Decimator/Ambidextrous, Blood Rage/Ire, Bone Breaker/Crusher, Carnage/Seething
• Expertise: 2H Axe
• Mercenaries: Raheir (Slow, Iron Wolf’s Call) & Varyana (Whirlwind)
• Seasonal Powers: A Beast Cornered, Accelerating Chaos, Deafening Chorus, Marred Guard
• Equipment
  • Harlequin Crest Head (Ruby), Chaos Battle Trance Chest (Ruby), Twin Strikes Gloves, Undying Pants (Ruby), Yen’s Blessing Boots, Limitless Rage 2H Blunt (IgniWat), Vehement Brawler’s 1H Mace & Sabre of Tsasgal (Sapphire), Fields of Crimson 2H Slash (TamVex), Edgemaster’s Amulet (Diamond), Starlight & Vocalized Empowerment Rings (Diamond)

Now, you may notice this build does not actually use Walking Arsenal. It meant too, but Unbridled Rage just ended up flat-out better with the benefits of A Beast Cornered. Gameplay is simple yet engaging; Wrath -> Mighty Throw -> Rupture -> spam Double Swing. It slices things up nicely and doesn’t have any notable survivability problems thanks to the barrier and life gain.

Post-season changes would be to swap in a Deflecting Barrier chestpiece and swap out Unbridled Rage for Walking Arsenal, then switch Rupture to Fighter’s and reduce Frenzy to Enhanced while getting rid of Raid Leader to put two points in Booming Voice. Might also have to swap out the +Skill runeword for a +Resources one since the Shouts won’t have constant uptime.

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Wanting to grab the various Barbarian and Necromancer challenges I was missing without respeccing my existing characters first lead me to creating a Deathblow Barbarian. While at the start this seemed rather powerful, by the end (although it certainly wasn’t weak) it felt both more fragile and weaker than the cobbled-together Shadowblight build. Even having all the required gear besides the Mythic.

Somewhat disappointed, as I was really hoping for a boss-killer that could finish off Lilith, I moved on to trying to create a Necromancer minion build. This failed miserably. It was barely capable of handling basic T3 content. While it’s possible that may have been a result of the mere level 8 masterwork and level 15 paragon glyphs, not being interested in putting much leveling effort into a build I planned to soon delete, it was more likely a lack of focus; there was Bone Storm, and Blood Lance, and all three minion types.

Extremely disappointed at this point I decided to check out Maxroll and Icy Veins‘ Shadowblight builds to see if my ‘finished’ build was missing anything obvious. Putting aside the whole Alter the Balance setup, which I dislike as it feels like an exploit and will be useless post-season, it turns out I was: Blighted Corpse Explosion. Taking the extra points out of Blight, 1 point from Necrotic Carapace, and dropping Sever (which was only there for Reaper’s Pursuit) let me take both that and put 3 points into Fueled By Death. Now having a consumption power, I was also able to swap the Bloodbath paragon board for Flesh-Eater.

This resulted in a pretty massive damage upgrade allowing a brute force victory over T4 Lilith, helped out a bit by having gotten better at dodging her Death From Above (the trick it seems is to keep running around the inner edge of the arena while she’s in the air) and finally finding the last Rune I needed for the Mythic greatsword.

Since that turned out so well, next up was looking at some endgame Minion builds hoping for similar inspiration. This turned out to be a wash. For whatever reason they’re focused on a single minion type, and if I’m going to be playing minions I want all the minions. Also, while I can understand focusing solely on Skeletal Mages if you’re using Hand of Naz and Service/Sacrifice, I’m deeply suspicious of the claim that sacrificing the Mages will result in more damage for the Reaping Warrior build than keeping them.

So I’m now split between two potential paths:

1) A bone-centric Reap build that uses Skirmishers 1, Bone Mages 1, and Bone Golem 2 supported by Corpse Tendrils, Bone Prison, and Bone Storm. Chaos powers being Alter the Balance, Grim Reapers, Unstable Power, & Crazy Brew with the intent being to just have bone shards flying everywhere and critting everything.

2) Based solely on having a 3-star Ancestral ring with Overpower damage just drop, keeping the Reaper theme but switching to a blood skill focus. I’m hesitant to try to re-tread that path though after the earlier Blood Lance debacle and none of the Mage minion options have any synergy.

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.

For the past week or two I’ve been on a nostalgia kick replaying Diablo II. Eventually burning out recently and annoyed that retaliation/thorns builds aren’t viable (and that there’s no buff/debuff timer) I finally got around to doing a bit of research on Diablo IV.

On the positive side, it appeared there actually was an effective Thorns build available (albeit for an unexpected class). On the negative, it seemed like the game had turned wholly into an MMO with cooldowns and attack/buff rotations and world bosses and whatnot. So I waffled a bit but, ultimately just as with Diablo III, ended up caving.

Some thoughts being now a little ways past the prologue and having cleared a chunk of the first area’s north and western stretches:

Negatives
– Dungeons tend to be rather empty with barren halls and a notable lack of destructive urns/barrels.
– The Cellars and timed World Events feel exceptionally gamey.
– Weapon and skill bonuses seem pretty minor, with differences being sometimes only a fraction of a percent or a couple seconds.
– There’s about twenty too many different types of resources.
– Oddly frequent cutscenes.
– Dungeon rewards being static. Could they not think of a class-specific reward for each one?

Positives
– Grim Dawn-like respec access.
– Gameplay at this point isn’t as complicated/rigid as feared.
– The massive number of resources don’t take up inventory space.
– So many things to collect and upgrade.
– The map evolving as you clear strongholds is a nice touch.