At the moment, I’ve pretty much stuck to my guns about avoiding the current season and just focusing on my non-season characters. Since I really didn’t get much of a chance to experience the PTR magic find buff, I could not get the opportunity to test out the newer builds. Fortunately, I can experience everything in full since my hoarding has proven very fruitful.
Although I’m still working on perfecting my Witch Doctor, the character I’ve been playing the most is my non-seasonal barbarian. I’ve experimented with a combination of builds, crossing over the Immortal Kings set with Raekors to see what I can pull off. I’ve tried a few variations, including with the Vile Wards and going 2 piece Immortal Kings as well as 4 set bonus using the Raekors shoulders. Part of what I would do is employ either a Reapers Wraps bracers or the Strongarm Bracers in experimenting with better damage builds. My 4 set bonus with Immortal Kings tends to be Furious Charge with Seismic Slam or Weapon Throw to help keep Wrath of the Berserker up. That possibly was my favorite Raekor build for fast T6 clears.
However, in the process of doing this, I managed to acquire 5/6 Wrath of the Waste pieces. While my build is far from optimal, I will say that it’s one hell of a fun set to play. I’ve seen other people who just focus on the full set and include the Bul-Kathos Oath set along with Focus/Restraint as the ultimate set up. In my case, I’m still ways away since I don’t have the two weapons nor well rolled Focus/Restraint rings. Instead, my intermediate set is 5 piece Wrath of the Waste used in conjunction with the Immortal Kings 3 piece, including the Boulder Breaker weapon, mighty belt and helmet. The great thing about this set up is that it allows me to run permanent Call of the Ancients and near 100% Wrath of the Berserker. I don’t have Fury issues and destroy T6, even in group runs.
However, once you start doing Greater Rifts, you’ll feel a massive slowdown because the higher levels (particularly 37+) will be a pain as the monster’s health will start scaling and you will require some damage dampening ability or item. In my case, I’m still far from optimal with my gear but i can do 35s without too much difficulty. The biggest issue is single target, namely the Greater Rift Guardian. While some bosses won’t be that tough, it does become fairly tedious dragging your mouse in a circular pattern as you wait for the boss to die.
I’m hoping to secure ancient Bul-Kathos weapons. I gambled a non-ancient one so far and still am looking for the second one. However, I feel that without either being ancient the build still will be lacking. On the bright side, a lot of people are reporting to be able to complete 51+ with the Wrath of the Wastes build and not using the Immortal Kings set. I probably will avoid pushing anything higher until I can secure better weapons.
What I’m seeing is that Immortal Kings seems like a really good bridge set between Wrath of the Wastes and Raekors. The two set bonus alone is just amazing and being able to get close to 100% uptime on Wrath of the Berserker is a fun boost overall. I don’t feel that Wrath of the Wastes and Raekors go well with each other though. There really isn’t much synergy at their respective 2 set bonuses compared to Call of the Ancients and Wrath of the Berserker.
I still need to work on my wizard set. I’m taking a break from farming the belt for my pet doctor and mostly focusing on my barbarian (since I’ve practically shelved them since the expansion). However, I am eager to try the Slow Time set. I’ve read that most people feel that combining that set with Tal Rasha’s is the way to go. However, I do have some other pieces and I just want to see it working on my own. Similarly, I would like to do a complete Tal Rasha build. Again, I’m doing a hybrid with the Firebirds set. It’s fine for now but I can tell that I’m missing out because of lacking things like the Meteor boots and a good pair of Focus/Restraint (and I’ve found a bunch but most have been pretty poorly rolled).
That said, I’ve been pretty happy thus far with this patch in the sheer amount of potential build diversity. I think having meaningful 2/4 set bonuses per set allows a great deal of cool combinations for different purposes. While not everything is perfect and there’s been some disappointments (like the Barbarian bracers), there’s plenty of things to experiment with and change the game play somewhat. Also, the new maps help keep things reasonably fresh for rifting and the removal of bosses from bounties really has been great.
Season-wise, I feel that there wasn’t enough in seasons to motivate me into playing whereas I’ve enjoyed playing the non-season content a lot more. The only bad thing is that I’ve mostly played alone so it’s been kinda boring. I did manage to get my transmog so beyond that aspect, there really hasn’t been any reason for me to return.
That said, I’m curious what they propose to do for Season 4. If the patch preceding Season 4 is anything like the one we’re seeing, then I would find less motivation to play again. Season 2 was better for me since the builds were pretty well defined and I had accomplished as much as I could on non-seasonal. Since the transmog set for the most part is done, I’m wondering if they’ll do another transmog like for weapons or if there will be some other special prize. Also, what additional seasonal items will be added into the pool.