I woke up extra early this morning and felt the urge to finish up the season journey. The biggest challenge, sad to say, was the set dungeon. But I had an Invoker set ready to roll along with other supporting gear so I said what the hell.
Basically, my gear was a full Invoker set with a Heart of Iron, Hellfire Amulet using the Hold Your Ground passive and CDR, a Vigilante Belt, Justice Lantern, a Convention of Elements with the critical hit rerolled for more CDR, Akarat’s Awakening, an ancient Hack with 10% CDR, In-Geom, Leoric’s Crown (but it looks like I forgot to use it in the Cube) and finally an Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac.
So basically, I ran with a ton of CDR for this build and would have even more if I used the Leoric’s. No Bombardment was necessary nor desired because of how the set dungeon is setup. For completion, you just need to get hit by 75 spears and kill a few elites while standing in Consecration with Iron Skin active. So this dungeon is pretty straight forward.
Since this was the first time I ever did it, I messed up the first two times. First, I forgot to equip the Boyarsky’s Chip, which meant significantly less Thorns damage. The second thing was that I assumed that the Consecration with Iron Skin would instantly kill the elites. So for the first time, I took fatal damage waiting for the elite to die from the Iron Skin and Consecration.
The next time, I corrected my mistakes (although I still had a glaring one from the missing Leoric’s Crown but that apparently had no bearing) and would manually assault the elite after activating both the Iron Skin and Consecration. Pretty much Punish with Celerity took care of the Elite quickly and I just ran through the dungeon and killed off all the mobs that didn’t hurl spears at me.
Because of all the CDR I used in this build, it was easy to Steed Charge around the area. I think I was able to Steed Charge roughly once every second which made backtracking fairly trivial. Honestly, it might’ve been overkill but the intent was to ensure Iron Skin, Consecration and Steed Charge were up most of the time.
Another major aspect to this build was dismissing my follower. Normally, I would use an Enchantress especially because they provide more CDR from their update. But my main concern with the followers was that they might slow down progress. So I wanted to remove the possibility of one of the followers CC’ing a monster I might need to hit me.
The remainder of the Seasonal Journey was a breeze. I accidentally received Avarice while playing my Wizard using a Boon of the Hoarder. I think I might’ve hit a Gilded Baron goblin for the conquest even though I wasn’t making an effort at that moment. Also, the GR75 conquest was pretty simple. I got that one early on via my Wizard.
All the T13 fights I did on my Monk using the Patterns of Justice set. Most bosses were instabbed the minute I touched them. The only one that gave me any concern was Urzael because of his dialogue. So I just made sure to break out of that as fast as possible. For the T10 < 2 min conquest, I used my monk and skipped all drops. I had Kyoshiro’s Soul and a Vengeful Wind equipped which allowed me to speed through the areas rapidly.
Also, early on I managed to get through extracting 40 legendary powers. That one seems pretty grindy but my motivation was actually learning how reusable parts and arcane dust were fairly nice drops from bounty caches. Also, I had been farming items like the Avarice Band, Gloves of Worship, etc. for my followers. I figured that with a fast character like a monk, I would speed through bounties without issue. In turn, I managed to score up enough materials to extract at least 40 powers.
As this was my first time doing the complete Seasonal Journey, I must say that I was pretty motivated in seeing it to the end. Once I got over the hump of the Set dungeon, everything else felt very easy. The thing that made me happiest was getting the extra stash as well as the pet. The stash was my ultimate carrot on the stick. I was missing to get it last season but just ended up losing motivation. Since this season I rolled a crusader and geared her early on, I felt it was worth going through the motions. In the future, that means I’ll be able to get four more so I might be rolling at least one crusader per season moving forward until I max out the number of stash tabs available.
Either way, I have to say that I’m very pleased with the overall season. I still have more things I can do such as pushing GRs, augmenting my gear, farming ancients and primals, etc. But I was more than happy with the follower change alone. I really loved being able to gear out my followers, seeing the progress, being able to use more items that normally never see the light of day. The foundation lain for what followers could be is pretty strong especially with the Emanate ability from gear and the ability to equip all slots like a normal character. Also, making use of crafted gear was another great move. If anything the lesson here is being able to better use more of the game. Now, if only we can get back that 4th cube slot and have a permanent Ring of the Royal Grandeur ability….