I didn’t have a lot of time this past week to get a chance to progress in Diablo 3. Part of it was that the Challenge Rift ended up being complete rubbish again so I lost a bit of motivation to pursue the Altar. However, this weekend I had been playing with my Barbarian a bit more and made a Witch Doctor as well (more on that later). So I figured to provide a minor update about my season journey thus far.
I managed to do a lot of the Altar related tasks without finishing up the Altar such as hitting a GR110, crafting a Staff of Herding and working on an Ancient Puzzle Ring (among other things). Of course, I’m completely jammed on the Challenge Rift Cache which convinces me that either they allow a daily Challenge Rift or get rid of the Challenge Rift Cache as part of the Altar. I hate social engineering and Blizzard is one of the worst companies when it comes to this aspect in gaming. Either way, hopefully Monday’s reset/next Challenge Rift won’t be aids.
Since I couldn’t do much more with my Demon Hunter (at this stage) outside of farming ancients/primals, I also ended up making a Wizard and Barbarian among other things before this weekend. The Wizard is struggling to find Tal Rasha ancient gear but my Barbarian has done quite well. And the reason why I wanted to talk about my Barbarian is because I changed things up a bit by moving from the dual wield of Bul-Kathos’s Oath to Istvan’s Paired Blades. I had been using Bul-Kathos’s Oath for a long time for Whirlwind because I enjoyed the resource generation and movement speed. However, as I started moving into higher GR tiers, I decided to swap the weapons as I was unable to find ancient/primals for my Bul-Kathos’s set, whereas I had an ancient Little Rogue sitting in my bank. Also, I looked closer at what Istvan’s Paired Blades do which is boost your damage, armor and attack speeed by up to 30%, which is pretty huge. I also changed out one of my passives for Unforgiving and swapped Whirlwind’s rune to Wind Sheer so that I could maintain Whirlwind. The difference is quite significant. While I do move slower, the main thing is being able to damage more and improved tankiness overall. Also, my gearing on my Barbarian has been much better with a good chunk being augmented.
On the other hand, my Wizard has struggled to find decent gear for Tal Rasha. Most of the gear I’m encountering is for Delsere’s Magnum Opus or Firebird. Some Typhoon as well. But I have little to no plans on playing any of those builds. I did start with Delsere’s but struggled too much with AoE. Tal Rasha is still slow but the damage and survivability is just too good. I’m hoping with some more ancients, I’ll find higher GRs not as bad, despite the nerf.
Then today I ended up creating a Witch Doctor just because I had enough gear and was bored. It didn’t take long for me to get a Mundunugu’s Regalia build going. Actually, this season I found Mundunugu’s Regalia build really fun. The gem that causes on death explosions really helps make this build next level. I forget the gem she uses in her helmet but it’s really all about the exploding weapon poison gem. My gear is still shite but I could do GR70 out the gate in a fairly trivial manner.
Considering how much gear I’ve got stored up for alternative classes, I might just make the other three. Monk is fun both as Innes/Mystic Ally and Patterns of Justice. I don’t have a lot of monk gear but I do have enough to do an LoD Wave of Light build where I just need a few extra pieces here and there. As I mentioned, I have 5 pieces of Valor gear just sitting in my bank. If I can craft the set shield/flail along with the two belts and Fist of Heaven’s flail, then I’m pretty much done. Also, I’ve been collecting a variety of Necromancer gear and have been considering doing either a Rathma or Inarius build.
Either way, I’m still having fun but I really want to finish up this Altar. I really hope Monday doesn’t suck when it comes to the Challenge Rift and that they have a good one for NA like GoD DH or WW Barbarian rather than some random schmuck build.