The description I read for season 2 was how Jessica Jones’ conflict turns inward as opposed to outward. We see how her past events continue to haunt her from her family’s demise to the way Kilgrave resurfaces in the end. One of the main criticisms that I read was how the lack of a primary villain made the show seem unfocused and that is something I wholeheartedly agree with.

For the most part, season 2 seems rambling with the story scattered between Jessica Jones and the supporting cast. It felt as though each person involved were attempting to battle some form of internal demon that have led them to making poor decisions. I suppose that in some ways this idea was a good thing as we saw more character development that attempted to add more depth to the environment.

However, I feel that none of the characters outside of Jessica Jones really resonated with me. Everyone felt incredibly generic with only Jessica Jones having an established voice. Probably, the only character that could have been interesting was that Whizzer guy near the beginning who seemed to be some geeky type that could have made some impact outside of cannon fodder to push the plot forward.

If anything, most of the supporting cast severely annoyed me. The superintendent was nothing more than a sounding wall with Disney trying to keep the Marvel franchise connected to children by making Jessica Jones somewhat of a hero. Malcolm as the recovering addict struggling with temptation is boring and insipid. Her best friend Trish is nothing more than the blonde bombshell while Carrie-Anne Moss continues to disappoint with unsympathetic Jeri Hogarth.

There’s really nothing that makes me gravitate towards anyone in the series outside of Jessica Jones. The story was stretched so thin that they had to bring back the one character that made season 1 interesting: Kilgrave. But that only hints that the writers had so little material to work with and were forced to prolong this season with filler.

If I had one major frustration with this season is that there was little to no connection to The Defenders union. We got Foggy and Turk in very brief appearances with no lasting impact. It’s as if that whole side of the continent was intentionally ignored. Also, there’s no hint if there are any lead ins to another Defenders series.

Let’s be real here: we’re in it to see another Defenders reunion. I think at this point these characters aren’t truly strong enough to exist on their own (maybe Daredevil but only when he’s connected to another major Marvel character). The initial setup to establish each of these characters with their realms were decent (except for Iron Fist-ing) so that a nice backstory could help each actor/actress develop a sense of identity with their character in addition to the audience learning what each character was about.

At this stage though, putting effort into developing supporting characters feels like an utter waste. I like the attempt at a different direction that Jessica Jones season 2 was going towards in terms of the inward struggle. Most movies these days are nothing more than paranoid conspiracies about secret weapons manufacturing for a hidden society. So the fact that the true battle was in Jessica Jones’ mind was refreshing.

What made the series suffer as a whole was it being far too long and giving too much screen time to people who are as fascinating as stale poop. Right now, if you were to exchange Karen Page and Trish, you would not see much of a difference because their tones are almost identical as an example. It felt as though people were just going through the motions of reading off a script.

Another part that which made this season suffer is too much of an attempt to connect things to the #MeToo movement and with the recent Hollywood scandals. Trish essentially is a tool/voice for the #MeToo movement. I found that to be tiresome and typical of Hollywood writers in bringing recent scandals/Hollywood events to their writing. The truth is that Trish isn’t much of a sympathetic character to start and the actress isn’t great to really pull this type of deal off. So this part of the show just never worked for me.

Also, there was that Pryce Cheng guy. AKA the token Asian. Again, if that actor swapped with the guy playing Oscar Arocho or Malcolm, you wouldn’t know the difference. That’s because these actors suck badly. They’re just token characters with no tone thrown on screen to meet a quota. They really don’t do anything with him nor give him any material to work with outside of an initial dialog or two. He’s just there for no good reason beyond filler.

So again, I enjoy Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones. I think she’s managed to acquire a voice for the character and her language and actions make her distinct. The rest of the cast are nothing more than stock people with random folks in Hollywood trying to fill in a large void where the writers are obligated to pen 13 hours of film. Because of this situation, it made things meander. The actual season itself probably could’ve been done in 6 episodes tops.

Overall, I’m not feeling the Defenders series. I think the super heroes thing is starting to really grate on my nerves in terms of fresh material. I like how the characters from the Defenders are more grounded than most of the Marvel universe but the super hero genre in general is just running out of steam. FAST.

The post Jessica Jones Season 2 Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

Motivation

First, what is the motivation for doing a seasonal character? Most people will argue that seasonal characters are geared towards streamers and pro-gamers. While that might be partially true for more hardcore style pro-gamers, there also is a reasonably sized audience for seasonal characters as well. The other major argument for seasonal characters is to establish leader boards in providing an even playing field by having people start from scratch.

So on the surface, a casual player might not really want to participate in seasonal game play. Are there any benefits? For a casual player, the main benefits for creating a seasonal character are:

• Seasonal Transmog
• Access to Season Only Items
• Large pool of public games
• Slightly higher drop rates (at least from what I’ve heard)
• Potential to play with streamers (most tend to play seasonal and seasonal hardcore)
• The general feeling of starting from scratch and experiencing the game as if you just purchased it

Also, if you are the type that only has a few characters that are maxed out, you might want to try a brand new class from scratch just to check it out. With the improved drop rate and early access to current season items, you might consider using this opportunity to give the seasonal game play a shot.

Leveling

So let’s say you decide to create a character. In this case, I would say that your best bet would be a demon hunter (either that or monk) since demon hunters are pretty strong overall. What are some things you can do to push forward in terms of leveling?

It really depends on where in Diablo 3 you are at with your non-seasonal characters. If you managed to complete the Campaign Mode, you will have full access to Adventure Mode as well as higher difficulties. The nice thing about having access to Adventure Mode is that you have more freedom to do different acts for bounties and experience. Also, you will have access to your followers. As a demon hunter, you can immediately grab your Scoundrel’s weapon, which does slightly higher damage than your current weapon and start going around the map.

I’ve seen people who use Act 1’s Halls of Agony Level 3 due to mob density and relative decent ease of killing those mobs. I suggest setting the difficulty to normal for the first 10-20 levels while you’re gaining gold. Pick up everything and check chests. Through Adventure Mode, you will be able to access each act’s merchants. So make sure that you periodically Town Portal to see what you can buy from time-to-time. Also, don’t forget that you can start crafting gear from level 4. You will want to focus on upgrading your Blacksmith as fast as possible. And if you manage to find weapons and helmets, don’t ever forget to add gems to them. For weapons under level 60, you should add the best Ruby you can either craft or find. And for helms, you should do the same so you can get bonus experience.

For myself, I don’t bother selling most gear and prefer salvaging everything, unless it’s a major upgrade. Also, I don’t bother upgrading the Jewelrycrafter nor Enchantress for a while, at least until my Blacksmith cannot be upgraded any further. The reason is that your Blacksmith will allow you to craft pretty decent leveling gear. In addition, once you’re around level 45, if you managed to have enough crafting materials, you might even be able to craft a decent level 60 weapon that has level reduction on it. By doing that you might be able to pump up the difficulty level by one, thus allowing you to gain a little more gold and experience along the way.

Also, don’t bother keeping low level gems around too long. The only thing that really matters is focusing on hitting level 70. Once you hit level 61, you will want to look for rares for upgrades since the gear will start scaling up much higher. The first thing you should really aim for is a decent level 61+ weapon with a socket. In addition, monsters will start dropping gems, blues and rares that will be very useful for crafting materials. So continue grabbing everything as much as possible so you won’t have to worry once you hit level 70.

Another thing that I do is avoid certain bosses until I’m leveling 70. I think Diablo and Malthais both drop a guaranteed legendary on the first kill. So if you want to make the best of gearing, you should save your first kills for when you hit level 70. In the case of Malthais, the most important thing he will drop is the Reaper Wraps Blacksmith plans. I think he won’t drop them before level 61 though, so again save that kill if you’re doing bounties for that moment.

Although I did mention using Act 1’s Halls of Agony level 3 as a way to efficiently level, you probably should only do that for the first 10-20 levels. After that, you will want to focus on doing bounties. The idea is that by the time you hit level 70, you should have a small collection of Blood Shards and Rift Keys. Once you hit level 70, you should start looking for a basic build and optimize that build around your gear. Lastly, you should try to make sure your gear, even if it’s all rares, has decent stats (e.g. rings with Critical Hit/Critical Damage, Legs with 2 sockets/Main Stat/All Resistance/Vitality, etc.) If you manage to hit over 300k paper damage and 300k toughness, you probably are good for master-Torment 1 normal rifts.

Early Gearing

You really want to be able to start pushing Torment 1 as soon as you have enough basic gear. The reason is that your main set items will drop in Torment 1 so you want to keep your chances up at all times. As a demon hunter, you should also try crafting a decent Reaper Wraps as soon as possible. Try to go for a Fire build (which I think is the best and easiest to gear) and make sure your Reaper Wraps have +% Fire Damage, Critical Hit (hopefully at 6%), Dexterity and Vitality. You’ll probably be starved for crafting materials for a bit so don’t go overboard if you can’t craft decent ones.

Another thing you should try doing is to hunt for a Ring of Royal Grandeur from Act 1. Again, try to do at least Torment 1. While doing bounties, start looking for a Goblin Rift. There’s some areas that pretty much have a goblin most of the time. While the spawn point can be random, you really want to find the Goblin Vault. In that manner, you can get the Boon of the Hoarder as soon as possible.

If you have enough keys, you can start hitting normal rifts. The main thing you’ll be on the look out for is the Trial Key. The reason is that you will want to fetch all the basic gems immediately. Also, Greater Rifts can yield some decent legendaries along the way.

Getting Legendary Gems

Once you get your first Trial Key, you’ll want to use it. But don’t bother fighting anything in the trial. Instead, Town Portal out immediately so you get a level 1 Greater Rift. These should be pretty easy and you’ll probably have excess time to clear it. Again, you do not want to kill the Greater Rift boss too soon. The reason is that you want to progress slowly so you can get gems and some legendaries along the way. With the three new legendary gems, you might have to progress to level 13 or so before you see all of them. In any case, make sure you only kill the Greater Rift Guardian with less than 5 minutes so you only get a single difficulty level more and can focus on getting you gems.

Boon of the Hoarder

The most important gem to get early on is the Boon of the Hoarder. I believe that Boon of the Hoarder will now drop from Greater Rifts as well. You want to obtain this gem because you can focus on earning gold early on as you do both normal rifts and bounties. Also, you won’t have to worry about the cost of upgrading gear and gems.

Broken Crown

The Broken Crown is a very good helmet pre-Marauder helmet because you can focus on building up a nice supply of gems early on. The Broken Crown drops the same gem that is socketed inside the helmet (it does not drop the same quality; that’s an important thing to note). So as a Demon Hunter, you probably will want to start accumulating a ton of Emerald gems, which means you should be equipping a green gem whenever you do anything besides Greater Rifts early on. What I did was use this item to first build up my supply of Diamonds (for cooldown reduction and all resistance), Emeralds and later Topaz and Rubies.

By combining the Broken Crown’s supply of gems with the gold you will accumulate through the Boon of the Hoarder, you should quickly be able to maximize your gem upgrading. Naturally, you should focus on creating the best Emerald for inserting into your weapon and then follow that up with maxed out Emeralds and even Diamonds for either your helmet (CDR) or other slots (for all resistance).

Mauraders Set

The most important items you will be hunting initially are your Marauders set. You should gamble for these whenever you have a chance. However, certain items have a higher percentage of rolling than others. Because of this, you might want to prioritize which pieces you should roll. This is my preference:

1. Shoulders
2. Legs
3. Gloves
4. Boots
5. Helmet
6. Chest

The reason for this ordering is the likelihood of being able to find the right pieces. In my case, I had to adjust my gambling slightly since I had a really tough time rolling the boots (eventually it came up but only after everything else). I ended up rolling a chest piece early on because I was attempting to aim for a Cindercoat to get more resource reduction, not to mention growing frustrated that everything except the Marauder boots were dropping.

Torment Difficulty and Gear Progression

As you accumulate your M6 pieces, you should be able to handle higher and higher torments. With proper itemization, elemental damage and a decent weapon, you can start doing T2-3 as early as having the 2 set M6 bonus. I managed to find an ancient Pus Spitter where I was able to handle T1 rifts reasonably well. But the minute I obtained my 2 set bonus, I felt the power shift quite a bit and I was able to hit T3 rifts without worry.

With the 4 set M6 bonus, you should be able to hit T4 reasonably well. Having your sentries fire multishot will allow you to hide behind corners and you should be able to kill things with decent efficiency. Soloing T6 though might be tough though unless you’re fortunate enough to have double Unity and your follower has the undying relic.

With the full 6 set bonus from M6, you can do T5 pretty smooth, even without a Bombadier’s Rucksack. T6 though starts to get painful unless your gear rolled decently and you have enough All Resistance and Vitality so that you can avoid getting insta-gibbed. By this point, you should be able to fair decently in public games and start enjoying a larger magic find bonus.

Assuming that you have your M6 (minus say a chest), your next focus should be on obtaining a Bombadier’s Rucksack and Cindercoat. Your weapon won’t be as important as long as it rolls good damage at this point. And you have some degree of free for your ring, amulet and belt early on. But once you want to hunker down and focus on doing some Greater Rift progression, you will need to really hunt for the last few items.

Greater Rift and Legendary Gem Progression

With the gear set up above, you should be able to handle anything between Greater Rifts 25-31. You might encounter some insta-gibbing for a while as you build up your gear, increase your damage and level your gems. So at this point, you’ll want to hunt for those uber rare items like a Fire base Stone of Jordan, double Unity, Witching Hour and a solid amulet (either Hellfire with a good passive like Awareness of a damage immunity amulet). You could aim to gamble for those items, starting with the belt slot. If you can’t find a Witching Hour, you might consider using a Harrington’s or Blackthornes.

Blackthornes are an interesting choice early on because of the rarity of Witching Hours. I’ve seen quite a few Blackthorne amulets drop though so combing those with the belt slot, you will be able to gain some damage resistance to elites and normal modes, which can be good early on.

Gem-wise, you will want to focus on Bane of the Trapped first because it does some of the best scaling damage and has a nice passive CC effect once it reaches level 25. After that, focus on Zei’s since the damage will scale and add a nice CC effect too. Now, with season 2 in play, you do have a few extra options with regards to gems. Most demon hunters end up choosing Bane of the Powerful for the elite bonus damage and increased general damage after slaying elites. I would argue that Bane of the Powerful is a good candidate to swap out for one of the new defensive gems. Here, you can try using the Esoteric Alteration or Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard. The idea is that if you find yourself too squishy then you can try to either avoid getting one shot or out healing the incoming damage by using either of these gems. I haven’t tried it yet but it does make an interesting possibility given the trouble I’ve been having with incoming damage.

Also, start gambling for ancient, better itemized versions of your M6 set. Don’t bother spending shards on amulets nor weapon though due to the outrageous cost for either. You could make an exception for a Stone of Jordan, but only if you have managed to find the rest of your basic gear. Now, the main things you want on ancients beyond ideal stats is higher dexterity, vitality, all resistance, armor and life regeneration. I feel that vitality is the real winner in many cases just because having higher health will help mitigate those one shot scenarios. You can get all resistance on your pants and boots, so I would value those if I managed to find some that I could reroll. I only mention armor and life regeneration here as well because they are the only other two stats where the ancient aspect makes a real difference. Although Life Regeneration might not be that great down the road, early on while you’re in the lower 100’s of paragon levels, it certainly helps, especially when you get hit and your potion is on cooldown.

Now, don’t worry too much about pushing too hard unless it’s a personal goal of yours. Do what you can and try not to destroy your keyboard (because you will get angry quite often). Even with poor gear, I still found myself being capable of doing Greater Rift 31 (I did have a fair number of deaths). I’m certain with double Unities and a few other key pieces, I would slide along easily. That part should take some time though so you really just need patience and perseverance to make this work.

The post Diablo 3: Seasonal Demon Hunter Tips for Casual Players appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

When Season 1 began, I felt that there really wasn’t much of a point. I knew that at the end of a season, your character would eventually roll over in normal mode and that the season only gear would find its way into the main legendary pot. More importantly, Season 1 began, I had different goals. At that point, my toons, especially my main Demon Hunter, still were not fully geared and I was far more focused on my original Demon Hunter. On top of that, the gear drops were buffed not only for seasons but non-seasonal as well, making my motivation for joining seasons pretty moot.

Right now, most of my toons are fairly well geared and I honestly don’t have much to do beyond helping my friends get their own sets of gear while looking for elusive ancients and a few remaining key pieces (such as an Starmetal Kukri for my Witch Doctor). However, one thing I am going to pursue is my seasonal transmog, where I managed to get the head and shoulder pieces. So if anything, I want to do some seasonal stuff at minimal for the transmog.

However, while I doubt I’ll participate in competing for high level greater rifts, the main thing I will try to do with seasons is hopefully connect with other streamers and people who will be focused on seasons. I feel that one thing I really missed out on season 1 was being able to play with other popular streamers or even people in my clan who exclusively played seasonal characters.

Now, that my original goal of trying every single class and even a few builds has been accomplished, I can move onto the challenge of really embracing the idea of seasons and seeing what I can accomplish from scratch. In some ways, I want to really just focus on a single class such as a Crusader or Monk since they will be receiving special items that ought to change their play style a bit. I’ve already tried it a bit while at Blizzcon and hence have more motivation in doing Season 2.

Another big difference for seasons is that we have a much better idea of how everything has worked out. Things like rankings with Greater Rifts, exploits, gear and builds pretty much are finalized, even with some of the new upcoming seasonal gear. So I think the season in general will be pretty smooth.

My general plan going in will be to do the normal campaigns (maybe even hard mode) and grind out levels until I’m in my 60’s. Then switch to Adventure Mode for the final few levels while earning key fragments. Right now, I’m leaning towards the Crusader just because I found the Bombardment build at Blizzcon to look pretty interesting and I want to give it a better shot. I will miss playing a Demon Hunter, but I don’t want to just run Demon Hunters. I feel that monks and crusaders ought to see a fairly reasonable change with the upcoming items so it will be worth checking them out as opposed to the Demon Hunter for this coming season.

Unfortunately, as discussed during the Tavern Talk regarding the upcoming Season 2, we will not be seeing the set items introduced at Blizzcon until the season finishes. From the sound of things, that probably won’t occur for at least 3 months. Given that scenario, classes like the Barbarian, Demon Hunter and Wizard really aren’t worth playing if you’re looking for a new experience. Their new seasonal items aren’t huge game changers at this stage whereas Crusaders, Witch Doctors and Monks will see some potentially huge benefits.

At any rate, I’m pretty excited. I probably will go a bit hard core this weekend in getting my seasonal character up to 70 asap just for the transmog if anything. After that, I want to see how much gear I can obtain and hopefully find some of the new seasonal pieces.

One little wish I do have for the developers is to increase the number of character slots every season, just so that we have more options to try other classes just for the new seasonal items if anything.

The post Diablo 3: Season 2 and Me appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

I feel that the three classes that will see the most impact by far are the Crusader, Monk and Witch Doctor as a result of their new class specific items. Crusaders will receive a new Belt of the Trove which will cast Bombardment at enemies every 6-8 seconds. If you combine that belt with The Mortal Drama, you will see a definite increase in damage. I did manage to give this build a try while at Blizzcon. The way they set it up was taking a Phalanx Stampede base build and adding Bombardment. In some ways, this build feels similar to a Tal Rasha 4 set bonus build where you automatically have Meteors triggered. Unlike the Tal Rasha set though, you do not require a specific trigger to cause Bombardments to fall. They did provide Bombardment as part of your action bar along with the Akkhan set. So overall, it looks to be a very AoE heavy and possibly some single target build that has the defensive benefits of Akarat’s Prophet. You will lose some cooldown in removing the Vigilante Belt in place but also you will not have to deal with as much of the awkward positioning of Stampede.

Monks will receive Gungdo Gear bracers that applies Exploding Palm upon others dying from Exploding Palm. So in short, it’s going to be a massive chain effect that ought to boost the monk’s AoE damage pretty significantly. More than likely, monks’ Sunwuko set still will be the armor of choice since the Raiment of a Thousand Storms has not been finalized in terms of the new set bonuses. Nonetheless, Monks with their revised Sunwuko set bonuses already are seeing fairly significant survivability increase and build diversity from the way their clones are triggered and the buff added from the 4 set bonus. Adding Exploding Palm ought to provide yet even more burst damage, which may overall make monks the top class at the end of the day.

Lastly, Witch Doctors will receive a very nice Staff called the Wormwood staff. Wormwood will automatically cast Locust Swarm on foes and automatically roll with poison damage as an affix. The primary benefit of this staff will be effectively freeing up an action bar slot for the Witch Doctor as well as allowing them to reduce their overall mana depletion and focus more on CC’ing enemies to hit their Soul Harvest on in conjunction with their Jade Harvest sets. From what I can tell, a fair number of Witch Doctors look to be going towards another CC ability like Horrorify. Unfortunately, I do not know if this will help address some of the current issues with Jade Harvester survivability issues. If anything though, we should see them rank slightly higher since their rotation should simplify quite a bit.

For the remaining seasonal class specific items, I do not think at this moment they are clear game changers. The new Demon Hunter Oddysey’s End merely increases damage from Entangling Shot by 20-25% from all sources. While fresh 70s might find the bow to be useful on working with Cull of the Weak, without the new set this bow simply will not synergize well with the current M6 builds. I still feel Kridershot will be the most sought after Ancient then perhaps Calamity in conjunction with Bombadier’s Rucksack and the popular Evasive Fire/Multishot builds. That said, if Blizzard manages to introduce patch 2.2 during the season with the set items, this bow might be fairly sought after. It was demonstrated at Blizzcon and seemed to work nicely with the set with the whole generators receiving a boost in damage. But until that set is put into the wild and tested in a very high greater rift setting, M6 still will end up dominating the next season.

For Barbarians, they will see an updated belt in The Undisputed Champion, which will give the barbarian all the Frenzy runes. While the belt may open up early opportunities for Barbarians, I foresee that compared to the clearing speed of Raekor’s set, this item alone won’t be a game changer. And with Raekor’s set, I doubt most Barbarians would use this item, instead choosing the Pride of Cassius for the Ignore Pain duration increase. This might be an interesting low level item but definitely not a deal breaker for high level greater rifts.

Finally, with Wizards we’ll see the Halo of Arlyse in which, “Your Ice Armor now provides 50-60% Melee Damage Reduction and automatically casts Frost Nova whenever you take 10% of your Life in damage.” While it is true that Wizards currently suffer from lack of general CC abilities to compliment the high end Firebird Finery build style, this ring sacrifices too much damage to be of practical use for Firebird style wizards. Most Wizards end up kiting so enemies that do manage to inflict damage at a certain range probably will be actively avoided. Wizard’s real problem outside of some defensive issues is the lack of single target damage. Black Hole is too cooldown and reaction dependent as well as being the main spell to take down rift guardians. If the ring had modified Black Hole to have reduced cooldown, then it could be considered useful. Perhaps, it might even be useful for the newer wizard set coming out. Nonetheless, Firebird wizards still will probably stick with Unity, Stone of Jordon and/or Ring of Royal Grandeur.

Of course, the other massive change that will impact season 2 are the changes to the three gear sets, particularly the Marauder’s set, Raekor’s set and Sunwuko sets. In my own experience thus far, Marauders actually does quite well early on in terms of having a massive damage boost. But the chief weakness in the Marauder’s set is the lack of defensive stats compared to the previous version. It might be the case where the new legendary gems may help the defensive side. However, I feel that won’t be the case for most Demon Hunters and that damage gems still will be BiS.

Raekor’s change is pretty significant too and addresses a few problems like adding armor and giving another charge. I still think the set remains tough without the high CDR either from gear or a high level Gogok. When everything gets reset, it might be that Barbarians still will be at the bottom even with their set bonuses in place.

To me the real winner in this upcoming season seems to point towards the monk. I think the combined defensive and offensive changes for the monk, they will end up becoming one of the best all around classes that will skyrocket them up the charts. However, depending on how long the season will go, they might end up peaking early and dropping due to the insane clear speeds of a savvy barbarian. The real problem in Greater Rifts is that even with all the changes, the bottom line is that ones success completely depends upon the RNG of the rift rather than a player’s raw skill and even gear to a degree.

The post Diablo 3: Season 2 Best Class Thoughts appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

I think the biggest change for many people will be the modified Maurader Set. No longer will you be able to duck and hide while letting your sentries do all the work. Instead, to really maximize your damage, you’re going to have to realign your gear and skills slightly or start your hunt for a Kridershot. At the moment, I believe most Demon Hunters are employing the Etrayu bow as it does the best DPS for the popular frost-fire build. With the changes to the Maurader set, you will probably get rid of Elemental Arrow (if you don’t have a Kridershot) and use either Chakram (if you have the quiver) or a different generator since your sentries will only fire your spenders when you trigger them. If you’re doing a lightning build with the Helltrapper Hand Crossbow, you should start hunting for new weapons as the lightning build pretty much will be going away since the number of Sentries will be limited in the patch.

So what are some possible weapon combos given these circumstances? In my case, I managed to have a Calamity in my bank along with the Chakram quiver. Until I am able to locate a Kridershot, I might change my spender over to Chakram, thereby eliminating the need for a lower DPS spender. Calamity does boost your DPS by 20% so it might be worth giving that a try. Of course, you still will want to move back to the Bombadier Rucksack quiver down the line but you’ll either have to switch Elemental Arrow to a generator or have your sentries use Polar Station for the damage bonus with the Bane of the Trapped legendary gem. From what I’ve seen, Multi-shot will probably end up being prevalent, although you probably can still choose Cluster Arrow (but it won’t provide as good AoE and the cost will be higher).

The good news is that by relinquishing one of your key spenders, you’ll be able to have a free action bar slot. Two possibilities here will be to choose Preparation with Punishment to have the secondary Hatred regeneration or go for another defensive like the old Smoke Screen with Healing Vapors.

Because Hatred management will be relevant again, you’ll need to look into gear and passives to help keep your Hatred up. Essentially, Tasker and Theos will be going away, so if you had the older fire build gear, you can dust that off. So ideally, you’ll want to make sure you have some spare Maurader Gloves handy along with a Cindercoat and Fire oriented Reaper Wraps (I was fortunate to retain all three). If you don’t have a Hellfire Amulet with a good passive, you might want to consider using Night Stalker for more Hatred regeneration (since they’re redesigning this).

The other major change will be monks using the Sunwuko set. Currently, most monks with this set use a Flying Dragon in conjunction with the Eye of Peshkov spirit stone so that they can spam Breath of Heaven and Sweeping Wind to generate the clones from the set bonus. With the changes to the set bonus being changed to eliminate the need of spending 75 spirit to generate the clone and moving the clone generation to several spenders, you no longer will need these items to be effective. Instead, the weapon of choice looks to be the Incense Torch of the Grand Temple since you can spam Wave of Light for the clone generation instead while doing fairly decent damage.

One thing to look out for with this change is the possibility of using the Inna’s set for some additional spirit regeneration and possibly having all base mantras. Before the Inna’s set reduced the cost of Sweeping Wind which made the clone generation somewhat prohibitive. Now, that the clone generation will be moved towards a different spender that does not depend on the amount of spirit spent, using Inna’s in conjunction with Sunwuko might become a possibility, especially since you’ll probably want a different source of Spirit Generation.

On the bright side, this will change the build slightly since you won’t be as cooldown heavy. Also, you might be able to switch up your elemental damage somewhat from being strictly holy into something else like Lightning since your spender will be handling the clones. I’ve seen a ranged monk who uses the Lightning Pillars from Wave of Light so that might help make monks a little more feasible in doing higher level Greater Rifts.

In both the Demon Hunter and Monk’s set bonus cases, the changes will be applied retroactively. That means that you will be affected no matter what, for better or worse. In my mind, what you can do in the meantime is start hunting for those key items so that when Patch 2.1.2 comes down, you’ll already have enough items ready for the changes.

I think if you play a fairly well geared Demon Hunter and are planning to stick with non-seasonal (and if you do participate in the current seasons even), I would suggest that you try to do all your farming right now. While the changes to the Mauraders set are said to be a buff, you still will have to get adjusted to the “new” play style. If you’re pretty comfortable with Demon Hunter play style and use him/her as a feed character to the rest of your toons, you might consider spending that extra time generating keys and farming blood shards so that you have enough gear going into patch 2.1.2.

I would suggest getting as many Rings of Royal Grandeur, Hellfire Amulets and anything where you feel that you’re overpowered right now and can handle the content blind folded. I’m really not joking. Also, start catching a few streams and keep up with the PTR notes. But don’t let yourself get caught off guard and unprepared. Get that gear right now while things are pretty easy for you.

What about the rest of the classes? Barbarians too will be seeing their gear change a bit with Furious Charge and Raekor’s set receiving a facelift. So far though, it hasn’t been mentioned whether the Barbarian’s current Raekor set will receive the same retroactive treatment as the Mauraders and Sunwuko sets. If that isn’t the case, then you’ll simply have to re-farm the set to get the new bonuses.

I think Pet Doctors will see a very positive change to make them a little more viable with their pets seeing a life buff. I don’t know if this will solve all their problems but hopefully it’ll help them solo greater rifts a little better. Jade Harvester Doctors, I feel, won’t see too much change unless they get into Season 2 directly. The real game changing weapon, Wormwood, will be a Season 2-only weapon so it’s hard to say how a non-seasonal Jade Harvester Doctor will fair.

Firebird Wizards will be seeing a change too with their DoTs having range limits as well as Hydra receiving a damage nerf in exchange for increased attack speed. I’m not sure if that implies that the Serpent Sparkler will end up becoming the BiS weapon for a Firebird Wizard but more than likely The Furnace still will dominate non-seasonal Firebird BiS weapons (if you can find one).

The last three things I want to talk about are the three ugly step child 6 piece sets in the form of Helltooth, Roland and Raiment of a Thousand Storms. Not much has been said about the Helltooth and Roland sets but I do know that the monk Raiment of a Thousand Storms will be seeing a pretty big change. I think the main thing is giving generators more power and worth using with the Raiment set. The current patch notes don’t specify exactly how it’ll work but the idea should be that you still ping-pong around with the set. They might swap the four set bonus as well but I don’t remember exactly what the change will entail.

Now, the big thing I’m hoping for is more information on some of the newer sets. I did manage to play with the new Barbarian, Demon Hunter and Wizard sets at Blizzcon 2014. The big question is whether or not they’ll be ready for both the patch and Season 2. More importantly, will the new sets be seasonal only or for anyone. I’m really hoping that these sets make it into the non-seasonal world. With the changes to many of the sets, I think people will want some form of compensation. Part of that compensation I think is designed to get people to want to try the new sets out.  In the case of the Demon Hunter, the problem was that Mauraders simply was too easy of a set to abuse so even if the new Demon Hunter set is being planned to be quite powerful, I feel that many Demon Hunters would probably just prefer to hunt for Ancient Versions of the Mauraders if it didn’t change.

Unfortunately, I do think that some of these set items might depend on having the new Season 2 items. For instance, the new Demon Hunter bow Odyssey’s End might be designed to work with the new Demon Hunter set (I recall the six piece bonus possibly working with this bow, but I could be wrong). So I kinda feel that these new set items will end up becoming season only. Hopefully, that won’t be the case so that people who prefer non-seasonal will still have incentives to play.

At any rate, for myself, I’m trying to do my last minute farming and getting all of my guys geared to satisfaction. I now have 12 level non-seasonal level 70s and can’t wait until the next patch to see how far I can get.

The post Diablo 3: How to Prepare for Patch 2.1.2 appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.