set items Archives - Kontroversial Keith https://www.keithwatanabe.net/tag/set-items/ Hitting Where It Hurts and Making the Universe Like It Wed, 25 Feb 2015 16:27:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 81900562 Diablo 3: Data Mined Patch 2.2 Notes from DiabloFans and Gear Discussion https://www.keithwatanabe.net/2015/02/25/diablo-3-data-mined-patch-2-2-notes-from-diablofans-and-gear-discussion/ https://www.keithwatanabe.net/2015/02/25/diablo-3-data-mined-patch-2-2-notes-from-diablofans-and-gear-discussion/#comments Wed, 25 Feb 2015 16:27:57 +0000 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/?p=1799 More concrete information has been released on the DiabloFans website containing not just some of the upcoming changes to the

The post Diablo 3: Data Mined Patch 2.2 Notes from DiabloFans and Gear Discussion appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

]]>
More concrete information has been released on the DiabloFans website containing not just some of the upcoming changes to the legacy legendary sets but some new features that will be released in Asia (at first), the Cursed Realms, side quests, etc. What I want to focus on in this blog is the information regarding the updates to items based on some of the hints from the data mining.

I already went over some of the changes concerning the upcoming sets for patch 2.2. For this blog, I want to start by looking at the updated older sets and then delving into some of the possibly updated non-set legendaries. First let’s look at the updated older sets and items that be used to work with the new sets:

Roland’s Legacy

  • 2 set – Every use of Shield Bash/Sweep Attack reduces the cooldowns of your Laws and Defensive Skills by 1 second
  • 4 set – Increase the damage of Shield Bash/Sweep Attack by 500%

There’s no mention if the 6 set bonus will change. Currently, the 6 set bonus increases your attack speed by 20% for 3 seconds and stacks up to 5 times using the aforementioned Shield Bash/Sweep Attack skills. My guess is that the 6 set bonus will remain the same and that the changes will address two major issues with the Roland’s Legacy set: 1) Improving the defensive aspects of the set; 2) scaling up the damage to be more competitive.

In examining the Crusader section, there is an item called “P2_ItemPassive_Unique_042” where “When your Shield Bash hits 3 or less enemies, its damage is increased by [VALUE]% and 50% of its Wrath Cost is refunded.” Another major issue with the Roland’s Legacy build is that the Wrath Cost can be quite high, which forces people to use a generator like Punishment in conjunction with the updated Angelic Hair Braid. But even with such an item, it’s simply not enough (Sweep Attack I hear faces similar issues). This unique item looks to resolve part of the equation through introducing an item for Shield Bash to help Wrath starvation issues.

Raiment of a Thousand Storms

  • 2 set – Your Spirit Generators have 25% increased attack speed and 500% increased damage
  • 4 set – Increases the weapon damage of Dashing Strike to 5000%
  • 6 set – Dashing Strike spends 50 Spirit, but refunds a Charge when it does

In it’s current form, Raiment of a Thousand Storms pretty much is useless for higher Greater Rifts. In some ways, it’s similar to the Raekor build in that you’re acting as a ping pong ball. Unlike Raekors though, you do not gain all the runes for Dashing Strike nor are there many items to really boost up what Dashing Strike can do, except for the Jawbreaker fist weapon. Even with Jawbreaker, you end up becoming heavily limited in how many times you can dash across the screen. So in a way like the Raekor build, you end up losing out on single target attacks. At the same time, you gain no stun attacks and pretty much are forced to take the Quicksilver rune to maximize how many times you can dash around.

This new version rewards using a combination of Spirit Generators and converts Dashing Strike into a spirit spender upon usage. One of the great things about this change is that you no longer need to depend on Jawbreaker to make this build work. Instead, you can focus exclusively any elemental type of damage and use any form of a weapon. Of course, the bigger issue that will result is making sure that you can maintain a high amount of spirit, but that will certainly be easier than either hunting for a Jawbreaker or figuring out some way to get a ridiculous amount of CDR to make the older build work.

Guardian’s Jeopardy

  • 2 set – +250 vitality/regenerate 8000 life per second (up from 2000)

I’m not certain why this set was updated. Perhaps, the thought process might be making this craftable set a little more usable for a defensive play style early on. The biggest positives for this set are the fact that two of the three pieces uses a bracers and belt slot. So you can easily gain the 3 set bonus and use that along with another major set.

Zunimassa’s Haunt

  • 6 set – Enemies hit by your Mana spenders take 100% more damage from your pets for 4 seconds

I’m not sure if they’ll modify the other set bonuses for this set or if this will be on top of the existing set bonuses. Right now, the current appeal of the Zunimassa set is having a permanent Fetish Army. However, Pet Doctors still are pretty weak versus Rift Guardians or in situations where their fetishes from Fetish Sycophants are destroyed. In addition, most Pet Doctors who want to push hard end up discarding the Zunimassa set once they find a Starmetal Kukri (and a few other key items). Unfortunately, the sheer rarity of a Starmetal Kukri, even a poorly rolled one, is so terrible that it leaves Pet Doctors little choices if they want to push hard.

The new set looks to alter the play style somewhat. Most pet doctors go with Plague of Toads/Addling Toads or Rain of Toads (unless they go Carnevil where they employ Poison Dart). Here, the pet doctor might use Piranhado as the spender. But with Piranhado on an 8 second cooldown and the effect lasting 4 seconds, some pet doctors might opt for a less intensive spender (or perhaps even using something like the Wormwood which auto cast Locust Swarm on enemies).

If we delve a little deeper into the article, we can see that another item called P2_ItemPassive_Unique_035 will “Summon a Fetish Sycophant when you hit with a Mana spender.” Again, this might be a non-set item used to make the build more powerful. And from the text, we can infer that again we are being encouraged to use some form of a mana spender. That could mean anything like Acid Cloud, Zombie Bears or Piranhado still. Deeper still, we can see Fetish Sycophants buffed with a 15% chance to summon a Fetish (up from 10%). So bottom line is that we should be able to have far more uptime on our fetishes, even if we get one shot.

Inna’s Mantra

  • 2 set – Increase the passive effect of your Mystic Ally and the base passive effect of your Mantra by 100%
  • 6 set – Mystic Ally casts Cyclone Strike, Exploding Palm, Lashing Tail Kick, Seven-Sided Strike and Wave of Light when you do

Again the question to ask is if we’ll see any changes to the current 3 and 4 set bonuses. My guess is that the 4 set bonus will stay, but I don’t know about the 3 set bonus. I feel that the 3 set bonus is actually quite good in allowing you to regenerate spirit and reduce the cost of Sweeping Wind. The nice thing about that bonus is that it can come in really handy when used alongside a set such as Sunwuko.

The way the set looks though is that besides enhancing your Mantras, your Mystic Ally will behave similarly to the Demon Hunter’s Maurader 4 set bonus in utilizing a few key spenders. Considering that Mystic Ally now is one of the favorite abilities to use with the Sunwuko set for the spirit regeneration, the increased effect will make the Sunwuko combination even stronger. The Crudest Boots will probably end up becoming a very popular item to use with the 6 set bonus.

One thing that I’m wondering about is if the 4 set bonus will stay and work with the 2 set bonus. In short, not only would you get access to all base Mantra effects, but you will have them boosted by 100%. In that scenario, Monks will become an awesome party buff/support type.

Tal Rasha’s Elements

  • 2 set – Damaging enemies with Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning will cause a Meteor of the same damage type to fall from the sky. There is an 8 second cooldown for each damage type
  • 4 set – Attacks increase your resistance to that damage type by 100% 6 for seconds
  • 6 set – Attacks increase your damage by 75% for 3 seconds. Arcane, Cold, Fire and Lightning attacks each add one stack. Adding a stack refreshes the duration.

It looks like Tal Rasha’s almost is getting a complete revamp where the original  4 set bonus will be moved to the 2 set and the damage and defense mechanisms will be buffed. I think Elemental Exposure, the Shard of Hate and the new community designed legendary ring that rotates the elemental damage will be highly sought after for making this build work. I’m not sure how a Wizard will be setting up his generators/spenders. Perhaps, mixing a few up to trigger the Meteor strike faster such as an arcane magic missile being used alongside Explosive Blast and Hydra with the Frost rune.

My only issue with the Meteor though is that it’s both hard to trigger and it lands too slowly to be effective. Unless the set is really designed to promote more of a melee wizard play style (say Spectral Blades, Explosive Blast and Storm Armor), then it’s going to be hard to hit monsters. So we’ll have to revisit this set later to see what will make sense in terms of skills to use once other items are revealed to work alongside this set.

 

Immortal King’s Call

  • 2 set –  Call of the Ancients last until they die
  • 4 set – Call of the Ancients’ melee attacks also deal 600% weapon damage in a 15 yard radius
  • 6 set – Increase the duration of your Wrath of the Berserker by [0.5|1]|4seconds:seconds; every time an Ancient deals damage

Essentially, Immortal King’s Call will be turning Barbarians into a pet build here. So one nice little thing will be allowing Barbarians to use the Enforcer legendary gem. Also, the Ancients pet damage will be doing some nice AoE, possibly making Area Damage worth using for this build.

But one of the cooler parts is essentially doing perma Wrath of the Berserker with the 6 set bonus. Looking under the Barbarian items area, you can see an item called P2_ItemPassive_Unique_032 that where “Wrath of the Berserker gains the effect of every rune.” Again until seeing which slot this item goes, we can assume that at the very least the main usage will be to compliment the set. If it’s an amulet, ring or even bracers, I can definitely see non-Immortal King’s builds using it since Wrath of the Berserker is such an awesome cooldown abiliity (even Raekors).

And since the pets are the ones keeping up Wrath of the Berserker, the set allows a variety of builds to come into play such as plain Whirlwind barbarians, ranged Barbarians using Weapon Throw and Seismic Slam or even enhancing Raekors since Immortal Kings (unless the gear slots are changed) can use belt and weapons slots (you could just add the helmet or chest piece and gain the 4 set bonus on top of the Raekors 5 piece bonus).

Natalya’s Vengeance

  • 4 set – The cooldown of Rain of Vengeance is reduced by 2 seconds every time you cast a primary skill and by 3 seconds every time you cast a Hatred spender
  • 6 set – Rain of Vengeance deals 800% increased damage

The set bonuses here are interesting in the revamping of how Rain of Vengeance works. My complaint about the original Natalya’s Vengeance set was how Rain of Vengeance’s cooldown would be lowered by 1 second after killing an enemy. The big problem with that was single targets containing large health pools like the Rift Guardian. At 30 seconds, Rain of Vengeance simply is too impractical as anything outside of white mob clean up.

The revamped Rain of Vengeance still seems a bit low in terms of reducing the cooldown. You still need to hit 9 spenders + the original Rain of Vengeance to get the cooldown to make it worth it. You could add more cooldown from items. For instance, there are two notable items labeled ItemPassive_Unique_919_x1 in which “Your skill cooldowns are reduced by [VALUE] seconds” along with ItemPassive_Unique_920_x1 which “Reduce the remaining cooldown of one of your skills by [VALUE] seconds each time you spend resource.” So these items look to work closely with a set like this (especially the second item)

Now, like many legacy sets, one of the chief benefits of using one a few pieces is that you can gain a few additional bonuses. The current Natalya’s set offers increased Discipline for both the 2 and 3 set bonuses as well as a+7% critical hit chance modifier. Those bonuses will be heavily sought after for Demon Hunter who want to use the Unhallowed Essence since that set is all about the damage boost from remaining Discipline. I’m hoping that most of these set bonuses are preserved to a degree (except where a few just were god awful) and that the new bonuses are additional ones to the existing ones.

Other Notable Items

Although most of the items have some generic label, I do want to examine a few of the more interesting bonuses.

  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_025 – “Enemies hit by your Furious Charge take [VALUE]% weapon damage over 3 seconds.” Another item that looks to enhance the Raekor Furious Charge build.
  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_026 – “The first enemy hit by Furious Charge takes [VALUE]% additional damage.” This item looks to solve some of the single target issues Raekor Barbs face.
  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_004 – “Increase the damage of Whirlwind by [VALUE]% weapon damage.” I believe this item is going to be the updated Bul-Kathos’ Wedding Band that Wrath of the Wastes barbarians will want to enhance their Whirlwind damage
  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_015 – “Slow Time gains the effect of every rune.” This is obviously aimed at the Delsere’s Magnum Opus set. But obviously, it’s going to be pretty insane to use as a damage debuff on foes, party buff, CC and spam cast ability
  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_050 – “Your Fire Signature Spells cause up to 3 enemies to explode, dealing [VALUE]% weapon damage as Fire to enemies within 10 yards.” Not sure what this is but this might be a missing item for the Firebird’s Finery set to make it stand out more, even on single target.
  • ItemPassive_Unique_541_x1 – “Your Spirit Generators generate [VALUE]% more Spirit.” Not sure how this one will play out. Perhaps, it’ll work with the updated Raiment of a Thousand Storms to encourage monks to use their spirit generators less so that they can use Dashing Strike more frequently.
  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_041 – “Gargantuan instead summons three smaller gargantuans each more powerful than before.” It might be that this could be part of the newer Zunimassa’s Haunt set. If not, it is a very interesting ability on its own, similar to the Tall Man’s Finger (except in reverse).
  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_017 – “Multishot hits enemies below [VALUE]% health twice.” I think this might be the belt I saw on the Demon Hunter used at Blizzcon. It definitely isn’t a set bonus but it might work well with both Unhallowed Essence and Marauders Multishot builds.
  • P2_ItemPassive_Unique_038 – “Gain [VALUE] increased damage to a single element for 5 seconds. This effect rotates through the elements available to your class in the following order: Arcane, Cold, Fire, Holy, Lightning, Physical, Poison.” This is the community designed item from Blizzcon. I think they ought to reduce the number of elements that are rotated. It really seems more designed for elemental wizards than other classes. Beyond elemental wizards, I don’t feel it’s practical given how it works.

Beyond those items, there are some new legendary gems and potions mentioned. But I don’t want to go into detail about those. Also, the other items in the Misc section seem a little too generic to be worth mentioning for now.

Overall, the new patch looks to be ramping up nicely. Unfortunately, it looks as though the Helltooth set did not make it into this iteration of revamped sets whereas most of the other sets that were barely viable are starting to come into their own. Other sets like The Shadow’s Mantle are better off as Forgotten Souls unless they’re completely revamped or are made to be used with other sets. However, we’ll have to wait on the verdict for those.

 

The post Diablo 3: Data Mined Patch 2.2 Notes from DiabloFans and Gear Discussion appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

]]>
https://www.keithwatanabe.net/2015/02/25/diablo-3-data-mined-patch-2-2-notes-from-diablofans-and-gear-discussion/feed/ 1 1799
Diablo 3: Patch 2.2 Early Look and Thoughts https://www.keithwatanabe.net/2015/02/24/diablo-3-patch-2-2-early-look-and-thoughts/ https://www.keithwatanabe.net/2015/02/24/diablo-3-patch-2-2-early-look-and-thoughts/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2015 21:12:24 +0000 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/?p=1791 Blizzard gave us a sneak peak at Patch 2.2 for Diablo 3. The main theme for the patch is increasing

The post Diablo 3: Patch 2.2 Early Look and Thoughts appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

]]>
Blizzard gave us a sneak peak at Patch 2.2 for Diablo 3. The main theme for the patch is increasing the breadth of class builds through adding a few new sets and updating older sets to become more competitive. In addition, there will be a few other changes such as new Bounties for Adventure Mode, goblins and quality of life changes. For this blog, I want to focus on the new sets and legendaries and talk a bit about my feeling about the patch.

For myself, the thing I’m looking forward to the most are the new legendary sets coming out. I did have a chance to try them out during Blizzcon and I think that they will be pretty solid alternatives to the current builds. The three sets are aimed at Demon Hunters, Barbarians and Wizards. I will go each of these sets and the way that they will play out.

Unhallowed Essence (Demon Hunter)

This set focuses around the Demon Hunter’s Discipline resource. The bonuses work as follows:

  • 2 set – Generators add 2 Discipline
  • 4 set – 40% (20%?) damage reduction for enemies within 20 yards for 4 seconds
  • 6 set – Generators and Multi-shot damage is increased by 10% per point of Discipline

So this set will have the Demon Hunter move to stack Discipline to maximize their damage output. Also, the set will essentially allow Demon Hunters to not be forced to move around as much since inherently they will be gaining a defensive buff.

Over on the Diablo 3 forums, I did see someone theorycraft the BiS gear and skills. However, I think one thing he was missing was other possible gear that might be used to compliment the set. At Blizzcon, I do recall using the Odyssey’s End (the new Patch 2.1.2 Season 2 legendary bow) and I believe it was complimented by a belt that enhanced Entangling Shot’s damage. I could be wrong on the belt, but the way they set up the Demon Hunter, you had Entangling Shot being used in conjunction with Multi-shot. In addition, I believe they had Companion (Boar), Vault, Vengeance and one other skill (Preparation perhaps?)

Regardless, the main thing to focus on is stacking as much Discipline as possible. Thus, I believe that we will be seeing a combination of Natalya’s Slayer and one other item being used in conjunction with this build as the 3 set bonus (given that most will end up using a Ring of Royal Grandeur) adds another +20 Discipline, translating into an easy +200% damage increase.

With regards to passives, we probably still will be taking Cull of the Weak and possibly Entangling Shot to maintain the missing CC from Polar Station and/or Frost Arrow. I think Blood Vengeance will still be a highly valued passive since Health Globes will help us maintain high Hatred and most importantly Discipline. Steady Aim looks to be a good choice for additional damage and we can probably choose Awareness for some survivability for higher Greater Rift difficulties. If we manage to obtain a well rolled Hellfire Amulet, one additional passive could be Nightstalker because of losing Evasive Fire: Focus to Entangling Shot and needing a way to rebuild our Hatred quickly.

Also, by removing the sentry aspect, we can focus on finding other quivers beyond the Bombadier’s Rucksack. Since the damage boost applies to any generator, we will be able to use other generators, thus allowing The Ninth Cirri Satchel, Emimei’s Duffel and Holy Point Shot to become viable as well. My belief is that Holy Point Shot will become more sought after since it’s the only quiver that can roll with elemental damage.

So without further knowledge on complimentary new legendaries to the set, what other items would be good for this build? I think optimally we will be using the Natalya’s Slayer for our main weapon and will be able to rotate out the Natalya’s helmet, cloak or boots so that we can have the full 3 set bonus. I think we still should be using Reaper’s Wraps for our bracers as we will need to generate Hatred for our Multishot while The Witching Hour will remain our BiS belt. For our other ring slot, the Stone of Jordan still will be a key item because of the elemental and elite bonus damage. And most likely we’ll be seeking either a damage immunity amulet or Hellfire Amulet. For Legendary Gems, I still think that Bane of the Trapped, Zei’s and either Bane of the Powerful or Esoteric Alteration will be ideal.

Another possibility is instead of using the Natalya’s Slayer (and set), we can use Danetta’s set. By doing this, we will lose a little on the damage side but gain more defensive capabilities in being able to keep our Discipline at 100% since our Vaults will become Hatred spenders instead. This might end up becoming a really huge deal for being able to quickly clear out Greater Rifts or avoiding whole floors of bad RNG in Greater Rifts through vaulting through all of our enemies.

The great thing going forward with this set is that we will have far more options with regards to gear and elemental damage preference. While we will be (sadly) losing our fun companions (especially Ferrets!), this build’s appeal will be on very high damage and survivability. Most people probably will continue to focus on the Marauder’s set but after the nerf, it doesn’t have the same compelling play style and feels very average, despite having solid damage. Still, the current version of Marauder’s lacks defense compared to the previous version, which is why I think they nerfed it as they wanted to provide some incentives for using this new set.

Delsere’s Magnum Opus

The new Wizard set might be the thing to really boost the ailing Wizard class with regards to being more competitive in Greater Rifts. Before delving into my interpretation/experience with the build, let me enumerate the set bonuses:

  • 2 set – Casting Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Magic Missile or Shocking Pulse reduces the cooldown of Slow Time by 1 second
  • 4 set – Enemies affected by Slow Time take 1250% weapon damage for every second
  • 6 set – Enemies affected by Slow Time take 500% more damage from Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Magic Missile or Shocking Pulse

So the main thing to notice is that the set will revolve around Slow Time and 2 signature/generators and 2 spenders. Slow Time ends up becoming both a source of major damage on top of a debuff to help increase damage for mobs caught inside. Also, Slow Time normally has a cooldown of 15 seconds, so even without any CDR, you will be able to cast Slow Time much sooner after spamming your generators and spenders.

At Blizzcon, the base character used Frozen Orb as the main damage dealer and Magic Missile (from what I remember). I found myself able to lay down numerous Slow Time bubbles over enemies which would both act as a shield for my character and give me the ability to nuke them down with Frozen Orb. You’ll essentially get a large number of CC’s as a result of this build from both Frozen Orb and Slow Time. I do think that the build also employed teleport, one of the armors and Familiar to round things off.

Now, beyond the base set, the question becomes what items will compliment the build? I imagine that while The Furnace will perpetually remain a favorite, the fact that the set focuses around specific spenders and generators might imply that certain other items might come into prominence. For instance, Wizardspike, an obscure dagger, hurls a Frozen Orb 20-25% of the time. Also, for weapons there is Valthek’s Rebuke in which Energy Twister will travel in a straight path. In that situation, you might be able to use the Storm Chaser rune along with say Shocking Pulse and stack a lot of lightning damage to cause a massive explosion inside of the Slow Time bubble.

Another solid weapon that probably will become extremely popular will be Gesture of Orpheus. This weapon reduces your Slow Time ability by 50-70%. So that combined with a high CDR essentially means you’ll be spam casting Slow Time along with a generator or spender in between.

Some other interesting things to look at with regards to gear are Orbs. Two Orbs that might be interesting to use with this build are Winter Flurry and Mirrorball. Winter Flurry causes a Frost Nova to be released whenever an enemy is killed by cold damage 20-25% of the time while Mirrorball doubles the number of Magic Missiles that are fired per cast. I can easily see how Wizards in the next patch will become highly valued as a support option in having their large numbers of Slow Time bubbles up, going cold and creating more CC’s through an item like Winter Flurry and Wizardspike. That along with using the new Halo of Arlyse in conjunction with Ice Armor with pretty much reduce the damage of enemies, slow them or out right keep them near permastunned. If the wizard decides to go more DPS oriented, the Mirrorball will provide that DPS boost by doubling their Magic Missiles that get buffed. Add something like Depth Diggers, and you’ll be seeing some pretty sweet numbers from a simple generator.

Just looking at the generators and spenders that will get boosted through this set, it’s pretty evident that the variety of elemental builds will increase as a result. I think that while certain people will try to min/max certain builds, what is certain is that there should be far more variety in terms of combinations of equipment that can be used. With that in mind, I would suggest stock piling up gear to avoid an unnecessary new gear hunt once the patch hits.

Wrath of the Wastes

Whirlwind Barbarian is BACK! I know a lot of barbarian players ought to be elated by the news of a dedicated Whirlwind set. So again let’s start by diving into the set bonuses before going more into detail about how the set will work and the gear to compliment it.

  • 2 set – Rend last three times as long
  • 4 set – Rend does triple damage
  • 6 set – Whirlwind does triple damage to enemies affected by Rend

The main idea behind the build is to do Rend -> Whirlwind (clean up). The playstyle will not be the same as the older, more popular infinite Whirldwind barbarian pre-RoS. However, the set will allow people to get back into the melee game and potentially address some of the issues with melee by combining Rend and Whirlwind together.

The way I’m looking at the build is to use Rend with the Blood Lust rune for the Life Regeneration in conjunction with Blood Funnel for restoring health by 1% through Critical Hits. That means that you would be focusing on having a high critical hit chance through this build and keep up a fair amount of health by having near or over 50% critical hit chance. Now, the build looks to be focused around Physical and you’ll want to use the upcoming redesigned Bul-Kathos’s Wedding Band, which from what I remember will increase your Whirlwind damage by 80% and onward. Another item that will probably be used to compliment this build will be the more obscure Lamentation mighty belt, which allows Rend to stack twice on an enemy. So in combination, we’re looking at 15 second Rends that boost your health along with the Bul-Kathos’s Wedding Band to increase your Whirlwind damage by quite a bit. You’ll have both the survivability and damage with this.

Unlike the Raekor’s build which is more CDR-centric, the Wrath of the Wastes build will be very Fury usage intensive. Considering that the build focuses around Whirlwind, I believe that the Bul-Kathos’s Oath Might Weapons set will end up becoming potentially the most sought after BiS weapons for this build. The additional fury and Whirldwind proc on the set would definitely compliment the Bul-Kathos’s Wedding Band.

From a Legendary Gems perspective, I imagine that Pain Enhancer, Bane of the Trapped and either Esoteric Alteration or Taeguk will be the most important ones here. Bane of the Trapped works nice by having both the CC from the close proximity and damage boost, Pain Enhancer’s DoT affect will do well with the area damage from Rend and Whirlwind and Taeguk will boost the barbarian’s armor up along with granting high stacks of damage buffs. I only added Esoteric Alteration in that mix in case some Barbarians might find the build hard to maintain the Taeguk armor buff.

Legacy Sets

One other thing mentioned in the patch  2.2 preview is revisiting older sets to make them more viable in higher Greater Rifts. The main two examples they gave were adding non-set legendary items to compliment sets such as Natalya’s. They showed some new gloves which boost Rain of Vengeance’s damage output by over 80%. Also, I recall them redoing the way sets like Raiment of a Thousand Storms operates by eliminating the antiquated dexterity bonus from the 2 set bonus and revamping the overall bonuses of the set to work more with generators. While no other concrete examples were provided, I did read about buffs to sets like Zunimassa’s where fetishes would be buffed. The only major set that was missing in the mix by name was the Witch Doctor Helltooth set. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that included since it’s completely under utilized.

Conclusion

The most exciting thing about patch 2.2 is the number of builds that will open up. The gear combinations will be far higher and allow players to go beyond very narrow elemental builds as well as try different skills. Some sets like Unhallowed Essence for Demon Hunters and Delsere’s Magnum Opus for Wizards attempt to widen the number of skills used by allowing for a broader range of generators and spenders (and I think that will be true with the modified Raiment of a Thousand Storms set). So rather than endlessly hunting down for a single piece of gear, or being locked down to just a weapon like The Furnace for having any viability, the gear and skills will now be centered on what you find, the need of a party (if any) and what style you like in the end. It should be a fantastic patch that I think will stimulate a great deal of experimentation, min/maxing and lower some degree of frustration from those who just are out of luck when it comes to finding very specific items.

One last thing I want to mention is that I do think that the new legendaries introduced as a part of Season 2/patch 2.1.2 really were meant to work with some of the newer sets/items for the upcoming patch. Not all of them of course (such as Wormwood and Gungdo Gear) but a few items like the Halo of Arlyse really don’t feel as though they have a place at the moment. I think that the developers really wanted to have the new stuff from patch 2.2 ready for the current seasons but unfortunately season 1 ran too long. As a result, I think patch 2.2 will be more geared towards season 3. My guess is that from a time frame perspective, season 3 might be the last season for RoS and that at Blizzcon 2015 we will be hearing about a new Diablo expansion.

The post Diablo 3: Patch 2.2 Early Look and Thoughts appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

]]>
https://www.keithwatanabe.net/2015/02/24/diablo-3-patch-2-2-early-look-and-thoughts/feed/ 1 1791