f13.net

With Season 4 drawing to a close tonight (in NA at any rate), Blizzard is giving us a couple weeks of downtime before firing up Season 5.

The S5 feature I'm most curious about is the Rebirth. I like the idea of keeping the same main character, even if it means resetting back to level 1.

Edit: does anyone know if 2.4 is going to be released at the same time as S5? I get the impression that they're not necessarily linked.

EDIT: my reading comprehension level: -1  I haven't heard when the S4 patch launches. Sorry

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From: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/19975528/

While not explicitly stated, the patch should be hitting when the season starts, as that has been the case the last couple go rounds.

Generally the patch hits on the Tuesday before (for USA, for us Euro's its Wednesday), and then the season goes live on Friday. Blizzard always patches on the Tuesday / Wednesday for all their games.

Patch 2.4 downloaded for me 30 minutes ago.

Tried the WD Helltooth dungeon. I think I was on t8 and after just one attempt I think I can comfortably say f those.  Kill 20 creatures with one wall of death 4 times and they give you crappy monster density. Yeah no.

Apparently you have to run around herding up mobs then hope you can get them all in one wall. Also don't take any poison damage while you are doing it. etc all for cosmetic items....

I think I may pass.

No, I need MORE stash space.

MORE.

No loot in the set dungeons. Do not care about them now.

Seriously ?  Like, at all ?  Not even a shower at the end ??

Not that I saw, I did not "master" the Vyr's set because I didn't quite understand the rules, I merely got the first achievement for it.

The only drops I saw were a couple sheets of paper called "maddening questions" and "yet more questions" that, despite their name, didn't really have any questions.

Low monster density is right, too.  I had to lower my DPS to get through the seeker of the light dungeon.  The cooldown-resetting mechanic of the set relies on hitting mobs with the blessed hammer--but if your DPS is too high the monsters will die without giving you enough hits to reset Falling Sword three times in 15 seconds, and if it's too low you won't kill all the monsters in time.

The cosmetic changes are really nice though.  I especially like the differentiators for Damage and the wick burning for mobs.

All of the UI touches are entirely welcomed.

This sounds terrible. The point of Diablo is kill monsters faster so loot drops faster & in greater numbers. Having special counters resetting & DPS watching made for lousy raids so I don't expect to be thrilled with it here...

In retrospect, if I had swapped it to the rune that shortens cooldown based on the number of enemies hit, it would have been simpler, but who thinks about that?  :uhrr: I completely forgot that one existed until reworking skills to make Hammer Jammers work in place of Hexing Pants.

I get that they're trying to teach you to use it to keep 100% uptime on the 8-second buff, but it's dumb.  In any greater rift that's level-appropriate, Falling Sword regenerates well within the time limit. Any time I want it, it's pretty much there.

As it was, I think it took about a dozen tries.

Uber player / min-Maxer player appeasement is nothing new.  Just give it a few days until guides for the most efficient way of speccing and routing are posted.

The ulinayas dungeon is equally frustrating.  Kill 21 mobs with exploding Palm 3 times but the density is low except for three or four specific spots. I got 20/ 21 kills three times after corralling and accepting I wasn't hitting any timer because I had the slow aura gem slotted. 

 Also kill 195 mobs, avoid all fire and don't die. Those are easy but you have to do it in in under 4 or 5 minutes.  You're going to have to dash and use the teleport component of trance on every cool down to do it because the dungeon is huge and only contains 195 mobs.  Miss one and you're fucked.   Oh. And there's a few spots where there's only one mob off in a corner out of an efficient path.

Yeah. I'm not puzzling this one out.

I read that the set dungeons can be done with a group and the group members don't have to follow any of the restrictions.  Only the person that starts the dungeon gets credit, but should be pretty quick and easy for a group to get together and knock out each other's dungeons.

That sounds like something they're going to patch out pretty quickly. Although it screws you on the "kill x mobs with y ability at once" unless other character's kills get flagged for you.

So, can someone explain the benefit of "Season Rebirth" to me.  Cause from  what I can see, the only thing it does is let you carry an existing non-seasonal  character over into a season, but none of your gear, exp, paragon points, gold, bank, or pretty much ANYTHING useful except your name and your achievements carry over with you.  So what exactly is the point?

You don't have to type the name in again.

Or if you're maxed out on character slots.

Which I am.


Tossers.

Wait... 5:00 Pacific Time?  What a useless timezone.  Bastards.

And it's begun :grin:

Feel free to toss an invite to segors#1459 if anyone needs another in their group (especially for leveling)

edit: of course, it still requires D3's servers to allow a character to be created...

It carries over your Time Played and other lifetime stats (Elite Kills, etc.).  Some people care about such things I guess.

The Wizard Firebird set is utter garbage. Convinced the person who designed it doesn't actually play Diablo 3, because it is so out of line compared to other class sets its slightly laughable (and very depressing).

Not sure how a set that would require you to have stood still and channel a spell for 5 seconds on *80* mobs to get the same damage bonus as Delsires has with an instant cast Time Warp on every mob ever got through the test realm.

From reading the PTR forum during 2.4 development it was grossly over-powered and near the end they accidentally or deliberately* hamfisted it into the ground.


*decided it wasn't fun.

Yeah, definitely. However, even if you took every number and multiplied it by 10 I don't see how good it would be - the 6 piece set bonus basically doesn't exist, because when do you spend 5 seconds channelling a spell on a trash mob? One of the main problems with it is the fact that when fighting trash, you may as well not be wearing a set. You get the paltry burn effect, you don't have any defensive abilities from the set, and the 6 piece bonus doesn't kick in.

At the very least, they need to increase the numbers substantially and change the 6 piece bonus so it triggers off dealing fire damage, rather than the infinite burn ability which takes way, way too long to activate to be of any use on anything other than bosses.

Feel free to join on me whenever.  The more the merrier.

I'm a fan of the mini-pet. (I just started equipping him at the start of this season.)

Thorn paladin is hugely overpowered. With this setup http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Setanta-1696/hero/71160077 I'm still missing a ring and shield and I got through grift 40 (T9) one day after playing. I still need a chest piece to cube along with a weapon and Pig Sticker to main hand (I think I crushed 7 or 8 last season). Kadala is making a fortune out of me trying to roll for the shield.

I don't know who came up with the build byt in T6 you can walk into a mob, nake a cup of tea and the mob is dead. For once I actually feel like I'm playing a paladin.

Yeah I was wondering wtf the big deal with Thorns spec was because I only had 4/6. Took forever to kill things and wizards were blowing past me, even with 61k thorns on my Cusader. 

Then I got the last 2 pieces.

Shit melts. I went from struggling to kill rift guardians in less than 3 minutes on Torment 2 to running through Greater rifts up through 22 with no sweat. I just did a group Rift at 36 without any struggles as well. I don't have any of the good companion pieces to the set, either. Just the Invoker set and 2 pieces of Blackthorn. It's nuts. 

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Merusk-1698/hero/71098109

It doesn't feel broken to me.  I've only got Boyarsky's at around 25, and I've got a couple wasted crit rolls on my gear, but while survivability is awesome (I hit around 600 million toughness with akharat's up) I feel like the damage output will fall short in the low 60s Greater Rift range.  Hammerdin I know I could push into the low 70s at least, with the right ring/amulet stats. 

We'll see what another 35-40 levels on the thorn gem does.  Maybe it'll be more effective than I think.

Like I said above, it's slow right until you get that magic 6/6 bonus. The main reason it was slow was mobs just wouldn't attack me or had such slow attacks that you had to wait forever for them to kill themselves. 

That +600% to a fast attack makes a huge difference.

on another tangent, the requirement to do the set dungeon this season sucks. I'm stuck there now so it'll be a while until I'm able to get the achieve.  That rather sucks.

Top crusader in the game (softcore) is on the Thorns build, so it must be doing something right even if it's a boring as fuck build: http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/willemh-2886/Willemh/71390650

That belt (and chest).

Yeah, the guides I've seen have said do Aquila Cuirass or Heart of Iron and cube the one you roll with lower stats. I like the combo they've got going instead.

Though I also prefer the setup using the CD reduction shield proc over his set, but if you get enough cooldown on your gear I imagine that becomes irrelevant.

So yeah, I'm also going with a thorn crusader...it's ridiculous. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Segoris-1459/hero/71445474

I'm still missing a neck/shield/ring/chest/cube pieces and t8 still just melts. I dropped Akharat's in favor of provoke to use with my current shield (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/votoyias-spiker), and I'll probably even drop Laws of Justice for something else.

What do you chaps do with legendary gem dupes ?

In my non-seasonal stash, I have some space allocated for dupes. This is dumb because I'll never use the vast majority of the gems, on the other hand I do have the space to spare.

You can vendor your extra legendary gems. They're not worth much, but it's either that or drop them on the floor. I vendored basically an entire set after the last season ended.

I keep at least one of every gem in storage so they stop dropping.

Right, ok, but I have two seasons worth of dupes in the stash.  So, I'll vendor them.  Cool.

Thanks.

My trouble is I've been keeping all the 'active' legendaries, but not getting the reagents to cube them, so I have a real space problem.  :D

Oh good, it's not just me. I keep hoping they'll have another double-bounty weekend but, alas, it hasn't happened. Running bounties sucks solo because it takes too much time. However, running them in groups also sucks because most people are utter dumbasses who follow you around rather than run one of the other 5 bounties that are still open.

So if you leave, you find you're not getting any bounties done at all, or you keep getting the same goddamn act. There I am with 123 angel skin and 0 holy water when all I need is goddamn holy water.

Nope, even doing it with the wife is a pain in the arse.  ...  I could have worded that better.

Level them to 50 and use the new cube recipe to augment ancient items.

I've still got some wasted +Crit stat on my gear, and I need a few more gem levels, but rifts 65+ seem sorta doable, but it's dependent on the rift.  I need LOTS of mobs around at all times, ideally multiple elites, to keep blocking enough to ramp up the 25% thorn damage stacking buff.

Toughness climbs over 800 million now and still with room for improvement; other than packs of lasers I barely notice my health bar move.  I might ditch laws of hope for something more DPS-y.

The objective of clearing a torment 9 rift in 6mins probably the worst of the season journey so far. I keep closing the portal around the 6:10 mark >< Getting that CDR proc shield will probably make all the difference, but until then this is annoying

Edit: and of course the next run I get a really easy rift and clear it in 4mins....

So I haven't been paying attention to all this because Grim Dawn sucked up every moment of my gaming time till I left for vacation.  Are there any darling class's for this season, like hoe everybody went Monk or Barbarian last time?  Or is it more balanced (or everybody is till going monk or barbarian)?

I'm seeing a lot of crusaders. There were a ton of Wizzards up until I started running Torment 9 Greater rifts last night.  The party I had for the two I ran was a Monk, WD and another Crusader alongside myself.

The Crusaders walked/ charged through mobs with only a single death between us, because he didn't avoid a molten 4-pack explosion. The WD said he was 'still squishy' and fell way behind as mobs tore him up (I had to go back and kill some stuff so he could catch up halfway through level 2). The monk died a few times but certainly wasn't a contributing factor to the DPS.

I'm not certain if this is reflective yet. F13 has a large amount of Wizards who seem to be doing OK. We don't appear to have any barbarians yet, people might be waiting and using the OP chars to equip the others or trying something new out.

Played a wizard last season and a crusader this season.  The crusader is, without a doubt, the easiest toon I've played in my entire Diablo history.  The thorns gear is silly to the point that I've considered starting a new toon just to have a challenge.  In one day of play I was up to torment 8 after being PL'ed to 70.  It's almost too easy to be fun.

My wizard blows the fuck out of stuff, but I cant break into T9 without some very important defensive items. I easily have the damage for T10 though, I am using Tal Rasha's six piece set. My end goal is a six piece set of Delseres Magnum Opus.

Most people are playing a FB wizard, this will not cut it.

Using the FB set, I jumped into a GRIFT 50 with some friends and up against a generic numpty minion I was channeling a constant 30-60million and his health was barley moving.

I got the full 6 piece Delsere set short of some of the additional items. ie the compass rose/traveler's pledge and the Ancient Parthan defenders. Even without those my damage immediately jumped to ~500million with spikes into the multiple billions. This is also with very sub-optimal gear, nothing ancient ect.

I thinking that a fully optimized wizard will be able to challenge for top spot on the grift leaderboard but it definitely will not be a FB wizard.

Also the play style could not be more different than the FB wiz. Instead of just spamming disintegrate you have to maintain your stacks, and time your arcane orbit ect.  

This is similar to my experience with my Tal Rasha build. You have to pay attention to which element you are applying, watch your six piece buff stacks and cooldown, and pay attention to the invisible timer on the four piece meteor activations.

I am having the same issues with the Firebird's set. I absolutely shit out damage (and almost never run out of mana), but I am extremely vulnerable and get 1 shot by anything at T7 or above. Hoping some better non-set items and some paragon levels will help with that.

I'm going to be dinking around doing bounties in a private game over the next few nights for mats. If anyone wants to PL a guy feel free to hop in and leech. I PL'd a guy I met last season two days ago and got 52 levels for Murgos last night.

I also found a hilarious combo I'm using when doing this. I got the Greed gem the first night I was 70 but didn't get a single gem I needed for my thorns build until I'd run 8 GRs. Therefore I have a L15 greed gem that causes gold explosions on 47% of mob kills.  I combine this with the belt that gives Armor on gold pick-up and cube the bracers that give XP on gold pick-up. Hilarity ensues as I can't be killed after savaging a few white mobs for gold.

I got up to 2 billion toughness yesterday in part of one run. I was standing in arcane beams, poison and molten explosions like it was nothing.  :drill:  I wish mob density was even higher.

yeah couple this with a WW barb and your boon of the hoarder at level 25.  (level 25 is speed bust on gold pickup) and the item that increases your pick up radius based on gold picked up

Its pretty swank for farming mats. I played this in season 3.

check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sa3GhF8x8w

Interestingly enough, most of the higher-level Thorns crusaders are ditching the Invoker set for the "setless" bonus (two set rings + all ancient items).  Once you get enough ancient gear, the +100% damage/4% resistance bonus outweighs the set bonus, and doesn't require you to sit around spamming Punish, or lock you into sitting still so much.  I know I wound up moving enough I was rarely over 40-50% +damage on the Traveller's set bonus.

It's a lot more squishy than the cookie-cutter invoker set, but damage is higher.  I'm missing a few ancient pieces, and some of what I am using is ancient but not well itemized (or just not the right piece), but it's got more potential.

Yeah I wondered about that. I don't have any ancient gear though and farming for it may be more trouble than it's worth. Last season I only got about 3 or 4 pieces of ancient gear total.

I think I'd go with the ancient legendary stuff for solo and the invoker set for groups.  Being tanky + decent damage would be great if grouped with more dedicated dps.

Thorns build is retarded. Went from T2 being hard to soloing nearly T8. I basically click and things die.

I love this game, but this is dumb.

Oh I don't know - at T10/Grift 50 I've started to actually use my CDs  :why_so_serious:

I'm quite tempted to make a hardcore version - start blessed hammer to 70 and see if I can get the gear for thorns

I've got to agree and I love the spec.

Last night my son decided he wants to play with me. The wife's account, however, hasn't ever had a L60 or story-completion because she never downed Diablo meaning we were forced to do seasonal at Expert level, not even Master.  :heartbreak:   So I had to hop on my non-season L70 wizard who had previously been able to tear through Torment III without a problem, so Expert wasn't going to be a thing.

It felt like a SLOG to get anywhere compared to the thorns build and I was only on Expert. That's just not right.

Just watched that Crusader get Rift 81.  Jesus, that looked so boring to play.

It can't be any dumber than the leap barb I saw doing mid-70's.  This game has jumped the shark.

It hasn't jumped the shark, they just..... catered directly to specs. They'll fix it. They've had the best track record in recent memory lately.

So, I went and looked at the diablofans suggested build for Firebird's and gave it a try. At first I hated it, but then I realized that it was set up to be in melee range (uses both Storm and Ice Armor along with Explosive Blast). I started diving into piles and it popped for me. When I get it properly geared it will be very good. You can still kite with it and then finish up close, so it will be interesting learning to balance risk/reward on level. I need one more 30+Grift to level my 2nd gem to 25 which will really make elites a lot easier.

I finished the set dungeon after a few tries. Mastery is going to take some planning and some luck I think.

I hope that you're right. 

I can't get over this odd sense... when I play PoE, I wish it were more like Diablo and when I play Diablo, I wish it were more like PoE.  Both have good ideas, but I enjoy the complexity somewhere in the middle.

Same with me and Marvel.  Kinda.

Marvel's loot is just too crappy (and too overwhelming) for me. I like the utility of D3's drops being useful for most classes.

Grim Dawn?

Regarding the easiness of this season - it's a whole world of difference starting a new char without the free set. I have my facerolling thornsadser, and then a brand new wiz and monk, who are both not nearly as fun or easy without a set. Once they complete a set it will be come easy mode. And I think that is where they messed up this season is it isn't a progression, it's a feast or famine with either having a good set or not having a good set. They need to make it more progression curve.

Side note - fuck Akarat's Awakening drop rate.

Of course all you need to do then is just farm shards and cube mats with the crusader for your other characters to use.

Random question for anyone who has done them, but what kind of tuning (damage and survivability wise) are the set dungeons tweaked to?  Like, dont even try it if you cant do T10 kind of thing?  or do they scale with chosen difficulty?

They have their own difficulty level regardless of Torment.

Just did the Firebird's last night. It felt on par with T6, perhaps T7.

I'm not 100% sure that's the case. I couldn't do the set dungeon at all on Monday but I was running Torment 6 or 7 at the time. The ranged guys fucked me up pretty bad and I couldn't survive past the second pack.

I dropped down to Torment 3 Tuesday for the seasonal boss achieves and didn't have a problem at all completing the set dungeon. I didn't make any major gear changes between those two attempts.

On another note, I got the Bombard belt on my crusader last night as an ancient. (Two in fact, thanks RNG)  I'm not sure it's a required part of the set at all as I'm pretty convinced my DPS actually went down. Even when I swapped back to the Pig Sticker things were taking longer to kill with that belt than with the Non-effect belt I had with another 2k thorns on it. Subjective rather than objective testing, though.

Which is what I'm doing, when I'm tired of not getting the crusader shield I need, but it's still very slow.


The dungeon doesn't really take torment into consideration, it just feels like there is a breaking point when the ranged mobs become trivial. For me, that was around 18million sheet toughness. I started around 10mil and got torn apart. Then with minor gear increases in toughness, and a higher torment level, they could barely touch me.

As for the belt, it's more about the 50% dmg reduction which trivializes the damage through ~T8-T10. It is a bit of a dps loss without perfect rolls, though it's an even bigger dps loss if you don't have bombardment: Barrels of Spikes on your hotbar. Basically, without B:BoS it will use the normal Bombardment and not take your thorns into account for dmg.

It's really for the damage reduction.  You can put the belt on and drop bombardment from your bar and still get the 50% reduction with the invoker set.  That's a big difference.

I'm not sure the Barrels of Spikes is worth it, it doesn't really do that much damage compared to just whacking stuff with my sword.

I think my Crusader has reached the "must find all ancients" part of gear as I have everything I need right now for the invoker's set.  I guess I should start working my way towards the Litany set where you just equip a full sheet of ancient legendaries and get 1000% damage or whatever it is.

It's definitely for the damage reduction, until you're at a point where you don't need to stand still using your sword. For instance, the speed running LoN Bombardment build (http://www.diablofans.com/builds/69853-2-4-gr90-lon-bombardment), which seems to be the fastest

It's not.  Was running torment X last night testing these things and I see no reason to keep bombard on my bar with the belt providing me with the damage reduction.  Consecrate does much more work for me.

Ah, see I missed the whole DR part. Just about everything except Icy-Veins said to put Bombard w/ Nails on your bar for the increased damage, so I even picked-up the Flail that does 2x bombards to boost DPS and it still felt like a loss.

I wasn't having survival issues before because I've got the gem that spreads damage out over time equipped instead of the Bane of the Trapped. It's been working pretty well so far, making-up for the lack of a Blood Brother. (I lucked into an Akarat's Awakening when leveling so I've got that cubed)

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Merusk-1698/hero/71098109

I need some damn rings/ amulets to shard now. I dropped the Blackthorn's set last night so the current ring is useless but better than the one other piece of effect jewelery I've gotten.

I may try another class.  Crusader seems pretty dumb up to GR 50.  Just run into the middle of a pack and roll my face over the keyboard. 

Perhaps this is the intended Diablo experience.

Well, it's the end goal, right? Except they just kinda... hand it to you.

Yep.  I'm using the 'sader for seasonal achieves and farming. I think I'm going to roll a DH up and see how that goes. I haven't tried them or a WD in much seriousness yet.

Melee DH is fun, broken fun. At GR35 I can no longer 1 shot Rift Guardians, but only barely.

I mean, there's some decisions to make in GR60, but, no not really.  Wait for Convection of Elements to hit Phys, then slam all the things.

I was going through nephalim rifts and ran out of space to add the blood shards the guardian dropped.  So I went to Kaladuna and gambled 3 times and got an Etched Sigil (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/etched-sigil).

I then made it so my only arcane spender is Meteor Shower.  That took me straight from Master to Torment 3 lol

Does this undissable Stormshield have any other uses apart from a transmog that makes you think of better days ?

If anyone wants a quick boost to 70, let me know.  I'm Neboo #1240 and play most evenings.  I've been grinding torment X for gear and death's breaths and it would only take me 2-3 tor 6 rifts to get you from 1-70.

So this is all great, really enjoying this again. I last played before they started seasons at all (I think), so there's lots new for me. Only took a few days to go from a fresh start with a seasonal character to running T9 rifts with a thorns Crusader. :heart:

Loving all the changes, Kanai's Cube is great, Greater Rifts are fun, UI changes are good, Salvage All buttons are awesome, etc.

Set Dungeons are stupid and annoying. Bounties are still godawful, disappointed that they haven't been made less cockstabby. Kania's Cube needs to take mats from your stash. Paragon level up icon really needs to not be right over the buff indicators.

9/10 from me for this patch! Will probably get bored again in a month or so and begin the cycle again in 6-9 months time  :awesome_for_real:

The Cube/ stash interface and the Bounties are the two worst elements for me. The bounties you can at least drop down to Torment VII or so and walk/ Run through them. Terrible that you still get screwed by the random maps on most, but if they'd drop the "Must kill x# of monsters" requirements it'd be a lot better.

They wouldn't be so bad if i could ever find a damn aetherwalker wand.  Also this melee wizard meta is dumb.

I haven't seen an upgrade in over a week and I am stuck at about T7/8/9. I can grind through 9s, but they take forever, so I just run bounties and nephs at T7. If I get to Paragon 400 and haven't maxed out, I am going to switch to another character, or at least another set build.

This is probably the most important thing I keep reminding myself about D3.  I play, HARD, for like 4-5 weeks.  Then, I start getting super bored and that's ok, time to move on and ignore it until next patch/season.

I've not played much since release I think i have 3 chars in the T1/2 range, but have been playing a witchdoctor for the first time as a season character as i had to reinstall it on this rebuild PC over the weekend. I've never been much of a pet fan but this guy is pretty good fun. I have been lazy and left it on normal, im running it as fast as I can.

My infinite-Chakram-spam Mara DH is able to do T10 stuff pretty handily, but I seem to have topped out at GR52. I was getting so many monk drops I ran one up, but it's a lot more work/less fun without the season reward free set.

Sent a request from segoris#1459 as I could go for 2 PLs if you don't mind. Can even PL in return[/s] Scratch that, got a pl for my last two seasonal classes and a HC char. The stuff below still applies though to anyone interested

On a side note, I have about 6-7 full sets of Hellfire portals if 3 others want to join

And I have one Puzzle ring left to get 3x people their TX greed run for their stashes.

I'd love to come along for the Hellfire portals!

I can help kill TX Greed, but I don't need it.

- Drevik

I am happy to PL anyone to 70 in Torment 6- just /t me or drop into my game (if it you can get in). My wiz can handle up to about T8 before things take forever to kill. Started a barb yesterday and already have her in Torment 3 without any matching set items. She does have 3 or 4 ancient non-set pieces, so I am on the way to a LoN build as an alternative. If anyone has a barb already kitted out and wants to share drops, let me know when you see me online.

I'd love in on the TX greed run this weekend. I can never get the goblins to open portals or the drops for it myself.

Sure thing. Either of you can just toss an invite. Ask in the f13 channel if anyone else needs it too (since I'm in a different clan) and I'll go whenever I'm on if I'm not in a full group already.

I'm also happy to offer PL'ing, grouping, whatever to anyone on the EU servers. Apocrypha#2851

Also, class representation in the top 100 leaderboards:
(http://i.imgur.com/HiwbLkS.jpg)

WTF happened to DH's?

Which reminds me, I keep seeing you on when I'm doing runs with the wife ;  feel free to drop in for a threesome.

Will do, likewise :)

Edit: I'm often grouped with a friend who's got a nicely geared wiz, we could tear up some TX rifts etc as a full group.

Those charts show exactly what I expected... crusaders are worthless for group greaters.  Now I have to decide if I want to reroll and farm a new set of ancient gear or just play something else.

Eh, farming for a new set isn't too bad. I just tossed on uniques and joined public TX rifts to leech. People are clearing them fast enough that no one really notices :awesome_for_real:

I rather play a good solo char than a group one any day.

There's very little difference outside of how long it takes to clear a rift in either event. I don't talk to people and running 4 rifts solo or in a group still takes the same amount of time over-all.  When doing them in a group the people drop in/ out or fuck around in town between rifts too long 80% of the time, killing any efficiency there vs. Solo-rifting.

Fuck you blizzard. 

I had an idea on how to use Tal whatever set on my wizard to hopefully get higher up since I was having trouble going higher than T6 with my Firebird wizard (more due to a lack of ability to take damage than an ability to dish out damage).  So I equipped my 6 pieces of Tal Rasha I had in my bank and went into T5 to test it out.  My idea worked and I was destroying things.  A second before I am about to zone out to up the difficulty an elite appears.  The second I go to attack it I get 3007'ed for no reason.  Log back in and my HC seasonal character is dead.

I don't care if my HC guy dies due to my own stupidity, and I know it wasn't my internet because i literally just killed another enemy with no rubber banding or any lag. 

As much as i enjoyed HC the lag and disconnect deaths killed it for me long long ago.

The Firebird set dungeon is pretty terribly designed.  You have to completely gimp your damage and having one specific legendary is pretty much a requirement.

Many of the sets seem to be poorly thought out.  That's why I think we're seeing the LON sets do so well this season.

This is why I don't play Hardcore in Diablo 3, or any other game that is online only. I played a ton of hardcore in Diablo 2 and Torchlight, but I'm just not going to fuck with network connectivity issues and hardcore modes.

Fancied a change from the Invoker Crusader so I rolled a Barb, roughly following this build (http://www.icy-veins.com/d3/barbarian-furious-charge-speedrun-build-with-the-legacy-of-raekor-and-immortal-king-patch-2-4) for speed farming TX rifts. 6-piece set bonus from IK's plus 4-piece set bonus from Raekor's is stupid crazy damage.

It's ridiculous fun. Makes me think of the "When do you start to suck at gaming" thread though because I can barely keep up with the speed of it. I'm usually playing with a mate who's in a Wand of Woh speed wizard build and we're clearing a TX rift in 2-3 minutes. It takes us longer to go back and loot, if we can be bothered, than it does to clear it.

Biggest gripe with it is that I can't find a good chest piece to transmog to go with the Raekor's set, which has no chest!

I don't understand how everyone is blowing past TX and higher GRifts.  I must just have terrible luck.  I seem to have hit a wall with Firebird at T7 (I can do T8 Nephalim rifts but my fatal damage passives blow too often for me to be comfortable with).  The rate of legendaries falling is woefully low for the fact that I seem to need some specific stuff.  I can't switch sets because I only have partial pieces of the other sets and it seems like 9 out of 10 set pieces that drop are either firebird (non-ancient so most of the time not an upgrade) or blackthrones

*Edit* I thought I'd start a new class to lower the repetition a bit but I loathe having to get a full set on yet another class and starting at T1.

Firebirds is broken, in a bad way, switch to literally any other wizard set and become amazed. Now, I know you said you aren't getting drops; the mistake you are making is not hoping into any clan groups and leeching the t10 drop rates. Seriously nobody minds and most of us enjoy the company, carry or not.

Hop in with some friends.  I was farming tier X rifts in 3-4 mins and getting 5-7 legendaries a run.  It fills up the bank pretty fast. 

The problem with joining in with Friend's T10 groups is they leave random mobs all over the place.  I can't really take the damage to run behind them and since I"m HC that's dangerous (so maybe that's the core issue).

Also what do you mean by FIrebird is broken?

*EDit:* I do have 4 pieces of the archon set, but not sure how viable it'll be without the reducing cooldown legendary.

Ask them to be more judicious about clearing?  Accept that you're going to die a few times? 

Not really understanding the issue here.

You missed where he said he's HC - Hardcore. There is no 'dying a few times.' Dead and restart

I did miss that.  My apologies.

There's no way I could play this Barb build in HC. I die regularly. Same with my friend's Wizard. Accidentally Furious Charge/Teleport near a molten pack as one of the mobs dies? Dead, lol. Stand in some poison/electric/lava/etc too long? Dead, lol. We die often, and it's always funny when we do.

The drop rates in TX are a lot higner than lower torments, and speed-clear builds are mostly pretty squishy until you get a load of excellent gear, so starting off in TX seems to involve a lot of dying, for me anyway.

Hardcore just seems like a way to take a lot of the fun away.

Also, quick gearing up tip. You don't have to rely solely on drops or spending shards. Upgrading rares in the Kanai's Cube is a great way to get specific pieces. If you have a build you're working towards then you can run lots of easy/safe normal rifts for crafting mats, make the rare base item and then upgrade them until you get what you're after. I've found it much easier and faster to get specific bits that way.

If you don't have a build in mind then I highly recommend looking at something like Diablofans (http://www.diablofans.com/) and checking out the top rated builds for this patch for your class. They're all highly theorycrafted and tested and are very solid. Sure, you can build and gear how you want if you're pootling around in low Torment but you're going to find that a lot harder in tougher difficulties.

See, another friend mentioned this and rerolling legendary in the cube and I realized I totally forgot about that.  However, when I looked it up online it said to do so required 50 forgotten souls, and so far I've been able to accumulate a whopping 130 in total.  Seems extremely expensive unless I am missing something.

*Edit*: Just looked it up again and it seems I've confused myself.  Upgrade rare doesn't require forgotten souls, so yeah that looks like a pretty economical way to try and get some legs I need.

Yeah it's Death's Breaths I keep running out of doing that. I think there's an item that lets you get double drops of them but I've forgotten what it is.

Sage's Journey - crafted set - for DBs.

That's the one, thanks Xan. I should craft one of those sets because I'm gearing up a Wiz atm and keep running out of DBs.

If you ever are actually low on souls, then you start plowing through TX rifts and DEing all the legs that drop. You'll never have enough mats to cube all of the effects anyway because Bounties SUCK.

Went to my non-season monk to clean-up the mail - 12-days left to collect your sets from last season, by the way.

Anyhow... noticed that they changed Inna to provide all your spirit allies at once with 50% damage bonus for each... then I remembered I had the 2x ally boots disenchanted and wondered if that would give me 10 allies.  Er, yep.  10 spirit allies and all the benefits, plus all the mantras plus 500% damage to all skills... zoinks, totally un-optimized went from T6 to T9 and just walking through enemies.  The monkiest of monks.  I wish there was a reason to play non-season characters.

Just using builders for damage... once something blue, yellow or purple shows up - hit 7 sided strike and everything dies - continue until next pack of elites.  Kill boss.  Augmented with various AOE blades, clouds, auras of death.

Holy crap you guys weren't kidding about Firebird being broken and bad.  Now that I understand how it works (you only gain the 25% buff after you've done 3000% damage, which for most mobs means they are already dead) I realize I'm not getting use out of the set pieces at all.  It almost seems like you want a low damage weapon so the threshold for the damage is lower and easier to obtain, but I can't imagine how that works in reality.

I did however, get a RORG and a 5th Tal Rasha set piece and holy shit, the damage is insane.  It took me a while to figure out a good flow to get all 4 stacks (the trick it seems was Teleport with calamity for the arcane).  I also finally used the cube to upgrade some rares and got an ancient Wand of Woh.  I went from barely being able to do Torment 5 to being able to do GRift 36 in 4 minutes flat consistently.  I know I can go higher, but I just stayed there to farm my gems up to level 25. 

Tomorrow I shall tempt fate and see how far I can go....

Nice! With that and 6-piece Tal Rasha's you've possibly got GR60+ there  :awesome_for_real:

I got a nearly perfect ancient Pig Sticker drop yesterday, just needs CDR to be ideal for my thorns Crusader. 120 enchant attempts, over 500 million gold and not a sngle CDR roll on it yet. :uhrr:  Gave up in disgust and went to bed.

So much this.  Seasons have taught me that I keep way too many legendary items in the hope of one day having the Bounty rewards to cube them.

120 attempts?  Ow.

Because of the imperfect nature of all RNG generators it would probably be better to quit out and start a new game after 15 rolls with no desired stat showing once. D3s gen in particular seems streaky as you may have noticed a n all those rolls that the same type was coming up frequently.

Yeah, but I'd got into that "Fuck you RNG" frame of mind. Plus it's only the 1st ancient Pig Sticker I've seen so far. Plus I'd had a few whiskys.  :grin:

I tried Firebird (since that was what my wizard had equipped when I went back to her.). It cleared elites incredibly quickly, but struggled hard with trash mobs.  I imagine the melee demon hunter works rather like that as well.

My PS4 crusader is sitting at 4/6 invoker because I've burned ~4000 shards on the helm and haven't seen it yet. In fact, I've seen a handful of Blind Faith and overseer's cowl, but I've yet to see a set helm. I'm stuck in T6 because drops and shards are absolute shit. RNG gonna RNG.

Does PS4 not get the free set pieces for the season journey?  


Yep that's my experience too, but what I figured out was the reason was that it's trivial to get that 3000% weapon damage against elites, which gives you lots of time at 600% increased damage.  However, since trash mobs die before giving you the firebird burn buff you have to slog through them unbuffed.  Pretty dumb.

*Edit:* I guess it means the set excels is supposed to excel at higher greater rift when mobs have more health, thus allowing you to get more damage bonuses, but the stats dont' really help survivability to survive up to the point where you finally start getting a good damage bonus.

My understanding is that the consoles don't get seasons. They have some vague excuse about how it's because console players can play offline, and server stuff, etc...

I can envision they want you chain-teleporting through a rift, never stopping, spamming fire on everything and hoping it all burns to death before the timer ends.  

Until the inevitable mis-click teleports you into death.  I ain't trying it.

*edit* grr clicked wrong thread.

I also capped out at around T7 with my Firebird wiz. Made a leapquake barb and have been having a blast jumping all over Hell's half acre beating the shit out of things. I can struggle through TX solo (Malthael is still a challenge), or cruise in a group. Finished a GR 49 last night. Need to bang out the set dungeon, then maybe go back to the wiz and do some different sets so I can clean them out of my bank.

Speaking of which, are there rewards for mastering the set dungeons or is it just a "congrats"?

Mastering one is a season journey step, and I think mastering 6 is another farther down the road. Getting through the 8 steps of the journey nets you another stash tab (which carries over into non-seasonal and beyond). There is also some cosmetic for doing all 24 if you are a shut in/autist.

congrats

You get banners for completing a class's set dungons, one for proficiency, and a different one for mastery (so 2 per class).  If you get proficiency with all set dungeons you get the glowy ethereal green wings and if you master every single one you get the big green dragon wings.

How long do seasons last? this is the first one ive played.

I believe it was said this one would last "approximately 3 months." So around April.

Finally got my extra stash tab last night. Thought doing two conquests would be the trickiest part , but got the 50 million gold streak and the GR 45 without a set item ones done pretty quick and then just had to work on doing a TX rift in 4 mins.

How'd you manage the 50 mil gold streak?

Turned my pet off at first so he wouldn't collect any of the gold. Got the boon of the hoarder gem up to 50, had a suit of Goldskin armor, and the gloves that cause an explosion of gold after a massacre. Reset paragon points to put 50 into the gold find one. Went through the ruins of corvus in act V on TX, killed just about everything while trying to pick up as little gold as possible. Then looked at the map and made a mental note as best I could about the route I was going to take back through, brought my pet back out and ran through picking the gold up. Took me a couple tries to figure it out, and even the time I did it, there were a few times the gold count in the bottom almost faded away before I got to the next pile but it didn't end up being nearly as bad as I thought.

Try to keep one of those rings (I think) with the property that grants you a speed boost every time you pick up  gold, and throw it on on the way back through in the pickup phaze for a little boost.  makes me wonder if a Witchdoctor would be a good one for that, clear the thing with as little pickup radius as possible, then  throw on Thing of the Deep for the huge pickup radius boost on the way back.

Pick up radius didn't seem as big an issue to me since the cosmetic pets can pick up gold now (of course more pickup radius certainly doesn't hurt).

Or on T10 just put on gold find gear when you find a gilded baron, kill it for 100mil.

Yeah, that.  Even without a focus on gold find, I've seen 45 million drop out of a gilded baron.

I farmed 80 TX bounty caches in public groups and opened them all at once without moving. Got a bit laggy but it worked. And I now have all the bounty mats I'll need for some time  :awesome_for_real:

The no set items GR45 one is proving difficult for me atm. Geared up a Wiz for it and she's up to GR35 atm and only just making it. Will get there, just needs some slightly better rolls on the gear she's using.

I have a WD that can clear TX, but I am rather envious of barbs that leap through dungeons and everything dies in their wake.

So now I'm gearing a barb.  Whee.

Hit one this morning with Ray. He stopped and put on GF gear and got the conquest. I didn't and got 35M. Sigh.

I wanted to build an Earth set for the barb, so of course I currently have 4 piece IK, and the 2h mighty hammer that returns fury when using hammer of the ancients.

 :oh_i_see:

The hilarious bit is I can trivially clear T6 with it, and I'm literally missing key pieces (2 more pieces of IK for 250% more damage when Wrath is up, bracers for Hammer of the Ancients for faster attack, more damage, and better able to keep Wrath up full time.)

I think full emerald in your helm + about 100% GF from your gear ( had a gold skin laying around) at T10 will net you the conquest from a gilded baron.


Predictably, I didn't play this for about a week and the high has filtered off.  Ah well, was damn fun for those 3 weeks for me again.  See you next season!

So, 39 hours (some idle) and 472 paragon later, I got conqueror and my stash tab with my WD. If anyone wants any tips, let me know. I couldn't really find a good guide anywhere online.

I'm playing the Demon Hunter Shadow's set this season and it's pretty fun. I feel like this build would be great at someone who can AoE clear quickly. I melt elite packs and bosses, but large groups of regular dudes are kind of a slog sometimes.  Still, humming along nicely and it's pretty fun to see big numbers.

I am pretty sure I have goldskin cubed so I could bounce back to town to swap that out I guess.

Ran some TX rifts this morning with some goons. I can't believe how lethal some of the classes are. I thought my build was pretty efficient, but I was hardly helping at all. I did collect a shitton of DBs though. Burned through most of them trying to upgrade rare 2h mightys and 2h maces. I actually ran out of Veiled Crystals first, which I would have bet was impossible. So now i am back to picking up yellows and mats like a dirty poor.

Kadala drops many yellows.

That is, if you bother to pick up the blood crystals. Like a dirty poor.

I would like some tips!  I have a WD, and I can clear (and carry!) TX, but he seems slow compared to Earth barbs.

I'm not sure I'm going to make the stash tab. I have yet to finish one challenge, let alone two, and I'm out of crystals for Greater Rifts with only three gems at 35.  I'm forced to do pubbies or solo runs for my rifts due to play time. Most public games I join are just people standing around in town doing nothing and solo games are boring as fuck (thouh as a 'sader I never die) or take forever since I don't have enough ancient drops to tear through TX like the more DPSy builds.

I think other distractions are going to get me long before I do the grinding necessary for the achieves needed.

Yeah, there is no way I make the stash tab for the achievements/challenges here.

Got a link to your guy? Also, where are you at in the journey.

My G-rift gear/build. http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ray-1555/hero/71708216

Handing people the "best" set trivialized content far too much. The Grift leaderboard is not even remotely compelling :(

If I am on, feel free to join!  Although the barb is sitting in T6, I should be able to push higher soon.

The WD can meander around and murder everything, it just feels slow.

I'll link when I get home, I can't log into bnet because authenticator.   :oh_i_see:

On Journey, I'm stuck on chapter 4, set dungeon.  Mostly because I'm trying to get a poison immune amulet, and the weapon for the hex/angry chicken rune.

Edit:  I have roughly the same build, with minor differences.

If you need help with your set dungeon, I am happy to tag along. And Merusk- we can blow through some rifts for keys if you want. I can do TX, but it would take about 10 min. I can probably do T8 in half that.

Thanks for the offer. I rarely see folks other than myself online prior to 10pm so I muck about solo. If I see you online I'll hop in.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/soulflame-1181/hero/68994789

WD

I built him around the Suwong's, because look at that thing.   :oh_i_see:

I want to swap the tall man's finger for a convention, then use rogar's to let me wear Jeram's or tasker/theo.

Get rid of the pet rings in favor of focus and restraint.

Champion:
Master any set dungeon - Try a couple out if you have the pieces. Towards the bottom of this link there is a list of dungeon locations and requirements. http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Set_Dungeon
I did Spirit of Arachyr by only using the Frog, Piranhas and 2 piece spider bonus. Jade Harvester looks easy too, but I didn't try it. By now I assume you probably have a bunch of sets lying around.
-SNIP-

Destroyer:
-SNIP-
Complete one season Conquest this season - There are many options. See Below.

Conqueror: (finishing this gives Stash Tab)
Show me what you got: Kill Diablo on TX within 1 minute 30 seconds - Easy, your Gargs should murder him.
Money Ain't a Thang: Kill Greed on TX - If you throw a puzzle ring into the cube it opens a portal.
A little more: Reach GR60 solo - Your gear looks about good enough. Where re you at now?
4 minutes to save the World: Finish a TX Nephalem rift within 4 minutes - This one took me several tries, it's mostly rolling the dice to get a rift with enough mobs. Typically one of the more open maps is best. You can get friends to help. I was hitting around 5-4:45 minutes in an average rift and when I finally hit a packed rift I finished in like 3:30.
Gem of my Life: Level 3 legendary gems to lvl 55 - Just takes time.
All I do is win: Finish 2 Conquests this season - See below.

CONQUESTS:
Sprinter: Complete Act 1 through 5 within one hour - Would need a full and dedicated group. Seems like way too much effort.

Avarice: Complete a 50M gold streak while out of the Vault and Inner Sanctum - Required finding a guilded baron on Torment 10 and putting on about 200% gf, easy but random. I think another method was posted earlier in the thread.

The Thrill: Reach GR45 without any set item equipped - I did this for the second half, which only took me one try actually and was surprisingly easy. Tasker and Theo, Jheram's Mask, the various Rings , Transendence Belt, Etc., are all great damage boosts. Just put on the pieces that pack the best punch individually and give it a go. I think I used an Aquilla Curass for the damage reducation and used a no mana (except haunt) build.

Years of War: Reach GR55 with bonuses from 6 class sets - I did three on my WD thinking I might give this one a go. It was fairly easy with a mediocre Jade Harvester and Zunimasa setup. Was going to do the rest on my Wiz, but just did the above instead.

Masters of the Universe: Master 8 set dungeons - Fuck this

You would think so. But I tried focus & restraint and found them lacking. You REALLY need the short mans finger, as the tiny gargs just murder stuff. It took me a while to find one, and I wasn't expecting it to be all that, but I dropped F&R real fast. You also kinda need RoRG so you can use either Tasker and Theo or Jheram's Mask (both take a Helltooth slot). Given you can't cube bothrings, and Convention of the elements is also kinda busted, there just isn't room for F&R. That said, soulflame is running a less pet focused build, so it might work for him. But for me, the three gargantuans are like 80-90% of my damage.

Even with the less pet focused build, the gargs are probably 70% or more of my damage.

I'm pretty sure I've seen crits for 5.5 billion...

I redid my gear slightly, found that I did have a convention in the stash.  Not a good one, but good enough to at least run Jeram or Tasker.  Although I was running Grin for some P/L action.

Quick tip for getting loads of Veiled Crystals first - yellows salvage into a single crystal, but blues & whites salvage into multiple dust and parts. You can convert the arcane dust & reusable parts into veiled crystals in Kanai's Cube, costing only gold.

If you reforge an ancient legendary, does it only have a 1 out of 10 chance of staying ancient?

Correct.

Unless you are swimming in Souls, upgrading rares seems cheaper.

Woohoo! Completed the Conqueror season journey for the extra stash tab. Managed a 45 grift (with 4 mins to spare) without any set items on a 3-day old DH. Now I can collect even more shit I don't need!

 :awesome_for_real:

I made a thorns crusader to see what all the fuss was about. After a couple days of farming rifts between drops, gambling and crafting I currently have 5 pieces of Roland's, 4 pieces of Seeker of the Light, 3 pieces Akkhan's, and ONE PIECE OF THORNS OF THE INVOKER.

Bleh, gearing a new character sucks with the focus on sets.

I actually find it quite a bit easier thanks to receiving a starter set. With new chars I do one of two things

1) join a T10 rifts public group to leech. As long as I don't die and make it look like I'm doing something I get free loot (and DBs for upgrading rares) faster than actually grinding out the gear.
2) take my best char and run my most efficient GR level for blood shards (for me that is about GR55 with ~5min clears).

The last char I geared up was a barb who now has 2.5 sets in about 4 hours and 1k death breaths.

One step short of another stash:  3 level 55 gems.

OK, what genius at Blizzard decided that Wizards need to learn to use Firebird?

I'm frustrated by the set dungeon.  :mob:

Same fuckers that think Jade Harvester is fun.

I like how the launcher has some Q&A patting themselves on the back about set dungeons.

Thing is, Set Dungeons aren't a bad idea, in honesty.  But they shouldn't be fucking mandatory.  Like, at all.

Also, they should reward you with shit  ?  Like, lots of shit ?

The "reward", in this case, is finishing chapter 4 in the Season journey.

So it's completely optional. I wouldn't mind having that mini-ent pet though.

Um, no.  What's the point in doing a season at all if you don't want to complete the season journey ?

Also if you consider stash tabs mandatory then it gets much worse (in regards to set dungeons) after chapter 4.

Seasonal items?

I thought there were no seasonal items this time around, all items were available among all game modes?

Yup, they removed seasonal uniques. You can get all of the new gear in any game mode, standard or season. Seasons are now for achievements, cosmetics, utility pets, and stash tabs.

It's also nice to start from scratch every once in a while, which is why I do it at this point.

Check and mate, motherfucker.

I am hoping that it will go like last season, where I didn't finish the journey either. I got stuck on the dumb Season step where you had to finish some level of Rift in 5 minutes (or thereabouts). But I was having too much fun to care about that.

I got a ton of loot and paragon levels, and put together the most fun Wizard build I've ever played.
Seriously, I gained more paragon levels in the last Season than I had previously done in the entire game.

I fell into this set via the freebies and drops.  I really don't enjoy this play style at all.  Sadly, it's all I really have gear for and the loot fairy is being stingy.

I'll be leveling gems or messing around with the Arachyr WD tonight, jump in and I'll see if I can get you some better drops.

Yes.  I feel your pain.  I opened the bag as my WD, not knowing any better.  Then I found I was trapped so I said 'Fuck It' and opened the rest as him.

Now I have a full set of shit that I hate.

I didn't know that I could hold on to those for another character.

 :sad_panda:

 :heartbreak:

Sorry.  I guess ignorance was bliss.

I have a Crusader up and running in HC if anyone wants a PL for the final step of the Season Journey (or if you just want to play some HC).

Completing a season to get storage makes Yego smash.

So, Is it just me, or did they sort of royally fuck  up sets VS high level greater rifts. I have full sets now for almost everything on my witchdoctor (arachyr, Helltooth, Harvester, Zuni).   I can fairly reliably solo GR 45.  I stuck my head into GR 50 to test with  a 6Zuni 2 Helltooth build and got my ass handed to me by just about everything.  So goddamned squishy.  And looking at the leaderboards, i think i had to go down like 20 rift levels from the top before I found a WD using a set.  Just about everybody in the top brackets are running LoN builds......

You can probably inch up with paragon levels and cubing legendary gems for mainstat bumps, but LoN is pretty nice once you get a lot of good ancients.

You should be able to push into the 70s with pretty mediocre set gear as long as you are using a good build.

Here's an Acid Cloud Helltooth build for example.  You can check out the other builds and see what suits your fancy based on what other artifacts you have.  Lots of good builds on this site:

http://www.icy-veins.com/d3/witch-doctor-acid-cloud-build-with-helltooth-patch-2-4

I'm dubious.  I tried acid cloud with helltooth, the damage from it was utterly unimpressive.

I think I have all the pieces, I can try it again, but I am very skeptical it can push to GR 70.

I have a Suwong diviner.  It really, really makes Acid Cloud rock.

It's not just Acid Cloud.  Jeram's Bracers augmenting Wall of Death and the Belt letting you put out 15 Sycophants make a big difference as well.

If anyone is pushing grifts and feels stuck I'm happy to look at your profile and offer suggestions on where/how to make changes.

Ok, I'm getting stuck at ~50 on my 'sader.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Merusk-1698/hero/71098109

The Akarat's Awakening is cubed rather than Blood Brother because I haven't had another AA drop. That one dropped in my 30s so I cubed it and went with the best shield I had. Ditto with Justice Lantern and Conviction of elements. Goldskin isn't supposed to be there, it's actually Aquila but I was farming a bit last night.

Still can't get a goddamn socket roll on my Traveler's Pledge, either. Terrible luck all 'round.

Can you roll off the the damage on your pigsticker for attack speed? more speed = more application of thorns.

Also I would switch your punish to celerity and drop bombardment.

here's my sader for example: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Stinkfist-1403/hero/66756998

For legendary gems I use the Boyarsky's chip (obviously), bane of the stricken and bane of the trapped.   

I can give that a shot, I think the socket came naturally on that sticker.

I had something else in place of Bombardment before, but I never used it. I figured get the +thorns damage if the skill slot was just sitting passive like that. I'll give Akarat's a go.

You're missing a rune on your steed, BTW.

I have a non-season WD with the exact Helltooth build I posted, so I decided to dust him off and see what I could do.  I ran a GR 62 since that was the highest I had available and definitely struggled with it.  I had a terrible rift, but just barely managed to complete it.  Overall I'd say the build definitely feels weak compared to most of my DH builds where I was able to complete GR70 with less optimized gear than my WD.

In addition to what Stewie said, I'd say switch your CoE for another Justice Lantern and cube CoE. Your CoE has low rolls with low str, and CHC does next to nothing for a thorns sader. However, JL would give you more % to block, which increases its own passive as well as having a greater chance to reduce your cooldowns faster through Akarat's Awakening.

Start looking to replace the traveler's set. Run hellfire portals to be able to craft a useful hellfire amulet, and then keep going for an ancient hellfire amulet with a useful passive.

On the pig sticker, I'd actually go for cooldown reduction first. After str and vit, that is probably the best stat you can have, right above or equal to all resist. You need a different pig sticker anyways though. That or a doombringer, and look for str -> vit -> cdr -> attack speed -> lph (for pig sticker) -> socket, with no regard to weapon damage.

I'm guessing you were running cookie cutter before and had Akarat's Champion in place of Bombardment. A.C. would not be doing much for you until you get your cooldown reduction % and block % high enough so the cooldown is closer to matching the duration. However, it's still doing more for you than Bombard is until you can run LoN Bombardment through the damage reduction and damage increase.

Switch Laws of Hope for Laws of Justice:Decaying Strength. It's used constantly and for good reason. The 15% damage reduction is going to reduce your incoming damage by more than 10k lps and 100k shield that Laws of Hope will benefit for you. Another option would be Laws of Valor: Invincible, but that is far behind LoJ:DS. I'm actually about to try dropping Laws all together and going for condem:Vacuum, but that is experimental.

On your legs - reroll the +punish damage to Vit, All Res, Armor, or +bombard%.

Gloves - reroll for CDR

Switch your vit gems for +280 str

These changes should easily get you to gr60+.

As I said with the shield, the COE is worn because I haven't gotten a L70 Lantern yet. Fucking drops. What you outlined is the plan, though.

Yep I recall having AC before and it was too long on CD to be worthwhile. That was before I got to where I'm at now, though, so adding some CDR gear might have made it more useful now. I know I need a different weapon, again, drops. I'm getting more set and belt drops than any useful weapons or shields. RNGesus is infuriating.

Laws of Hope isn't for the shield or heal, it's for the run speed and ability to run-through mobs. I was getting stuck behind masses and Poison/ Laserbeam/ Succubus Bulleted/ Moltened to death. Keeping LOH lets me pop it and run away where I'd otherwise be cornered. Avoiding damage entirely > mitigating it.

I'd forgotten about my gloves, I stopped there when I ran out of mats. Hadn't thought about rerolling the pants I'll give that a go, thanks.

Still need more rubies to drop. I'm slowly building there but I've got a metric asston of the rest. I got enough to make one imperial ruby last night.  :oh_i_see: I might just do the conversion thing in the cube, but farming mats is unfun. Fuck Blizzard for bringing that asstastic WoW element into this game.

The gem conversion doesn't require anything except the gems, some death's breath, and the expensive vendor reagent.

Make yourself some +280 whatever gems, stick them in the box and turn them into whatever you want.

The biggest problem I see is the lack of DR.  You'll get oneshotted by pretty much anything that avoids your fetishes.

Of course everything is drop dependent. And I totally missed your comment about your JL and CoE. Oops.

With the Laws of Hope thing, what you're doing makes sense though more CDR will help with that too by having your steed ready faster. If you find you're feeling stuck between mobs, other options include gemming a RoRG and use either a Leoric's Crown or the bounty cache boots that let you walk through mobs. Or, you can use the 2h+shield set items. I used those for a bit and it was close enough in effectiveness that the extra mount time was worth it while I was gearing. Though, I'm honestly surprised you have a chance at dying at all even when stuck. Around that gear level I don't remember GR40-50mobs being able to touch me.

As for gems, I'm with Poly.

Charge is buggy as fuck, I get stuck on mobs very often and its obnoxious. I shouldn't have to jiggle my mouse to remind the game I'm on a horse but I do, very often, so I started relying on LoH instead.

Mobs don't touch me, environment effects do. It's very weird. I'll be standing there brazenly tanking a few dozen things then some poison or molten path mob or a few of the Succubus join in and I'm dying quickly.

I fucking hate that horse.

DR?

Damage resistance.

I'm having a hard time finding a WD spec I actually like that's effective.  Right now I'm just using something that I know clears TX pretty reliably and doesn't get one shot all of the time.  I can even run it without spirit vessel.

I tried a garg build with no real spamable spell.. boy that was boring. Just wait around for your gargs to kill shit and reset your wall of death/piranha cool downs.

I may just try out my wizard.  Anyone have a fun build that's not too terrible to put together?

I think of it as Damage Reduction, but yes, your ability to reduce damage is sorely lacking in that build.

I might try using Traveler's Pledge or Sacred Harvester/That Bracer to see if it would improve that build.

Ahh, yeah you have to be paying attention and quick with Spirit Walk (everything is slowed by Iceblink and all the cold damage).  The damage output was more the issue.  Still not a build I'd care to push higher grifts with though.

My crusader was doing terrible, with no set drops. So I put on an LoN, and a bunch of ancient stuff my DH got.
Shit melts fast, though the thorns/bombardment build is kinda boring.

So I tried the Helltooth Acid Cloud build, but I didn't have all the gems leveled up yet.  Working on that.

Ran up to GR 39 so far, no issues.  I even was running up to about GR 17 without the hat, so no six piece.   :awesome_for_real:

I honestly think I'm going to try traveler's pledge, and unity/convention.  Should be good for a lot of DR, and Focus/Restraint is annoying to keep up anyway.

If that doesn't work, I'll try Sacred Harvester/Damage reduction bracer.

Although I am already seeing the same thing you were, the damage at GR 39 is still fine, but is already starting to fall off in effectiveness.

Thanks again for trying to toss me some gems last night, Seg! Too bad we didn't know they're account bound!

Anyway I tried the tweaks mentioned. (Except the sticker, turns out I had to roll for that socket)  Flew through GR50 like it was EZ mode now. Akarat's instead of Bombard, reroll the gloves and legs for CDR, bam, big performance increase.  (Can't reroll punish damage for anything other than a basic skill)

Also rerolled all my emeralds and amethysts to flawless and  had enough to transmute them to rubies so I have flawless imperials everywhere now. Also a nice bump in DPS.

Now it's all waiting on goddamn drops. Oh, and refilling my gold since forging that many gems, buying the essences and such wiped me down to 50million gold. One empowered rift later I only have 2 million. I'm a poor! Time for some goldfind gear and leeching off some tier X rifts.

I would suggest looking at leveling Boon of the Hoarder, then running as high level a rift as you can.  Probably could still easily run TX with it replacing one of your other gems.

Boon of the Hoarder, Goldwrap, and an Avarice ring!

Not coincidentally boon is one of the gems I have at 35. I didn't get any of my "Mandatory" gems for the first several greater rifts, so it was already ~21 when I needed the achieve. Far easier to take it to 35 (and now 45) than grind the damn runes for Greater Rifts and then run rifts to level another. I'm uber lazy about this.

Avarice ring is the only thing I need.. but I've got the "enemies explode in a shower of gold" item to go with Hoarder and goldwrap, so farming is easy it's just boring. :grin:

You could also look at crafting the shoulders of corruption, they extend gold pickup range by 7.

That probably would be too much though, you'd need RoRG at that point.

My latest Avarice plan- wear gold gear, then sit at the entrance to Ruins of Corvus while someone else clears the whole thing on TX. Then run through and harvest all the gold that drops. Who wants to be my guinea pig?

So I rifted and gambled and grinded Act I for a bit. Now I have 5-pc Tal Rasha + rorg, and did the set dungeon for that instead.
Just as silly, but it felt achievable and frustrating, rather than merely frustrating.

I also found Mantle of Channeling (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/mantle-of-channeling) and Etched Sigil (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/etched-sigil), so my Disintegrate based lifestyle has shot up from T4 to T7 in short order. I can probably handle T8 if I build up a little more defense.

So I got a wild hair and decided to bang out some set dungeons. Finished IK and Raekor's, but got stymied on Wastes (I finished Earth previously). Dusted off my wizard (who did Firebird before), and got outfitted for Tal Rasha. What a fucking pain in the ass. Fuck rockworms to death. I don't see how you can solo it without A) memorizing the exact location of every worm, B) being geared just so, and C) getting lucky. There is not enough time to avoid the worms while trying to hurry WHILE trying to apply 4 stacks of elemental damage. ARGH.

Galvanizing Ward.

It's not a magic bullet, but it does provide you with some pre-loaded defense against a surprise attack.

I'm pretty stoked, I finally hit greater rift 70 (14min 57.633 seconds)

This was the last achievement I needed for the Guardian season Journey. Woot!

Not sure if there is anything worth working towards now though  :(

You should help me get my goddamned set dungeons done so I can get the Conquest for it!

I have no idea how I'm going to get a second conquest for the seasonal achieve. The rest is simple.

Hating this bullshit grind.

The conquests I ended up doing are :

- Avarice: Complete a 50M gold streak while out of the Vault and Inner Sanctum. Just farm t10 rifts until you find a gilded baron, switch to gold gear (don't need much) and you are all good.
- The Thrill: Reach GR45 without any set item equipped. this wasn't too bad.
- Years of War: Reach GR55 with bonuses from 6 class sets (2 crusader, 3 dh and 1 wiz set) There is at least 1 set in each class that can hit grift 55 pretty easy and the set items aren't that hard to get.

I found hitting GRift 70 was the hardest.

Isn't it GR 60?  I have the tab, and I have not gotten anywhere near GR 70.

He did the next tier, I'm still on the "get a stash tab" one.

Avarice I knocked out without even trying. One gold goblin while gold farming and I was set. Wasn't even my intent to go around finding one, I was just running a normal rift on Tier X.

GR45 I gave a shot but got my ass kicked. I don't have the ancient gear to make the ring set work even partially well. It seems every time I get an ancient item it's part of my set or off-class.

No way I'm doing Years of War. I don't play enough to get sets for multiple characters.

I considered the 1h run, but apparently the best way of trying involves 4 characters with one staying in town to do turnins. Nah.

Having the ring set for ancients wont work, since for that conquest you cant have any set bonuses at all.

I didn't even see that there was another level to it.  Eugh.

Shit that's right. So I'm even more screwed. Whee.

It's not the build I used, but it's pretty close. http://www.diablofans.com/builds/76793-s5-conquest-the-thrill

You'll still be gearing for thorns, and I don't even remember having a unity ring on me or my follower or even many ancient pieces when I did this. Ancients will help, but I wouldn't call them required. I think for the weapon cube you can even switch it to In-Geom or Blood Brother if you wanted. Or even swiftmount.

Full Invoker.  Set dungeon down.  Monsters so Melt.  Wow.

Nice. Grats.

Anyone been noticing the battle.net servers doing a 1-3 second freeze the last week or so?  I'm almost to GR45 with no set pieces but the pauses are killing my ability to beat the timer. I'm wondering if it's just me and the machines ability to handle so many blessed shields on the screen.

I have had more than a couple of connection/latency issues the past few days.

Level 70 rift in 7 minutes ?

What the fuck.....

If you don't have to solo it, I can run you through one in maybe 5. Although you are probably on a different server cluster segregated away from the filthy Americans.

Yes.

 :heartbreak:

I just need to get one more season Conquest done.  So pissed.  Last night was in a bounty farming group, asked nicely if someone could let me know if they found a Gilded Baron so I could port to them for the Gold collection Conquest, and within 3 minutes of everyone  running off to do their split bounties, some asshole murders two of them literally the instant he finds them :/  Didnt see another one in the remaining 2 hours i played that night.

Melting Shit (http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironwood-2511/hero/72461859)

I'm actually quite scared how quickly my guy went from 'pootering about t2/3' to 'Melting shit in TX.'

I still haven't managed to master a set dungeon. I've got all the sets for my DH, and I've come within 2 mobs on Marauder, but can't seem to get them all in time.

Really annoying.

The wife has that Impale set for the DH and she's tried the Set Dungeon.  Unsurprisingly, despite seeming easy on paper, it's a bunch of utter bullshit.  I've even tried for her (her theory was I was 'better at this').

Nope.  Still bullshit with a strong male hand too.

I think these Set Dungeons are universally fucking awful.

Eh, Im at 3 of 4 set dungeons with my witchdoctor.  The Zuni, Harvester and Arachyr ones were stupid easy after you do a few trial runs through to figure out what needs to be done.  I think it took me about 5 tries a piece for those 3, mostly just learning the layout of the dungeon, and figuring out where important things were.  Most of them seem to be easier also if you run without a follower and  watch your side equipment bonuses.  Having the Fetish belt is a bad idea for Harvester  / Arachyr for example, as the fetishes murder the mobs before you can get credit for them.

The Helltooth set on the other hand  is a royal bitch.  I am going to say that unless i got stupid lucky I am never going to get that one done without getting a Maras Kaleidoscope for the Poison damage Immunity, which is straight up bullshit.

Nope, I'm going to totally discount that when you said 'Harvester is Easy.'

I do not find it so.  Invoker was 'easy'.  Harvester, not so much. 


However, easy/hard/impossible is all utterly beyond the point ;  the point is these things are fucking useless unrewarding nonsense stuck in for no reason I can fathom beyond, I dunno, peen waving.  So I'm gonna stick with 'Universally Awful' until they actually have a point in doing them.

Beyond Mr Sticky, I mean.

Not sure what you found extremely difficult about harvester.  Make sure you have no pets / folllowers that could kill mobs.   Get the basic Harvester required non set gear (ring of emptiness, Quetz hat, Dagger that stacks Harvest to 10, vile hive).  For extra SUPER easy mode, equip the belt that adds a haunt, cube the staff that auto casts Swarm, and pick the 2 haunts haunt rune.  Put Piranado on your bar somewhere, and spec into the talent that reduces cooldown every time something dies.  Then you just run from one large group of leaches to the next, group em together with Piranado, spam a few haunts, harvest and move on.   The only tricky part of that Mastery was getting the final kill count after you met the other requirements, but usually just Nuking down the snakes with Haunts was enough to ensure you didnt have to backtrack too much to round up the last few stragglers.

Also, they do have a point, at least cosmetically, as completing the set of 4 for a Class (either basic or full mastery) gets you  a class specific Pennant your can run around with to show off your "skillz".  And completing all 4 for every class gets you a set of wings.  Other then that, they are about as pointless as every other achievement in the game.

Marauder is trivial if you bring a friend who can kill shit quickly. Just set up your turrets at the entrance, send the friend ahead to spring the rockworms and kill anything in the way, then help them mop up at the end.

Finally found another Blade of the Tribes (I cubed the first one I found weeks ago since it had terrible stats). I have re-rolled it 6 or 7 times, but can't get an ancient yet. Decided to try it out anyway, despite it being significantly inferior to my current ancient 2 handed sword on paper. I fucking melt shit with it. Jumped from barely squeaking by GR 58 to waltzing through GR 61 (picking up the season journey goal in the process). If I can either find or roll an ancient, it will be goddamned ridiculous.

I know.  I mentioned peen waving.   :why_so_serious:

I am doing them for the conquest checkbox so I can get a goddamned stash tab.

Gold Collection one is probably one of the easiest, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, provided you can get a friendly hand in a TX bounty split farming run who doesnt instagib the Gilded Baron when they find one.   Thats how i got mine.  Joined a split farming group, had 4 pieces of gear with good gold find on them (Sunkeeper 80ish %, a GoldSkin 100%, the Crown that doubles the effect of gems with a gold find gem in it, and a squirts necklace with 70%ish) in my bag, and just swapped to it as soon as portaled into wherever the guy was.  Jut kept bounty farming and asking for people to call out and not kill a Gilded Baron if they found one.  When I finally got one (had a couple bum runs where people blew the goblin up before I could even react), I think I cleared that conquest requirement by almost tripple the required gold amount.  Might have taken me about 2 hours tops.

q

Also valid. But a bullshit requirement.   :why_so_serious:

Stash tab takes 2 conquests. I already got Avarice. Might take a stab at GR 45 sans sets, but my non-green equipment is a grab bag of dogshit for the most part.

I've been working on GR45 for about two weeks now. Still haven't gotten to it, I'm hitting a wall at GR35 that I can't surmount without the right drops. A Hack would be lovely but I can't seem to fucking create one.

I probably shouldn't mention that I have sharded 5 or 6 of them then...

Sonofabitch.

It's the goddamn S4 daibo for my monk all over again.

 :grin: I promise to hand over any drops if we play together again

What class do you play that you are having trouble with the GR45 no set requirement?   I did it on a witchdoctor, and while I scraped by with about 1 minute to spare, I still got it done relatively easily with a Slam Dance Fetish Army spam pet build. Of course, I probably got relatively lucky in that I did get a decent Starmetal while converting rares to legendaries in the hunt for a better dagger for my harvester set.   Basically  just threw on Starmetal + Tasker + Carneval + Fetish Belt +  the Tall / Short fingers and a cubed Jerams, then threw every single pet skill on my bar and ran through the dungeon spamming Slam Dance and Fetish army.  Though I  imagine  it would have been pretty much impossible without the starmetal.

Crusader.  I don't die I just can't kill shit fast enough to complete the rift in time.

It says how long I've been away that I have no idea what any of you are talking about.

OTOH, given my complaint with my Crusader way back when was "Takes forever to kill crap" maybe things haven't changed that much.

Merusk is right.  I've noticed now that despite me being pretty much unkillable even in T10, these speed challenges are just NOT gonna happen.  It's so slow killing stuff.

In other SHIT news, I just went to play my Wizard again ;  not content with fucking up my last fun Wizard build and not letting me explode things with Timebomb, Blizzard have now nerfed DalRasha builds by changing the Slow Time Effect.

Why is it that Blizzard will give you a fun Wizard build then take it away ?  I can't recall them doing that to any of my other chars.

I am sad.

Got a Hack this morning. Night and day difference in the ability to do rifts without set gear. I went from struggling to do a 33 rift in time to easily beating a 45. In fact, the Hack is so awesome I just decided to do away with the Pig Sticker. Who cares if it gets .3 more attacks a second. Hack gives me another 97% of my thorns as damage. I'm cruising through the level 57 rifts I was up against the timer with before.

The dependence on a single piece of gear to make something possible is infuriating at times.

I assume the people that care have seen this, but new patch incoming.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/20057106/patch-241-ptr-patch-notes-3-8-2016

tl;dr Most class sets getting buffed, rather a lot. Also, Guilded Barons will drop less gold, maybe enough that you can't get the Conquest.

This doesn't coincide with the end of the season, does it? Just got My 60 rift today and only have the grind to l55 gems left.

Nah, they'll give lots of notice for end of season. Another month at least, maybe two.

The buffs are pretty crazy.  Assuming they go live even anywhere near where they are now, my Helltooth Garg build will likely go from struggling with GR 68 to cruising through the mid to upper GR 70s.  At the very least.

I am waiting to do any more set dungeons until the patch. Two I have been struggling with are getting fixed, so that will be nice.

Yeah, some of those Set Dungeon changes are so nice.  Coupled with the HUUUUUGE amount of buffs there (seriously, what's the deal ?), Set Dungeons should be much, much more easy.

Just a shame about the Wizard.

Twisted Sword change is a bit harsh.   While other class builds got buffed to the high heavens, that just has to gut higher rift twister builds.

I'm having so much fun with the Thorns build again I'm loathe to try one of the other armor sets. Any other Crusaders done Roland's or the Light set and how do you feel they compare?

I really need to run a bunch of bounties and suck legendary powers out of a lot of shit in my inventory. Finding out that running a T10 bounty gives you 10 of each component really made it not as terrible as when I tried at Torment 3 or 4 for speed runs earlier.

2.4.1 is the patch for Season 6, unfortunately.

Eh, aren't patches typically larger updates with actual content? I thought 2.4.1 was mostly horseshit.

Sorry, should have included a link.  Source (http://diablo.somepage.com/news/2159-patch-241-brings-the-next-content-patch-and-season-6)

Any idea if the season rewards for the set  dungeons (pennants / wings) will carry over from season to season, or will if they  are likely to change each season?  What I mean is, if I am unable to do ALL of the set dungeons this season, will i miss out on those rewards, or do you think they will keep them between one season and the next (so i can say, complete Witchdoctor and Crusader in season 5, and then  Monk / DH in 6, and maybe eventually get all 6 done for the wings by season 7)

There will probably be rewards next season, but they'll be different. Like the pet and the portrait frames.

The set dungeons and their rewards are not related to seasons.  They're a permanent part of the regular game so your progress will persist through different seasons and the pennants/wings will always be available.

Edit to clarify:  There are a few seasonal achievements tied to set dungeons, but those of course are separate and have no bearing on the completion rewards.

Fireflash wizard is totally insane.

Finally got my stash tab, woo. I hate grinding gems, but I hate even more that a 60% upgrade chance happens at 5 or 6 gem-levels away from the dungeon-level you're running.

Thats what sneaking into random groups that are over your level is for :P

No, I mean totally insane and game breaking.  TX Rifts in under 3 minutes insane.

I'm set for DB's now for the rest of my career.  I don't even have that good a set of gear, but there's nothing it won't wreck. 

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironwood-2511/hero/75601039 (http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Ironwood-2511/hero/75601039)

Insane.   Though a little hard on the eyes and fuck knows if epileptics can use the spec.

When is the next season? I haven't played this one at all but don't want to start if the next one is around the corner.

I don't think anyone knows for sure, but I've heard mid-April.

If you want to tool around on a 70 I can probably PL you next week in about 30 minutes.

Thanks for the offer, but I may be out of town next week. Mid-April? That's pretty close.

I guess that means I have to go back and do set dungeons. Sigh.

I have the 70 hardcore (I can dooo theeees), the three 65 gems (easy.  ish.) and another conquest to go for the next step in the journey.

To which I go "fuck".  Because, yeah, set dungeons.  Probably the next "easiest" conquest.

 :oh_i_see:

Been playing my monk a fair bit and I'm still searching for that perfect exploding fist fist weapon, but browsing the patch notes seems like it's going to be even better times for my build.  Flow of Eternity is getting an upgraded damage to seven sided, Ulianas getting a new Double damage to seven sided and increased explody fists.  Add all that double damage together and running around exploding fists with seven sided strike is going to be even more fun.

This makes me unreasonably happy (https://www.twitch.tv/gabynator/v/57229066?t=13m)

I was using nothing this season! Yeah, I am sure his Paragon 3500 wasn't botted at all. Fuck him and the rest of his shitstain guildies. Suck it.

I saw that this morning and thought it was pretty funny.

I have 3 coworkers that play and one of them bots. He said he hasn't logged in for a few weeks though but I would laugh my ass off if he gets banned.

Some context so I don't have to listen to those fucknuggets ?

They got banned, sure, but for what and who are they ?

I love how the "...this season!" means he feels that if he got away with it in previous seasons he should have gotten a pass. Nope, they aggregate and mass ban at once, they don't reset the counter just because a season starts.

Streamers who were widely considered to have been botting, thus having ridiculously high paragon levels. There's been a lot of botting going on this season apparently and a fair amount of very vocal unhappiness with Blizzard for allowing it to happen unfettered. Blizzard finally got round to fettering.

Good.  Fuck them.

I'm confused as to why botting matters in what is effectively now a single player game.

Leaderboards. Srs bzns.

Yeah. If you're running a stream as a 'top rated player' when its all just bullshit, well, I'm glad you get hosed.

So far they've just gone for the botters too, not TurboHUD users, which I am glad about. Thud fixes their shitty UI, and is so widely used that I hope they do the same as they've done with WoW over the years and incorporate the best bits of it into the default UI.

The rumblings are that it still gives you some 'advantage' though in how it presents the maps ?

Yeah definitely, lets you see mobs - and especially elite packs - much more easily and earlier than without it. That and the proper buff icons that you can customise so that you can see things like CoE properly for instance. After playing with it you really notice the difference without it. Personally I decided that if they ban people for using it then that'll just be me done with D3.

The season is "Ending Soon" according to the brief flash before battlenet client restarted and threw me into a 25+ queue. Guess I need to finish that any damned set dungeon soon.

2 weeks.

It's a geographical oddity!

I am a Dapper Dan man!

Finished my 8th set dungeon with a timely assist from soulflame, so I got my stash tab. Now I am trying to burn through the Guardian level of the Season Journey.  I have 2 already done, and am 1 legendary gem level from a third. Working on a hardcore character to 70 now. Have to play through story mode, which is sort of interesting now that I know the game a lot better. Also has the fun of finding new blue upgrades all over again. If anyone cares to join me, look me up online.

FYI, in case you missed it, Season 5 has ended. Get ready for inbox spam!

It is amusing how all the goodies you crammed into your stash instantly become trash when the season ends.

Looking forward to season 6, but I will be out of the house when the season starts, so I will be behind :heartbreak:

Like we won't catch you up in an hour or two.

So with this new approach to seasons, I'm sort of missing what 2.4.1 brings to a new season?  It looks like nothing more than minor tweaks... is there anything actually new for season 6?  I'm a little confused on why I'd even bother?

Because ladders are a thing? I get that D3 seasons have had a bit more going on than D2 ladder resets, but that's always been the rough appeal. Granted, Maxing out in Diablo 2 was a different beast than in Diablo 3.

The fun is in the journey. I love gearing up characters and watching them improve.

God damn you, expiring mail.  Damn you to hell.  I'm pretty sure no one will complain if Blizzard steals read-only tabs from Grinding Gear.

Expiring mail? When's that set to happen? Do I need to log in and work out if any of the piles of gear I have is worth keeping?

IIRC it's 90 days after you get the mail if its unopened, and 30 after its opened.

OK, well, I might get round to that... I forsee having a lot of Forgotten Souls in my stash.