Diablo 4 - Hellish Grind

[Argonath Diver]

I'll definitely be abandoning my Eternal characters, but I'm very used to that since D2 ladders. I logged on to find the five or so Altars left, and I'm going to beat the campaign once more, with my Barb alt to see the A5 cutscenes again. 

Still definitely going to season start with Druid unless they gut the class. Will avoid Pulverise this time as it's just clunky as hell. 

I won't be able to play nearly as much as my earlier years and will be far behind many but I think it'll be a fun first season.

[Soylent Brown]

Level 76 on my necro and things are really starting to come together now that a resource aspect I needed has finally dropped.

I can throw bone spears all day long now, and my runs are speeding up thanks to that. I killed the butcher before he could even speak this morning, heh.

[JGP]

fReSh MeUgh [dead]

[JGP]

Saw a 2:22 Uber Lilith kill by a HotA Barb today [eyes widen]

[Soylent Brown]

Yeah, a variation of the standard HOTA build, with absolutely maxed out gear. Closer to the times of the other classes, but a lot harder to achieve due to the gear constraints.

[JGP]

When I finally kill her and put the stream up, viewers are going to be seriously impressed that I navigated her mechanics for nine hours.

 

[Relic]

1 hour ago, Soylent Brown said:

I killed the butcher before he could even speak this morning, heh.

Oh damn thats crazy. Ive been ending Butcher fights with more potions than i started with but it takes me a good 4 minutes to get him down. His barrier slows me way down with Whrlwind barb.

[Ser Not Appearing]

11 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

So what's the point in playing for the next week unless you want to test out new toons?

This has been annoying. I've covered the entire map and only found like 25% of them, lol. 

I gave up and looked up a map. Took a good handful of hours to get them all, even with the route planned out.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

I gave up and looked up a map. Took a good handful of hours to get them all, even with the route planned out.

I'll probably do the same soon.

I have a baby necro now. Shit it's fun, but I don't entirely get how to build a giant army yet.

[JGP]

Bored, Mom's week with the girls, tried a Necro-- nope. So, goofing around on my second Barb Uchelfar [lvl 26] She's mean as fuck, but has no idea what she wants to be. 

 

Basic: Lunging Strike

Core: Double Swing [whew did I miss out on this ability, though Uche is a bb Barb as of yet]

Rounding her out with Groundstomp [for the Ultimate cd reduction], Rallying Cry, Challenging Shout, and Iron Maelstrom [first time rocking an Ultimate in this game]

 

No idea what this might round out to in the later game, but she's chewing through shit way faster than Gostyata.

Edited July 12, 2023 by JGP

[Arakasi]

Like this game has issues with not enough content for endgame plus QoL issues and such but I find there is a remarkable diversity of builds here that are both good and unique to play. There are certainly some underperformers (fireball for example). It’s also just a lot of fun to play. I came from D2R mainly as I never got that much into PoE and only played D3 pre reaper and not played any other games in the genre other than Minecraft dungeons.

But just comparing it to D2R which I played a lot last year as Sorc, Amazon and then Barb. So sorc just frozen orb everything and then eventually switch to blizzard and cry when I have to break out fireball on cold immunes. Boring gameplay. Then Javazon where I just lightning fury everything and cry at anything lightning immune and hope my merc and Valk can kill it. Then barb which was wonderful and could p8 all the way through hell since nothing could hurt me unless they were non undead physical immunes (Aka just deathlords) and for that I could just berserk instead of frenzy for no big deal. Fun with crazy move speed but incredibly repetitive. Like I get the draw for playing D2 to get the rare stuff or get an enigma but the gameplay is just shit.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Arakasi

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Bone Necro is dope. I still don't get what to do with The Book of the Dead, but this toon is strong without any real gear at 17.

And I finally killed The Butcher. Only the second time I've seen him. Sadly the drops were meh.

[Arakasi]

Heh odd the other day I saw him three times. I mean I was grinding some NM dungeons to level glyphs so not too bad. But surprised I saw him so much.

[JGP]

44 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

Heh odd the other day I saw him three times. I mean I was grinding some NM dungeons to level glyphs so not too bad. But surprised I saw him so much.

iirc, though I think it got nerfed before before launch, Book of the Dead lets you sacrifice your minions for [channeling Mojo Jojo] uba powrah

Edited July 13, 2023 by JGP

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Arakasi said:

Heh odd the other day I saw him three times. I mean I was grinding some NM dungeons to level glyphs so not too bad. But surprised I saw him so much.

Well aren't you fancy. 

1 hour ago, JGP said:

iirc, though I think it got nerfed before before launch, Book of the Dead lets you sacrifice your minions for [channeling Mojo Jojo] uba powrah

I get the impression cancelling the minions is what you need to do late game, sans the golem, but they're really helpful for me weakling. The nice part is unlike the druid you don't have to invest much in them besides the passives that massive increase their damage. 

[Argonath Diver]

Finished the campaign a last time, boy are there some great cutscenes. Upon replaying it you can really see how it's patched together into the instanced world map with the standard Collect, Door, Collect, Door Boss layout of every dungeon. But it's compelling enough with some great voice acting (and vastly over-the-top music).

New rig built soon, I'm gonna just blast efficiently in season 1 and push my Druid to 100 - hopefully there's more to post-60 endgame goals than Uber Lilith but regardless it'll be fun anyways. I'll be far behind the curve, but with the absolute lack of any trade or ladder, that won't matter - behind the super try-hards but ahead of the majority. It's odd that this is an MMO sort of, but it's basically a Solo Self Found mode for the vast majority of players due to an utter lack of in game grouping features.  That D2 and D3 had since 2005 but hey Blizz said you can't expect everything from a brand new game right! Can't wait for the expansion at Christmas with a Prime Evil boss kill and multi-player features from 2016 D3! Apologies from the snark,  as a Blizz fanboy in 1998.

[Soylent Brown]

9 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Bone Necro is dope. I still don't get what to do with The Book of the Dead, but this toon is strong without any real gear at 17.

And I finally killed The Butcher. Only the second time I've seen him. Sadly the drops were meh.

Sacrifice your buddies for the stats!. You'll want +crit chance from your skeletons and +essence from your mages for now.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

Sacrifice your buddies for the stats!. You'll want +crit chance from your skeletons and +essence from your mages for now.

DON'T TELL ME TO KILL MY FRIENDS!!!!

[Arakasi]

I’m at level 92 now and have been doing 51-53 tier level content. Not too difficult either at level+12 or so. Curious at what point it would get a lot harder maybe at high tier 50s.

[Relic]

Whelp, ive reached my limit i think. Officially burnt myself out on D4. Played the shit out of it in the past couple of weeks because i randomly contracted chickenpox and couldnt leave my house for ages. I might be back for S1, but there's not much in it that makes me eager to level all over again. We'll see if the itch returns after some time away, or if Baldur's Gate 3 will be my next time sink.