Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

So I am really close to completing the season.
I had one effed up situation with the level 3 gems to 70. I guess you can't split between two characters, at least you can't do some levels of a gem on one character and the rest on another. It doesn't appear that all 3 gems need to be leveled on one character and if it ends up being true, that could make me rage quit.

It also does appear that I need to complete the prior chapters to complete the last chapter. So at some point I need to waste a level 50 legendary gem to boost and ancient armor piece. And I will need to *sigh* master a set dungeon, yay. (NOT!)

I definitely want the extra stash tab. I have never earned one and it is sorely needed at this point. I can totally see why players burn out. It is almost as bad as WoW rep grinds ;P

But so far my spin barb melts T16 with ease and has managed GR81. She can certainly do GR85 but bosses are pretty painfull at this point. I am going to have to level a bane of the powerful to level 25 to get the sweet 15% damage and reduction against elites to make higher GR's tolerable.

My wizard is T12 or T13 farming capable. She was converted to LoD and is churning out the damage with disintegrate and frozen orb.

My necro is the biggest surprise and is the one I am using to re-level up the 3rd gem. She is LoD and using siphon blood and the phylactery that casts blood nova for free on every siphon cast. She is absolutely delicious in packs because she has the scythe that increases nova damage the more enemies within 25 yards. It is kinda funny that she takes longer to kill 1-2 enemies but can nearly one shot packs of 8-10. She is T14 ready and has completed GR60 with moderate ease.

Fang, try leveling a WD with Jade Harvester. The set dungeon is pretty easy, both for the basic and mastery. Run a loop and then the hook part of the dungeon at the end for both. First one is killing ten sets of 15 with Soul Harvest; you kill more than that and when you get ten, you just blast away until the necessary number is hit.

For the mastery, same pattern, but exterminate an area after hitting maybe two of the groups there. You will find at least five clusters big enough to do this. Just make sure you don't leave any strays behind because you have to kill everything.

It's the easiest I've tried.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure you can level any gem with any character.

So close!
Should be able to complete the season today or tomorrow. (with my luck, the season will end today abruptly)
For whatever reason I can't get the third gem leveled to 55 or 70 goals. My necro leveled up a bane of the powerful to 59 and it didn't trigger the 55 goal so I used it for the augment an ancient goal. (man did that cost a lot of mats)
I am trying one last time with a molten or something gizzard using my spin barb. It gives life per second and the level 25 bonus is a double health shield after not taking damage for 4 seconds. It is level 29 so far...

I did the set dungeon mastery with the inarius set on my necro first try and with 1:35 left on the clock. Thank god that is over with. I tried Tal Rasha's dungeon and that was frustrating with rockworm not biting you.

It is crazy how full my stash is. Not only that, but I have been getting so much gear on T16 with my barb that I am replacing most of my legendaries with ancients. Primals are just the dumbest thing ever. I have the one that I got for clearing GR70 and nothing since.

Dunno what I'm gonna do once I complete the season. I'll probably research gearing up inarius. That was fun but no where near as strong as my LoD necro... LoD has rejuvenated my wizard too but I swapped over the level 70 LoD gem to the necro, so I will have to level up another LoD for the wiz. The spin barb is fun and powerful but has hit a brick wall where there really is not much higher she can go unless I get the rarest of the rare drops, and/or use hideously expensive augment recipes. I guess I could get ancient set pieces of which I have none but they don't seem to drop at all. Maybe start gambling with rerolling the set pieces.
My spin barb - https://us.diablo3.com/en/profile/re...
My necro - https://us.diablo3.com/en/profile/re...
My wiz (still equipped for Tal Rasha) - https://us.diablo3.com/en/profile/re...
Super proud of my HC Monk - https://us.diablo3.com/en/profile/re...

I found it was pretty easy to use a T16 spinbarb to level up a gem. Just do the first few runs at, like, T13, with the paid extension to get it up to 55 or so. If you need money, do a cow level with a cash gem in place of one of your regulars. Then switch to T16 and continue. Should take around, I dunno, 20 or so runs at a few minutes each to get the 3 gems from 55 to 70. Easy to do across a session or two.

I have almost 2 billion gold. I should empower the GR's. One extra gem level adds up over the course of the journey to 70.

The funny thing is I have been stockpiling puzzle rings. I have about 5-6 and a bovine bardiche or 2. The funny thing is that I have yet to encounter the whimsydale this season. It seems I run it about 3-4 times a season up until this one. Anyone know if they have removed it?

Leveling the gems past 55 is no problem as I can do gr79 without breaking a sweat. So with no deaths, that is only 7 GR's or so. It just gets routine and mix in the normal rifts to get the rift keys, and I have to try an alt or play some other game to keep from going mad.

I ran into a Whimsydale portal about a week ago, it's still in.

I was in the same boat as you - two gems at 55, the third one burned for another cheev. It only took me till the next day to finish it all up. It seemed much more daunting than it was. Honestly, the hardest part of the process was the set dungeon.

FYI, inarius must have been super easy. It was easy enough for me to do it first attempt and I had never mastered a set dungeon to date. (and less than 10 non-mastery completions to date)

The only risk is being too well geared, but that is an easy fix by just removing a ring or amulet and trying again.

Good to hear about whimsydale. That will net you a ton of DB's, gems, gold and crafting mats in one run.

Inarius is the easiest set to run. Period. Did it this season with 5pc, random everything else.

Wait.... people played something other than Barb this season?

I bet there were a lot of monks and saders because of the new sets.
I started this season with the sader to try out the new set and then became addicted with LoD builds of the monk, and wizard. Only then to be superseded by the spin barb which took over everything

I still can't believe with the spin barb, I have surpassed my lifetime diablo 3 accomplishments in 1 season. My paragon levels are closed to 700 whereas my lifetime total was probably in the low 600's. I have reached T16 and GR 87 (and 3 other classes in the GR45-65 range) whereas I had only reached GR 60-65 and T13 in prior seasons but only 3 characters (only Wiz and DH) with bare survivability. My highest legendary gem was maybe 35 whereas I now have 3 level 70 gems and half a dozen others in the 30-59 range and perhaps 6 more of level 25. The number of ancient legendaries totals 2-3 dozen and 1 primal as compared to less than 15 ancients total in the prior seasons. I have completed so many sets and duplicates of sets that I have never gotten more than 2-3 pieces of before. It is just nuts to think about ;P

I played a whole bunch in the beginning of the season, completed the full journey then kinda just left it for a while for other shiny things. But I've played a couple of rifts the last couple of mornings before work and still enjoy it. I've only got my Barb this season, but I'm levelling up the LoD gem to 99 then I'll create a new Crusader and see if I can get that one going as well for a bit of fun.

Finished the season. Holy crap I still can't believe it!
It is weird now because I have this itch that now I can actually start playing. It is like completing the season was/became a "job" or "task" or "challenge" and now I can play how I wanted to at the beginning.

I rolled 3 pieces of the valor set for crusader within the first 10 minutes of firing that character back up. I was trying to use the barb hand me downs to build a LoD sader but if i stumble upon 2 more set pieces, I will be ecstatic to test out valor's fist of heaven's rock and rolla.

The sader does feel wierd now. It should be pretty uber since I have the flail that removes the cost of blessed shield and increases its damage. But the skill feels really weak, like it just glances enemies rather than chopping things up. Stock blessed hammer, while slower, feels like it has way more oomph. I have nearly 800k damage and 90mil toughness and while at no risk of dying in gr25, I should be 1-2 shotting things with blessed shield. But it took 9 minutes or so to clear the GR with trash taking 3-5 hits to die. So it look like I am goingto have to find another combination until I can complete the valor set

I landed on Wizard this time, and still managed to progress farther through this season than I ever have before.

I started as a Crusader because new set, but I wasn't having any luck finding a build I liked with the drops I was getting. Meanwhile I randomly got like 2-3 pieces of the Wizard set that gives you free meteors with every elemental cast. While I was leveling a Wizard to check them out I got the offhand that casts all your other things while you channel. A bit of cubing and RoRG farming later and I'm holding down the right mouse button while the world fills with blizzards, black holes, and tons of meteors...

That wizard build is my favorite. It is so easy to gear for damage but you have to work to get your toughness up until you get that ring that reduces damage when you hit with storm armor 15 ft away.

Etched Sigil is the off hand that will cast free mana spenders when you cast a mana spender. My favorite pairing is disintegrate with frozen orb. (and then later meteors when you get 2 pieces of Tal's set) Death Wish helps a lot too

fangblackbone wrote:

That wizard build is my favorite. It is so easy to gear for damage but you have to work to get your toughness up until you get that ring that reduces damage when you hit with storm armor 15 ft away.

Etched Sigil is the off hand that will cast free mana spenders when you cast a mana spender. My favorite pairing is disintegrate with frozen orb. (and then later meteors when you get 2 pieces of Tal's set) Death Wish helps a lot too :)

Yeah, that ring was a real game changer. Before that I was making do with defensive gems and other defensive skills and it was hard to do enough damage. I used frozen orb for quite some time, but then I worked out that the Blizzard that freezes did a great job of holding enemies still for the meteors.

That is a good tip. I used frozen orb for D2 wizard nostalgia reasons but when the damage started tapering off, the CC of the mass cold slow still really helped survivability. I can imagine freezing blizzard does a better job of that.

The crusader valor set is the bees knees, just sayin...

They pushed it to feb 13th.

I fell of the wagon last weekend. I wasn't gonna, but the idea of a viable Tempest Rush monk brought me back. I love the Rush. I love sprinting from pack to pack and actually killing things. Plus, whole new build! That's rare for season 19. Probably finish up season this weekend.

Been wondering where you were. Sorry not sorry you fell off the wagon.....

Hi! I played through the campaign of Diablo 3 on the PC once on normal way back at launch, opened up and went through the Super Happy Fun Level, then never went back. I picked up the Switch version for Christmas, and just got started. I grabbed a witch doctor in the campaign on normal. I still think it's funny they don't default you into elective mode. I think it's even funnier that they default detailed skill descriptions off. I was looking at the skill descriptions, and by default they tell you basically nothing about what they do. For example, Haunt basically just says "haunts an enemy, if it dies, another one becomes haunted." I had to consult the internet to find out I needed to toggle the setting on, and then it says that oh, it does a mess of damage.

I'm still trying to get used to the menus on console. The quick menu popup thing is nice, but I have to resist the urge to go look at the details for everything I pick up. I'm also still trying to figure out the witch doctor in general. I looked at a leveling build guide, and they suggest not using any of the direct damage abilities, which also feels weird.

So I have no idea about seasons or anything. Is it better to run through campaign mode, or should I just go directly into a season character?

How viable is playing D3 co-op with just 1 set of joycons? I'm mostly a console newb and my wife is a complete newbie to diablo.

Campaign, Adventure and Challenge modes are available in both Seasonal and Normal play modes. For Seasonal, I usually just hop into Adventure mode and go. Well, actually, start your Seasonal character, then as that character do a Challenge mode run first; it gives you a *ton* of useful materials and money to get jump-started.

WDs can be very well played with pets and DoT effects. Do whatever you like, though. Unless you're a min/maxer, the guides are completely optional. Do what makes you happy.

NathanialG wrote:

How viable is playing D3 co-op with just 1 set of joycons? I'm mostly a console newb and my wife is a complete newbie to diablo.

It isn't?
I think you need at least two joycons or a pro.

No, you can do single sideways joycon. I haven't tried it though.

Chaz wrote:

No, you can do single sideways joycon. I haven't tried it though.

Huh. I just assumed (u, me, ass) that it needed a full control set since it used the right thumbstick.
Good to know.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
Chaz wrote:

No, you can do single sideways joycon. I haven't tried it though.

Huh. I just assumed (u, me, ass) that it needed a full control set since it used the right thumbstick.
Good to know.

The right thumbstick does something. I wouldn't go so far as to say the game uses it though. I barely touched it aside from screwing around in town, and I've got a ton of hours in the Switch version.

Don't get me wrong, that roll move is a great idea and I'm glad they're starting D4 with it as a baseline. I just never needed to use it when I was actually fighting things.

It's probably a bigger deal that the D-pad functionality is lost with a single Joycon. Maybe something is mapped to clicking the stick? I'll fool around with it and see if I can see what's what.

I've made a (bad) life choice. I will not buy Diablo 4 until I have the cosmic wings of Diablo 3. Tempest Rush monk is excellent for gob farming. Hit me up if you feel like it.