Diablo III Catch-All 2.0

I've reinstalled it, will try it again.

Lost Epoch has some bones (and flesh) that remind me of Grim Dawn. I'm enjoying it, although it seems a bit unbalanced on the Easy side. Still fun.

I just revisited Last Epoch as an archer to see how it's faring and it's quite fun so far.

Check out Boardman on YouTube for builds. The crazy purple balls build is sick. So is the fire minion necro.

I really really love the Darkening of Tristram event. I wish we would get new goals/rewards or it gets expanded every time it returns

fangblackbone wrote:

I really really love the Darkening of Tristram event. I wish we would get new goals/rewards or it gets expanded every time it returns :(

Same here.

I finished the season.
Now I think the only thing I am interested in doing is gearing up my WD to try out the changes to arachyr's.

Never had as much consistently bad random luck as I've had this season. At 250 Paragon have yet to get a Flavor of Time drop. Not a single piece of Inna's set has dropped, despite having most of all the other sets for my monk. It feels as though some percentages have changed since last season, but maybe I was more fortunate than I knew in the last 4 seasons.

LoD + crudest boots can get you to T14 relatively easy. I always cube an echoing fury.
You might be right though. I had to use blood shards to get my first 3 pieces of innas. Once I had 3, they started dropping from GR's.
I used the pet damage soul shard and the damage increase when more than 3 enemies are within 25 units.
Messerschmitt's reaver is also essentials so that you can spam your mystic ally special.

Arise! The season 26 PTR is up.
New mechanic is Echoing Nightmare.
It is timed endless waves of enemies until you die or run out of time. It is very fast spawns currently and in tiny arenas, it is easy to get swarmed. Also the faster you kill a wave, the higher tier the next wave is.

I was able to level up a hydra wizard to 70 and got gear from the PTR vendor to be about torment 6-7.
I was able to clear several waves with my hydras but it is difficult to say how many, perhaps 4-5 and reached rank 80 before dying. At that point I was barely whittling down enemies and could have survived but enemies are fast and as mentioned before, the arena is very small. I'd guess it is about 40 players wide and high to give you an idea. (think Belial's lair or so)

It was fun and I am sure when I gear up to T16+, I'll be able to handle much higher ranks. The loot chest at the end seems to drop pretty decent gear for the time investment. The real boon is paragon levels. After the first echoing nightmare I went from P11 to P122. After the second, I had enough xp to go from P122 to P274.

XP levels are boosted on the PTR so don't expect that at launch. But even 1/5 or 1/10 of that would be extremely fast and easy to ramp up to P800 next season.

Another reward is a unique legendary gem that is used for augmenting but I have no idea what effects it bestows on what gear. (tomorrow I will try and augment something with it) I hope it is something powerful. It will be a let down after prior seasons if there is nothing to boost your seasonal characters.

So it looks like those new legendary gems are exactly what they say they are. They are a way to fast track augments. Instead of leveling up some random gem to sacrifice for an augment, you can level up these gems to 100+ in one echoing nightmare run. The rank of the gem is whatever tier of echoing nightmare you clear. Which will save dozens of hours on augmenting.

This season is designed to fast track fresh level 70's to GR 100 and 800+ paragon.

Also, it will be the insane way to powerlevel because you can group with newbs in echoing nightmares. And if they die it isn't a big deal because the big xp boost happens when you open the chest at the end. So after you are done, you can either revive your newb friend or I think they can revive at their corpse and then pop the chest. Some streamers have had power leveling someone level ~20 got to paragon ~300 in one nightmare run.

Got my first character (Crusader) through a season and am really enjoying this Invoker set. Going from 4 to 6 pieces bumped my damage by about 100x.

When the next season starts (which I think will be soonish?) I'm looking forward to doing it all again with a new class.

PTR is 2 weeks and started March 10th. New season will more than likely be the first week in April.

Season 26 started today. Going to run a Monk, judging solely on the coolness of the season armor set.

Nice. I'm thinking of going Witch Doctor since I haven't played it in a few seasons.

Math wrote:

Season 26 started today. Going to run a Monk, judging solely on the coolness of the season armor set.

Even with the new nerf it looks to be super powerful

okay, let's say i want to casually join this season, and that I've only really maxed out multiple characters for one season in the pre-covid days (not the way you all max things out...casual max out).

What would be fun? (casually)

In order of old, old favorites, I'd say Demon Hunter, then Necromancer, then Witch Doctor, and maybe Monk were the ones I liked playing the most. So I'd be up for any of those, especially if there's new/cool/flashy stuff to get that's not insane in terms of grinding. I remember getting one free set of named gear with the season, so...I guess I'd be going first for that with whatever ya'll think would be fun.

Fun being defined as not taking lots of focus, on an Xbox. I'm like...one month post-covid case, and still getting brain cells back and functioning. Slowly.

Entry level Diablo 3 is about as casual as it gets. Start a Seasonal, Adventure mode character and game, find a gold exclamation point on the map, move towards the gold area, whack stuff until the pinata pops, repeat.

I remember the basics, just not sure if there's something that's now more uberpowered, some cooler armor sets or whatever, that will be fun to crush all in my path.

If there is one thing you can be fairly certain about in Diablo 3, there is always something that is now more uberpowered than what came before. Well, with this season being the first exception in the games history. But since you didn't play the previous season, it still holds true when compared to all seasons before that.

Afaik Monk and Demon Hunter are the strongest classes currently, which usually, even when you aren't going to "max out" endgame or anything, still means they are really strong before that too. But tbh, while I haven't looked much at it, it actually sounds like this is the most balanced patch in a very very long time.
As for not taking a lot of focus, eh, again, if you like Demon Hunters, they have the relatively new (~2 years or so) Spin To Win set, that is requires just enough focus to fall asleep on the attack button, then everything else takes care of itself (slight exaggeration). It is pretty fun if you like the spin to win style gameplay (that was the Barbarians specialty before). I also believe their "pet" set (Marauder) was buffed a lot in the previous season. I'd consider both of those fairly chill. Albeit I haven't tried Marauder in many years, it might require more focus than I think it does, it is a pet build though... usually not bad.

On top of that, Demon Hunters start with the Marauder set this season, for an even easier introduction into crazy uberpower mode. Monk also starts with their strongest set. The monk build, which I tried a bit last season, feels a bit more involved though, having something that resembles a skill rotation.
Starting with a good set that you want to play, cuts down the early grinding requirements a lot at least, so always worth taking into consideration.

Shadout wrote:

If there is one thing you can be fairly certain about in Diablo 3, there is always something that is now more uberpowered than what came before. Well, with this season being the first exception in the games history. But since you didn't play the previous season, it still holds true when compared to all seasons before that.

Afaik Monk and Demon Hunter are the strongest classes currently, which usually, even when you aren't going to "max out" endgame or anything, still means they are really strong before that too. But tbh, while I haven't looked much at it, it actually sounds like this is the most balanced patch in a very very long time.
As for not taking a lot of focus, eh, again, if you like Demon Hunters, they have the relatively new (~2 years or so) Spin To Win set, that is requires just enough focus to fall asleep on the attack button, then everything else takes care of itself (slight exaggeration). It is pretty fun if you like the spin to win style gameplay (that was the Barbarians specialty before). I also believe their "pet" set (Marauder) was buffed a lot in the previous season. I'd consider both of those fairly chill. Albeit I haven't tried Marauder in many years, it might require more focus than I think it does, it is a pet build though... usually not bad.

On top of that, Demon Hunters start with the Marauder set this season, for an even easier introduction into crazy uberpower mode. Monk also starts with their strongest set. The monk build, which I tried a bit last season, feels a bit more involved though, having something that resembles a skill rotation.
Starting with a good set that you want to play, cuts down the early grinding requirements a lot at least, so always worth taking into consideration.

This is so massively helpful, and also the exact news I was hoping for.

Demon Hunter to get all those plans and crafting materials and such, and then keep doing that. And then Monk if I feel more ambitious. All sounds beautiful for me (I have two weeks off for Easter, living in Greece, and no brain to play new games right now, one month post-covid, still have covid brain...)

Thanks so much for taking the time Shadout, and for putting it all in terms I understand. Heh.

Shadout wrote:

On top of that, Demon Hunters start with the Marauder set this season, for an even easier introduction into crazy uberpower mode. Monk also starts with their strongest set. The monk build, which I tried a bit last season, feels a bit more involved though, having something that resembles a skill rotation.
Starting with a good set that you want to play, cuts down the early grinding requirements a lot at least, so always worth taking into consideration.

Just to clarify, by "start out" do you mean "earn progressively by completing season journey milestones"? I'm sure a seasoned (heh) pro could bang those out in an hour or two, but it's going to take me at least a couple play sessions. (My buddy and I played about 2.5 hours last night from fresh and ended at level 24 with roughly 30% of the season journey complete.)

I believe he means start in Adventure mode. Do the Challenge rift first, then Adventure mode in areas that are dense with enemies, in the first act. Also, only play at like Expert level to speed the killing and get bonuses, until you get someone to level you up in rifts.

Is Leoric's helm with your best Ruby still highly regarded for leveling faster?

Edit: Yes and...

This is a nice little guide to get back into it, for those like me who havent played in a few years. I forgot about the Challenge Rift, the Kunai Cube, and Followers

https://d3.maxroll.gg/resources/seas...

Inna's set for the monk can be very hands off and one of the most powerful builds in the game. They even made changes so that the earth ally build is viable. (I had a lot of fun with earth when the revamped inna's was introduced but the water and fire builds were so much stronger)

Fire inna's is more involved but water inna's pretty much only requires a little cooldown reduction and crudest boots to fly up the GRs.

This season is unfortunately not designed for someone like me. They have not only nerfed XP in Echoing Nightmares, but have also significantly nerfed the drop rate. I have done 6 GRs and have yet to find one so I don't know if that is RNG or they don't drop before GR 20.

So instead of reducing the hours it takes to get to GR 70 and paragon 800, I am probably going to already be paragon 100 before I find one. So I am guessing once I find one, I will go from paragon 100 to 200 in a single rift. When on the PTR, I went from around 30 to 350+ in one Echoing Nightmare. Now you can say that the latter sounds too easy. But it honestly only cuts out ~15 hours of GR grinding which is nothing compared to the 60+ hours it takes to gear up to T16+, GR80+, finishing the seasonal journey, Paragon 800+ and getting augments 2-3 augments.

They scaled back from what was on the PTR but ended up killing this season with death by 1000 cuts.

Math wrote:
Shadout wrote:

On top of that, Demon Hunters start with the Marauder set this season, for an even easier introduction into crazy uberpower mode. Monk also starts with their strongest set. The monk build, which I tried a bit last season, feels a bit more involved though, having something that resembles a skill rotation.
Starting with a good set that you want to play, cuts down the early grinding requirements a lot at least, so always worth taking into consideration.

Just to clarify, by "start out" do you mean "earn progressively by completing season journey milestones"?

Yeah sorry. Given as part of the season journey indeed.. Vs. having to find the pieces.
Not instant or anything but a lot faster than finding the pieces otherwise. So the 'starter set' will basically be your build for a good while.

fangblackbone wrote:

Fire inna's is more involved but water inna's pretty much only requires a little cooldown reduction and crudest boots to fly up the GRs.

Yeah, I have only tried the fire inna.

Fire Inna is the side that got nerfed. It's degrees weaker than last season, but the water version is still just as strong.

I gave this another go after a long break after the season started.
I am actually having a blast with my innas monk alt that leap frogged my hydra wiz main.
Lo and behold I got my first EN key and was able to take my under geared but 6 piece innas monk to EN rank 80.

Boy did they absolutely cluster this season! All that good will from playing an innas monk that replaced the bad will after all the nerfs to EN when the season started, is gone again. I did not get my first EN key until I was already P200. I reached EN 80 and was rewarded with a whopping 40 paragon. I was totally building momentum for the season again and the rug was pulled out from under me. It is the worst gut punch I've felt in the entirety of playing Diablo 3.

Damn. You step away from GWJ for a couple of weeks and the new season starts without you.

Hey bud, holler at us in Discord. We are already done with season but will gladly help.