Horned Hellrazer

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Good Morning Folks! When last we spoke I was sitting at level 62 and had yet to transition into World Tier IV. Shortly after making that post I got to around 65 and finished the capstone dungeon and have been rolling around on the maximum world tier ever since. At time of writing this blog post, I am sitting at level 92 with a good chunk of the way toward 93. In theory, if I push it really hard tonight and grind out Nightmare Dungeons I could hit level 100. I have no however been in the mood to “push it really hard” and have been mostly taking the leveling process in a super chill manner. I am already higher than my previous highest character which made it to 90, after weeks of frenetic play during Season 2. I am not sure what my real end goal with this season is save for seeing the Pit which I believe unlocks at level 100.

The biggest problem that I have been dealing with is performance issues. The worst place this occurs is during Helltides where players are zooming in and out of your effective range constantly… often causing the game to hitch at the worst possible times. Almost every death that I have taken has been due to a player coming into my immediate area and causing a hitch as things load in around that player. Unfortunately, group activities are pretty much required to chase the best gear you can get. I do want to shout out this player from yesterday while waiting on a boss to spawn. Dingalingus is maybe the best “awful” name I have ever seen. This season has seen me crashing out to desktop a lot namely when trying to transition between areas which is unfortunately what 90% of this game is all about. Some of the instability was with RTX features and I have turned all of those off which seems to have improved things marginally but I still occasionally get the disconnect/crash to the desktop when teleporting into town.

I’ve not entered the pit and as such I am not complaining about gold gains yet like every other player out there. What is killing me though… a few scenarios surrounding loot. In this Season, Diablo IV stole the concept of exalted gear from Last Epoch where at least one stat drops with an extremely juiced stat roll. Unfortunately, these can drop on items that are effectively vendor trash. Once you reach World Tier IV, nothing that drops that is not item level 925 aka the maximum level… is not worth paying any attention to. I was able to get fully decked out in 925 gear relatively quickly and by at least level 75, I was sitting in a full set. That means every unique that drops and “exalted” item that drops that is not at least at that maximum item level is worthless. So the tweak I would love to see going forward is that if a unique drops or if an exalted item drops it drops at the item level cap. Nothing feels worse than salvaging an item that could have been amazing but rolled with a substandard item level on it.

Minor complaints aside it feels like Diablo IV has finally arrived at a good “base” for the game. From here they need to work on adding more things to do and different ways to obtain the same end results. For example, if you really enjoy Helltide… but don’t enjoy Nightmare Dungeons… there is no way to level your glyphs and as such will always be weaker than characters who leveled up those glyphs slowly. There are a lot of gear drops that are focused on Bossing, and I am personally not a character who enjoys doing boss fights. I feel forced into farming them so that I can have a shot at maybe seeing the specific uniques that I need. The thing that makes Path of Exile so strong is that it has enough content that you can reasonably focus on sone specific niche and the market economy will make sure you still have access to anything you might want. Diablo IV is a good base game now, but suffers from the same problem that Last Epoch does where there just isn’t quite enough stuff to be doing yet.

It will be interesting to see how Diablo IV evolves over time. I am hoping we see more permanent system going into the game rather than temporary mechanics. I want the game to succeed and it is finally in a state where it feels good to play it. So I am hoping in another years time it will feel like a proper contender for the ARPG throne.

AggroChat #478 – Bullethell Raid Simulator

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Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We start off the show talking about some of the recent updates to Pathfinder adding a number of player background options including build your own animal race.  Kodra talks about his experience finishing up Animal Well, and Ash talks about playing a game that mimics raiding in Final Fantasy XIV called Rabbit & Steel.  Bel shares his thoughts so far about Diablo IV Season 4, where they gave up on whatever the original vision was and just made the ARPG people expected them to make.  This ends up in a side conversation about how breaking an implied promise and removing content from your game is very hard to pull off.  We talk about still being bitter about Cataclysm and Destiny 2.

Topics Discussed:

  • Pathfinder Animal Options
  • Animal Well Finished
  • Rabbit & Steel
    • FFXIV Bullethell Raid Simulator
  • Diablo 4 Season 4
    • They decided to make the game folks wanted
  • Changing Content is REALLY hard
    • Cataclysm Blowing up the World
    • Destiny Deleting Content

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Decaying Friends

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I did not make it terribly far last night as we had a family dinner thing to go to, which put me getting home extremely late. Additionally, the whole not really sleeping the night before because we lost power at 2:30 in the morning also meant I turned in pretty early. I did get to level 62 on my Barbarian and I did make an attempt at the World Tier 4 dungeon at 57 only to get wrecked by Elias. I think that fight favors folks who don’t have to stand all up in his grill. His attacks were just dealing too much damage for me to burn him all the way down. I am probably going to wait until around 65 before giving it another shot hoping that the levels and additional gear will make the difference.

I did create a baby Necromancer this morning just to play around with that class and see how the minion gameplay feels. It feels exceptionally strong, and to be honest… it feels like the easier option. Within 10 minutes or so I was level 16 because leveling in this game is just nonsense especially since I have the experience from monster kills buff in action. I will probably keep at the Barbarian because I feel like the visceral gameplay is more enjoyable for me personally, but I will keep poking around at the Necromancer as well. I would not be shocked if I managed to get both of them to 100 during this season.

The most important part of any character though is setting up the cosmetics and I feel like Necro has the best stuff. This is not a matched set of gear but it has the feel that I want it to have. I am such a sucker for “plate skirts” for characters and still consider Judgment the best gear set in World of Warcraft. I am hoping to get some time to play this weekend with my friend Ace and I am not sure if I will be bringing my Barbarian or dragging along this Necro when I do it. There are problems namely around the acquisition of gold and how awkward leveling glyphs feels, but all in all the changes that came with “loot reborn” have breathed much-needed life into the game.

Convocation of Elements

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Good Morning Folks! I’ve not been hitting Diablo IV as hard as I could, but I am still making fast progress sitting at 57 as of this morning. I unlocked World Tier 3 at level 44 and given how powerful I already feel… I am contemplating giving an attempt or two at unlocking World Tier 4. I am largely following the Upheaval Endgame build from Maxroll and it feels pretty freaking great. I had never played with Iron Maelstrom before now and it is such a freaking “me” ability as I swing around giant hellraiser chains hitting everything on the screen. For cosmetics I have gone back to my good ole Cold Iron set that I picked up during the first season, and it is probably still my favorite appearance.

I am not sure if this is a new legendary affix or if it is just “new to me” but I was cracking up last night when doing a boss fight and almost every player was running this games version of Convocation of Elements (called Circle of Elements in D4). For those who did not play a lot of Diablo III, this is an ability that cycles through giving you an element buff and is largely just “more damage” and as a result, every build ends up running with it. This one is a bit weaker but cycles between two buffs that each add there “elements”. It weirds me out that poison in this game is considered an element because I am used to there being some differentiation between the whole Fire/Water/Wind/Earth thing and any other ability that applies an affliction.

Last night I took down several world bosses and they all pretty much evaporated. I was holding off on doing these until World Tier 3, because there is the chance of getting Uber Uniques to drop starting then. Uber Uniques supposedly drop at full end-game power no matter when you find them, so I was hoping that maybe just maybe I would luck into something amazing. At this point I have fought Avarice, Wandering Death, and Ashava and all were pretty easy. Ashava is still probably the worst of the three because of all of the Giga poison damage. I’ve found a handful of uniques but I won’t start finding anything really amazing until I manage to pass the World Tier 4 capstone dungeon.

All in all thought I am having quite a bit of fun. It seems like Blizzard is also doing a big push to get players back as right now the game is on sale for $35 on Battle.net and has a free trial available. If you are a Gamepass subscriber it is also available through that service as part of your subscription. If you tried it at launch and were disappointed, now might be the time to reinstall and check out the changes. There are still a number of things that I would love to see… like they still keep fighting the addition of loot filters and map overlays… but the game is in far better shape than it has ever been. I figure this weekend I will probably hit level 100 and start checking out some of the proper endgame.

If you are interested in more specific information than my random thoughts… I would suggest checking out the Season 4 State of Diablo IV Video that Raxxanterax released. It goes into a lot of detail about the good bits and the bad bits alike. For me… I need to sort out how the heck to fight the Beast in the Ice because it apparently has the highest drop rate for Hellhammer. I might now mess with that until I jump to World Tier 4 however because I would prefer to not have to get it twice. Anyways… are you playing? Are you having fun? Drop me a line below with your thoughts.