Hammerknell and Keywardens

Nightmare Larva

rift 2015-09-03 17-52-18-84

I had a strangely disconnected evening last night essentially happened in two distinct parts.  My great niece was in town doing a track meet, and we had arranged to meet up with the family for dinner.  Initially I thought I would get home and we would essentially leave right away.  That wasn’t quite the case and we ultimately did not walk to dinner until around 7ish, which left me with a fair amount of time to kill.  I have once again been feeling the Rift itch lately, as I go through every few weeks.  The shiny new mount that I talked about yesterday may or may not have been the catalyst.  So I poked around Meridian for a bit and ultimately decided to do an Instant Adventure.  For those not familiar with the concept, Rift has this really cool thing where you hit a button and get thrown together with a raid group of people and teleported to a specific area of the world.  There you complete a series of objectives, and get teleported to a new place where the process starts over again.  Each time you complete a segment you are rewarded loot just like in a Rift, except this time they are generally caches of gear for your class.

Last night I noticed there was a new option called “Intrepid Adventures”.  I say this is a new option, but I really mean it was new to me… because I had not noticed it before.  That said I have not really run any instant adventures since the launch of Nightmare Tide.  What it appears to be is a Instant Adventure style tour of raid encounters.  I got teleported into the caverns under Hammerknell, where I fought all sorts of tougher but still manageable monsters leading up to several “boss” fights.  I have to say it gives a nice flavor to leveling especially as I have not actually seen any of the raids since Vanilla.  I had a lot of fun and will probably use this option when I return to leveling again.  I am right now about halfway through 62 and the grind to 65 has been slower going than I had hoped.  I honestly have problems with the layout of content since vanilla, or more so I just liked the feel of leveling in Vanilla better.  This is of course personal preference, and since Storm Legion and Nightmare Tides feel really similar… I am guessing they have done the market research that tells them that the Rift demographic wants that style of content.  Anyways…  I have contemplated trying to set up at least one night a week to play Rift.  The problem there is that I am not sure there are enough nights in the week to go around for all of the games I want to be regularly playing.

Hunting Keywardens

Diablo III 2015-09-03 21-39-45-21

 

When I got home from dinner however it was all about Diablo 3.  Before dinner I had managed to pop in shortly and get my good friend Neph invited to our Stalwart Diablo clan that makes finding folks to group with significantly easier.  My friend Shandrah popped on and started the leveling trail for Neph, Damai and Ashgar which was a full group so I happily worked on Season IV objectives.  Right now I am working on the fourth and final chapter of objectives, and I spent most of the night tracking down the various Key Wardens which I had to defeat on Torment I or better.  After a significant rearrange of my abilities I am finding that Torment I is actually fairly easy.  I am essentially doing a variation of the classic “spin to win” Whirlwind build.  I am using Frenzy with the added fury bonus of Berserk as my builder, for the purpose of being able to build fury as fast as humanly possible so I can spend the most time in whirlwind.  From there I use Whirlwind with Blood  Funnel which heals me every time I crit, which is often.  From there I have Overpower with Killing Spree, Threating Shout with Falter, Ignore pain with Ignorance is Bliss, and Wrath of the Berserker with Insanity.  For passives I take Boon of Bul-Kathos, Rampage, Ruthless and Weapons Master.

The end result is a built that can chew thing mobs pretty effectively, but the most important part is that it has really solid “sustain” which seems to be the most important thing as a melee character.  None of my gear is ideal at the moment, and I am not using the right legendary procs because I simply haven’t gotten them to drop.  That said it is a good start and better than the previously build I was working with.  I am still relatively new to the whole Rifts and Greater Rifts thing, and at this point I have two objectives standing in the way of my spiffy portrait and pet.  One of which is “Reach Greater Rift Level 10 Solo” which I find really confusing.  Last night I attempted to do this one and completed a Greater Rift…  albeit without getting the bonus.  But I am not sure if this means that I need to complete the rift with the bonus or if I physically need to manage to get to dungeon level 10 within the Rift.  The last one however will take some doing considering I am in a mishmash of gear right now, and it is to have a level 70 legendary equipped in every slot.  I have been spending my blood shards on gear slots that I am currently missing in the hopes of slowly knocking this achievement out.  In any case… I am close and I am having a blast just killing stuff for loot and paragon levels!