diablo Archives - Page 19 of 23 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Diablo 3 Season Start and Anniversary Event

January 9, 2017 by Belghast

My weekend was largely dominated by the launch of Diablo 3 Season 9, and the Darkening of Tristram event. Up until this point I had not really touched any of the anniversary content, and to be honest the season beginning had completely slipped my mind until Grace asked me if we were doing our usual push. It has become a bit of a tradition to hang out Friday night and push as far as we can. While I rarely actually make it to 70 that first night, we both end up with a good head start into the season. This time around however we opted to do the Darkening of Tristram content… which is essentially a 16 plus level Greater Rift. I say plus because there are a number of offshoots that grant access to boss battles like the Skeleton King and other side areas. The interesting thing is that as much as I was not feeling Diablo 2… I absolutely enjoyed the weird nostalgic romp that is the darkening content. Basically glorious retrovision was cute… but did not destroy the fact that the underlying game is one that I still greatly enjoy. However for Diablo 2… I had simply moved on past that style of gameplay and the sort of character decisions that game asked you to make… permanently or at least relatively permanently.

As far as Season 9 goes I opted to play a Crusader once again… which is honestly my favorite of the Diablo 3 options. Primarily my decision this time around was due to the fact that the Invoker set was one again the freebie, allowing me to play quite possibly my favorite build… the one I loving refer to as “stop hitting yourself”. It is all about maximizing your thorns damage and then watching the mobs grind themselves to death on your armor. Essentially it plays into my ultimately player fantasy… and that is being this immovable object that survives being swarmed and walks out unscathed. The unscathed part however is a little open to interpretation since there are a handful of mob types that can just eat my lunch, but overall I am extremely happy with the progress so far this season. So far I have soloed up to a 42 greater rift, and had more than enough breathing room to probably be able to bump that up to 45 without issue. The most interesting thing is… I am already doing the equivalent of Torment 8 while still missing most of the items I need to do my proper build. I am following the traditional Thorns/Invoker build and am still missing: Traveler’s Pledge, Compass Rose, Heart of Iron, Justice Lantern, Akarat’s Awakening and Convention of Elements… and in truth I could probably use a better Hack than the one I managed to pick up.

I managed to complete through step 5 (Slayer) in the Seasons journey and am just now starting to slowly work on the Champion aka step 6. However the bulk of my time has been spent working on finishing the various Anniversary events. There is an excellent guide up on Icy Veins that I have been working on, and to the best of my knowledge I have completed them all. The one that took the longest however was “Protector of Tristram” which I included a screenshot of the completion above. Essentially as you go through the Darkening of Tristram Rift each floor has specific mobs that can spawn. You are usually only going to see a single spawn per floor, but in at least one rare case I didn’t see any rares up. Similarly in other rare cases you have a shot at seeing all three mobs up on a given floor… because that happened to me for certain on the fourth floor of the dungeon. Where the guide comes in handy is after a few runs of the event you are going to get your list of 40 whittled down to something more manageable. Towards the end of my grind I realized that I needed mobs on floors 5, 6, 7, and 12… so I began focusing those specific floors and simply rushing to the exit on any floors that I didn’t need. Finally both myself and Grace wound up needing the same mob… which feels like a rare spawn on floor five Foulwing.

The other item that took a long time to finally complete was the collection of Cultists pages which can be found off special Temporal Priests that spawn in amongst existing cultists out in the world. In theory there will only be a single Temporal Priest in a given spawn location, so once you have found it it is probably safe to move on to the next area. The Icy Veins guide has the zones that are likely to have them up at a given time. That said we did manage to find quite a few of them while doing normal rifts, and it seems like the “one per area” bit is unique to a given floor because we wound up with multiple pages in the same run a few times. For those curious about drop rates of pages… by the time I finished I managed to obtain:

Page 1: 1 copy
Page 2: 4 copies
Page 3: 3 copies
Page 4: 1 copy
Page 5: 3 copies
Page 6: 1 copy
Page 7: 3 copies

I doubt any of the pages are intentionally rarer than others, but for me I spent a lot of time grinding away still needing the very first page to drop. At this point I am extremely happy to have finished up all of the anniversary event and can now just start pushing towards that stash tab. This feels like a good season so far, and I am hoping that my drive maintains itself as I get into the harder content.

Bumbling Around

August 11, 2016 by Belghast

Yeti Power

After a Tuesday night spent chasing Legion Invasions and being an Illidari, I felt like last night I needed a nice relaxing night of being a completely different sort of Demon Hunter. By nice and relaxing I mean a night spent pushing rifts and causing anime style rocket explosions as I cleared entire rooms at the same time. It is strange how Diablo has morphed over the years for me. Originally it was that game that I wished I could play with friends… but didn’t have stable enough internet to be able to play it. Then it when the second game was released it absolutely become a game I played almost exclusively with friends. When three was released, I was in a place where I was largely soloing and found it a less than amazing experience. Now several years later each time a new season is launched it becomes this focusing force that brings a bunch of us back together for another trip happily through the paragon and gear grind. For most of the night last night I was joined by my fairly regular demon slaying buddy Grace, and we also managed to snag Thalen and bring him along for the fun. The night as a whole was pretty great because on our first tag team attempt at bounties… a Menagerist Goblin spawned dropping this extremely awesome Yeti pet named “The Bumble” for me to go wandering with. Additionally I was able to knock out several pieces of gear off of my list, and I finally managed to get the last of the three legendary gems needed for this build. The highlight of the night however was getting an Ancient Yang’s Recurve to drop… which admittedly made Grace super jealous. However because of this it is now my duty to tag along in any D3 madness to push hard for folks so they too can get their sweet ancient drops.

The other thing that happened last night is that I attempted the “Numlock Trick”. One of the more annoying things in Diablo 3 is that most builds have some sort of buff that they want to cast essentially anytime it is available. The goal of the build is usually to get enough cooldown reduction so that you can keep it up 100% of the time. For the Multishot build I am using for my Demon Hunter, it is focused largely around getting keeping Vengeance up 100% of the time… and right now I have it close enough that I maybe have a second without it up at any given time. The other day I heard something mentioned in a build video talking about “using the numlock trick” on one of these buffs… and I had to investigate to satiate my curiosity. There is apparently a strange glitch in the game that allows you to essentially constantly be spamming a button press. I mean in theory you could do the same thing with hardware macros on a keyboard, but this just sort of “works”. The idea is to bind the 1-4 hotkeys to have a secondary key which relates to Numpad 1-4. To toggle on autocast for any of the abilities you turn your Numlock key on, hold down the keys you want to autocast and then turn off your Numlock. Just like that the key keeps repeating over and over… which causes some weird behavior. Firstly if you are holding any key the cast will not fire… so if you are holding force move or the left mouse button down… just ease up on it to let the next cast go off. Secondly… it has the strange behavior of interrupt abilities like identification or teleport. What I do to get past those is to start the channeled cast, and then hold any key. In my binding I have S set as an alternate bind for Shift… which is to stop moving and hold still. Holding this down while channeling works well to keep my auto casts from interrupting whatever ability I want to do.

The other “strangeness” that happens is that any time you shift games, and sometimes when you just downgrade difficulty it can turn the autocasting off completely. In this case you just flip back on numlock, hold your keys down, and turn it back off to set the glitch back up. Now that I know this exists… I am wondering what other uses can be had for it. Supposedly folks use this regularly for Taeguk builds on the monk side to keep the stacks. In theory I could do the same trick to make sure I am evasive fire shots in with my hunter, to build hatred and keep up the damage shield. For the time being however I am keeping it simple and only using this to try and keep Vengeance up as often as possible as well as my Companion ability. I was always horrible at using these cooldowns, and tended to save them until I reached a point where I had a lot of elites to attack rather than just constantly using them knowing that I had another cooldown just around the corner. I need to spend some time working on achievements so I can catch up to the point Grace is currently in the seasonal journey. I am still not sure if I am going to go for the stash slot this time around… but for the moment I am going to keep playing so long as the game feels fun and fresh. Tonight however I have earmarked to go do Broken Shores scenario on my various alts… because I have yet to actually see the new cinematics.

Evil and Phones

May 6, 2016 by Belghast

Society and Cell Phones

This morning I am going to talk about something that I have been kicking around in my head for awhile, but haven’t really been able to shape into a full fledged commentary. It feels like each week there is some new alarmist piece of media talking about the degradation of society, and placing the blame squarely on the cell phone. For awhile I have had this working theory, that these articles for the most part are written by extroverts, and I am sure for that group of people the landscape has changed in a very scary way. I use my cell phone as a cloaking device, and what I mean by that is I am fiddling with my phone in order to create just enough social friction to convince you that it isn’t worth the time to engage in small talk while standing in the elevator next to you. For years I’ve been frustrated by the fact that apparently standing in the same vicinity as someone is passive consent to be deluged with a bunch of conversation that I have no interest in. Having my smart phone at the ready has greatly cut down on that unwanted interaction, because they see that I am engaged… or at least LOOK like I am engaged. It is the same cloaking device mentality that I apply at work by wearing headphones every single moment I am sitting at my desk. I may not actually be listening to anything, and honestly often times am not. However the act of wearing the headphones stops a lot of “drive by” conversation.

More so than that I feel like access to the internet and social media allows me to engage people safely. I’ve had to learn how to be “normal” but face to face conversation with someone I am not extremely familiar with is a massive anxiety ridden trap. While talking I am actively trying to be normal, running through a checklist of things and constantly aware of how much or how little eye contact I am making. When I am hanging out with someone I am familiar with most of this goes away, and I can just let my guard down. The thing is… non face to face communication lowers all of these barriers for me. I can be a social butterfly in a text only interaction. When I first stepped foot onto IRC back in 1994, it greatly broadened my horizons and introduced me to a world of new people and new places to learn about. So for me, as an introvert… it allows me a certain measure of extrovertedness because it hacks my brain into thinking it is perfectly okay. However for the Extroverts out there… I have a feeling that this does in fact seem like an epidemic. They no longer have all these passive participants that they can forcibly engage in dialog, and instead have to seek out other Extroverts who are equally hungry for that interaction. What I think is happening is that finally introverts are getting a vehicle where they can express themselves more comfortably. I might be wrong, but this is my working theory.

Return of Thorns

The last couple of days has seen me completing my Invoker set for my Crusader, and gathering up most of the items needed for the build I have been working towards. I am just not a fan of the Akkhan’s set and I lacked a handful of the pieces really needed to make it a viable option. A big part of the Season are the Seasonal rewards, and the last major bottleneck for me was the set dungeon for Akkhan. In spite of having tried it numerous times I simply could not stay alive long enough to complete it. However with the Invoker set I was able to muscle through that dungeon and come damned near close to getting “mastery” on my first attempt. The thorns set just feels better to me and as such I have been testing the limits to which I can push it. I am still missing a handful of items, but last night I managed to solo a level 50 Greater Rift without much issue. Earlier in the evening my friend Grace and I who are similarly geared… managed to complete a Greater Rift 60 together. In theory I could probably do the 60 right now solo, but even as a duo there were some pretty sweaty moments. The big problem for me are still a handful of mob types that can straight up one shot me, or come damned close to it. I think that is the sort of thing that only improves with slightly better gear and more paragon levels.

I am still in a constant search for the goblin that drops pets. Some of my friends have found one but so far neither myself nor grace has seen one. Last night we burned through two of the rings that summon the goblin realm thinking that there are three to four goblins in there. However we still had zero luck, but I did fine a cute easter egg. Notice the name of the boss I am fighting in the above image. Essentially right now I need to spend a significant amount of time running Torment X bounties with the hopes of getting the rest of my gem patterns to drop. I think that would go a long ways into improving my overall survival and output, by upgrading to the highest tier of gems available. I am also still in search of the best in slot main hand, and I need to get a shield to throw in the cube. For optimum performance I also need to get another Aquilla chest, because right now I have those reversed with the Aquilla in the cube and the Heart of Iron on my person… when it really should be in the cube. In any case I am just happy that I am functional at Torment X and above. Now begins the long wait to get just the right items to drop when I need them. I also need to start working on the various conquests if I hope to get the extra bank slot for this season. This honestly is a point of frustration for me… I hate that you can ONLY get the slots through conquests. I think that they should sell the extra stash tabs, but also allow players to do the conquest to get one as well. That means if you are doing conquests you are getting the new cap twice as fast.

Toasty on MMORPGs

May 5, 2016 by Belghast

The Decline

One of the more interesting trends that I have picked up on, has to do with my own blog. It feels like the more I talk about Destiny, the lower my reader numbers dip. I guess it makes sense, as I started this blog out with World of Warcraft and moved towards other MMORPGs as well. Destiny has a slightly different audience and not necessarily the sort of one that really reads blogs. The Destiny community is largely contained within a combination of Reddit, Twitch and YouTube. I don’t have a lot to say about this, but I just found it interesting. On one hand I hate that I am alienating a bunch of readers, and on the other hand in order for me to keep doing this daily blogging thing… I have to be writing about what is interesting me. At this very moment that is Destiny and Diablo, and nothing much in the traditional MMO camp. Now I have logged into a bunch of MMOs in the last few months, but none of them really seemed to hold my attention past that initial login. Each time there was something that would ultimately cause me to log out. It might be that my bags were a mess, or that I couldn’t remember what I was last doing. Ultimately I found a ready excuse and used it to “nope” the hell out of the game. The problem however I think is somewhere in me.

Right now I am finding myself enjoying games that shower me in loot, and games that allow me to have engaging solo experiences. Granted I have been spending a lot of time mooching off of folks as they run high end content in Diablo 3, but when I log into that game I can go off and do something by myself that feels like I am moving towards some goal. In Destiny no matter what I do I can always be working on getting that next faction package, or even spending time in the crucible hoping for that next 335 item. These two games specifically play extremely well by myself or with friends, and that is just something that I can’t say for MMORPGs right now. In most cases the only real way to get good gear is through raiding, and that takes a time commitment I am just not willing to do right now. There is no path for me to piddle my way to victory, and at the moment I don’t want to commit to much more than that. Raiding in Destiny has felt far more “à la carte” and I think the small six player raid size helps that. It seems easy to pull together a raid group, and even easier to pull together a three player team. For example we spent last night doing Challenge of Elders and it honestly felt just as engaging and rewarding as doing an MMORPG raid group.

Burnt Out Genre

For awhile now I have kept thinking that sooner or later I will get over this funk. That I will get that drive to go off and play an MMORPG. For example I really want to have the desire to play Final Fantasy XIV and to “get the band back together”. However there is just some wall keeping me from getting back into it and enjoying it. I’ve patched up the client a few times, but I know when I do log in… someone is going to do the “Bels Back!” thing and I will feel guilty when I log out a few minutes later because I and confused as to what to do. It is not a time issue, because I still have the same amount of time I ever did… it seems to be an attention span issue. Diablo 3 and Destiny both reward me for spending ANY time with them… and there is always an explosion of shiny colored loot just waiting on me around the corner. The grind of an MMO is a much more slow burn, with large gaps of time between those moments of excitement. For years I played MMORPGs as a way to hang out with friends, but thanks to tools like Slack, Discord, and Band… I can take my group of friends with me wherever I happen to go. I no longer need to rely on the MMO as a chat client, and when that happened I guess the games lost a part of their hold on me.

I guess it hit me last night when technically I was scheduled to be raiding in World of Warcraft, and I didn’t even remember that it was a thing I was supposed to be doing. The leader said over chat that I was just burnt out on WoW, which is a bit true… but its more than that. I feel like I am burnt out on MMOs in general. I’ve been rabidly playing this one genre since 2000, and I feel like maybe I just need other types of games in my life. The parts of the MMO that I really liked, which were the acquisition of new stuff and the feeling of constantly evolving your persistent character… those things have been exported to pretty much every single genre out there. I guess I realized this was happening when nothing that was coming out, that actually excited me… was an MMO. There are plenty of things to be excited for out there, and I think Black Desert is one of those games that I would have loved… were I not over-saturated on MMORPGs. I am not really sure if I have a point this morning. It sucks that I am driving away readers, but I just don’t think I can write with the same love and excitement that I used to about MMORPGs right now. I keep hoping at some point I will climb out of this hole, and be able to log into Final Fantasy XIV and be excited again for story and world building, However in the meantime… you are probably going to see a lot more talk of Diablo 3 and Destiny because that is where my attention and excitement has landed.