necromancer

Best D4 Season Ever?

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Good Morning Folks! I hit level 60 last night and officially entered the endgame. I am exceptionally happy because I essentially did not change any of my gear since around level 40, and did only a minimal item swap in a few slots when I hit 60… and was pretty much able to roll straight into a Pit 20 to unlock Torment 1. The Season of Witchcraft is going to do nothing for the folks who are deeply biased against Diablo IV, but for those of us who are capable of finding joy in more than one thing at a time… it is a pretty great time to be alive. Diablo IV will always be the Duplo version of an ARPG, but that does not mean that there is not a heck of a lot of fun to be had. Quite honestly I feel like we have this great progression to take someone from only being mildly engaged all of the way to gibbering madly in the darkness.

Essentially for me… you have Diablo III which is the absolute simplest version of an ARPG. Now Diablo IV sits just on the other side of Diablo III with a little bit more nuance and build variety. Then you have Last Epoch which serves as this happy medium between all of the games where it is very easy to understand, has a lot of hand-holding for gear progression, but also has real depth for creating interesting builds. On the other side of that I feel like Path of Exile II really serves as a much more accessible gateway drug to Grinding Gear Games. It is a bit more complicated than Last Epoch, but nowhere near as complex as Path of Exile 1. Finally at the furthest end of the spectrum you have the original Path of Exile with its decades worth of systems built upon systems and effectively represents the ARPG version of what the Kowloon Walled City was. No one should feel shame for finding their happy place and then deciding that they do not need to descend any further into madness.

Anyways…. back to this post… at this point I have done up through a Pit 25 and need to spend a lot of time grinding the Pit until I have all of the glyphs needed for my build. I wish there was a more interesting way of acquiring these because in its current state… The Pit feels way less rewarding than some of the other endgame systems. There are a bunch of vectors that I need to follow to level up various things but not having any of the right glyphs is a problem that should be remedied quickly. I still do not love the paragon system in general and feel like it is way too tedious for what it is. I would FAR rather have a passive tree like Path of Exile 1/2 than this obtuse combination of boards. The big problem is when you decide that you want to swap builds… it is just a pain to set up all of the paragon boards again.

Right now I am trying to make the decision if I stick with the pure minions build, or if I migrate to one of the other more powerful Necromancer builds like Blood Wave. I think ultimately I want to end up Blood Wave but am uncertain if it is worth trying to transition until I have at least some of the uniques that the build relies upon. Unfortunately… Blood Wave is a zero minions build in its optimal form… and I do not love that. That is one of the things that kind of annoys me about the current state of the Necromancer is it feels like the best versions are all based no not having minions at all. Ultimately if I wanted to have zero minions… I figure I would just play a Sorc. If I can get to Torment IV on pure minions then I will be pretty happy, because quite honestly… once I finish the seasons journey and the battle pass I will probably stop caring about Diablo IV.

Speaking of Seasons Journey… I am currently in Chapter IV and starting to whittle away at the requirements. This is ultimately going to be my guide moving forward and will dictate a lot of the activities that I participate in. At some point I am going to have to take down Lilith, and if I can actually do that as Minions I will be exceptionally happy. I also want to do some boss farming with Ace like I did last league, so hopefully the build will allow us to do that. Spiritborn was wildly overpowered… but honestly Necromancer at least so far does not feel terribly weaker. At very least I had a much easier time transitioning into the first Torment level than I did as my Centipede Spiritborn. Spiritborn did not become exceptionally overpowered feeling until I switched over to Quill Rain.

As far as the Battle Pass goes, I am only 20 levels into that. From what I remember last season it did not really start speeding up until I could chain farm the internal council. I know that knocking out the sub objectives of the seasons journey also seems to give a lot of credit as well. Like I said above my goals for Season 7 are to complete the Seasons Journey and complete the Battle Pass. Any thing past that truly is a bonus, because if I can squeeze enough enjoyment out of the game to make it to Path of Exile season 3.26 I am going to be stoked. It is a little sad though that this Diablo IV season feels like it is the best so far and it is getting very little in the way of attention. Most of the ARPG streamers are continuing to stream Path of Exile II for the time being, and at least among my Battle.net friends there are very few people playing outside of my closest circle of friends.

I’m happy and having fun and honestly… that really is the only thing that matters. I also really dig the look of my character… which is admittedly the same basic appearance I use on all of my Necromancers but I am pretty happy with the armor. That has been the thing that I really enjoy about completing the battle pass each season, is gaining even more interesting cosmetics to use going forward. Diablo IV will probably always be an acquired taste, and will never be technical enough to gain legitimacy amongst the most hardcore players in this genre. It however still will be a pretty fun game to revisit every few months… pending they don’t do anything terribly stupid with it.

Farming the Witchtide

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was the launch of Diablo IV Season 7, and last night I rolled the Necromancer that I was planning and started leveling. If anyone is wanting to play along at home, I am mostly following this guide on Maxroll because I do not want to think about anything right now. I am not really going to worry about my gear until I hit level 60 because at this point I have effortlessly gotten to 44 without really trying. I am absolutely half-assing my way through the content and it is delightful, in large part because Season of Witchcraft is effectively the spiritual successor to Season 2. The Season of Blood as Season 2 was properly referred to was essentially peak Diablo IV for me, and the rapid recurrence of the Blood Tide events made it feel great to level.

Instead of Bloodtides… we have Headhunts which I am affectionately referring to as the Witchtide. These will spawn in four places on the map and are up for 40 minutes at a time. However these appear to be staggered so that when one ends there is always going to be another one up that you can be farming. This also means that once you complete all of the Grim Favor objectives in one area, you can bounce to a new area and start the entire process over again. This is by far the smoothest leveling experience ever and even more important… taking a death does not cause you to lose your hard earned event currency like you do in a Helltide. That said… I have not taken a death yet but you are collecting resources that you then spend to unlock Witchcraft abilities.

Part of what made the Season of Blood so great was that in addition to the blood tide events… you had a borrowed power system in the form of vampire abilities. These were gained randomly in a pick one of three scenario and it often took you quite a bit of grinding to get the set that you really wanted to use. Witchcraft abilities work so much better in that you simply get currency for doing events and then can outright purchase the ability that you actually want. Within the first hour and a half of game-play I had all five of the abilities that I wanted, and then could simply focus on leveling them up instead of acquiring new abilities. I highly suggest Aura of Siphoning for your first ability because it is essentially “What if Righteous Fire Healed You”, as you deal damage to everything around you but also gain some of that as life.

I also love that it lets me run around with a giant poison dart frog. The crossover abilities from the D3 Witchdoctor are greatly appreciated. I am sure at some point I will build something around the Firebats ability if I end up running a second character. I am pretty curious how nerfed the state of the Spiritborn ends up being from what it was during the expansion launch. Diablo IV has reached the point of light popcorn fare and I am here for it. I was having a lot of fun from the moment I dropped into game and so far that seems to have no sign of stopping. I really need to run a few Nightmare Dungeons to see how they have been buffed because Ace reported that they got a stupid amount of legendaries from them.

Kind of the crux of the Witchtide events is to spawn these headless husks, which you kill to reclaim heads at least in a narrative sense for the tree of whispers. There is also a background story happening surrounding a coven of witchdoctors that do the bidding of the tree. I have to be honest… I do not care at all about the story side of this, because really it is a loose framework that allows me to keep going out and killing more monsters that are spawning unique to this season. The core mechanical loop feels extremely rewarding, and I am curious to see how this transitions as we move into the endgame. I am sure there will still be the need to farm a lot of summoned bosses for unique drops. Ace and I learned last league that the best option was for us to hold onto everything and then meet up to amplify the number of summons we were able to do in a single sitting.

Another thing that I greatly appreciate is that they have added additional functionality to the Tree of Whispers location. This is where all of the event resources are set up, but also they changed the layout a bit and added an Obols vendor and Alchemist to essentially allow us to never leave this location. I was already setting my default teleport to the Tree of Whispers for dumping Grim Favors, but now there really is no reason to use any other location other than if you are happening to farm the Pit. I still would really like to have something akin to the player hideout from Path of Exile 1 and 2 because honestly… unless I have invited them to my group I don’t really care about other players.

Speaking of not caring about other players… I am guessing the community got the memo that running World Bosses is not really worth the effort. I killed Ashava this morning and it was just me and a Barbarian… and thankfully we managed to take down the boss without much issue. I don’t feel like I am probably too far ahead of the curve… and more that it is just a case that no one seems to care about world bosses. I said this last league, that the older content like World Bosses, Nightmare Dungeons, and Legion Events really do not feel like they are worth doing right now. Sure you can get some drops, but the amount of drops pale in comparison to just farming literally anything else. I mostly wanted to kill the world boss because I am certain that somewhere in the seasons journey there is a requirement for doing so.

By farming effectively nothing but the Witchtide, I am actually progressing pretty quickly through the Coven’s Favor track… aka the event faction for this league. Mostly this serves as a way of unlocking the various quests associated with the league which I am sure will gate some things behind them… so might as well grind it out as quickly as possible. Once I get into the endgame I am probably going to be farming content that is not the Witchtide, so it would probably be beneficial to get the faction now while I am not having to go out of my way to farm it.

All in all I feel like this is a pretty solid outing for Diablo IV. The game will still have its critics, and that is fine… I just wish they were coming from a place of legitimate gripes and not largely piling on the campaign of streamers. The raw game is in a pretty decent state at this point, and I am having quite a bit of fun. It will never be a technical experience like Path of Exile, but for big dumb fun it is pretty spectacular. I am sure I will bore of it quickly once I have finished the season journey… but not everything has to be a forever game. While I can appreciate Citizen Kane… I also really like movies where they have cool CGI and big explosions. Diablo IV is a big explosions type game, and if you can appreciate it for what it is… there is fun to be had here.

Minion State of Mind

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Good morning folks. I am still playing quite a bit of Path of Exile II while also alternating between it and Last Epoch. I am playing Minions builds in both games currently, and seem to be going through a phase where that just seems to be what I want to do. There are few things more satisfying in an ARPG than running around with a giant mob of NPCs that do your bidding. The Necromancer was one of my favorite characters in Diablo II for this reason, and when that character was launched in Diablo III I had a few seasons where I played it there as well. Biggest happening of the extended weekend is that I spent nine divines on a new sceptre. Essentially I wanted something with at least level 19 Skeletal Warriors on it, because to the best of my knowledge there are none available with level 20 on them. I am not sure if this is even a thing that can roll, but upgrading from 18 to 19 should still be a significant boost.

When I started running a Storm Mage I had to drop one of my Arsonists to make it work, and while this worked great for Rares and tankier packs… I noticed it negatively impacted my overall map clear. As such another benefit of the sceptre swap was that it gave me enough spirit to pick back up another Arsonist. Additionally I had enough left over spirit to add a second cleric, which seems to greatly improve the sustain of my minions. My poor little cleric worked overtime healing up my minions and having a second one just spreads out the total healing. Basically everything seems to just have an easier time staying alive which is good, especially given that my infernal hound is eating a portion of damage dealt to me.

Today however is the launch of Season 7 in Diablo IV and I plan on popping in tonight and giving it a shot. Raxx released his tier list for characters and right now has Necromancer as number one. Generally speaking his tier lists are fairly accurate or at least present relatively sane early data. The thing is I was already leaning heavily towards playing a Blood Wave Necromancer during this league since I appear to be in minion mode right now. The fact that they look like they are going to be in a good place is only really gravy on top.

I’ve MOSTLY played Barbarians in Diablo IV, because generally speaking I prefer to play tanky characters or big bonk characters when given my druthers. However Barbarians have been in a bit of a mess this entire time and they feel kind of awful to level. I’ve always been partial to Necromancers, but to the best of my knowledge have never actually played one through the endgame. A bunch of mine got pushed up to level 50 when the expansion dropped, but I am not certain I have ever actually organically taken one of my characters to paragon levels as a Necro. I figure this is a good opportunity to give it a shot. I’ve also never really played a Rogue either and at some point want to play some sort of a bow build.

I’ve had more than a few complaints about Diablo IV since its launch. That said I have never understood the false dichotomy of needing to hate Diablo IV to love and appreciate Path of Exile. D4 has been in a bit of a mess but by the time the expansion launched it was in a pretty decent state. Is it a brilliant game? No. Is it a fun game? Yes, within specific parameters and for a shortish period of time. I’m kind of ready to be playing something other than Path of Exile II, because there are also a lot of things about that game that I do not like. Unfortunately 3.26 is nowhere in sight, so that means I am more than happy to hop on the next train that leaves the station… which means Diablo IV Season 7. If I can get a few weeks out of it before this particular brand of gum loses its flavor, then I will honestly be extremely happy.

Last Epoch is Cozy

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Good Morning Folks! Since Path of Exile II is awaiting a patch, I figured I would spend some time doing something else. Sunday I started an Acolyte and turned her into a Necromancer going down the path of doing a fairly common minions build since that is what I played almost 300 hours of in Path of Exile II. It is wild just how comfortable Last Epoch is compared to Path of Exile. While the game is lacking at the endgame, and hopefully the big April patch will alleviate that a bit… the leveling experience is so freaking cozy. By my play session last night I was starting in on Monoliths and having a grand old time with my army of horrible children.

I played quite a bit in September when they did the Cycle Refresh and had gotten my Circle of Fortune faction up to rank 11. This made leveling a new character feel amazing, because I was constantly getting really interesting items. More than that the Nemesis system feels phenomenal at low levels because you are regularly getting pretty interesting unique items turned into legendaries with random stats attached to them. The only negative about the Nemesis systems… is that it makes all of the other content feel significantly worse. Rogue Mages for example need a rework because it feels like they only drop Clutch Plates for a 77 Honda Civic Hatchback… which is awesome if you need one of those but otherwise pretty forgettable.

Some of the items that I am seeing from drops are wild. Path of Exile II wanted to make loot on the ground matter and failed miserably at that, but honestly… that is precisely the state of Last Epoch right now. This is an item I picked up off the ground… that has 3 Tier 6 affixes… one of which sealed so that i could in theory roll off one of the other affixes trying to get something with better synergy. Granted I don’t plan on playing a character that needs any of those things, but it is still a wildly compelling item. Given enough time spinning the randomizer I will start seeing items that DO have the stats that I want on them. The fact that I can target specific monoliths for specific gear slots… and also throw Runes of Ascendance at random items use that trying to get the Uniques that I want. I feel like I have so many options to either farm perfect loot, or perfect less than perfect loot.

Right now I am mostly wearing a bunch of weavers will items, because they were handy and often have interesting results. I’m also running two Hollow Fingers which give me extra skeletons. I had one with two legendary potential and attempted to turn it into a ring with Minion Health and Minion Damage, but unfortunately hit flat health instead. Still a reasonable item to use but not necessarily an ideal item. That is one of the things that I dig about Last Epoch is that you can get to a pretty reasonable gear state easily, and then slowly over time attempt to improve upon it by making more Legendary items or lucking into some really tasty drops.

I am sure when the POE2 patch drops I will be back over there testing out the changes, but for the moment I am living my best life in Last Epoch. This game is so damned good, and really… once it has the amount of content that Path of Exile does… it is going to be the easy winner for my attention. I am definitely looking forward to April and the next Cycle where they are supposedly focusing on the endgame entirely. The monolith is a good core, but it just needs more surprise content to borrow a term from the POE2 patch announcement over the weekend. Monoliths feel great when you have a Nemesis, Rogue Mage, and a loot chest… and feel pretty awful when none of those spawn. The more of those little doses of joy that they can pack into the mapping experience, the better the game is going to be.