Over the Thanksgiving break I spent most of my time playing Diablo 3. I go through these periods at the beginning of a new season where I play hard and heavy for a few weeks and then taper off once I have achieved whatever goal I thought I wanted to achieve for the season. This time around Blizzard put a Tyrael themed Goblin pet at the end of the process and as a result I ground my way to the very end. This was supposed to be the season that I learned the joys of playing a Wizard, but I have to say I am just not a big fan of that class. The highest I managed to get my Wizard was a solo Greater Rift 60, and now that I am in the post seasons journey I might try finishing out the set I was going for and seeing how well it plays.
My friend Grace bailed me out and helped me power level a Demon Hunter and get some of the basic gearing that I needed. This ultimately was the class that I finished the Seasons Journey on and has rapidly become the class that I am the most familiar with. Effectively it and the Thorns Crusader are pretty much my favorite ways to play Diablo 3. I should branch out more, but when I find something I like I end up sticking to it. On the Demon Hunter I effectively ran a variant of the Unhallowed Essense Multi-shot build that you can find on Icy Veins. The most important part about playing the build is never stopping long enough to get hit, because you are still relatively squishy… but Demon Hunter has the mechanics to keep that from happening whereas I felt like the Wizard lacked them.
I’ve seen a bunch of friends dipping their toes into this season, and because of this I thought I would spend this morning breaking out the most cogent advice that I have. I have to credit Grace for starting me down this path initially, but the single best thing I did to improve my gameplay in Diablo 3 was set a keybind for “Force Move”. This effectively gives you a key that pressing it down moves your character towards your mouse cursor. I highlighted the keybinds that I am going to be talking about in the above image but the first one is that when I hold W my character moves towards where my mouse cursor is allowing me to move the mouse to steer rather than relying on the sometimes sloppy click to move. This is important because it allows you to be moving independent of any other actions you might be taking with your character and rapidly change directions as needed.
The next important keybind is that I bound my first skill slot to space bar. This is where I put my movement key on whatever class I happen to be playing. So on Barbarian this would be Leap Attack or Furious Charge, on Demon Hunter it would be Vault, on Witch Doctor it would be Spirit Walk, Wizard it would be Teleport, and Crusader it would be Steed Charge. It is plays on a key that is super easy to spam because you are going to want to be moving as fast as possible most of the time especially when dealing with higher level Greater Rifts.
You are probably questioning why I have Action slot 2, 3 and 4 bound to 7, 8 and 9… and I have to admit this is a fairly new revelation. I play with a Logitech G600 gaming mouse with a keypad on the left hand side. For me the most natural and comfortable keys to hit are in the 7/8/9 row as that seems to be where my thumb naturally rests. That means I can comfortably move up to hit 4/5/6 or down to hit 0/-/= without really interrupting my play in MMORPGs. Most builds involve putting your most important abilities on Left Mouse and Right Mouse and then anything you just want to keep hitting periodically on keybinds 2/3/4. I find it takes me out of the action less if I am hitting these on the mouse as opposed to trying to reach them on the keyboard while holding the W key to be moving forward. Ultimately you sorta have to figure out what feels best for you, but for me this works.
The truth of playing higher tiers of Diablo 3 is that standing still is going to kill you. You effectively need to stay in constant motion to be able to avoid the cavalcade of nonsense that is being thrown at you as far as ground effects and missiles headed your direction. I find it way easier to do this while staying shifting around the battlefield and in order to do this effectively you need to be able to move independent of you performing any attacks. Similarly there are a bunch of attacks that are effectively skill shots requiring you to swing your mouse cursor around in a specific direction and I find this easier to do it I am doing so without worrying about what directional inputs I might be sending my character. Keybinds made Diablo 3 feel so much better and I need to see if I can set up something similar in Path of Exile to maybe fix some of the bad feelings I have towards that game.
As far as my late game seasonal journey, I have had a decent amount of luck with Primal Ancient drops. I aligned these in the order of which I got them, and the one I got from clearing my first 70 Greater Rift is the Nemesis Bracers, which are usually a cube item… but I wound up shifting up my build a bit to accommodate them. The most important drop was my Primal Ancient Yangs which I managed to get by re-rolling a spare Yangs over and over trying to get an Ancient and then somehow winning the Jackpot. The St. Archew gloves are mostly a throw away drop, but I got them on a character I will be talking about in a few minutes making that a little bit more viable. Lastly I got a Primal Ancient piece of the Unhallowed set which blends perfectly into the build on the Demon Hunter.
At the beginning of the season I mentioned that I had never played a Wizard or a Witch Doctor before and apparently this is the season where both of these have been remedied. Grace mentioned that since we are both done with the seasonal journey that we should roll a couple of “Chicken” build Witch Doctors to do some nonsense farming with. I leveled a Gem of Ease and ground up the Witch Doctor yesterday afternoon for fun. I have to admit while I don’t have anything close to a final build, the leveling build I am running is rather enjoyable. The class as a whole feels like this weird blend of the Necromancer and the Demon Hunter… both of which classes that I greatly enjoy. So I can see this being enjoyable.
I’ve only managed to get up to Torment VI with the character, but right now I mostly need the rest of the Helltooth Items and the weapon set that makes the Chicken build work. More or less this is going to be the thing that keeps me invested in this season, and I may even dust off the Wizard and get it moving again. Weirdly at night I am going from playing Diablo 3 on the PC to laying in bed and playing Diablo 3 on the Switch for awhile as I play up a seasonal Barbarian there. Apparently I am in the zone as far as it comes to playing Diablo, and I am sure this will last right up until the point that the new season starts in Destiny 2.
