Hey Folks! I spent some more time yesterday tweaking and leveling my Wintertide Brand Occultist. I’ve dialed up the defensive layers a bit and I have a Watcher’s Eye that should also help whenever I can get the free passive points to allocate a jewel socket for it. This is never going to be a bossing character for me, so with that in mind, I am largely leaning into comfortable mapping clears while upping the survival. Essentially I think my next play is to pick up another strength travel node, which should allow me to drop a +30 strength node and then use that point to allocate the socket for the Watcher’s Eye.
I had a Dawnbreaker laying around in my vault that I picked up off Searing Exarch, and I decided to give it a spin. Sure I lost some damage by dropping the caster shield with +1 to cold gems, but I also gained a number of defensive layers baked into the shield alone. Essentially what this is doing is splitting some portion of the damage I am taking and then making it resolve against my Fire Resistance. Sure my Fire Resistance is not amazing and nothing like the 90% that I have on my Juggernaut… but it is enough to sort of blunt the blow for all other attacks a bit. The shield alone is worth almost 2000 armor by itself and has a small amount of life baked into it along with a 46% block chance. While it doesn’t make a ton of sense thematically… so far I am thinking the Dawnbreaker is helping.
I recorded another video yesterday afternoon of me playing the class and talking through some of the decisions that I am making. Now this video was recorded before I made a number of tweaks like the Dawnbreaker last night but still shows the general state of the build. If you want to look at the state of my tree here is a POB, but note that I currently am muling a new wand with my Juggernaut to level it because I can handle crucible progress so much faster with that character. In the grand scheme of things, I am pretty happy with where things are so far. Sure it is weaker than most of my other builds but I am actually enjoying running around with Wintertide Brand again. Would I start that build in another league over RF Jugg? Probably not. That does not mean however I am not enjoying myself.
Now that the weather is warmer, my wife has been spending a lot of time out in the backyard in the evenings reading. Around 8 pm I decided to go out and check on her, since often she comes in way earlier than that, and found that Greybie had decided to hang out as well. He’s been coming around to the backyard more often lately and it is pretty great. So I spent about an hour out there petting him and trying to coax him up onto my lap. He is still a little too skittish for me to actually lift him up and place him there… and expect him to do anything other than run away. When not actively getting attention he would set up shop underneath one of our chairs and just lay there.
All the while we were back there Tripod was over on the concrete patio off our kitchen… some 15 feet away. Greybie and Tripod seem to tolerate each other, but I am not certain they are actually friends yet. She kept coming closer to us… like she wanted to come over and get attention as well and then would retreat back under the patio table rubbing up against the chairs. I feel like she is on the brink of being more sociable, but I am not entirely sure how to tip her over. Our thought is maybe if she watches us petting Greybie… and him being seemingly happy about it… that she might realize that she too can get love and attention. I would honestly love it if Greybie set up shop in our backyard as well because at least knowing those two cats are relatively safe and happy would be a load off my mind. He lives somewhere down the cul de sac but given that he spends MOST of us time in the orbit of our house… I don’t think he has another family.
I really need to start taking my Steam Deck out into the backyard with me and playing something while just chilling with the feral cats. Last night was delightful but other than when I was actively playing with Greybie I was somewhat bored. You can only screw around on your phone so much before it is no longer interesting.
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