Witch Doctor Set Mastery

I’m still slowly moving forward with the goal of mastering all of the set dungeons in Diablo 3. So far I’ve finished the Demon Hunter, Wizard, and Crusader ones. Next I decided to work on the Witch Doctor mastery, since I play that class fairly often and had all of the sets laying around. Sadly even with all of the time I spent with the class, I had only mastered one dungeon so I still had plenty of work to do. At least the pennant reward for this mastery looks neat!

Witch Doctor Set Mastery

The set dungeon I had already completed was the Jade Harvester’s. I decided to try it again for this project just to remind myself what it was like so I could record it here. The objectives are to harvest 15 enemies (x10) and kill a total of 100 enemies while they’re affected by both haunt and locust swarm. I got it on my first attempt. It definitely helped that this is the set I’m most comfortable with and I had plenty of choices for legendaries to make it work. I suspect the biggest issue with this one would normally be clearing everything within the timer since the map is fairly large and convoluted.  I used Shukrani’s Triumph in the cube which let me spirit walk until I attacked or found an enemy, which made for a speedy, easy run.

Next up was the Helltooth Harness set dungeon. The first objective here is easy. “Do not take any poison damage” can be utterly trivialized by cubing Mara’s Kaleidoscope. I’m sure it is possible to do without this item but why bother if you have one available? The second objective is to kill 20 enemies with a single wall of death (x4). This was the sort of objective that gives me trouble. First, you have to be able to 1-shot the small enemies with your wall, which hopefully shouldn’t be too hard. I used a Jeram’s Bracers to increase damage to make sure of this. More importantly though, you actually have to find or make groups of 20 enemies. It was tricky to do since the dungeon has a lot of little pockets and pillars that make it hard to find and group up the mobs. I had no trouble running through and killing everything in time, but it took me 5 or 6 tries to meet this objective. If RNG is kind and you get good pack placement this one should be easy.

After that I worked on the Arachyr’s Mantle dungeon. The easier objective here was to let your hex toad lick 30 enemies. On my first attempt I was so eager to get this done that I botched the other objective. Killing all of the elites while they are both webbed and piranha’d was tricky simply because they got accidentally killed by other things first. On the plus side there aren’t that many enemies and the layout is fairly straightforward so eventually I just ran through to find the elites first and then let the toad mop up for my 30 licks. The other good thing about this one is it didn’t require much in the way of specialized legendaries other than the set itself. It took a few tries to get the hang of what I needed to do but was definitely easier than the Helltooth dungeon.

The last of the Witch Doctor dungeons was Zunimassa’s. This one asks  you to grip 150 enemies in grasp of the dead, and to avoid getting into melee range with anything. That second requirement really slows you down, because you can never risk running ahead and getting too close to an enemy. With reasonable gear things should die quickly to your swarm of pets before they get to you though. I managed to 1-shot this one without even looking at the map ahead of time, so I’d call this one very easy.

Overall these were way easier than I expected them to be. Since I already had all the gear I needed I managed to knock all of them out in a single evening. I’m getting close to my goal but the next two classes are ones I’ve never played so there will be some down time while I level and farm gear for them. Still, I’m getting close enough that those awesome wings look like an achievable goal now!

 

 

 

 


Witch Doctor Set Mastery

Crusader set dungeons

I guess I’m following through on this nonsense mission to try to master all of the set dungeons in Diablo 3, because cosmetics are the true endgame and the wings you get as a reward are so very sweet. Having finished off the Demon Hunter and the Wizard dungeons for Season 10’s conquest waay back in April, I decided to step out of my comfort zone for the next one. So I leveled a crusader, a class which I’ve never really played any farther than leveling to 70. I don’t really love playing melee in Diablo games, I’m not sure why. Mostly I suspect that it is far outside of my “player fantasy” idea. I want to be smart and precise and out of harm’s way, not wading into the thick of things. Even so, the crusader is survivable and has enough shiny tricks to be entertaining.

Crusader set dungeonsI did the dungeons in order of what gear I happened to collect, so the Invoker dungeon was up first. This might have been the easiest set dungeon out of any of the ones I’ve tried. The objectives are to get hit by the goatmen’s spears, and to kill the elites while both consecration and iron skin are active. The enemies are easy and the dungeon layout is very straightforward without a lot of twists or dead ends. I looked up the map before I started, and I completed the mastery on my first try with almost 30 seconds to spare. My weapons and armor (other than the Invoker set) were a random collection of whatever I had laying around, including some yellows. Seriously easy. If you’re struggling with mastering a set dungeon for the season journey, I would highly recommend this one.

Next up was the Light’s set dungeon. The objectives are to use falling sword 3 times within 15 seconds (x3) and to not get hit by any of the enemies’ mortar attacks. You’ll want the weapon Cam’s Rebuttal for this one, since it will let you cast falling sword more often. The layout of the dungeon is a very simple series of T intersections, and wasn’t bad at all to finish. The main thing holding me back on this one was my time to kill the elites, since that both made it harder to kill everything in the time limit and made me have to dodge more mortar attacks. With some slightly better gear this one would be a breeze.

The third crusader set dungeon I attempted was Roland’s. I struggled with this one until I got the exact right gear for it. Namely, the Flail of the Charge/Shield of the Steed combo for faster movement, and Golden Flense (2H flail) for wrath restoration. Without the steed charge boost I couldn’t clear fast enough, and without the Flense I couldn’t meet one of the objectives at all. The first objective is to hit 12 enemies with a single sweep attack (x7). There are multiple points on the map with big groups of enemies so this wasn’t too bad, especially with Illusory Boots in the cube to allow easy positioning. Like many similar set dungeon objectives this one is a matter of holding off until you have a promising pack and being prepared to restart if you get bad RNG on group spawns. The other objective is to spend 300 wrath within 10 seconds (x5). That is what I really struggled with until I could cube a Flense. It was still difficult to spam enough within 10 seconds but I got it done. This dungeon was not as bad as some of the RNG-heavy ones from other classes but it was incredibly gear-dependent.

The last crusader dungeon I completed was Akkhan’s. This one’s objectives were to use condemn on 10 different enemies (x10), and to kill 150 enemies while under the effect of Akarat’s Champion. The steed charge weapon/shield combo I farmed for the Roland’s dungeon also worked great here. In fact it felt almost mandatory, because my biggest challenge with this set dungeon was clearing all the required enemies in time. Raw power also seemed to matter again in this one, and like in the Light’s set dungeon, much of the time I wasted was spent trying to take down the elites. Rounding up tons of enemies with steed charge + illusory boots was simple and the small enemies died quick enough from condemn at least. Of all the crusader dungeons this one took me the most tries. My failures were all either by dying like an idiot, or to the timer running out with a handful of enemies left.

Overall these weren’t too bad. The Invoker’s is by far the easiest, not just of the crusader dungeons but including the wizard and demon hunter ones as well. Considering I had never really played a crusader much before attempting these, I was pretty pleased at my success. Even without really knowing what I was doing this series was easier than the wizard ones. Now to figure out which class to work on next!

 


Crusader set dungeons

Stormblood for the Holiday

I had a very long weekend for the holiday and spent most of my gaming time with FFXIV. Our Free Company is still very active and it feels so great to have tons of people around and looking to group. I spent a good share of time helping folks knock out story dungeons or just getting faster queues for roulettes. Yes, even as a healer my roulette queues are almost instant right now, while the poor DPS are waiting and waiting. I would love to see the data on the effect adding 2 new DPS classes had on queue times. I suspect it isn’t as drastic a change as we might think since many folks are happy with their chosen role, but I’m sure it did make things at least a bit worse. There’s so very many red mages now.

One of the goals I had for the holiday was to complete the two EX primals that are available. I got halfway there. It only took a couple attempts to get a Lakshmi clear, but I’ve been trying Susano over and over and over to no avail. I am hoping that once I clear it I’ll be able to get into the farm groups that actually know what they’re doing, because I’m so sick of watching the other healer (it’s almost always the healer) stand in the group with the lightning and kill us all. I’d really like to get the weapon from him, since it will be at least 6 more weeks before I can get a weapon upgrade anywhere else.

The big excitement really came yesterday when the first wing of the Omega raid opened up. As is now standard in FFXIV, it had 4 bosses with the token loot system used in Heavensward’s Alexander raids. I got pretty lucky and won items off the first 3 bosses on the first try, so I only had to run V4.0 a couple extra times to get all my gear for the week. I ended up with a belt, a pair of gloves, and 1/2 of a hat. Not bad. I’m hoping to farm Lakshmi a bit so I don’t have to depend on jewelry from Omega as much and can focus on “left side” tokens. Loot aside, the raid was super fun and I’m quite happy with it. I’m curious to see where the story takes us, but I think I already like it better than Alex. I loved the music and a lot of the fights from the Alexander raid, but the story left a lot to be desired. Omega seems to fit in much better with the overall plot of the expansion.

Stormblood has definitely been keeping me busy so far. I am hoping now that most of our raid group is at 70 that we’ll set up a regular raid night again and work on clearing the EX primals and Omega. I’ve been flirting with burnout a bit, mostly because I’ve been running a lot of things on my own and pugging is bad for my mental health. If I can do fun things on the regular with my friends I’ll be a much happier Grace.


Stormblood for the Holiday

Rise of the Necromancer

Yesterday saw the launch of the new Necromancer class in Diablo 3. If you’ve been around this blog a while you know I’m a huge D3 fan, so it was a no-brainer for me to spend $14.99 to pick up the new goodies. I spent most of my evening yesterday checking out the class and some of the other offerings that came along with the newest patch, and came away very pleased.

The first thing I tried when I booted up D3 last night was the new Challenge Rift system. Okay I lied the first thing I did was run to my stash and rearrange things to take advantage of the 2 new stash tabs I got with my necromancer purchase. But after that the next thing I did was try a challenge rift! The system took me a minute to figure out. Namely, to get to the challenge rift, you have to select a character, but before you log into a new game you must go to the game settings. Challenge rift will be a new option for your game type (beside the old story and adventure modes). Selecting this will assign you the character for the randomly-selected greater rift run of the week. When you zone in you’re in a new mini-area where you can learn about challenge rifts, check out your assigned skills and gear, and practice on some demons they keep laying around for that purpose. It was fun to see someone else’s build and try to make it work. This week’s rift was a demon hunter with an impale build. The fact that it was randomly selected means sometimes you end up with strange choices, for instance this person had a cubed ability that boosted fan of knives…but they were not using that skill. In any case I managed to get through the rift in about half the time of the original run so I made it work just fine. I really enjoyed this concept and my main hope is that they either make it more rewarding (the crafting mats were nice but not exciting), or update the offerings more frequently. I can see myself trying it out once every week but I’m not that interested in trying to climb the leaderboards or anything. The real joy of it is just seeing what random build they give you and making the most of it.

Anyway after the challenge rift was conquered I finally made my brand new necromancer. I decided to level via the story since it has been quite a while since I played all the way through it. Like I sometimes do with single-player games, I made things super easy for myself so I could play around and focus on the narrative instead of the gameplay. That meant normal mode and a gem of ease, so enemies just fell over when they so much as looked at me until I got above level 60. I ended up setting on a build that I’m sure will not be remotely functional at endgame but has been keeping me very entertained. I’ve got 1 generator, 1 movement ability, and the rest of my abilities all summon minions of one flavor or other. I had a blast running around and turning the corpses of my enemies into part of my rolling death swarm. By the end of the night I had made it into Act V so tonight I’ll finish up and switch to adventure mode. Hopefully I can get some set pieces and start figuring out a viable build for running rifts.

I expect I’ll be heading back to FFXIV before the end of the weekend, both because all my friends are still deeply entrenched there and because I don’t want to burn out on D3 before the start of the new season next month. Still, I’d say I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of this content pack. The cosmetic stuff is nice, the stash space is amazing for this pack rat, and the new class has been great fun. I am already looking forward to playing as a necromancer next season!


Rise of the Necromancer