4441

I just applied to the guild and would appreciate an approval!

Also, just getting back here after a long break (done some rifting and grifting but not for a while); made a Seasonal character and tried a bounty (sadly, the last item I was supposed to click on was bugged and wouldn’t respond). I will be poking around online today to get back up to speed but if there’s a good site or summary online that would help, I’d love to see it.

4442

I finally got my 6-piece bonus on the Tal Rasha set. It felt like I broke the game, I love it. I was playing mostly on Torment IV but once I got that final set bonus, I just smash the hell out of everything. Time to up the difficulty!

This is the complete opposite of what Diablo III was at launch. That game was a tedious gold grind trying to eek out a few more points of vitality, primary stat, attack speed, etc. It felt very, very MMO-style gear grind to me. Boring. Now, though? Finishing that set turned my wizard into a hurricane of destruction, meteors raining down every which way and bodies being flung all across the screen. Too much fun.

I really hope Diablo 3 gets another expansion, they’ve really turned the game around.

4443

If you can’t click on the Bounty item, run around the map a little and look for monsters that show up with “Skull” icons. Some of the new Bounties require you to kill all of the monsters marked with skulls before you can complete the quest. Sometimes they run out of the immediate area.

4444

That’s a good tip to know about the bounty - that might have been the case (I did run around a bit but I didn’t have a lot of time so I just gave up).

4445

Also for bounties that have you open a cursed chest, sometimes if the chest spawns enemies that you have to kill in order for it to open, one of the little buggers will get caught on the scenery out of view and the chest won’t open until you go and winkle him out.

4446

Managed to get them now, and also made myself a hellfire amulet with a monk passive that gives 40% bonus damage after 3 normal hits, so I moved from around 120m damage per hit on 7-sided strike+exploding palm to 350m or so, seems good :-)

My survival rate took a nosedive though, so I had to reduce my “paperdoll” dps from 800 to 550k or so.

4447

I’ve seen several people mention using the Wildebeest Gizzard jewel (10k life per second at level 1) really increasing their survivability. I’m really curious about that as I’m now at the point of pushing my hardcore WD into the mid to upper 30s on Greater Rifts and so am obviously concerned about maximizing my ability to survive damage.

It seems like with the amount of damaged dished out, in such a rapid fashion at the higher GRift levels, no amount of life per second is really going to help. Even if we take a level 25 Gizzard jewel giving 25k health per second, plus maybe another 25k from other sources - so a best case (?) scenario of 50k/sec - that’s 1/18th of my roughly 900k health. At Torment 6 (lvl 25 GRift) I’ve seen my health drop nearly by half with one good hit. There’s also the shield at level 25, so given 50k/sec that would be 100k shield, but once popped it’s basically gone for the duration of a fight (regens after 4 sec of no damage).

Instead the path I’ve gone down is Esoteric Alteration, which gives 10% resist to non-physical damage, but I don’t really know if this is better. I’ve got it to level 30, so it’s giving 25% resist, plus the second bonus gives 75% extra resist when below 50% health.

One option would be run both Esoteric and Gizzard, but setting aside what to give up, it still seems like Gizzard just isn’t worth it. But I’ve seen that it’s one of the most popular jewels among HC players, so what am I missing?

4448

I use Gizzard on my Wizard. At level 50, it’s 60k life/ second, and a 360k shield. The latter is probably more useful for ranged classes, as you have more opportunity for it to regenerate. Every time I switch to a more damage-oriented gem (my other two are Trapped and Zei, and I’d love to add Stricken), I die much more often.

Also, consider a combination of a Gizzard and a Moratorium (at 45, 25% of all damage taken is instead spread over 7.5 seconds, with a chance to clear all damage on a kill). When both are leveled, that’s essentially a 25% damage reduction.

4449

It seems like with the amount of damaged dished out, in such a rapid fashion at the higher GRift levels, no amount of life per second is really going to help.

No. LPS may be important in the low game, but not in the endgame. It’s like slotting a red gem in your weapon – great when you’re leveling, and just about useless (greens are what you should be slotting) at L55+.

Life per hit, OTOH, is pretty important for some high-level builds (Wizard Vyr comes to mind).

4450

What’s max rank for gems now? I have one at 50 but can apparently still upgrade it further.

4451

To be honest, I’ve never gone beyond Rift Level 27, but I find that the Molten Wildebeest Gizzard is still very effective at that level. Even with life over 1million, the regen from my L26 Gizzard is enough that I feel noticeably weaker without it. Try it out for a bit, it works better than it sounds on paper.

I’m not using it at the moment, but you can also double your life per second with the “Rogar’s Huge Stone” power.

4452

Wow! I started a Season character yesterday and before I was level 15 my WD had found both a Leoric’s Crown and a Nagelring (plus a couple other legendaries). It’s almost as though the game was saying “here, have some toys and have fun!”

Also, my WD pets never die any more (on Hard) so leveling is a lot of fun.

4453

Wow, I just got my first gem to level 30 and I’ve been playing since jewels got introduced…of course, this is the first time I’ve pushed one of my characters into T6+ and have them survive for any length of time. I could see how 60k lps could be helpful, especially as you’ve said with ranged characters. The combo with Moratorium is a great idea.

Still, in about half the times I’ve lost characters, it’s been due something that has amounted to an instant kill where even the resurrect passive hasn’t mattered (meteors, laser beams, etc.). The other half were more mobility related, and so I’m using the power from the boots that let you walk through anything via Kanai’s cube, and I’ve taken a passive that gives me +15% movement (+30% out of combat) so I can move very quickly with little hindrance. It’s the massive damage that gives me the biggest pause now…maybe Moratorium is the answer. I’ve only been running one defensive gem, largely because my damage seems a bit light, but maybe I can make some trade-offs somewhere else.

4454

Lol, reading all that is like higher science, or possibly even Chinese to me. I don’t even know how to get the required cube yet :-). But who knows, maybe in a while I understand what you’re all talking about…

Had a 1.6G download pending when I started playing yesterday evening. Is dat something new, or did my PS4 just not download it the other 10 times I played last month?

4455

You get the cube from the new area in act III.

On gems and the gizzard, I always run an escape skill (or two). On my seasonal Wizard, that’s Teleport, so as soon as I start feeling nervous I bug out and have time to regen. I’ve been extremely happy with it through T6/GR25 or so (need another piece of Del so I can do that silly thing and push harder/farther).

4456

I’ve been having a blast with my seasonal WD. Every time I start a new season character I end up with a build I would have never tried, just because of drops. I’m at the point now where I rarely ever play my established characters because I enjoy starting from scratch so much.

Between hardcore and seasons, there is just so much ongoing gameplay in D3, and the game just keeps getting better. I think it’s in great shape right now.

4457

Swapping to the “30% damage transferred to your zombies” and getting 4-piece Helltooth has let me jump from T6 straight to T8. I’m also using a level 25 Gizzard, which I’m finding very useful at T8 when combined with the “your LPS is increased by up to 96%” ring. Between the LPS shield and the 120k+ LPS at 50% life, I’m finding Gizzard more useful than adding the melee/non-melee damage prevention gems. In sticky situations where I get spikes in damage, I’m using the Firebats damage prevention/LPH bracers, which is able to shoot me right back to full in an emergency.

The one thing that will still give me fits is arcane enchanted elites. Those stupid lasers… No instant kills, but when 3+ of those puppies are overlapped and I get trapped in a pack, I have to hold my Firebats and pray :)

At this point it’s going to be about figuring out how to boost my damage so I can move on to T9 and TX. I have several opportunities for improvements in my gear, which is nice to know. While I have the 4-piece Helltooth set, everything else is mostly a mish-mash. I also only have 2 pieces of Ancient at the moment.

4458

arcane enchanted elites. Those stupid lasers

It’s one of those tooth-grinding decisions on whether or not you want to slot your ring power to Julia’s Cameo.

4459

51+ GR’s are hard. I have not been able to find a setup that gives me enough DPS to beat the timer without constant deaths (which prevent you from beating the timer, as well). Part of this is class balance – wizards are not the top dogs in this patch – but a lot of it is player skill. When I watch videos of people taking wizards up to GR60, it’s amazing how well they move, and how well they stutter-step while firing off abilities.

I like that this game has a high skill ceiling, though. :)

4460

What do people use for their main(left mouse) skill on witch doctor builds? The one thing about the WD is I don’t really like any of the left mouse skills. Right now I’m using the giant corpse spider because I have some bonuses to corpse spider damage.