Offline Journey tracker, for those interested.
If any of you get stuck on your way to conqueror, hit me up, I can carry any of the T13 bosses, assist with dungeons, carry GR’s so you can get gems to 50. Probably carry a T13 rift in under 5 minutes with a good run. T10 and 12 rifts with ease.
Happy to try to arrange to be online for overseas times, especially this week as I will be up late to virtually attend US conferences for work.
Yeah, I think I’m getting close to T12 in 6. T13 in 5 is going to be a rough go. Hoping I can polish off the no-set conquest soon…
I just figured that out myself a couple of days ago.
I leveled the Thorns Crusader using the starter set and got to T11 but my wrists started bothering me. It requires a lot of clicking. I tried switching to the LoN bombardment build but that’s even worse, I move so fast it’s hard to keep him on track and doing what I want. Awesome progression build, crappy farming build.
So I made a Gem of Easement, threw it in a Furnace and leveled up a Monk & Wizard to 70 in an hour and a half each. I decided to go with the Monk, the kinetic feel of the build is just fun and it’s highly mobile. Unfortunately the lack of a free set is majorly slowing me down. I can clear T4 easy enough but I don’t have any sets yet for him, just a bunch of ancients that I needed to modify the Str->Dex from my Crusader.
The free set for the seasons was a brilliant move. I could never muster the patience to get that far and that gives such an immediate burst of power after each acquisition that I got addicted to D3, which never happened before.
Yeah, it makes it a lot of fun, and rewarding for people that don’t want to spend massive amounts of time, but power up a character. I actually have 4 full barbarian sets as of this morning (got shoulder drop for Raekor’s and gambled the shoulder for Wastes).
I’ve been very critical of D3 in the past because of the build fluidity. However, at this point (as opposed to launch when this wasn’t the case) at least they are leveraging that in interesting ways with stuff like the set dungeons, conquests, etc. which would make no sense with fixed builds. Hopefully they keep coming up with more ways to do that.
Did PC ever get the Nemesis system? Once I played on Console I never could go back to the PC and the only thing I was missing was the Seasons and those finally made it to console. The dual stick controls just feel really good as does the dodge evade ability. Really helps with my arthritis.
Nope, no Nemesis system on PC.
I’m starting to get a little burned out. I’ve had the 6 piece Barbarian set for a while now, and can comfortably do T6, but T7’s starting to push it. I’ve done GR30 in about 10, but it’s tough going. I’m not finding any better gear, and don’t see what or how to improve on what I’ve got anyway unless there’s much better stuff out there that’s just not dropping for me. I mean, there’s got to be better stuff, right? Leveling up some legendary gems and raising my paragon level as I go, but it’s hard to tell if it’s helping much; certainly not enough to get in to the T10 level that many here are able to.
Oh well, I got farther this season than last at least.
What’s your battlenet id? Link your toon’s paperdoll for some friendly critique! 😀
Thanks.
I went with the crusader invoker season set on hardcore - currently T12-13. What I can’t figure out is if Hack or Pig Sticker is the better weapon. And if Sanguinary Vambraces or Heart of Iron is better in the cube. Any testing I do is super unscientific and I’m wondering what will let me push furthest.
In the same spot with my Crusader. I am just sticking at T6 for now. Trying to get a couple of germs up to level 25 so just running rifts over and over. Not quite sure what else to do other than extract some better legendary powers. The first set dungeon is kicking my ass as well.
Make another seasonal barbarian. Start them in adventure mode and get them to level 8, then park them in town without leveling further. Gamble boots on that character until you get Lut socks. Extract the legendary power from those in the cube and equip it on your main. Congrats, your damage just tripled. (The reason you do this is because being exactly that level makes the possible pool of legendaries very small and you aren’t going to actually wear them, you just need the power).
After that, I’d gamble belts on your main, looking for a girdle of Giants. After that, I’d gamble rings looking for focus & restraint or 2h mighty weapons looking for blade of the tribes.
OK, I’d also do this…
Gear
Helm - put a diamond in it (Cooldown Reduction). CDR refreshes leap sooner, leaping keeps you alive (set armour boost).
Amulet - re-roll attack speed for a socket and put another legendary gem in that. Also look to do a Hellfire Amulet run for a better replacement and free passive.
Shoulders - re-roll life for CD, see helm.
Chest - re-roll Furious Charge damage for anything, probably Vitality
Gloves - re-roll resource cost for crit damage
Bracers - fine as is, but replace for anything better - leg with a more beneficial effect or anything with dual crit.
Rings - I am presuming you rolled sockets onto them, but I can’t tell. If the sockets are native, re-roll the missing crit stat onto both. Ideally you will replace them with legendaries, but if you have none, craft yellows until you get one with a socket and one crit affix. Roll the missing crit affix onto it for a dual crit ring. Crafting dual crit rings is pretty cheap, gems will be your limiting factor.
Pants - re-roll regen for vit.
Boots - fine
Weapon - fine
Gems - OK. Get key gems to top tier ASAP - weapon and helm. Ultimately, you will work towards more rubies than diamonds for chest and pants.
Paragon Priorities
Movement Speed, Str, or Vit if desperate
Crit hit, crit damage
Resist All, Armour
Area Damage, Life on Hit (prioritise LoH if desperate)
Skills
You need to build fury quickly and spend it faster - spending fury resets leap, leap keeps you alive.
Your generators need to be generators first, they don’t do your damage anyway. Switch Cleave over to Reaping Swing, or switch to Bash Instigation. Frenzy Beserk is another option, but probably not with a slow 2-hander. I’d probably stick with Cleave for the moment.
Ground Stomp and a secondary generator is pretty fine. Consider switching to Deafening Crash, however, for the reduced CD and damage mitigation. That said, the Wrenching Smash pull is a good pairing with Cleave for generation if you don’t need the extra mitigation.
Seismic Slam is groovy, that is your spender. I’d probably switch to Permafrost for mitigation or Strength of the Earth for health recovery. Leap, Ground Stomp, Cleave, Slam, Slam, Slam, Cleave, Cleave, Slam, etc, until Leap resets, rinse repeat.
Earthquake - switch to Chilling Earth. Whenever Earthquake is on your bar, whatever rune is selected will proc when your Leap causes Earthquake. Chilling Earth is great damage mitigation and you want to trigger that mitigation every time your Leap comes off cooldown. Alternatively you could use the Cave-in rune for pulling with Earthquake and use Deafening Crash for the mitigation. If your mitigation is in good shape, just for for the extra damage of Molten Fury.
Avalanche - looks fine, proc’d with your belt and with a good damage mitigation rune. But, I’d consider swapping it for Warcry for the generation and damage mitigation. Pick a rune that fills mitigation gaps - more armor with Hardened Wrath, Health regen with Invigorate, etc. Avalanche does do some damage, but ultimately you want your goal to be resetting Leap as soon as possible to trigger armour boosts and more Earthquakes, particularly while you don’t have Lut Socks.
Passives look fine.
Legendary Gems
Your priorities should be Bane of the Trapped, Bane of the Powerful and Esoteric Alteration. Two damage multipliers and one damage mitigator. If you have all of those, put them in and get them to level 25 ASAP. If you don’t have them, run some more GR’s. GR level does not matter, just get the gems as quick as possible.
Cubed Items
Armour and jewellery slots are fine, until you get those Lut Socks for the armour slot A better weapon ability would be great as the Decimator ability just won’t be contributing all that much.
Things you want to keep an eye out for and not just salvage
Focus, Restraint, Lut Socks, Band of Might, Girdle of Giants, Nemesis Bracers, Broken Crown, Goldwrap, Ancient Parthan Defenders, Bracers of Destruction, Blade of the Tribes
So a bit more crit and cooldown, get another couple of legendary gems, change a couple of skills for mitigation and faster leap reset and I think you should be good to bump a couple of torments.
Cave-in is awesome. And mitigation is on leap (DfA).
You really shouldn’t need a fury generator other than leap, once you have Lut socks. Just need the Earthen Might passive and good to go.
Those boots sound like they’d be great to have, but alas no drop like that so far. I’ll keep looking. Thanks for the heads up.
Cave-in does sound good, but it’s hard to pass up TMC’s CD reduction to 30 seconds. With Leap on a 10 second CD that’s a long time between mitigations.
Do what I said above and you will have the boots in no time. When you can leap three times (making three earthquakes) the cd on earthquake becomes pretty much a non-factor. Add in blade of the tribes, and you get even more. Don’t forget that your set increases the effect and duration of your protection from leap. There is no downtime, and the more fury spend, the more of a buffer you have between being able to recast and when the protection ends.
Just to clarify one thing, damage from earthquake stacks, so pulling enemies in will cause them to take damage from more than one. That’s why cave-in so great.
Thanks for the analysis sharaleo. I’ll take a look at all of these items ASAP.
Yep, the mitigation from the leap lasts in the vicinity of 6 seconds (4 sec default x 150% set bonus increase). So, you only have 4 seconds to worry about getting squashed, which you can reduce further with the cooldown reduction. It goes away even further once you get the Lut Socks because you spend more time jumping, but I still found the CDR necessary.
That’s an increase of 150%. 4*(150%+100%) = 10
Yeah, that sounds better, thought it was off and had to fire up D3 to check my barb! It’s the Band of Might with the 8 sec CD.
Anyway, for reference with 27.5% cdr (diamond in helm, paragon points, cdr on shoulders), I get leap to refresh in just shy of 7 seconds.