Wednesday 24 August 2022

Diablo 3: A few warnings for Season 27 newbies and casuals:



A lot of new and casual players will undoubtedly be looking to veteran streamers or content creators about what class and build to run this season. I'd like to provide a few warnings toward a lesson I learned very early on during my newbie days:

  1. LoD builds are NOT casual or newbie friendlyPeriod. You'll see a lot of content creators, who I won't name to not throw shade, boast about LoD and place their classes in high tier lists simply because the LoD is extremely OP. Like Monks Wave of Light. This is a mistake for new players and casuals. LoD builds are some of the most annoying and tedious builds to put together due to the sheer RNG you're up against. Not only do you need an Ancient drop, it needs to then have a high enough multiplier to go with it and the right extra stats. That's 3 separate RNG mechanics you're looking to get good stats in. For gear where there are multiple options it becomes a nightmare to do. LoD can also be paragon hungry. LoD builds are strictly endgame scenarios where you have a set build you can speed content with for it. Content creators saying otherwise are lying to you because it's their job to play. They can spend hours in a group farming the perfect rolls and mats without any issue while you, the casual and newbie, are stuck alone or sub-optimized or both. Never look to start a season on LoD.
  2. Do not judge a class on its season theme. While the theme adds new powerful build options, they're not guaranteed drops. Understand that these are rare drops and have a 1 in 3 chance of having the affix you actually want. So if you go DH and want Spin to Win UE then you need to first get the drop and then you have a 1 in 3 of it being the spin to win affix. Try to understand it can be a WHILE before you get the affix you want. It's a whole lot like getting a Ring of Royal Grandeur. You can get it first drop or it can take more than 10 runs*(once took me a solid 20)*. Choosing a class strictly for the season power is a mistake. You can end up with a bad start grinding gear horrendously slow and not seeing the power you want. Pick a class you like, that looks fun to you, and go from there to understand. However, if you want less wasted time, go for a class with the best gift and worry about season theme later.
  3. Don't be fooled by content creator runs. Content creators will often tell you a "build is OP" and how it "clears GR100 easily" but don't be fooled. This is often with more than 1k Paragon and extremely good gear. It can take a long time for a casual to hit 1k, especially alone, and even longer to roll good gear. When looking at build videos that show off potential, always make sure to look for 4 things: 1. sub-800 paragon - 2. one or no primals - 3. less than 3 perfect stat rolls on gear - 4. No augments. These things can all highly boost a build into the stratosphere, especially augments, even though they perform terribly at the start. LoD Mages is a perfect example. It performs horribly as you build it but once you have it build with good rolls it becomes a monster of a speed build. However, that takes a while. Corpse Lance is also no different. So be careful when choosing builds, make sure the parameters shown are suboptimal as it reflects YOU when you first start out.
  4. A good Haedrigs gift is not a GR pusher, it's a speed/bounty build. This goes out to all you would-be Necros looking for that new Rathma gift to pump up that GR. It's a bad idea. Just because a build can push GRs easily does not make it a good build overall or a good gift set. Rathma will push deep GRs but it takes ludicrous gearing with a lot of CD reduction, till then it's stupidly clunky and amazingly fragile like all Necro builds. Do not be fooled by all the boasting being done, it is not speed friendly or starter friendly in any way. A good starter set gift is one that can do speed and bounty runs easily. This lets you not only get mats to upgrade and reroll gear faster and more often, it lets you run rifts for keys faster and net yourself more gear per hour overall. It's better to have a speed build that clears Rifts and bounties quickly than a slow as hell build that pushes high GRs. Mostly because starting out you're limited by lack of augments and paragon anyways. Grinding gems for augs and gear is all about speed rifts and bounties to reroll.

These are 4 warnings I didn't know about that actually put me in quite the bind during my first run of a season a few years back. Having learned from my mistakes, things are much smoother now. Hopefully, this advice helps newbies and casuals pick their class for this season. Remember you can always make a class with a great start and gift, grind that out into a speed build, then easily level a class you want to play strictly for the season power. You then use the speed build to farm gear, mats, shards and the season items. It makes the process of gearing much faster and smoother for people who value their time.

Goodluck.

EDIT: Given the lack of literacy let me explain further on LoD. It is FASTER and EASIER to get your journey finished and gear a full gift set. That set will send you directly into GRs and speed Rifts(like current Barb WW). Where as a LoD hits a softcap extremely early based on how many ancients, what the ancients are, the multipliers on those ancients, Paragon and the Gems level. That means you hit the glass ceiling long before a Gift Set does. A Gift Set increase in power per piece is far larger than a LoD because it doesn't require ancients, just multipliers. Meaning it is EASIER and FASTER on a fresh 70 to gear with a Gift Set for speed and GR than a LoD. A LoD shines when you have the pieces, multipliers and HIGH LEVEL GEM. Stop spreading misinformation, LoD is not casual friendly and never has been. You can use it to help get the journey done, yes, but when you pop on the Set gift you instantly outshine the LoD on all builds unless you got obscenely lucky on drops. Which is RNG dependent and irrelevant. Even then, it depends on the set gift itself.