Act IV was nice, especially after Act III.
I’m at lvl 70 now with my rogue. Some random thoughts about the game:
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I’d recommend moving to Nightmare and Torment world tiers as soon as possible. I did the Nightmare Capstone dungeon at lvl 50 and the Torment at lvl 58. Died a couple of times to Elias, but it was still doable. The level of drops increases significantly at higher tiers, so it’s definitely worth it, even though you’ll be fighting mobs 15 levels higher than you initially. You can also get higher tier gems earlier as drops than you can craft them.
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The paragon system is pretty fun.
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The aspect system has both good and bad sides. I got the build I wanted online prettty quickly after lvl 50, after which all I’m really looking for is stat upgrades on the items I already have. This means that any given yellow rare drop is equally likely to be an upgrade as any legendary drop, other than a small chance to drop a marginal improvement to an aspect% I already have from the legendaries. This means I have to shift through all rare drops looking for upgrades, and I’m also not that excited to see that legendary color on the ground.
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Inventory and stash management is a massive chore after a while, even more so than it was in Diablo III.
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I thought the story was fine until act VI, which was pretty great. Main minor complaint I have is that it makes no sense in the epilogue for Lorath and the MC to let Neyrelle just carry a Prime Evil around. A small dialogue change of making it so Lorath is looking for Neyrelle, but can’t find her would fix this. It makes no sense to “honor her wishes” when it’s pretty clear Mephisto is manipulating everything. There’s already bad precedent for letting teenagers carry Prime Evils around in soulstones.
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I used to play Hardcore seasonal in Diablo III, but the many system related instabilities in the game make me consider if I want to do it in IV. Diablo III had the possibility of an unfair death from a DC too, but I don’t remember it being quite as likely as in IV.
I’ve had enough lag-caused and DC-caused deaths in D4 that I’d rage quit if I tried doing this game HC.
They’ve made it very unfriendly to people who like HC.
They’ve made it very friendly to do alts though.
Same, but every class in D3 had one “get out of jail free card” passive that brought you back to life once every 2 or 3 minutes also. I don’t think there is anything like that here.
Sorceress can use a flame shield enchant (is that what that slot is called, the one you get two of that is a passive bonus) to heal back when you receive fatal damage, once every few minutes.
You can craft immunity on fatal damage potions in D4. Those replace the old D3 passives.
It’s broken again.
New patch, mostly minor buffs to all classes. Also you can now teleport directly to nightmare dungeons as well as they getting significantly boosted exp. Same with helltide chests and whisper quests.
That’s an awesome QoL improvement I appreciate.
Not that it’s that bad using portals and a horse, but there have been times I just missed an event.
It would be great if world bosses get this too.
Happy about some nice Druid buffs, also fixing that weird co-op thing where attacking the same monster at once gives you two different health bars with two different amounts. That was weird.
That was weird. Lost my first nightmare dungeon after clearing probably 100 of them. Every single death was a 1-shot from full health by a shivering blood magus. Not even stun locked and mobbed, which are the majority of my deaths. I’ll have to see what attack they have that was doing that.
I hate being stunned. I hate being stunned so much.
We finally got The Butcher. Aided by the fact there happened to be two of us and a giant pillar in the middle of the room that we could use to dodge around. Surprisingly, he did not seem to like my Hurricane. Drops were good.
Level 48. Tried the Capstone Dungeon and it was kind of a slog so decided to come back later. Focusing on Tree of Whispers stuff. I hit some kind of bug where the system didn’t “complete” the first set of ten… grim thingies, so last night when my husband and I approached the tree to cash in, I got nothing. I guess I had to talk to the tree after my initial cash-in and since I didn’t, it didn’t count everything I did since.
I like the tree. I asked my husband if he would want to be on the tree and he looked at me like I was crazy. “But what if I’m there with you?” Still no.
My Druid is much more of a tank than my Barb. Healing every time I cast storm skills, plus an item that reduces my damage whenever I’m using my Basic skill, and just picked up one that heals me X% whenever I’m near a close enemy (which is always.)
My Barb is getting better. Tier I Level 30 Act II. Still kinda squishy but the frenzy/dual wield build is more fun at least.
I’m doing nm dungeons in the high 40s now and “sometimes you just explode” is probably my biggest issue. Just gotta take slow, but I get into farm mode and the deaths start piling up. Haven’t actually lost one yet, but it’s been close.
Congratulations! The best I’ve done so far is survive him long enough for him to get bored and leave.
I keep getting great drops, both gear and aspects, for a different build. I think blizzard is telling me to respec. I have 4 nearly perfect whirlwind barb pieces and no slots that I consider done on my current build.
Do it!
Seriously though, a couple of times I found some great drops that made me tempted to change my build, so I did, and it completely woke me up to new possibilities. It changed the way I played.
There are some builds that are made great with the right gear, and others that suck without the right gear and then turn awesome.
If you’re not sure about it, toss your current gear in the stash and change back if it doesn’t work for you.
We unlocked the paragon board. Wow that looks fun! We have the day off, and the kid is in daycare, so it’s on today!
I can definitely see what folks are saying about the endgame being where it’s at. I’m really excited to see where it goes.
Here’s what I like about paragon. Yes, you advance only incrementally, and most of the tiles you unlock give minor benefits, but you get 4 paragon points per level as opposed to one skill point, so progression actually feels smoother once you get that far. That’s my experience at least.
It’s interesting that D4 works the opposite of most RPGs I’m familiar with, where you feel like you advance quickly then it slows down at endgame. I feel rather like things pick up more at the endgame. It’s so refreshing.
Diablo, since at least 2, has been about getting max level and then grinding better gear and improvements. Probably appeals to a very specific segment of gamers.
Agree that paragon is pretty incremental with the caveat that glyphs can make dramatic improvements. The glyph that makes all the enemies vulnerable is huge for a barbarian when so many skills depend on vulnerable enemies. And they’re generally more important than the legendary nodes.