Diablo 4, anyone playing this weekend?

[BugFreak]

Played for a while last night and realized there is one major downfall to my build. With all the war crys and aoe damage I am triggering loot goblins before I realize they are there. For a while now I've been finding little trails of a couple gold as I walk into a new area. I would say at least 1-2 a night and last night I noticed it was a loot goblin running away. Major problem for me but I'm still having fun with the build. On a good note I solo killed a random Butcher spawn last night!

 

[Woomack]

Level 3 does add some challenge to it for sure. I actually died last night for the first time in many games. I don't plan to move up until at least level 70 at this point but it sure will be interesting to see the challenge it brings and how my gold survives. repairing is getting expensive and imbuing is taking a ton of my cash but keeping my barb competitive at this point.

I played for a good bit last night taking part in the Helltide event. If you haven't tried one of those you should give it a go. The shrines you use the points at give some pretty good stuff. Also the Whispering Tree thing gives some great items. I'm not sure if that is available under level 3.

I also started playing with glyphs on the paragon board which is adding a whole new challenge. Luckily they are pretty cheap to refund at this point but I'm sure they will go up as I progress. Definitely a nice way Blizzard allows us to customize our characters.

I die from time to time. Usually in the helltide area when I get stunned and a lot of monsters are around (elites sometimes hit hard). Necro doesn't have a good defense if I pick some offensive skills, and without offensive skills, I feel like I deal low damage and can't finish some events on time. However, yesterday I started improving gear, and I found an amulet with boosts to necro skills +small nova each attack near summons. I can see the damage improvement only with this one item.
The Whispering Tree is available at lower levels, but when you are over 50lvl, then it still gives ~40lvl items and not so many legendary items when your level is too high (or it's my luck). At 3lvl you can get 50+ legendary items and sacred.

I think I have all glyphs already. I feel like I picked the optimal glyph, but I have to think some more about the gear as I'm using mixed items. I try to find more legendary sacred items to make higher upgrades.

I also found out I can add one more summon as the amulet gives a +50% effect, so instead of +2 max summons, it's +3. However, I can choose 1 more summon or a small blood nova aoe around every active summon, each of my attacks. I think the aoe is a better option. I feel like I should wait some more levels as I may waste a lot of money on upgrades and wish to change the gear anyway.

Played for a while last night and realized there is one major downfall to my build. With all the war crys and aoe damage I am triggering loot goblins before I realize they are there. For a while now I've been finding little trails of a couple gold as I walk into a new area. I would say at least 1-2 a night and last night I noticed it was a loot goblin running away. Major problem for me but I'm still having fun with the build. On a good note I solo killed a random Butcher spawn last night!

I don't know when these goblins were added, but I'm almost sure it's a copy from other games. The same thing is in other games like Black Desert Online, but instead of a goblin, it's a thief ... but runs away and drops gold, and you have to stop him so he won't disappear. The same Blizzard copied items and events from Guild Wars (shields were literally the same in Guild Wars 1 as later added to WoW, the same as some early events), and many things from other Korean games. I don't get why with such a high budget and so many people involved, they copy stuff from other games.

I remember that the Butcher was the first boss in Diablo 1. It's somehow hard even on lower levels, and it's harder than most dungeon bosses. I think that maybe 2 bosses in the story were harder than him. On the bright side, he always drops 1-3 legendary items.

 

[BugFreak]

The goblins have been around for as long as I can remember in the diablo franchise with d3 adding the very rare type where you could follow one into the portal. These and the cow level have a been a stable to the franchise. As far as I've heard no one has found the cow level in d4 yet but there are some pretty strong leads at this time. If anything I would say those games copied Diablo but don't quote me on that.

You might try to find an item with or extract/imprint the legendary skill that gives you unstoppable when damaged while stunned. It makes a huge difference for me since as a melee I take a lot of stun hits. I keep that and the aoe from my hammer of ancients on me most of the time while the rest change from time to time. I even add them to yellows if needed for the current item build.

 

[Woomack]

The goblins have been around for as long as I can remember in the diablo franchise with d3 adding the very rare type where you could follow one into the portal. These and the cow level have a been a stable to the franchise. As far as I've heard no one has found the cow level in d4 yet but there are some pretty strong leads at this time. If anything I would say those games copied Diablo but don't quote me on that.

I don't remember when I saw the goblin/thief for the first time, and I can't tell who was first in this case, but many other things Blizzard took from Korean or Japanese MMO that were released before (like pre-2005). It's like when someone did something that is selling then why not to use it. There is no law against it. WoW and some of their other games are mainly popular in the US/EU and Blizzard marketing is pushing it on the "western market". Asian games are a bit different and have more demanding players (mainly because of many more grind hours or higher difficulty levels). It causes that even if one or another side copy anything, then most players won't ever notice that. I remember that when I was playing other games, then some players were mentioning that Blizzard copied many things from other popular titles (and had some good examples, but it was years ago and I don't remember most of that).
Diablo is another thing. When the first part was released, barely any game was similar. It was something fresh and somehow new (even though was looking a bit like Baldur's Gate then felt different in any way). Back then, Blizzard was very small, and I feel they just went for the money after the second part. I remember a lot has changed and they grew pretty fast. Everything else was only about money and gamers see that clearly. Especially Wow was a hard push for the money since release. It had the most expensive subscriptions, but people were paying, so why not. Only Final Fantasy Online was more expensive when was released some time later.
Just my thoughts about Blizzard. Diablo is the only thing I like from their games. Probably because there is nothing similar on the market and most new games are too colorful and candy-looking.

You might try to find an item with or extract/imprint the legendary skill that gives you unstoppable when damaged while stunned. It makes a huge difference for me since as a melee I take a lot of stun hits. I keep that and the aoe from my hammer of ancients on me most of the time while the rest change from time to time. I even add them to yellows if needed for the current item build.

I have some unique items, but most are useless. Like armor is great, but with skills that I'm not using. I'm using only an amulet as it gives additional aoe dmg. Yesterday I got a unique scythe but it's also useless for me.
On Saturday I moved to 4 difficulty level as on the 3rd many things were too easy, and I wanted better gear. Dungeons are much harder, especially when I moved at 68lvl and I still had some 45lvl items. I still have one 45lvl and I'm 72lvl now. I don't know why but I get almost only garbage from events and bosses now. Yesterday I passed helltide 3 times, clearing most chests and I had almost only yellow items from them. The same from the tree.

I went summons+blood so I run with 13 summons and deal aoe blood dmg that is healing me. I have additional +blood nova +aoe with every nova. I only have problems to regenerate essence fast enough so I could spam it all the time. I also took all special paragon nodes for summons. I still feel it could be much better, but I can finally see every upgrade as I die less and clear faster in time.
I'm not sure how long I will play D4 as it feels like I did almost everything already and almost only grinding for better items left. I still have some side quests and stuff that appears at higher levels, but I feel that not much will surprise me anymore. We will see, I hope there are many things I haven't seen yet, and will be some larger updates.

 

[Woomack]

76lvl and I made the thorns build. I have no idea if it's good as I heard that in general, it's nothing special, but also, almost no one is using it, and barely anyone tested it in D4. With the unique armor, I'm at 11k thorns and have additional add-ons to use % of my thorns on summons + spread it to all near monsters + maxed passives. I also changed summons to more defensive, and I see that I kill faster and stay alive much easier. Replacing the gear takes the most time, as from regular drops I get barely anything good, and changes to existing items cost a lot of money. Good items seem to be almost only from dungeons and world events (boss/legion). I don't even get any good stuff from the helltide anymore. Maybe it's my luck, but most chests have only yellow items.
I see that most necros go with builds posted on the web. I dislike playing like others, and I never take builds from the web. It's maybe not always optimal, but I like to play my way.

 

[BugFreak]

I generally ignore the web builds as well. They either use very rare items or are too simple for me to bother with. Not to sound old but I've played Diablo longer than some of those people have been alive anyways. My Fury/HOTA/Warcrys build hasn't even been on the web radar but until it stops working well I'm keeping with it. In fact I've seen very little at all about using warcrys in general which I find odd considering they've always been a core use of barbs. Especially with items adding to Berserker time and damage so much. So far I've solo killed anything I've come up against and barely take damage most of the time so unless it doesn't age well with 70+ level monsters I'll stick to it. My son and I tried to move to t4 but his 56 druid couldn't handle the dungeon and my 61 barb wasn't quite powerful enough to keep him alive with all the vampiric mobs leeching him. I think solo I would have been fine though.

With the exception of swapping out an item to try a new legendary skill I'm also not finding anything close to what I currently have. All my items are max upgraded and add to my build considerably so I can't see switching them out anyways. My amulet is far below my current drops but gives my HOTA 65% area of effect which I can't lose. This alone often one hits adds when I'm fighting an elite. Most weapon drops are hundreds of damage lower than what I have. I am finding armor close to my defense level but the addons usually suck. One thing I've noticed is I'm getting better drops the more south I go. The items are at least close to my level there.

I've used the sigils to upgrade dungeons to t1 and 2 and both seem to be no harder for me. I found a t4 which I'll try tonight if I get time. Hopefully the drops will get better then.

 

[Woomack]

T4 seems fine at 70+ lvl with ~70lvl gear. I went at 68lvl and at first I had problems because my gear was mixed 45-67lvl and I was missing a lot of paragon boosts.

I'm at t21-22 dungeons and with the new build I can pass it, while before I had problems with some strong elite groups.

 

[BugFreak]

Finally made it to world level 4 and wow do I love it! The mobs are much larger and compact. It feels like the mass chaos I expect Diablo to be. Most of the time I can't even see my barb in the pile of bodies and monsters. So far I've found a couple new items but for the most part I'm still way over geared I guess. With the exception of tweaking my build to add bleed effects and extra damage to bleeding enemies not much has needed changing. I did switch from Frenzy to Lunging Strike as my basic to activate the bleed and get more fury per hit but that's it. One or two good hits with hammer of the ancients and the entire mob goes down.

I'll add that I'm starting to see videos about hammer of the ancient barbs so I guess people are picking up on it. Hopefully this doesn't mean Blizzard will nerf it.

 

[Woomack]

One thing which I dislike is how Blizzard is milking money from everything. The game was clearly overpriced and in a couple of days they release the first "season", already advertised as buy the new content. It passed barely a few weeks since release and they ask to pay them more.

I also feel that there is something wrong with monster damage. I have no idea why but one day I clear the whole helltide without a single death, I pass dungeons, do other events and no problems. Another day I randomly die to 1-shots from various things. The most annoying is when I kill elites and I "die by environment" from a fire blast or something else. It's instant and I lose the whole life. One day I lose 1/3 hp, another day I always die on 1 hit. I just feel that something isn't right. Btw. above 80lvl most elites have these aoe blasts after death and it's like 3-5, so it's sometimes hard to evade them.

Another thing is that sometimes I feel like I deal very low damage. Even 20k+ hits from overpower can be barely seen on monsters' hp bar. It's not all the time, more like from time to time but lasts for a while. It's very weird as sometimes I attack maybe 10 times, hp bars are barely moving and next 1 hit and elite dies. It's not lag, but I'm not really sure what it is.

I couldn't find any better build with minions that I would like, so I run with mixed minions/defense-thorns-freeze + armor focused on thorns and overpower damage + minion and overpower paragon boosts. It's like minions attack everything and I use aoe with overpower that deals 20-50k dmg right now. Worse is that overpower can be used every 5-12 hits.

On t4 you will see a lot of "leechers". I mean people who with help of others moved to t4 at 50-60lvl and now are following you expecting you finish an event and they get a reward. The same a lot of them are usually on world events like the legion gathering or the world boss. Then you see they are dealing barely any damage but often die.

 

[BugFreak]

I was complaining to my son about the random low damage last night. My barb usually hits for 100k-250k+ with hammer of the ancients but sometimes I get one leftover monster that I hit on forever before it dies. I get the feeling they are tweaking things in the background to counter these 1 billion damage builds people are doing. I figure they will get it nerfed about the time I get the last couple items I need to make my barb basically invincible. All I have left is getting the cool down timer on my war crys down a little more and I'll have a bubble or fortify up 100% of the time.

I think they're releasing this season already because enough people bought the game version with the first season included. Not to mention the whole season thing must be working considering they are still releasing seasons on D3. Personally I've never liked the whole season thing companies are doing and rarely buy them. Its one thing for a free game like Fortnite to do it but in a game I bought I'm not a fan. I get this one for free but see no reason to buy additional ones so I can get fancy colored armor or something like that. Expansion packs I'll buy but not gimmicky seasons.

 

[Woomack]

I feel like my necro deals quite low dmg. I kill everything without problems and looking at other players who sometimes invite me to parties or just kill monsters near me, it doesn't look bad. Just numbers seem quite low. On the other hand I have no idea what real damage deal minions as I see a full screen of low dmg hits, but like really a lot of them, so I guess that large numbers come from adding them up. My golem itself has like +400% dmg and sometimes I see that anything that hits me gets like 10-15k dmg (I guess from thorns as I have over 15k now).

 

[Woomack]

This is a bit pathetic, but there are bots in Diablo 4 already, and there isn't even an option to report them. Literally, you can't report bots or anything similar as there is no such option in the support tab, while anything you try to send as "general" is not passing as the system automatically moves to suggestions about your problem.

Farmers and account sellers were spamming me already, too ... both in-game and via friend invites. I had about 15 friend invites with buy gold/account info last week only.

 

[Trap05]

I had those friend invites too.

 

[Woomack]

All those low levels at the t4 difficulty are really annoying. People just follow me and pick up event items as if someone else kills monsters, then other players can pick something too. Yesterday I had a world boss. 90lvl, and most other players were 50-60lvl. The same in legion events. Most who I see are ~60lvls. No gear and die often. Each time I get party invites by 50-60lvls ... so they get more exp

Btw. 92lvl and I think I will change my build, but I will wait for some more levels, so I can get the highest level items. I already changed some gear and paragon nodes and went from 30-40k up to 50-70k dmg/overpower. For necro it's more like every 5/12 hits, I have a guaranteed overpower hit, and since I'm using all 2 skills, then it almost always deals dmg to everything around (aoe is pretty large).

What I see is that randomly monsters deal clearly bugged damage. I can have full hp+fortify and still die on a single hit. Like, I can clear the whole helltide without a single death, and then I die on a single hit from a bear or tree or whatever that seems a pretty easy opponent.

 

[BugFreak]

I'm sure its only a matter of time before I get the bot/sales invites but so far its not too bad. I'd imagine they target the necros and sorc builds because they are easier to leech. I don't stay in towns or random lands too much so that might help too. I pretty much do NM dungeons over an over unless I see a helltide event then I go there.

I'm up to 79 and so far I can solo 23-24 sigil NM dungeons and drops are so-so. 25 gives me more ancestral but I die too much and sometimes fail. Teamed with my son's druid we can do 25+ no problem. I'll get a full bag of sacred and ancestral items with maybe 4-5 equal to my current item levels. Rarely do I use any unless I take a legendary skill and apply it to my current gear. I finally got the chest armor that is supposed to make my build unstoppable but it made it worse imo. While it did randomly lower all my shout cooldowns it does so at such a random time and only to one at a time so I end up with one shout on while others are off which is too hard to anticipate the incoming damage. I guess that's what I get for listening to a youtuber so I'll go back to ignoring them and do it my way.

I definitely get those random one hit deaths in t25 but t24 less so. I'm also still getting stuck beating on one random monster after clearing a room. Its usually a leftover skeleton or something like that which just won't take damage so I agree there is something up with the damages. Between that one the one hit deaths its very annoying.

 

[Woomack]

Three bots that I saw so far had twitch in their names. I assume they bot to go to the max level and then make money from streaming.

I feel a bit weak when I can do t30-32 dungeons at 92lvl, and they're up to t100
I'm doing dungeons to boost my paragon nodes. The higher the dungeon, the more exp you get, but it's faster to speed-run a couple of lower level dungeons than make one higher, where you can die multiple times. I can do t30+, but I can run through t22-26 killing 2-5 required elites or put 2-3 stones on pedestals and kill the main boss in barely a few minutes. You could say it's no fun, but either way, you have to pass the same dungeons multiple times, so it's no fun anyway.

Thorns are great in theory ... but someone has to hit you, and you are supposed to try to evade attacks, so in the end it's not so great. When I have max throrns, then sometimes I see elites die when they hit me ... like one hit and dead Worse is that they still deal damage to me. I guess I will just boost my damage and try to kill everything before I get hit.

 

[BugFreak]

Wish I could do 30+! I would imagine we clear a dungeon in a couple minutes and agree, the faster the better.

Quick damage is how my build is. I know some barbs are using the thorns but my plan was kill them so fast thorns doesn't matter. I do use bleed but more for the extra damage bonus I get once they are bleeding. I doubt it kills anything or even has time to damage them. So far I'm at a little over 600% crit and overpower damage combined so just about everything goes down pretty quick. Except for those pesky guys I have to beat on sometimes.

For now I'm leaving everything as is because Season 1 is going to change a lot I think. I figure they will be changing how damage stacking works so all these huge damage builds will change dramatically. The easiest way would be to force the system to use the highest bonus then not stack the others like it is now but who knows what they will do. Regardless I'm waiting to plan a character until after I see the new changes but might make a WW barb depending on the nerfs.

 

[BugFreak]

Huge patch tonight for the start of the season and it looks like my build is one of the early targets. Something about the damage at the end of the hammer splash damage. Hopefully it won't kill it completely.

 

[Trap05]

I'm curious to get it patched and see if I notice them fixing anything or just making things worse

 

[Woomack]

The patch was over 7GB for me and it was downloading at about 1-100kb/s for most of the time. It took about 5h to update and so far I see no difference. Some quests are still not working and problems with them were since beta.