I have been playing a lot of Diablo 3 lately due to lack of time and other interesting games to play solo. Many times, I’m just browsing my Steam Library to find a game that I have not played before. I’ve tried many of these games but it still feels that something is missing. The games are not as rewarding as Diablo 3. There’s always a sense of accomplishment in Diablo 3 that I simply cannot find in many games these days. Even Blizzard’s own games like Overwatch and Hearthstone are both missing that something — reward.
Diablo 3 is still a good game and they have new rewards every season. Season 12 happens to be the season I poured a lot of time in. I raised my Paragon Level to over 300 on both my seasonal and non-seasonal characters. I also geared up a lot of my characters with set gears and Ancient Legendary items. So far, I have enjoyed the gameplay of my Wizards. My seasonal wizard uses the Tal Rasha set and my non-seasonal wizard uses a Delsere set. Each set has a completely different playstyle. My first character is my Demon Hunter and I am yet to get her a set Armor. So far, she has a couple of Marauder pieces which I’m aiming to build, but I kept getting Natalya’s gear.
The Tal Rasha Set
The set armor ins Diablo 3 is the best armor a character can get since it introduces players to a new play style they may not have done before. The Tal Rasha Set relies mainly on mixing elemental damage. Each stack of elemental damage adds 750% damage for 8 seconds. The armor limits the elemental to 4 thus at 4 stacks of the right elements, each damage is increased by 3000%. At this point, any mobs who got caught in this practically melts in seconds. The Rift Guardian melts in seconds. My seasonal wizard had reached Diablo 3’s Greater Rift level 40 which is comparable to Torment IX (9). I tried level 45 (Torment X), but I died a lot and it’s not worth the time invested since mobs are not dying fast enough. I still need to continue to farm Greater Rift level 40 to empower my gems until I can no longer do so due to diminishing return. Her Legendary Gems are almost rank 40 so by that time I think she can easily go through level 45 (T10). Her Paragon level is still level 336 so I think she will need at least level 400 to survive Greater Rift level 45. A lot more work to do.
The Delsere Set
I believe that the Delsere Set is the best wizard armor set in Diablo 3. Not only that this set protects my wizard, it also empowers him dealing massive damage. The only caveat is that everything must be done inside the Slow Time bubble. The play style of this set is very different from Tal Rasha. While Tal Rasha tries to avoid being touched, Delsere invites close contact. The more enemy surrounds Delsere, the more satisfying it is to blow them up. If the weakness of Tal Rasha is melee contact, the weakness of Delsere is ranged attacks. Delsere relies on spamming a Signature Skill in order to reduce the cooldown of Slow Time. If the mob likes to kite and shoot from afar, it becomes difficult to take advantage of the massive AoE skills. Playing a wizard using Delsere challenges me to come up with a strategy on how to deal with ranged attackers. One effective solution was to use Line of Sight. The mob always checks for a line of sight and if I hide around the corner, they are forced to gather at that corner. This strategy works really well especially against succubi. Unlike my seasonal wizard, my Delsere wizard can plow through level 50 (Torment XI) rather easily.
The Marauder Set
When I first played Diablo 3, I chose the Demon Hunter since it closely resembles my Thief in Guild Wars 2. It was hard back then since the system was rigged against the players due to the Real Money Auction House. Many might have forgotten this, but Diable 3 used to have an auction house where players can purchase item drops for real money. Some hardcore player most likely made a lot of money from it but the game became stale after a while since everyone wants to cash in. Every group is looking for Diablo run and nobody is interested in doing anything else. I’m not so sure when they first made the change to get rid of the Auction House, but my Demon Hunter was one of the casualties. When I returned in Season 10, I think, or maybe Season 9, I rolled a wizard for the season. This is how I got the full set of the Delsere armor. I finished the season and I stopped playing leaving my Demon Hunter with her crappy gears. I save the blood shard for my Demon Hunter every time I run GReater Rift with my wizard hoping to finally get her geared up and play through higher levels of Greater Rift. She can handle level 30 (Torment VII) so far but she really needs that set bonus from Marauder set in order to climb up.
The Necromancer
I am still not sold with the Necromancer since the play style is really close to Witch Doctor’s. When I first saw the preview I thought that they will focus more on blood magic. It turns out that it is just another minion master class. I tried to build a blood and bone magic but there’s just not enough choices. It requires the Trag’Oul set to make my build somewhat effective. The Trag’Oul practically inflates my Life for 45 seconds until I doubled my total Life. However, the cost of spells that requires Life is doubled. For instance, the Skeleton Mage with Life Support rune will cost 20% Life instead of 10%. It practically cancels out the bonus I get from inflating my Life points. The healing bonus is great though, but that’s minuscule since Siphon Blood will heal for 4% instead of 2% — not very impressive. I guess this set is forcing me to take the Drain Life rune instead of Power Shift. Once I fully geared my Demon Hunter, my Necromancer will be next to gear up and we’ll see how it plays out.
