Diablo 3 Season 24 Review

 Diablo 3 Season 24 is now over and it has been a long time since I made new blog so it meant that season 24 was a very long season.  Overall, I am very pleased at what I accomplished this season.  Season 24 introduced a new weapon item called Ethereals and it made all builds more powerful.  I managed to do greater rift of 123, which put me at rank 26 for NA hardcore Witch Doctor.  My seasonal paragon level hit 1413, which was my highest seasonal paragon ever.  My overall paragon is at 2779 now.  There were 3 Ethereal items to collect for each class and if you collected all 21 Ethereal items, you unlocked the achievement which gave you the transmog for the items.  Since I really wanted to get this achievement, I played all 7 classes this season.  I mostly played the Witch Doctor (with 98 hours), but did manage to do pretty well with the other classes.  I hit the leaderboard with the Crusader (rank 940 at greater rift 85) and the Necro (rank 626 at greater rift 80).  I also managed to do greater rift 86 for the Barb, 90 for the DH, 92 for the Monk, and 91 for the Wizard.  I am really happy that I managed to hit the Ethereal achievement and do a very good greater rift for the Witch Doctor.  

My first Ethereal that I found really suited my Witch Doctor.  I was going to play the Mundunugu's Spirit Barrage build and so I was really surprised that I was able to find a good Ethereal right away.  I believe that I was only paragon 10 or so when I found my first Ethereal.  Interesting enough, the first Ethereal that I found was the best one that I did find so I ended up using it for the entire season.  Playing all the classes was a bit difficult since I normally don't play other classes.  It was a refreshing way to play the season though.  In the end, I was really pushing hard on my Witch Doctor.  I managed to augment all my gear again, so this helped me to push a bit more.  I didn't play towards the end of the season because Diablo 2 Resurrected came out and I wanted to try that game and I also I was getting a little bit burned out by playing Diablo 3 a lot.  

Diablo 2 Resurrected was a good experience for me to try again.  I had played Diablo 2 in the past and I haven't played that game for very long time.  Normally I played Diablo 2 in off-line mode so playing Diablo 2 Resurrected through Battle.net was a kind of a different experience.  I played with the Paladin a lot when I first started playing Diablo 2 but the game has changed so much since I finished playing Diablo 2. There were new builds to try in Diablo 2 Resurrected for me.  I ended up playing with the Paladin again in D2R focusing on the Blessed Hammer build.  It was pretty easy to play and I managed to finish Hell difficulty in softcore mode.  I did find some cool items like the Herald of Zakarum, which was a shield I always wanted to find in Diablo 2.  I haven't done any of the end game modes or much farming after finishing hell difficulty but I did have a good time playing Diablo 2 again.  

Season 25 is starting on December 10th and I am excited for this new season.  I will probably play a different Witch Doctor build for this season.  The Arachyr set got some buffs and might try this build.  Another build that I might try is Zunimassa's but that build tends to be less tanky, which means that it is not good for hardcore.  Season 25 will introduce new legendary gems that can be put in your helm or weapon sockets.  I am looking forward to try these new gems and hopefully end up on the top 100 hardcore Witch Doctor leaderboard.  I hope everyone had a good season 24 and I wish everyone a good time in season 25.  

Diablo 3 Season 23 Review

 Well Diablo 3 Season 23 just ended and I ended up having my best season ever.  This season was very fun to play because of the new follower system and the new class set system (which ended up not really mattering to me).  My overall goal was to get the highest greater rift as possible and to finish the Guardian seasonal journey so that I could get the new pet and portrait.  I was really happy with my greater rift finish this season.  I ended up pushing to a greater rift 117, which put me in rank 16 in the NA Hardcore Witch Doctor group.  This was my highest rank ever and I was really surprised that I was able to reach this rank.  I guess there were very few people playing Witch Doctor this season because of all the nerfs that the Witch Doctor got to the Mundunugu's set.  I ended up playing about 118 hours, which is pretty much the normal amount I play in a season.  I was able to reach paragon 1304 (which is the 3rd highest I've reached) and my normal overall paragon now is at 2652.  Also, I managed to finish all the seasonal journey stuff so I got my pet and portrait.  

Season 23 was really easy to begin with because for the Witch Doctor, the starter set is the Helltooth set which very easy to play with.  I did have an early death in the beginning but I didn't lose that much progression because of it.  Even though the Mundunugu set got nerfed a lot, I still think it is the best Witch Doctor set.  I really like playing with Mundunugu set because it is pretty easy to farm with once you get really good gear.  I was able to get most of my gear to an ancient level except for the Ring of Emptiness and the Traveler's Pledge.  All of my ancient gear was augmented to at least rank 100, which gave me plus 500 intelligence each.  I found a real good ancient Gazing Demise which really helped me a lot.  I was really playing consistently throughout the season, I missed playing a couple of days later on because I was so tired from work.  I noticed early that if I could reach greater rift 115, that would really give a good rank for the season.  I pushed really hard at the end of the season and I managed to reach greater rift 115 on the last week of the season.  I wondered if I could push a bit more and I was really surprised that I did.  On the last the season I was able to do a greater rift 117.  

Season 24 is going to start in a few days and I really excited for this new season.  Season 24's theme is on the Diablo 2 ethereal items.  There are going to be new legendary weapons that are custom made and really powerful and only are able to be used for Season 24.  Ethereal items look very cool and I can't wait to find them all.  If you manage to get all ethereal items for all the classes, you get to keep the transmog.  Season 24 is going to be very interesting because soon after Season 24 starts, Diablo 2 Resurrected is going to come out.  I can't wait for this game to come out because I spent a lot of time in the past playing Diablo 2.  Well I hope everyone had a Season 23 and I look forward to playing Season 24.  Hopefully when Diablo 2 Resurrected comes out, I will write a review about it.  

Diablo 3 Season 22 Review

 It has been a while but Season 22 for Diablo 3 just ended.  I didn't think that Season 22 would last this long so it has been a while since I updated this blog.  I had a fairly interesting season of playing Diablo.  I had some specific goals playing this season and I met some of them.  I started out playing with the Witch Doctor again and I managed to do pretty well.  I ended up doing a greater rift of 122 which put me at rank 47 for the hardcore Witch Doctor NA leaderboard.  I really wanted to be in the top 100 again so this goal was achieved.  Unfortunately, my Witch Doctor died due to my computer freezing so I couldn't really push as far as I wanted.  After my Witch Doctor died, I really lost motivation to gear up again so I decided to play World of Warcraft with my free 1 month subscription (more on this later).  In Season 22, I also played with the Necromancer for a bit and I managed to hit greater rift 105, which put me at rank 918.  I think this is the first time that I hit two different leaderboards in a single season.  I managed to reach paragon 1379 for the season (which is most ever in a single season) and my overall paragon now sits at 2546.  I also managed to hit the guardian seasonal journey again.  

Gearing for my Witch Doctor was pretty easy this season.  The starter set was Mundunugu's set so it was pretty easy to start doing high greater rifts right out of the gate.  The seasonal theme of the extra cube slot and the clone were somewhat helpful, boosting the power level up a bit more.  I had some good gear overall, most of my gear was augmented.  I really hurt to lose my Witch Doctor because I worked so hard to augment my gear.  When I played with the Necromancer, I felt it was a bit more powerful due to the seasonal theme.  The Masquerade of the Burning Carnival set (which uses the Bone Spear skill) did a lot of damage.  With the extra cube slot and the clone, it felt very over powered.  I didn't get to play with the Necromancer a lot but I know that it would have done a higher greater rift if I had focused on playing with the Necromancer more.  

After my Witch Doctor died, I decided I wanted to play World of Warcraft for a bit.  I bought the Epic BlizzCon package so it came with a free 30 day subscription to WoW.  I hadn't played WoW since the Warlords of Draenor expansion so I left my paladin at level 40.  Levelling to 50 was pretty easy, I started out playing from the Battle of Azeroth expansion and hit level 50 pretty quickly.  I was really surprised at how easy it was to get to level 50 because usually it takes a very long time to level.  After hitting level 50, I decided to play a bit more so I bought the Shadowlands expansion and I levelled to 60.  The levelling process was a bit more difficult and longer but I really enjoyed the story line quests in Shadowland.  After hitting level 60 (which took me about a week), I played around doing world quests and some Torghast.  The world quests felt fine, they weren't too tedious and pretty simple to do.  There were some quests in the Maw but I really didn't like doing dailies in that zone.  I didn't do any dungeons but I managed to enter Torghast and did some content there.  Torghast was pretty fun, it was pretty neat to see how you could boost your character by choosing which powers to take.  I wish there was a system like this in Diablo so that you aren't always dependent on your gear to tackle more difficult content.  I think I ended up hitting an item level of about 170.  I wish I had a bit more time playing but after 30 days, it felt like it was enough.  

For season 23 (which starts this Friday), I will probably play with the Witch Doctor again.  The Witch Doctor is my favourite class but the Mundunugu's set has been nerfed again.  It really sucks to have the nerf for this set because other powerful sets for other classes have remained the same.  This puts the Witch Doctor at a disadvantage compared to the other classes.  There is a new patch that enhances the followers.  The new follower system should help the solo players a bit more since group players have a lot more advantages when doing content.  I hope everyone had a great season 22 and best of luck to those playing in season 23.