Diablo 3 Season 12 Review

Well Diablo 3 Season 12 just ended on Sunday and I wanted to write a review of what I accomplished this season.  Overall, this season was a very successful one for me.  My main goal for Season 12 was to play the Necromancer since I didn't get a chance to do it at all last season.  Another goal for this season was to reach paragon 900, which I managed to do in the very last week of the season.  I ended up hitting paragon 911 and my overall non-seasonal paragon level sits at 1513.  I think I could have had more paragon levels this season because I ended up playing about 110 hours.  This is the fewest I have ever played (except for season 1).  As for greater rifts, I ended up reaching greater rift 91, which put me at rank 113 for North American hardcore Necromancers.  I have never hit greater rift 90 before with any of the characters before so hitting greater rift 90 was a good surprise.  I also managed to hit Guardian in the seasonal journey, even though there was no incentive to do so.

Levelling up with the Necromancer is pretty easy, it kind of reminds me of the Witch Doctor in that you get pets that do a lot of damage for you.  I first was playing with the Inarius set.  The Inarius set is pretty easy to play with, especially with the Bonestorm build.  I was using this set to quickly rank up my gems and do bounties with them.  My end game build was using the Rathma set, which is the one with the Skeletal Mages.  Although this set is simple to use and does a great deal of damage, I really don't like how the Skeletal Mages attack sometimes.  It is very inconsistent in that sometimes the Skeletal Mages stand around doing nothing (especially if there are Grotesques around).  I did have a disconnect death in the middle of season but that death only killed my Necromancer who was wearing the Inarius set (so I didn't end up losing my Rathma set at all).  Even with a death, the greater rift progression went pretty smoothly for me. 

For season 13, I am hoping to play with the Witch Doctor again.  I like the Witch Doctor more than the Necromancer because the pets the Witch Doctor has is more consistent than the Necromancer pets.  I also hoping to play a bit more than season 12 since about mid way through the season, I was getting burnt out.  Diablo 3 is a great game when you are finding your gear and working with the end game progression but when it comes to grinding paragon levels and constant gem rank ups, it is very boring and tedious.  I hope everyone had a successful season 12 and I hope everyone has a very successful season 13. 

The ReactorLeak Forum is Back!

Hey everyone.  Just wanted to let all Juno Reactor fans that the ReactorLeak forum is up and running.  The link to the forum is this: https://forum.junoreactor.com/.  There was once a ReactorLeak forum (from 2005 to 2012). When the ReactorLeak forum shut down, most of us Juno Reactor fans connected with each other on Facebook.  Now that the ReactorLeak forum is up and running, there have been lots of good discussion.  Ben Watkins is also very active on the forums so it is pretty easy to ask him questions about what the upcoming album might sound like.

First of all, Ben has given us some of his unreleased music.  "Puttin' on the Blitz" is one that I really, really like.  It was made for the movie, "Bunraku".  It is based on swing music but has a very lovely guitar section and some amazing vocals by Taz.  Another one is "What a Lovely Way to Burn".  I don't like this one as much since it is a bit darker than most of Juno's music.  I think if Ben worked on this a bit more, it would sound much better.  A couple of more music Ben has given us are "Dreams" (which he has given us previously), "Jo's so Mean to Josephene" (a Flowerpot Men remastered song), "Until the Day is Done" (featuring Ben's daughter Simone) and a "Conquistador" remix (featuring Sphongle).

Secondly, I asked Ben about one of his songs that he played at the Ozora and Lublin shows from last year.  He confirmed that the song I mentioned will be on the new album and that it will be called "Return of the Pistolero" (although he thinks it might be called something different, so it won't be confused with original Pistolero).  Ben also confirmed that "Our World" and "Alien" will definitely be in the new album as well

I am looking forward to all the good stuff that is coming from Juno Reactor this year.  The next Juno Reactor album is looking pretty good.  Hopefully there will be a North American tour sometime this year as well.  I know that there are lots of Juno Reactor fans in the US and Canada that are waiting to see Juno live again.

Happy New Year 2018

Well 2017 just ended and I had a very exciting year.  My most memorable moment of the year was probably when I went to BlizzCon again in November.  I hope to have as much fun this year.  There are a few things that I am looking forward to this year.

1)  I think 2018 is going to be a big year for Juno Reactor.  First of all, Juno Reactor's new album should be coming sometime early in 2018.  I am really excited about this because I already have heard some of their new songs and I really like those songs already.  Secondly, I think Juno Reactor will have a new website along with a new ReactorLeak forum in 2018.  I really missed the old ReactorLeak forum because I really miss the interaction between us Juno Reactor fans.  Thirdly, there might be even a Juno Reactor tour coming to the US this year so I am hoping that I can attend one of these shows.  It has been a long time since I last seen a full Juno Reactor show for quite some time.

2)  Could 2018 be the year Blizzard announces the next Diablo game?  There is lots of speculation right now that the developers of Blizzard are working on the next Diablo game (either Diablo 4 or some kind of MMO).  Speculation is also pointing out that this new game will come out in 2019 or 2020.  So it wouldn't be far fetched to think that some kind of announcement would be made in late 2018 or so (@ BlizzCon maybe?).  I am really hoping that Blizzard will announce this at BlizzCon 2018 because it will make the fans of the game really happy that the franchise will keep moving on.

3)  I am hoping in 2018 that I will be travelling a bit more than 2017.  I would love to go to BlizzCon again this year but I would also like to go to a Juno Reactor show if it happens to come to the US.  I am also hoping to visit my friend who lives in the interior of BC.  We first wanted to go fishing out on the BC coast but after thinking about it, that trip might be too expensive for us.  So instead I am hoping to go camping or do something else when I visit my friend.  I wouldn't mind going somewhere else (like Hawaii or Mexico) but I think I will wait a bit more for that.

2017 was a fun year but I think 2018 will be even better.  I will continue to work hard at my job and enjoy myself whenever I can in 2018.  I hope everyone else had a fun 2017 and I hope 2018 will be great for all.

E-sports: Are we there yet?

It's been a while since I last wrote about e-sports that I wanted to share my feelings on it.  There have been many positive (as well as negative) developments in the e-sports world that it is interesting to talk about.  I wanted to write about e-sports again because I just came back from BlizzCon, which had a fairly big focus on the competitive aspect of video games.  Most of the focus was on Overwatch, which is probably going to become one of the biggest e-sport games out there.  Overwatch had a "World Cup" format at BlizzCon, where players from different countries faced off against each other.  Pretty soon the Overwatch League is going to happen, which consists of teams in various cities around the world facing against each other.  Whether or not Overwatch League is going to be successful is yet to be determined but there is many signs that it might be successful.

First of all, each city in the Overwatch League will have an arena where the games are played.  I think for the first season, most of it will be played in the Los Angeles arena but I don't know for sure.  The arena aspect is pretty important to e-sports in general since many people would like to attend a live competitive video game match.  I know that for the Overwatch World Cup at BlizzCon, the arena was one of the things that made e-sports so important.  Attending an arena is really just like watching e-sports on a screen because at an arena, there is a huge jumbotron where all the action is televised.  Watching the video game players isn't very interesting at all since all the action is based around the game. Sure there could be some focus on the players (like how are they feeling or are they having a good/bad time) but most of focus will be on the big screen.  Although the players are not the focus, it is important that they are there in the arena playing and not just playing somewhere else where no one can see them.  Another aspect that I like about e-sports is you get the color commentary along with the visual part of the game.  This is super important because most fans wouldn't know what is going on if there was no commentary when the video game is being played.  This is very different to other sports in general since you never get commentary while attending a sporting event.

While I think that Overwatch League is going to be successful, there are other concerns that show that it might not be so successful.  One of the biggest fears for e-sports is that you never know when the video game will become (or stay) popular or not.  It might be great that 20 million people are playing your game right now but after 5 years, maybe there isn't any interest in the game at all.  This really depends on the video game company itself, whether they will continue to develop their game or not.  One concern is that there is already talk about Overwatch 2, which could vastly change the way Overwatch League is managed.  If there is a new Overwatch game, this could be catastrophic to the new Overwatch League.  I think it will be interesting to watch and see how the Overwatch League and how much success it will have in the next few years.  I think other video game companies are also going to be taking notes and whether or not their own game could become as successful as the Overwatch League.  Although I think the Overwatch League will be successful in the short term, I don't see just one game becoming a great success in the long term.  Video games are constantly changing so I don't think something like the Overwatch League will be around 40 to 50 years from now.  E-sports in general will be around for a long time even though the video games that we will be playing will constantly changing over time.

Diablo 3 Season 12 Update

Well I'm off to a flying start on Diablo 3's Season 12.  I decided to play a necromancer this season since I wanted to play it last season but I knew everyone else would be playing it on season 11.  My necromancer started out pretty good.  The Haedrig's gift this season was the Trag'Oul's set, which is the blood set.  It is very good early on because it does a lot damage.  The only problem with this set is that your health fluctuates a lot, which is very dangerous for hardcore mode.  I was able to do most of my seasonal journey with this set, the blood nova is extremely fun to play with.  After playing with the Trag'Oul's set, I decided to play with the Inarius set.  The Inarius is also very fun to play with because when you trigger Bone Armor, it creates a circling bone armor around you doing damage to near by enemies.  This is often called the Bonestorm build and is extremely fast and the damage output is pretty good.  I am using this set right now just so I can do greater rifts and regular rifts done quickly.  My Inarius set is very tanky, it has damage reduction from the Unity ring, the Aquila Curiass and the Inarius set damage reduction as well.  Although this set is fun to play with, the maximum greater rift that it can do isn't as high as other necromancer sets.

I also tried playing with the Rathma's set, which is the pet build set.  This set uses the skeletal mages and is pretty fun to play with also.  The problem with this set is that your defenses is not very high so you are very vulnerable when there is enemies that can ignore your pets and come running into you.  I might try to build a high end Rathma set but I don't like the fact that you are pretty vulnerable.  Another option for a higher greater rift clear is playing with the Pestilence set.  This set is currently doing the highest of all the necromancer greater rifts.  I haven't played with this set so I am kind of hesitant of playing with this set.  I will probably watch some more guides on YouTube so I know what to expect when I try this set.

Overall, I am having lots of fun playing with the necromancer this season.  I am already at paragon 700 and I hope to reach at least paragon 900 when the season is over.  I have done a greater rift 72 with the Inarius set but I know that I could even doing a higher greater rift with one of the other sets.  I am also almost done with the season journey as well.  I only need to finish 2 more objectives for the conqueror seasonal journey and 1 more from the destroyer seasonal journey.  I should be able to finish completely the seasonal journey very soon.  After this season is over, I want to play with the witch doctor again because I love playing with the Helltooth set and I won't play with the witch doctor until this season is over.