D3 season 28

[Mehrunes]

Gotta drive retention somehow, especially when they're seemingly throwing even more hilarious levels of power at us than usual.

So far it's getting the opposite result and makes me want to quit earlier than I otherwise would have.

Well, it IS supposed to least a SEASON, not two days >_>

I find the Altar requirements altogether fine, with the exception of Staff of Herding, because that makes you waste time on irrelevant stuff. Everything else you get as a result of things you'd be doing anyway, even if it takes a while to get.

There's been more than a week of the season and the stark majority of players play for a few weeks tops. The actual season journey for the cosmetic unlocks is piss-easy to finish and there's no real point to continue playing after that, so gating additional power behind nonsense like that is only making me want to play less.

Like I said earlier, it's kind of weird to expect a months-long season to be fully finishable in the first couple days.

Except it's "months-long" so players can join in late and still do the season journey without feeling forced to do so earlier out of FOMO. No one fucking plays D3 for months on end outside maybe 5 YouTubers dedicated to it. Because, you know, there's nothing really there to keep the players engaged for that long nor does it have the Dev support to achieve that. Especially since I already completed the actual season journey two days ago. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't enjoy being gated out of the new power mechanic with abject bullshit of the game requiring me a 10% chance version of a specific legendary out of way over a hundred.

At least those sorts of things you can get through various means, including the primary endgame stuff. I didn't look at the altar requirements beforehand so I burned my first ancient Puzzle Ring to make gold but found another relatively quickly either through gambling shards or as a drop while running rifts (I've already forgotten).

Now on the other hand, whoever decided it was a good thing to require the Staff of Herding has a special place in hell reserved for their rotten soul...

So far those various means resulted in me burning though more than a thousand legendary materials on rerolls of a normal puzzle ring, god knows how many blood shards on Kadala and around three thousand death's breaths on upgrading the rare ones until I ran out of materials (the legendary ones for rerolls and normal ones for upgrades, with 12-16 breaths per elite those stack up quite quickly). With fuck all to show for it except for one measly extra normal puzzle ring from Kadala.

[chiddie]

So far it's getting the opposite result and makes me want to quit earlier than I otherwise would have.




There's been more than a week of the season and the stark majority of players play for a few weeks tops. The actual season journey for the cosmetic unlocks is piss-easy to finish and there's no real point to continue playing after that, so gating additional power behind nonsense like that is only making me want to play less.




Except it's "months-long" so players can join in late and still do the season journey without feeling forced to do so earlier out of FOMO. No one fucking plays D3 for months on end outside maybe 5 YouTubers dedicated to it. Because, you know, there's nothing really there to keep the players engaged for that long nor does it have the Dev support to achieve that. Especially since I already completed the actual season journey two days ago. So you'll have to excuse me if I don't enjoy being gated out of the new power mechanic with abject bullshit of the game requiring me a 10% chance version of a specific legendary out of way over a hundred.




So far those various means resulted in me burning though more than a thousand legendary materials on rerolls of a normal puzzle ring, god knows how many blood shards on Kadala and around three thousand death's breaths on upgrading the rare ones until I ran out of materials (the legendary ones for rerolls and normal ones for upgrades, with 12-16 breaths per elite those stack up quite quickly). With fuck all to show for it except for one measly extra normal puzzle ring from Kadala.

Both journey and altar are easy. But they require time.

People with a normal pace and without minmaxing take at least 3/4 weeks to complete the journey. And then there’s all the improve gear/paragon path. I play seasons since early 2020 and I never took less than 3 weeks to finish journeys, because I play 6 to 10 hours per week max. Blasters play in 4 days the amount of hours I play in 4 weeks, it’s just logic they complete the journey in less than a week and then they have nothing more to do but gearing alts.

Seasons can’t be tuned around these players, average joes will leave if they see they won’t be able to complete the basic stuff within seasons duration by playing a normal amount of hours.

[Adamas102]

So far those various means resulted in me burning though more than a thousand legendary materials on rerolls of a normal puzzle ring, god knows how many blood shards on Kadala and around three thousand death's breaths on upgrading the rare ones until I ran out of materials (the legendary ones for rerolls and normal ones for upgrades, with 12-16 breaths per elite those stack up quite quickly). With fuck all to show for it except for one measly extra normal puzzle ring from Kadala.

Yeah, it's certainly not a feel good thing either way. I burned through my stockpile of mats rerolling a normal ring as well to no avail. MUCH rather have been farming rifts rather than restarting the game dozens of times to collect the mats for the staff.

[PACOX]

Both journey and altar are easy. But they require time.

People with a normal pace and without minmaxing take at least 3/4 weeks to complete the journey. And then there’s all the improve gear/paragon path. I play seasons since early 2020 and I never took less than 3 weeks to finish journeys, because I play 6 to 10 hours per week max. Blasters play in 4 days the amount of hours I play in 4 weeks, it’s just logic they complete the journey in less than a week and then they have nothing more to do but gearing alts.

Seasons can’t be tuned around these players, average joes will leave if they see they won’t be able to complete the basic stuff within seasons duration by playing a normal amount of hours.

Another reason why I enjoy D3 seasons when I play them, there's no frantic rush. Ive played a lot of games with "seasons" and some of them want you to play like it's a job or you feel obligated to do so because you had to buy in. D3 seasons are always chill.

[chiddie]

Another reason why I enjoy D3 seasons when I play them, there's no frantic rush. Ive played a lot of games with "seasons" and some of them want you to play like it's a job or you feel obligated to do so because you had to buy in. D3 seasons are always chill.

Yeah, chillness is what I like most about D3.

You don’t feel rushed. You CAN rush but it’s fine if you won’t. You’ll get “there” anyways, it will only require some more time.

[Nemah]

Leveled a Witch Doctor up to paragon 123 and promptly died in a greater rift (hardcore, lol).

Going to switch to barb I think. So far pretty fun though. The perpetual experience buff from wells is pretty great.

[Biomega]

Another reason why I enjoy D3 seasons when I play them, there's no frantic rush. Ive played a lot of games with "seasons" and some of them want you to play like it's a job or you feel obligated to do so because you had to buy in. D3 seasons are always chill.

D3 definitely has a "set your own pace" kind of vibe to it, unless you're really into competitive rankings (and if you are, you know what you're in for and that you have to crank hard).

You can make it as quick or as slow as you prefer.

[Jotaux]

Why so many people switched to Wizard? Its really that broken in S28?

I play atm Necro and collecting gear for Blood Nova Trag build but I'm slowly losing interest in D3 again and I wonder if switching to Wizard gonna result in some "faster" farming to achieve my goals (mostly unlocking whole altar and maybe reaching atleast rift 140).

Wizard is insanely broken. Its not really faster at low or even mid GR but its got insane damage and insane survivability. I did a 139 last night and it was like taking a leisurely stroll.

[Mehrunes]

Both journey and altar are easy. But they require time.

People with a normal pace and without minmaxing take at least 3/4 weeks to complete the journey. And then there’s all the improve gear/paragon path. I play seasons since early 2020 and I never took less than 3 weeks to finish journeys, because I play 6 to 10 hours per week max. Blasters play in 4 days the amount of hours I play in 4 weeks, it’s just logic they complete the journey in less than a week and then they have nothing more to do but gearing alts.

Seasons can’t be tuned around these players, average joes will leave if they see they won’t be able to complete the basic stuff within seasons duration by playing a normal amount of hours.

I'm not minmaxing by any means and like I said I haven't played in years, to the point I was pretty clueless about multiple systems (like accidentally upgrading my weapon with vitality because I didn't know the gem color needs to match the stat you want). I'm still rocking the hydra build because I CBA to switch to Tal'Rasha (also with all my resources going to rings I didn't get an opportunity to fish for any staves and so far the normally dropping ones were all normal and with pretty bad rolls at that). And I played D3 maybe 2-3 hours per day because of the season release coinciding with a particularly shitty work schedule with today being my first day off since the season's (and I haven't even played today at all, so I'll only have about 3, maybe 4 hours today left anyway).

The difficulty in finishing the journey isn't even remotely comparable in the artificial gating of altar behind extremely specific RNG. Most of the missions don't even require going beyond torment XIII, which with the levels of power creep in the game I was already doing on day 3. And depending on what you ties you get, you can just finish many of the steps by pure coincidence without having to go out of your way. After which you just need 3 conquests, most of which require just normally playing the game as well, like 3 65 gems. With maybe just a bit of luck for stuff like clearing a rift in two minutes or 350 enemies in a cursed chest (which I outright got by accident while doing bounties since I always waste time to click them when I see one). And those two need only torment X anyway.

Yeah, it's certainly not a feel good thing either way. I burned through my stockpile of mats rerolling a normal ring as well to no avail. MUCH rather have been farming rifts rather than restarting the game dozens of times to collect the mats for the staff.

I'm actually further ahead on the staff than I am on the ring, since I had to do extra bounties as my burning through the upgrades also chipped into the 50 bounty mat stockpile that's also necessary for that altar step, so I am only missing two ingredients now.

[Biomega]

The difficulty in finishing the journey isn't even remotely comparable in the artificial gating of altar behind extremely specific RNG. Most of the missions don't even require going beyond torment XIII, which with the levels of power creep in the game I was already doing on day 3. And depending on what you ties you get, you can just finish many of the steps by pure coincidence without having to go out of your way. After which you just need 3 conquests, most of which require just normally playing the game as well, like 3 65 gems. With maybe just a bit of luck for stuff like clearing a rift in two minutes or 350 enemies in a cursed chest (which I outright got by accident while doing bounties since I always waste time to click them when I see one). And those two need only torment X anyway.

There's definitely a bit of a mismatch now, as they haven't updated the Season Journey difficulty levels in FOREVER. Heck IIRC the reason they don't go beyond Torment XIII is that they were introduced before we even GOT the extended Torment levels up to XVI.

The Conquests are a bit hit and miss. This season they happen to align with basically automatic completion for a lot of them, as stuff like the gems or speed Rift is effectively free. But that's not always the case, and there's also seasons where they're SUPER annoying (like having to clear multiple set dungeons etc.).

But I suppose it's better for them to err on the side of lower difficulty for cosmetic stuff like that, so the casuals don't get ticked off? I do agree it's a bit trivial to complete these days, but I'm not sure it'd be an overall improvement for the broadest audiences if the Journey was more difficult to complete - even if it might be more fun for the upper intermediate levels of players.

At the end of the day, though, this is a Diablo game - endlessly grinding the same shit just to get slightly better items is... what those games ARE. Maybe D4 will introduce meaningful iteration on the formula by making it less repetitive or at least less same-y, but D3 isn't really an egregious case of repetition within the series. That's how those games have worked for over two decades. At least grinding Rifts is more variation than doing your 39573975th Baal run or Chaos Sanctuary.

[mrgreenthump]

Why so many people switched to Wizard? Its really that broken in S28?

I play atm Necro and collecting gear for Blood Nova Trag build but I'm slowly losing interest in D3 again and I wonder if switching to Wizard gonna result in some "faster" farming to achieve my goals (mostly unlocking whole altar and maybe reaching atleast rift 140).

Wizard isn't as strong as Trag, but it's a lot less annoying, plus is a great xp farmer as well, so you can pretty much just run Tal'Rasha for everything and then do T16 content with something else or do the speed Tal's which is somewhat fast, but not the greatest T16 build.

- - - Updated - - -

This. Seasons are meant to last at least 4 months (this one in particular will probably last 5 or 6, they won’t launch another near D4 launch or when D4 S1 will start somewhere in July), they can’t be tuned on blasters.

I just unlocked node 15 (the CR cache node) yesterday evening and I’m still at Chapter V of Journey (still don’t have the full Marauder Set and proper side gear to try Set Dungeon).

I don’t have much time to play, I’m actually at T12 (I made a quick “rush” to GR80 to unlock node 13 but I take 7/8 minutes to finish a GR at that difficulty, it’s not worth staying there at the moment) and still missing a ton of core gear for the actual build and the cube.

Of course if you play like Raxx or Wudi you will crush everything in 24 hours but it’s not how the game is meant to be played by the vast majority of people.

I dunno, it took me like less than 4 hours of extra effort to do the altar and 3 of them was the staff grind because of the queues. You got almost everything while grinding normally.

- - - Updated - - -

Both journey and altar are easy. But they require time.

People with a normal pace and without minmaxing take at least 3/4 weeks to complete the journey. And then there’s all the improve gear/paragon path. I play seasons since early 2020 and I never took less than 3 weeks to finish journeys, because I play 6 to 10 hours per week max. Blasters play in 4 days the amount of hours I play in 4 weeks, it’s just logic they complete the journey in less than a week and then they have nothing more to do but gearing alts.

Seasons can’t be tuned around these players, average joes will leave if they see they won’t be able to complete the basic stuff within seasons duration by playing a normal amount of hours.

The Journey is doable in the first day. Just not much point to do it that fast as you'll get most of it done slowly anyways while doing bounties and stuff. The only thing I had left to do after 2 days of playing normally was the cube powers and one conquest. Granted I did play like 20 hours on the first weekend.

[Mamut]

Wizard is insanely broken. Its not really faster at low or even mid GR but its got insane damage and insane survivability. I did a 139 last night and it was like taking a leisurely stroll.

What build did you use? That standard setup from Maxroll is good?

[kenn9530]

Wizard isn't as strong as Trag, but it's a lot less annoying, plus is a great xp farmer as well, so you can pretty much just run Tal'Rasha for everything and then do T16 content with something else or do the speed Tal's which is somewhat fast, but not the greatest T16 build.

Wizard is the strongest out of all specs in the game in the tal rasha meteor build currently and a few items changes and you have a speed farming version to blast stuff really quickly, you can make most builds pretty good now but wizard is clearly far beyond in terms of damage.

[Jotaux]

What build did you use? That standard setup from Maxroll is good?

Yeah just the version from max roll but I took diamond skin prism instead of black hole to make it easier. Raxx has a speed build I’m going to try when I get home from work

[Biomega]

Wizard isn't as strong as Trag, but it's a lot less annoying, plus is a great xp farmer as well, so you can pretty much just run Tal'Rasha for everything and then do T16 content with something else or do the speed Tal's which is somewhat fast, but not the greatest T16 build.

Keep in mind that when it comes to T16 farming, differences between most of the top setups are VERY small.

We're talking 1:30 vs. 2:00 vs. 2:30 stuff, on that order. Mostly due to the way movement and AoE works, i.e. are you able to press 1 button to delete the entire screen (like DH and Monk can) or are you only deleting 1/3 or 1/2 of the screen. And do you have a way to spam a movement ability. Wizard Tal's with Aether Walker will oneshot their way from elite to elite, so they'll still be VERY fast in T16 - even if they're not quite as fast as DH and Monk. Still one of the top builds, and vastly above stragglers like say Crusader, who haven't gotten love in D3 since 2018 or whatever.

And when it comes to high GR there really is no contest, nothing does high GRs faster AND more easily than a Wizard. Sure there may be some contenders for GR150 records with perfect Rifts and a lot of skill, but Wizard is so easymode it's unbelievable. Any random casual can do GR130 on Wizard this season, and anyone even REMOTELY invested will hit GR150 with only a modicum of effort. It's never been as easy to clear GR150 as it is with a Wizard this season. Ever.

[Mamut]

Gonna roll Wizard and try it out, leveling is so fast in s28 anyway. I have mixed feelings about Trag Blood Nova, channeling and waiting to get those stacks at the beginning feels not that good. And I think my gear on it is way behind my current GR because even at 300 stacks Im getting sometimes one shotted.

[Biomega]

Gonna roll Wizard and try it out, leveling is so fast in s28 anyway. I have mixed feelings about Trag Blood Nova, channeling and waiting to get those stacks at the beginning feels not that good. And I think my gear on it is way behind my current GR because even at 300 stacks Im getting sometimes one shotted.

Blood Nova is great, but requires MILES more skill piloting than Wizard does with Tal Rasha. It's not quite the hold-button-and-afk braindead stuff of GoD DH or WW Barb, but it really doesn't require you to do a lot or pay a lot of attention to positioning, skill interactions, etc. Just move, carpet bomb, win. Fairly low APM compared to other things, easy on the positioning, and mostly automatic - all you really control is movement and spamming the same button to rain hell from above without cooldown, resource concerns, or particular discrimination. There's a few nuances once you get to the high end of things, but it's nowhere near the sophistication of some other classes at that level.

[Mamut]

Is there a way to recraft int into strenght on legendary items for followers? I see everyone use templar with Wiz and getting int pieces on templar feels wrong. Or the differences between followers are not that big and I can just use enchantres with standard breath/key combo?

[Biomega]

Is there a way to recraft int into strenght on legendary items for followers? I see everyone use templar with Wiz and getting int pieces on templar feels wrong. Or the differences between followers are not that big and I can just use enchantres with standard breath/key combo?

You can enchant them the same was as any other gear, if you just want to reroll into a stat that's not your class stat, just go on an alt of the right class to do it. Even a lvl 1 will do, since the stats depend on the level of the item, not the character rolling it.

But honestly it doesn't really matter. The impact of stats on follower gear is VANISHINGLY small. Yeah it matters a little bit and it's technically optimal, but it's also kind of whatever for most casual players. All that really matters is the emanating legendary effects, like Flavor of Time, Nemesis Bracers, etc.

[Jotaux]

Main stat does affect their talents. I just rerolled it on alts