Sunday, May 14, 2023

Playing The Underdog in Diablo IV

Man, I can't wait for Diablo 4, y'all. Stress Tests Slams and Bust-em-up Beta Beatdowns, here I am! I am in for the hype and all the stupid Blizzard crap. BRING IT ON!

. . . and yet what dumb class am I playing for beta and the stress test? Not Necromancer!  No no no . . . I chose to play the underpowered, underdog class: The Druid. What am I thinking? I'm the Friendly Necromancer after all?! BUT, I love me an underdog.

Large and in-charge . . . Stingite the druid.

Well, it wasn't all bad as that to be honest. The weird thing is, I actually enjoyed myself better on the first go 'round that happened back in March. The main reason being that I found some great gear that made playing a lot of fun.

Basically the gear I had made Boulder a core skill and cut its spirit cost and damage by a bit. In addition to that I had another piece of gear that made core skills deal an additional 7% damage per each active companion, so there was some really nice synergy there. I loaded up 3 companions, and I was chucking boulders everywhere and having a great time with it.

Loved this combo . . .

This time around, I didn't find any Legendary gear.  All I had was yellows, and it was much less exciting. In traditional Diablo fashion, gear makes the game more fun. Meh, it is what it is, and it's not like I had a bad time playing this weekend. I still had fun, and I enjoyed building my druid a bit differently this go around because I was trying to play to what bonuses I had on my gear, which wasn't much.

On both playthroughs the Druid felt more tanky than DPS, and I think perhaps the Diablo team was trying to make some kind of "roles" for characters to fill? No.  It can't be that way. This is Diablo! The main thing any class will want to do is SHRED through things and feel powerful. Right? I've never played a Diablo where every class wasn't DPS. Killing things as fast and efficiently as possible is the name of the game.

OH . . . yeah . . . and, you know, the epic chilling story telling of good versus evil, but mostly evil. That's also a thing. So far, it was delivering.

This quest was. . . pretty disturbing . . .

The most interesting encounter I saw in Diablo IV was the world boss encounter where myself and 10 other chumps tried to kill Ashava, the world boss in Fractured Peaks, which is the wintery area that would typically be called "Act I" in any other Diablo game.

We tried . . .

This Diablo really seems more like the Diablo Immortal mobile game in that you are, in fact, running around with other people nearby all the time. It's MMO-like in that way, and if it's MMO-like and a Diablo clone? Yeah, the Friendly Necromancer is sure to be there.

Happy Dueling!

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