Diablo 3: Patch 2.2 Early Look and Thoughts

Blizzard gave us a sneak peak at Patch 2.2 for Diablo 3. The main theme for the patch is increasing the breadth of class builds through adding a few new sets and updating older sets to become more competitive. In addition, there will be a few other changes such as new Bounties for Adventure Mode, goblins and quality of life changes. For this blog, I want to focus on the new sets and legendaries and talk a bit about my feeling about the patch.

For myself, the thing I’m looking forward to the most are the new legendary sets coming out. I did have a chance to try them out during Blizzcon and I think that they will be pretty solid alternatives to the current builds. The three sets are aimed at Demon Hunters, Barbarians and Wizards. I will go each of these sets and the way that they will play out.

Unhallowed Essence (Demon Hunter)

This set focuses around the Demon Hunter’s Discipline resource. The bonuses work as follows:

• 2 set – Generators add 2 Discipline
• 4 set – 40% (20%?) damage reduction for enemies within 20 yards for 4 seconds
• 6 set – Generators and Multi-shot damage is increased by 10% per point of Discipline

So this set will have the Demon Hunter move to stack Discipline to maximize their damage output. Also, the set will essentially allow Demon Hunters to not be forced to move around as much since inherently they will be gaining a defensive buff.

Over on the Diablo 3 forums, I did see someone theorycraft the BiS gear and skills. However, I think one thing he was missing was other possible gear that might be used to compliment the set. At Blizzcon, I do recall using the Odyssey’s End (the new Patch 2.1.2 Season 2 legendary bow) and I believe it was complimented by a belt that enhanced Entangling Shot’s damage. I could be wrong on the belt, but the way they set up the Demon Hunter, you had Entangling Shot being used in conjunction with Multi-shot. In addition, I believe they had Companion (Boar), Vault, Vengeance and one other skill (Preparation perhaps?)

Regardless, the main thing to focus on is stacking as much Discipline as possible. Thus, I believe that we will be seeing a combination of Natalya’s Slayer and one other item being used in conjunction with this build as the 3 set bonus (given that most will end up using a Ring of Royal Grandeur) adds another +20 Discipline, translating into an easy +200% damage increase.

With regards to passives, we probably still will be taking Cull of the Weak and possibly Entangling Shot to maintain the missing CC from Polar Station and/or Frost Arrow. I think Blood Vengeance will still be a highly valued passive since Health Globes will help us maintain high Hatred and most importantly Discipline. Steady Aim looks to be a good choice for additional damage and we can probably choose Awareness for some survivability for higher Greater Rift difficulties. If we manage to obtain a well rolled Hellfire Amulet, one additional passive could be Nightstalker because of losing Evasive Fire: Focus to Entangling Shot and needing a way to rebuild our Hatred quickly.

Also, by removing the sentry aspect, we can focus on finding other quivers beyond the Bombadier’s Rucksack. Since the damage boost applies to any generator, we will be able to use other generators, thus allowing The Ninth Cirri Satchel, Emimei’s Duffel and Holy Point Shot to become viable as well. My belief is that Holy Point Shot will become more sought after since it’s the only quiver that can roll with elemental damage.

So without further knowledge on complimentary new legendaries to the set, what other items would be good for this build? I think optimally we will be using the Natalya’s Slayer for our main weapon and will be able to rotate out the Natalya’s helmet, cloak or boots so that we can have the full 3 set bonus. I think we still should be using Reaper’s Wraps for our bracers as we will need to generate Hatred for our Multishot while The Witching Hour will remain our BiS belt. For our other ring slot, the Stone of Jordan still will be a key item because of the elemental and elite bonus damage. And most likely we’ll be seeking either a damage immunity amulet or Hellfire Amulet. For Legendary Gems, I still think that Bane of the Trapped, Zei’s and either Bane of the Powerful or Esoteric Alteration will be ideal.

Another possibility is instead of using the Natalya’s Slayer (and set), we can use Danetta’s set. By doing this, we will lose a little on the damage side but gain more defensive capabilities in being able to keep our Discipline at 100% since our Vaults will become Hatred spenders instead. This might end up becoming a really huge deal for being able to quickly clear out Greater Rifts or avoiding whole floors of bad RNG in Greater Rifts through vaulting through all of our enemies.

The great thing going forward with this set is that we will have far more options with regards to gear and elemental damage preference. While we will be (sadly) losing our fun companions (especially Ferrets!), this build’s appeal will be on very high damage and survivability. Most people probably will continue to focus on the Marauder’s set but after the nerf, it doesn’t have the same compelling play style and feels very average, despite having solid damage. Still, the current version of Marauder’s lacks defense compared to the previous version, which is why I think they nerfed it as they wanted to provide some incentives for using this new set.

Delsere’s Magnum Opus

The new Wizard set might be the thing to really boost the ailing Wizard class with regards to being more competitive in Greater Rifts. Before delving into my interpretation/experience with the build, let me enumerate the set bonuses:

• 2 set – Casting Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Magic Missile or Shocking Pulse reduces the cooldown of Slow Time by 1 second
• 4 set – Enemies affected by Slow Time take 1250% weapon damage for every second
• 6 set – Enemies affected by Slow Time take 500% more damage from Arcane Orb, Energy Twister, Magic Missile or Shocking Pulse

So the main thing to notice is that the set will revolve around Slow Time and 2 signature/generators and 2 spenders. Slow Time ends up becoming both a source of major damage on top of a debuff to help increase damage for mobs caught inside. Also, Slow Time normally has a cooldown of 15 seconds, so even without any CDR, you will be able to cast Slow Time much sooner after spamming your generators and spenders.

At Blizzcon, the base character used Frozen Orb as the main damage dealer and Magic Missile (from what I remember). I found myself able to lay down numerous Slow Time bubbles over enemies which would both act as a shield for my character and give me the ability to nuke them down with Frozen Orb. You’ll essentially get a large number of CC’s as a result of this build from both Frozen Orb and Slow Time. I do think that the build also employed teleport, one of the armors and Familiar to round things off.

Now, beyond the base set, the question becomes what items will compliment the build? I imagine that while The Furnace will perpetually remain a favorite, the fact that the set focuses around specific spenders and generators might imply that certain other items might come into prominence. For instance, Wizardspike, an obscure dagger, hurls a Frozen Orb 20-25% of the time. Also, for weapons there is Valthek’s Rebuke in which Energy Twister will travel in a straight path. In that situation, you might be able to use the Storm Chaser rune along with say Shocking Pulse and stack a lot of lightning damage to cause a massive explosion inside of the Slow Time bubble.

Another solid weapon that probably will become extremely popular will be Gesture of Orpheus. This weapon reduces your Slow Time ability by 50-70%. So that combined with a high CDR essentially means you’ll be spam casting Slow Time along with a generator or spender in between.

Some other interesting things to look at with regards to gear are Orbs. Two Orbs that might be interesting to use with this build are Winter Flurry and Mirrorball. Winter Flurry causes a Frost Nova to be released whenever an enemy is killed by cold damage 20-25% of the time while Mirrorball doubles the number of Magic Missiles that are fired per cast. I can easily see how Wizards in the next patch will become highly valued as a support option in having their large numbers of Slow Time bubbles up, going cold and creating more CC’s through an item like Winter Flurry and Wizardspike. That along with using the new Halo of Arlyse in conjunction with Ice Armor with pretty much reduce the damage of enemies, slow them or out right keep them near permastunned. If the wizard decides to go more DPS oriented, the Mirrorball will provide that DPS boost by doubling their Magic Missiles that get buffed. Add something like Depth Diggers, and you’ll be seeing some pretty sweet numbers from a simple generator.

Just looking at the generators and spenders that will get boosted through this set, it’s pretty evident that the variety of elemental builds will increase as a result. I think that while certain people will try to min/max certain builds, what is certain is that there should be far more variety in terms of combinations of equipment that can be used. With that in mind, I would suggest stock piling up gear to avoid an unnecessary new gear hunt once the patch hits.

Wrath of the Wastes

Whirlwind Barbarian is BACK! I know a lot of barbarian players ought to be elated by the news of a dedicated Whirlwind set. So again let’s start by diving into the set bonuses before going more into detail about how the set will work and the gear to compliment it.

• 2 set – Rend last three times as long
• 4 set – Rend does triple damage
• 6 set – Whirlwind does triple damage to enemies affected by Rend

The main idea behind the build is to do Rend -> Whirlwind (clean up). The playstyle will not be the same as the older, more popular infinite Whirldwind barbarian pre-RoS. However, the set will allow people to get back into the melee game and potentially address some of the issues with melee by combining Rend and Whirlwind together.

The way I’m looking at the build is to use Rend with the Blood Lust rune for the Life Regeneration in conjunction with Blood Funnel for restoring health by 1% through Critical Hits. That means that you would be focusing on having a high critical hit chance through this build and keep up a fair amount of health by having near or over 50% critical hit chance. Now, the build looks to be focused around Physical and you’ll want to use the upcoming redesigned Bul-Kathos’s Wedding Band, which from what I remember will increase your Whirlwind damage by 80% and onward. Another item that will probably be used to compliment this build will be the more obscure Lamentation mighty belt, which allows Rend to stack twice on an enemy. So in combination, we’re looking at 15 second Rends that boost your health along with the Bul-Kathos’s Wedding Band to increase your Whirlwind damage by quite a bit. You’ll have both the survivability and damage with this.

Unlike the Raekor’s build which is more CDR-centric, the Wrath of the Wastes build will be very Fury usage intensive. Considering that the build focuses around Whirlwind, I believe that the Bul-Kathos’s Oath Might Weapons set will end up becoming potentially the most sought after BiS weapons for this build. The additional fury and Whirldwind proc on the set would definitely compliment the Bul-Kathos’s Wedding Band.

From a Legendary Gems perspective, I imagine that Pain Enhancer, Bane of the Trapped and either Esoteric Alteration or Taeguk will be the most important ones here. Bane of the Trapped works nice by having both the CC from the close proximity and damage boost, Pain Enhancer’s DoT affect will do well with the area damage from Rend and Whirlwind and Taeguk will boost the barbarian’s armor up along with granting high stacks of damage buffs. I only added Esoteric Alteration in that mix in case some Barbarians might find the build hard to maintain the Taeguk armor buff.

Legacy Sets

One other thing mentioned in the patch  2.2 preview is revisiting older sets to make them more viable in higher Greater Rifts. The main two examples they gave were adding non-set legendary items to compliment sets such as Natalya’s. They showed some new gloves which boost Rain of Vengeance’s damage output by over 80%. Also, I recall them redoing the way sets like Raiment of a Thousand Storms operates by eliminating the antiquated dexterity bonus from the 2 set bonus and revamping the overall bonuses of the set to work more with generators. While no other concrete examples were provided, I did read about buffs to sets like Zunimassa’s where fetishes would be buffed. The only major set that was missing in the mix by name was the Witch Doctor Helltooth set. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that included since it’s completely under utilized.

Conclusion

The most exciting thing about patch 2.2 is the number of builds that will open up. The gear combinations will be far higher and allow players to go beyond very narrow elemental builds as well as try different skills. Some sets like Unhallowed Essence for Demon Hunters and Delsere’s Magnum Opus for Wizards attempt to widen the number of skills used by allowing for a broader range of generators and spenders (and I think that will be true with the modified Raiment of a Thousand Storms set). So rather than endlessly hunting down for a single piece of gear, or being locked down to just a weapon like The Furnace for having any viability, the gear and skills will now be centered on what you find, the need of a party (if any) and what style you like in the end. It should be a fantastic patch that I think will stimulate a great deal of experimentation, min/maxing and lower some degree of frustration from those who just are out of luck when it comes to finding very specific items.

One last thing I want to mention is that I do think that the new legendaries introduced as a part of Season 2/patch 2.1.2 really were meant to work with some of the newer sets/items for the upcoming patch. Not all of them of course (such as Wormwood and Gungdo Gear) but a few items like the Halo of Arlyse really don’t feel as though they have a place at the moment. I think that the developers really wanted to have the new stuff from patch 2.2 ready for the current seasons but unfortunately season 1 ran too long. As a result, I think patch 2.2 will be more geared towards season 3. My guess is that from a time frame perspective, season 3 might be the last season for RoS and that at Blizzcon 2015 we will be hearing about a new Diablo expansion.

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