Figuring why not, I decided to go with a Minion Necromancer today. Although my enthusiasm isn’t really high on playing yet another Minion Necromancer, I decided that I could level easily and swap builds later on. Before that though, I altered my Barbarian from Hammer of the Ancients to Whirlwind / Dust Devil / Earthquake and entered in Torment II with it. I’m still toying around with it in the background but I wanted a break in going with the Minion Necromancer to keep my motivation up a bit.
So before diving into the Minion Necromancer, I wanted to discuss the Whirlwind / Dust Devil / Earthquake Barbarian. It’s really hard to call this a Whirlwind Barbarian anymore because the bulk of the damage is handled through Dust Devils and Earthquakes. The way the interaction works is through the Earthquake Aspect that triggers an Earthquake from Ground Stomp and increases the damage as well as how the legendary node Force of Nature causes Dust Devils to spawn from Earthquakes. What you do is Temper chance for Earthquake to cast twice, increase the duration and size as well as Dust Devils size/cast twice to really try and maximize the number of Earthquakes and Dust Devils that spawn. Also, using the BacWat and XolTech Runewords, as you move around (every 10 meters), you spawn Earthquakes whenever Horrid Decrepify is cast. This makes it so you don’t have to channel Whirlwind all the time and relies more on moving around to autocast/trigger your Earthquakes and Dust Devils.
On Torment I, this build pretty much is quite strong but Torment II you start feeling some issues as your cooldowns become important for quickly spawning more Dust Devils and Earthquakes. In particular, when you’re in a dungeon space like the Pit, you can get into situations where your Shouts are on cooldown and do not provide enough resources for you to be able to cast Whirlwind as Elites and Rares overwhelm your space. Also, the 10 Meters requirement makes the casting of Earthquakes infrequent or impossible in tight spots. So you need to save your Ground Stomp and Call of the Ancients for bigger damaging moments.
Part of my current issue is that I lack a Ring of the Starless Skies which means that my resource generation is not only low but the cost for using Whirlwind is very high. Ramaladni’s Magnum Opus and the Anger Management Aspect cause my Fury to be low quite often. Also, I use Rakanoth’s Wake for the CDR, although since I have a Tyrael’s Might, I probably should just use normal legendaries with Ghostwalker to obtain Unstoppable (which is a weakness of this build if you don’t have things setup properly).
That said, the truth about this build is that I rarely am using Whirlwind except for the brief moment after casting Ground Stomp to clean up any leftovers. So it really doesn’t feel like a Whirlwind build. Most of the time I’m causing damage by simply running around and auto invoking the Earthquakes. While it is a better build than Hammer of the Ancients, I do think that without the Ring of Starless Skies it’s going to be rough making it any higher than I already am. Some of the other adjustments are getting more ancestral items with proper Masterworking on CDR or making sure new items have better versions of the key Tempers.
Now, I was able to farm up a few of The Third Blade but after reading the forums on the Mighty Throw build and seeing a video about it, I felt less inclined to play it. My issue with that sort of build is that the play looks slow and clunky. Most of the build involves using Steel Grasp to group up enemies then dropping tons of Mighty Throws on them so that the clump gets collectively decimated. It’s very much a D3 type of play strategy which I’ve never been fond of. At least with Whirlwind, it’s a little more fluid and straightforward. But it suffers in being too CDR dependent as well as having that 5 Meter cast trigger.
I did manage to level up my Glyphs to 15 but stopped to give the build a whirl…yeah. The other problem with the build is that the guide I’m using rotates the boards and changes them out depending on their level and having something like 300% Berserking Damage. Because I really hate messing with these Paragon boards, I felt demotivated and wanted to try something else. And that something else was a Minion Necromancer.
Now, I’ve done many Minion Necromancers. This would be my 3rd Season playing one (I’ve played two in one season). And while Minion Necromancer isn’t at the top of the food chain anymore, it did receive some significant boosts. That said, there are some changes in the builds I’ve seen, including using Soulrift. I saw Mathil1 do a Soulrift build and try to play it as a main skill but he swapped to Blood Surge afterwards. Right now, I think Soulrift is a better support skill than anything mostly for the Fortify. Some builds try to incorporate Darkness into their damage but I tend to prefer Golem. The main minion builds use Ring of Mendeln and don’t focus as much on Minion damage but scale up the exploding damage from the Ring. So in the end, they use The Grandfather to get the really big numbers.
For my purpose, unless I get a lucky The Grandfather drop, in all likelihood, I’ll just use this build to farm lower tier ladder bosses, possibly make a go for at least the Ring of Mendeln to do better damage then aim for the real build that I want: Spirit Wave. The way this build works is that you do a cast on trigger type of effect from picking up Blood Orbs that cause Bone Spirits to spawn. But the Bone Spirit isn’t placed on the action bar as Blood Lance is used instead. With Gore Quills Aspect, the Blood Lances themselves are what “pick up” the Blood Orbs. Those Blood Orbs are spawned by Blood Wave (which is an Ultimate Skill). In addition, since this build is reliant on an ultimate skill being cast (which means VERY long cooldown again), you use Fastblood to help reduce the cooldown for Blood Wave.
It’s a really convoluted but interesting interaction between skills, Aspects and gear that make me want to try it out. The one major piece of gear at the high end that I’m missing is once again the Ring of Starless Skies. I suppose that in having two builds depend on this Mythic means that I have more of a reason to grind out more gear. That said, one thing I have started to do is segregate my Runes in my Stash to begin the process of potentially crafting this piece. I prefer not to and the better situation would be just having me play my Spiritborn on T4 and do ladder bosses (since that’s where I’m mostly acquiring my Mythics). I’d honestly prefer just taking my Minion or Spirit Wave Necromancer and farm these items herself since I feel that the wrong Mythic might drop for my Spiritborn. There is another Mythic used for the build in the form of a Shako, but fortunately I already have procured one.
That said, in looking at other builds, it just feels the Ring of Starless Skies is so imperative to find. I have no idea if I’ll do more than these builds. In fact, there is a new Season coming up for Diablo 3. However, since I already ran all the builds I wanted to play on PTR (as well as having Ethereals and my Altar completed), I don’t know if I’d want to go through this upcoming season. I think if I stick with Diablo 4 and just play a few more builds just for the heck of it, I’ll do so since there is a Halloween event coming up at the end of the month. Possibly, the only other build I’d like to try is a Boulder Druid because I’ve heard good things and the interaction between Boulder and the unique amulet has been fixed.
I would’ve preferred Companion Druid but they really need to figure out a way to give Companion Druid some sort of AoE. I think the fix should be giving the Lightning parts of the Storm’s Companion pants a tag to trigger some other lightning affects to help scale lightning damage. Or if there was a new skill, aspect, Unique or Ultimate that would help improve Companion AoE damage. Until that’s done, I’m staying clear away from Companion Druid.
At any rate, some things to look forward to soon.
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