Deciding that I should give the Spirit Wave Necromancer a try, I went from my Druid to Necromancer and reconfigured her from Minions to Spirit Wave with some gear after doing a couple of Helltide runs to get workable pieces. The main piece I had waiting around was a Blood Artisan’s Cuirass which has the recommended 3 Blood Orb spawn condition for Bone Spirit. At this stage, I thought that the build itself wasn’t bad but I got a little pissed at something else that made me quit out of frustration.
Before getting to that moment of frustration, let me say that it did take a bit of work to get the right gear assembled. Luckily, I already had the proper Glyphs for this build leveled to 15, which made the Paragon board swap easy. The pain in the ass portions mostly were trying to get the right combination of Blood Attack speed and Bone Spirit doing double damage for my weapon and offhand as those two Tempers have four different Tempers in their category. That said, the build itself, once you get the gear in place, is pretty simple. Mostly, you just conjure up Blood Wave and attempt to shoot your Blood Lance in the direction of the Blood Orbs to consume them and lower the cooldown for your Blood Wave.
There are two other skills related to the build that you hot bar with Corpse Explosion and Corpse Tendrils for maintaining some increased damage buffs and gathering up enemies. In truth, while those two are nice and all, you don’t really need them most of the time. There’s also Blight for increasing damage and Blood Mist to get out of harms way but I found that this build mostly boils down to two skills. At the moment, I haven’t started Masterworking anything but I do have a poorly rolled Shako with Resource Cost Reduction (rather than CDR) that I can use to hopefully get more CDR overall. Most of what you need is CDR for Blood Wave to be frequently cast, which is why getting that critical 3 Blood Orb spawn requirement is so critical. The Fastblood aspect does the rest.
I will say that this build isn’t a speedy build. Blood Wave is awkward and really is all about positioning. You do get a very meaty sized set of Blood Waves that spawn but it’s easy to panic to not position them correctly. That’s why I really don’t bother with Corpse Explosion and Corpse Tendrils. At least for Torment II, you’re killing things at a reasonable pace such that anything besides Blood Wave and Blood Lance seems superficial. Perhaps, at higher level difficulties that changes.
Now, that I have some exposure with this build I want to say that it may not be for me. Maybe with better gear and more practice I would feel more inclined to play this build but it just feels slow compared to other builds I’ve played this season. Quite frankly, I have more fun with my boulder Druid than my Necromancer and I still haven’t properly got either up to a better spot with gear and Glyphs. If I decide to play more Diablo 4, I might just continue with Boulder Druid for a while.
That said, the issue that really ticked me off earlier was when I was rolling my Focus through the Occultist. The stupid Enchanting mechanism with the CDR honestly should not have been that hard to manage. Yet I blew through a ton of gold and my hand ended up hurting. The only thought in my mind was, “What the hell am I doing with my life?” If there’s one thing that kills Diablo 4 for me more than anything it’s the ridiculous all-in attitude towards RNG that the developers have placed. I absolutely hate RNG that’s exposed to this degree where it kills my interest. It’s not even a rewarding feeling when I hit the correct value I want. At that stage, my hand hurts so bad from toiling around with whatever mechanism that’s involved that I simply want to give up.
Considering how the game’s numbers have significantly dropped, I have to wonder if the bulk of the players who returned or decided to give this game another shot simply got fed up with the number of levels of RNG that infect this game. Because RNG at the bozosort type of level is more of a turn off for all but those with extremely addictive personalities.
I’ve stated numerous times that I don’t care about perfecting my character in this type of game which is dictated by this level of RNG. I’m going to play for as long as I feel progress is manageable. Once I feel like I’m wasting my time, I quit cold turkey. At this stage, I’m at that point.
Now, the only thing I kind of wouldn’t mind trying is that Mighty Throw Barbarian. I did get a glance at Datmodz playing a friendlier version rather than the stupid yoink/Steel Grasp one on maxroll. Most people who have played Mighty Throw Barbarian have stated the build feels awkward. At least, the one that Datmodz is doing looks like something I would do (he’s mostly using Shouts along with Call of the Ancients). I just don’t care for the Steel Grasp version at all. It looks bad except for very high end Pits. But I don’t care for very high end Pits and just want to go around nuking things with my weapons. So I could give that a shot.
I did try to search for a Sorcerer build. I came to the conclusion that nothing really is worth playing that I haven’t already tried at some point. The only two builds that look decent are Fireball and Lightning Spear but I’ve done them with Lightning Spear being the standout build from last season. Now, it’s completely gimped due to the amulet getting nerfed. So nothing else seems interesting. The only other things that I haven’t tried are a Charged Bolts build or a Hydra build with more modern gear. Maybe even the new Familiar skill but that thing got nerfed before it even made it out of PTR. So unless there’s something really drastically done with a mid season patch that elevates poorly performing skills/gear/builds and/or re-introduces old content like the Vampire powers or Construct from S2/3, I’m out until S7.
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