LL D3 Tourney

[Kylearan]

Hi,

people are in Nightmare already, huh? Well, here's a report from a slower one.

First off, regarding my Magic Missile/Split problem:

You can control the cone of the split to some degree by altering the distance of your cursor. The closer your cursor to your character the wider the split, the further away your cursor the narrower the split.

I'm not sure this helps. What I tried is this: I positioned the cursor at the edge of the screen and, while standing still, fired off a series of magic missiles. What happened was that the split between the missiles varied considerably in distance. There's some randomization at work here, and I think it's independant of the distance of the cursor. (I took a series of screenshots, but unfortunately only one was actually taken.) This makes the rune even weaker in my opinion, as the random factor makes it less plannable/reliable.

Speaking of unreliable spells, let's talk a bit about Energy Twister! During my first session, I really hadn't liked the spell. The movement path of the twisters is so erratic that I found myself unable to target it properly. Especially in open territory, the twisters would often move away from the mobs, hitting nothing. And if they hit something, the damage was...underwhelming. The only time the spell was remotely useful was in narrow spaces, like in the cells in the Cursed Hold:



But honestly, with the narrow door and my templar blocking off the monsters, I could have easily killed them off with Magic Missile anyway. So at first it seemed like a completely useless spell. Untargetable, and weak damage? Ugh, that's just horrible!

But as it turned out, part of the problem was that I could only spam 3-4 twisters. Now, with more arcane power and the Mistral Breeze rune, I can spam 10-15 twisters. My attack routine now is to spam Energy Twisters, pop Diamond Skin once the first monster of a mob gets into melee range, then spam more Twisters. If Diamond Skin ends and there are still survivors, I cast Wave of Force to finish them off (or to enable me to retreat). This works surprisingly well, and has reconciled me somewhat with Energy Twister.

I still have to do a lot of kiting though. And that's me still being in Act II Normal... that doesn't bode well for later. I need 3-4 casts of Magic Missile to kill an Act II wasp and several more for Snakes or other tough brutes, which also seems to imply I didn't have the best of luck with item drops. Especially the snakes give me headaches:



I dread the fight with Belial, where I won't have that much maneuvering room - the fight with the snakes in the narrow spaces of the command post almost killed me because of that.

Champions and rares provide for interesting fights as well, of course. One event led me into the Lair of the Lacuni, which I hadn't seen before. I was surprised by the amount of Lacuni unburrowing around me, ran, and got trapped on a small bridge with tough monsters on both sides (bad play on my part here!). I almost died; here's a shot from when at least the white Lacunis where dead and I finally had more room for running.



Several more close calls involved Waller and Jailer wasps.



It's not fun if you get walled in on three sides, have no escape skill and their wasp missiles are closing in from the only open side...

Another fun fight was against two champion packs and two white mobs in the Dalghur Oasis.



One of the packs spawned when I freed Mikal, a captive villager, and kiting it woke up the other pack and the white mobs. But with that much maneuvering room, it only took time and I never got into real danger. To thank me, Mikal gave me an item...a white Morning Star. Uh, yay.

What I like best about Diablo 3 so far are the events. I guess most of you who have played a lot more than I have don't find them so interesting anymore, but I still love how much effort Blizzard has put into them.

I met Hadi in the deserts, who got sucked underground by a Monstrous Dune Thresher that I had to fight afterwards.



Later I found his mine - not sure if this was pure chance, or if these two events are linked.



But the best and most sophisticated event I had was in the Dalghur Oasis, where I had to turn two wheels (and fight two special mobs) just to open a tomb, and in there had to find a lever to open a treasure chamber. I like objectives that say "Find the treasure of Khan Dakab" - sure, will do!



At level 21, I had to switch out Ray of Frost for Disintegrate. The upside of Disintegrate is that I can now target dangerous monsters that hide behind other monsters. The big downside however is the damage: 155% for Disintegrate versus 215% for Ray of Frost (280% after 1,5 seconds with Snow Blast). I feel like I don't have anything with good DPS against tough monsters anymore, and I'm not sure how I should deal with Belial, or any other boss monster for that matter. We'll see.

At 9:43 play time, I'm level 21 and in the process of reviving Kulle. I hope I'll find some more DPS gear, or otherwise I foresee some problems with Belial.

As a silly closing remark, doesn't this look like an opening?



Must have been some invisible wall of force preventing Simpleton from going there...

-Kylearan