LL D3 Tourney

[TheDragoon]

I had taken a couple weeks off from this due to work constraints and playing up the last couple characters to give me a level 60 in each class. This past weekend I did a bit of catching up so while I'm not all the way there, I've made some decent progress. Currently sitting in Act 1 Nightmare and slowly making my way to the Butcher. As I kind of figured, using Arcane Mines is kind of tedious but does get the job done, for the most part. I imagine that ranged attacking things will be particularly annoying but still should be reasonable. I do hope to get a nice weapon upgrade at some point since I used the same crossbow from the end of Act 2 all the way to Act 1...

[MonTy]

Week 5 has ended, and with it some of the characters as well. Quark's monk made it to level 40 before falling. He was second in lead to Chesspiece_face who is pulling ahead with his level 47 Demon Hunter. I took a snapshot of his character so you can inspect his gear here.

Good luck to everyone in week 6. Seems some may be making it into Hell soon- impressive!

[Frag]

First time in nearly 4 weeks I've had time to sit down and play a tourney character (I don't like doing it unless I know there will be no distractions). Made it to Act 3 and was doing alright, had found some decent gear (22 vit, 2 socket chest / 18 vit, 1 socket hat / 36 dps bow / 3-6 dmg, 7% mf, socketed ring) and received a "your game has been terminated" error. Checked and everyone else had received it too, just a straight drop, no latency or anything. Came back into the game, continued on, and right away, looong lag spike:


Going with the WD next, it's the worst build I've ever seen, anywhere, so it should be short and entertaining.

[Chesspiece_face]

The perfect cap for this weeks progression.



And I did it with two minutes to spare.

Overall this was the roughest week yet. Not neccessarily because of the difficulty of the end of Nightmare, but because I had to lock in runes for both Rain of Vengeance and Chakram. Stampede definitely has its uses and maintains some utility, but the Boomerang rune for Chakram is by far the most useless PoS rune I've yet to encounter in this game. It is a complete downgrade over the BASE skill. It keeps everything that is cumbersome and frustrating about the skill and throws out all of the positive uses one might have for it. I'm completely baffled that this rune made it through design.

Edit: I recorded all of my trip through A4 Nightmare and will probably background some of it into this weeks DitD episode. If there is interest in watching the entirety I may upload the rest later in the week.

[Chesspiece_face]

Part 1 of my Nightmare Act 4 run is uploaded for anyone that is interested:



Part 2:



And finally Part 3:

[Kylearan]

Hi,

I'm level 32 and at Diablo now, but I'll probably stop participating at this point. I haven't played D3 for over a week now, and I'm missing nothing... I got increasingly frustrated and bored with the game. Frustrated by the game design that player skill is so dwarfed by item quality, implemented by such stupid things as auto-hitting, non-dodgeable monster attacks, and bored by the lack of variance in item characteristics.

Thanks MonTy for this tournament, which was a really fun idea, and sorry for dropping out. I hope the others will finish this and have more fun on the way, although following this as a lurker would be easier if more reports would be made...

-Kylearan

[MonTy]

Thanks MonTy for this tournament, which was a really fun idea, and sorry for dropping out.
-Kylearan

Sad to hear you're dropping out. Thanks for contributing, I really enjoyed your write-ups.

[Chesspiece_face]

Well I'm out!

Forcing myself to play through a head cold was probably not the best of ideas. Still; Level 52, Hell - Cathedral Level 2 is the spot to shoot for I suppose.

[FoxBat]

Well I'm out!

Oh c'mon, you still have a whole two characters left!

Very good job, I hope I can get somewhere near there. My Barb just beat A2 normal and it's been slow going due to being boring easy so far.





I'm just surprised the clobber rune works on so many different things including the butcher. Only belial's final form has been immune so far.

It helps that alot of my skills are high level meaning I could slot what I felt like for a long time, especially since this is my first time playing around with barb outside of beta. I'm gonna sure miss iron impact whenever that has to go though, and vengeance has been quite handy as well.

[Chesspiece_face]

Well I'm out!

Oh c'mon, you still have a whole two characters left!

Heh. Yeah, I told myself when I started I was gonna take the DH as far as I could and that would be my real attempt. It went ok, but could have actually gone much further. The death was not from any real threat but because I forced myself to play when my head was hazy and reactions were completely off. Oh well.

I may play around with the other two characters, but don't view them as serious attempts at all.

[Chesspiece_face]

Just when you thought I was down and out, I claw myself back up from the depths!



This character is so unblelievably bizarre on paper but when played has some really strong aspects. The damage potential out of the gate is ridiculous. And although she lacks any great reactive cooldowns (Soul Harvest with the life gain rune is the best I get) she has Insane champ pack control with the cooldown Gargantuan, Hex, Grasp of the Dead, and Spiders.

Zombie Charger is also an absolute BLAST! The little I used it before I was entirely underwhelmed and even frustrated with it. Something about this particular build, however, gives it room to shine and I cannot wait to get my locked in rune which will make it set off a chain reaction of zombies.

So far I've been using Spiritual Attunement and Blood Ritual as passives which offer me constant regen for both health and mana and I have a feeling I will stick with these from now on. The final passive is open for Jungle Fortitude, Pierce the Veil, or even Spirit Vessel depending on need.

All in all, this character has been a blast so far and I can't wait to see how it pans out moving into the higher difficulties.

Update: I finished Normal in ~12 hours 30 minutes at level 32. Of all the characters I have played under these restricted Tournament rules now this one is far ahead in her ability to chew the hell out of the content and spit it out. I am consistently astounded at the pure damage output and control that she offers in nearly every situation. oO

Update 2: Got to level 36 absolutely destroying everything in my path only to get a hard crash and not be able to log back in. 15 minutes later I log in and see this beast of a character dead. Oh well.

[MonTy]

Update 2: Got to level 36 absolutely destroying everything in my path only to get a hard crash and not be able to log back in. 15 minutes later I log in and see this beast of a character dead. Oh well.

D'oh. Were you able to record any video of your WD's gameplay? The skillset seemed interesting and was looking forward to reading more.

I've also uninstalled D3 temporarily so if anyone has updates to their characters that are noteworthy, please let me know.

[Quark]

I haven't played much of anything in the past few weeks due to non-computer ventures. Will try to get some in this week. My DH has no survivability but a ton of DPS.

[Chesspiece_face]

D'oh. Were you able to record any video of your WD's gameplay? The skillset seemed interesting and was looking forward to reading more.

I've also uninstalled D3 temporarily so if anyone has updates to their characters that are noteworthy, please let me know.

Unfortunately I was unable to record any video of the gameplay. There was no reason to expect the sudden loss of the character so I was pretty much waiting until later in Nightmare to record anything.

I did promptly start a softcore WD after the loss so that I could continue playing with the same skill set though. So if you are interested in any video from that character I could probably throw some together. It is very strong (at least up until Mid-Nightmare) and suprisingly fun to play.

The biggest thing I noticed while playing this character was how massive a downgrade the 15s cooldown Gargantuan is. Yeah, it does a moderate amount more damage while it is up, but I don't see why anyone would take that rune over the previous rune which gives the beast an enrage.

Edit: I take that back. There is one flaw in this character build that can easily invalidate it in higher difficulties. It lacks any damage source that will consistently hit Belial's 3rd phase. Spiders will just drop to the floor and die without damaging him, Grasp of the Dead won't hit him, and Zombie Charger stops at the edge of the wall. It's possible that some of these will damage his arms when they are on the platform, but 99% of the damage you will put out on him will come from your Companion and Gargantuan. Not exactly optimal and definitely an impossibility if you were to attempt him with an enrage timer.

[Quark]

Think it's safe to say I'm out w/ the DH. I simply haven't been playing any games recently. Damn Pesmerga for getting me into 40k.

[MonTy]

Think it's safe to say I'm out w/ the DH. I simply haven't been playing any games recently. Damn Pesmerga for getting me into 40k.

I'm out as well. I had a lot of fun with my characters and tried some builds I would never have otherwise. But admittedly the tournament went on for a month too long.

Chesspiece, you may want to start looking up charity organizations for me to donate the $100 to. Seems like your 52 Demon Hunter is going to take it - haven't heard anyone else with updates. I'll be sure to check back by the end of the month and confirm if that's the case.

[FoxBat]

Well Chesspiece's only remote competitor is out as of now.



I had a ton of close calls with various bosses through Act 3 nightmare, and a champ mage pack in Act 4 that swiped for large health with its melee attack, so this end was disappointing. No quick kills, just gradually worn down through attrition before I finished him off. There were any number of things I might have done, like going back to my 2H with more life leech, checking if the next higher potion was avliable, or understanding better how to kite him. (I was trying to avoid triggering his "teleport" move, as I didn't have any way to negate it, so I stuck close praying for his lashers to give me some pots.) Of course a single health globe dropping in the fight could've changed the tide as easily. Ah well. The journey was fun and intense, so I may write up more at a later date.

[MonTy]

Well Chesspiece's only remote competitor is out as of now.

Nice run though. Your barbarian's skill set seemed interesting. Two hander might have been the way to go, especially with wrath of the berserker. Rakanoth tends to teleport attack if you stay too far outside range, so I would focus on staying close range to bash and then whirlwind to go through his attacks. Also depends if RNG hits with the 20% knockback on bash to interrupt his attacks. Can be a tough fight depending on your gear.

But yea, it's safe to say Chesspiece won this competition, so I'll go ahead and crown him victor. Level 52 is a damn good accomplishment so that was pretty awesome to see his demon hunter get that far.

Thanks all for making this a fun competition. I know a lot got burnt out on the game and the competition was a month too long. But I really enjoyed all of the write-ups and I genuinely had a great time when I did play my tourney characters. Hope you did too.

Chesspiece, link me to the charity you'd like the $100 donated to. Also let me know your steam account and a game $40 and under for your personal prize. I'm currently playing through Dark Souls and I'd highly recommend it if you haven't played it :)

[NuurAbSaal]

I'd just like to pop in and say that I enjoyed the write-ups and stories as well. Hats off to all the participants and a special tip-of-the-hat to Monty for organising the tournament (not to mention the awesome prizes!).

take care
Tarabulus

[MonTy]

I'd just like to pop in and say that I enjoyed the write-ups and stories as well. Hats off to all the participants and a special tip-of-the-hat to Monty for organising the tournament (not to mention the awesome prizes!).

take care
Tarabulus

Glad you enjoyed! $150 went to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. Just look at those cute cubs 3: http://i.imgur.com/pMHK1.jpg