So the latest iteration/patch for D3 is live for PC, PS4, and XB1. There are new ancient versions of legs to find that can be the new bis pieces, and a whole new variety of Goblins to kill and get gems, shards, gold and loot from. Season 2 is next/soon for pc(might be up today?). New class set features and functionality changes too. It's a fun addition. For my end game Demon Hunters on pc and XB1 it's made them even more op. T6 is a pushover, even more than before, despite the more interactive play style(sentries only shoot what you shoot so Kridershot is king, and Taskers are kinda irrelevant). It's all about GR challenge I guess, and lvling gems, and seasons of course on pc. For a brand new 70, or those HC characters it's a breath of welcomed freshness I'd imagine, and maybe worth revisiting for many. The word from DatModz is Monk is back to being very dominate btw. Just a heads up for D3 fans who may wanna check it out. Didn't see anything on this when I checked just now. And for anyone who's playing again whatta ya think?

EDIT: Double gobs buff this Friday 12:00 PST is the word just now.

I have an M6 Demon Hunter, 2.1.2 made T6 feel like T3 used to. I do miss being able to just drop all my sentries and then check email or something, though.

I hear ya. I've always played DH this way though, so it's not much of a transition for me. Still a good idea imo for the class. Maybe they need to implement a T7-T10 or something to keep it from being all about GR time, and/or seasons.

Even though t6 is really easy now im still really enjoying the regular rift runs because of the chance for ancients. An etrayu dropped a few hours ago and my heart almost stopped because if it was ancient it might be able to replace my current near perfectly rolled etrayu. It wasn't, unfortunately, but its been awhile since I actually got excited for loot. The goblins are also really fun. I got a lucky treasure portal, and found about 6 or 7 goblin packs in almost an equal amount of rifts. The packs are crazy and there's a good chance you'll get a couple legendaries and a huge chunk of bloodshards to gamble with.

@mb said:

Pretty much how my DH feels. Luckily I had a better setup for this new kind of active demon hunter build than the old passive m6, so i saw a bit of a quality of life improvement. It's also more fun nuking things instead of kiting all day in my opinion. I made the swap from my witch doctor main to my old demon hunter because they're actually fun to play again.

The new ancient legs aren't that distinctive. They just kinda have a thin orange frame around the thumbnail of the item. It's easy to miss 'em. Anyway, for an end game character this is gonna be a grind. I only have bow(pretty much need Krider), Cindercoat, Rucksack, Witching Hour or Harrington's(my preference), and just maybe a leg ring/neck combo to beat my current Traveler's, to possibly replace and improve on. The new gobs do drop a ton of stuff. I had a gem pack drop me about 200 gems in a couple minutes. Double gob weekend too starting tonight at midnight pretty sure.

I just got back into Diablo 3 after a decent hiatus, and I'm kind of lost now. I have a level 30 paragon Demon Hunter, and I don't understand what the best options are for me to progress further. I've been playing adventure mode, however I don't understand what the rifts are for or what the best ways for me to get better gear are. Would you mind clarifying it for me a bit?

The name of the game is farming Adventure mode for rift keys, then farming rifts for greater rift trial keys and blood shards. This leads to using the trial keys to run greater rifts for, yep, more blood shards, legendary gem upgrades, and gear. Your priority should be to complete the Marauder's set (M6), which is done fairly quick by doing Torment 1-2 rifts to collect as many blood shards and trial keys as you can. The idea is to stick with the level that you can do quickly, but make sure its at least Torment 1.

Use the shards at Kadala to gamble for specific pieces which typically nets you set items quicker than monster drops. You can also run greater rifts until around level 10 while gearing up, which can also get you decent gear, but monsters drop no loot so it's based entirely on the RIft Guardian. You can go further with the rifts, but the difficulty starts curving up more sharply as you get to level 25 (Torment 6).

With ancient legendaries, your best bet is to craft an ancient Arcane Barb at the smithy. Since the new M6 is now very Hatred dependent, you want your burst damage to be as high as possible. A kridershot is also an excellent option, but it's very rare on its own merit, let alone an ancient version.

Once you complete M6, even if you don't have an ancient weapon, you can easily jump to Torment 6. Once you do that, run Adventure Mode quests for Act 1 to get the cache and try for a Royal Ring of Grandeur. Torment 6 caches have a 100% to drop a legendary now, so it's quicker to find it there. With that ring, you can then aim for either a CinderCoat (for Fire Builds) or Pride's Fall (for Cold Builds).

I'm leaving a shit load of other things out, but that's kind of the basics.

Do bounties and run rifts mostly. Bounties can yield some unique bounty only stuff. Royal Ring of Grandeur is most important because it allows you to run only 5 pieces of the Marauders set instead of 6, and get all the perks the set has. It drops from Act 1 bounty bags btw, and has a chance to drop from Act 4 or 5 bounty bags too I think. Marauders is the set you want for your sentries to shoot your spenders. Play on the highest torment you can for better chances for the good gear of course. Play in groups of DHs for even better chances too if possible. Greater rifts get you legendary gems, and you lvl them by completing harder and harder versions. You'll need socketed rings and neck to use them so look for those. Best gems imo are the pet damage gem(works for sentries too), can't remember the name right now, Bane of the Trapped(damage bonus to enemies under control impairing effects), and Zei's (which adds damage to enemies based on distance from them). There are some other great ones too...preferences obviously. Build and elemental choices are a factor for DH too, but the Marauders are key for highest torment. It goes on and on really. Ask anything gear or skill specific if you need to duder.

@jacksmedulla: This should explain most of what you need to know. Basically to go into a rift you need to have have a "Rift Keystone Fragment". You get those by completing Adventure Mode bounties. Then when you kill the bosses inside the rifts you occasionally get a "Keystone of Trials". When you use that you'll go into a dimension that will spawn a bunch of waves over and over until you can't finish the wave in the time they give you. That will then award you with a "Greater Rift Key" that is attuned to how far you made it in the trial. For example if you get to wave 10 you'll get a "Greater Rift Key level 10". You use that to enter a Greater Rift which is timed you basically have to spawn the rift guardian before 15 minutes to progress to the next level.

The bosses in the greater rifts have really high legendary drop rates and they are also the only source of legendary gems. So you'll probably want to start off doing Adventure Mode bounties to build up a stock of key fragments for rifts.

@neocalypso: @pweidman: @nevalis: Thanks all! That's exactly the help I was looking for! Time for some reading/research!

Thanks for reminding me about the update. Might have to poke at it this weekend.

My fav definitive source for info for DH stuff: https://www.youtube.com/user/philosophios

This guy knows it all and is an easy watch/listen. His youtube tutorials and/or streams are extremely helpful for anyone wanting to get educated on the DH class.

Soooo... try to make some progress in dragon age inquisition or sink another 20-40hrs into this? :'(

I have the same dilemma, though I'll probably pass on Diablo 3 for now. Prior to the patch I was at a point where it was just fine tuning to start pushing for higher grifts, but now the new patch has set me back to have to find a bunch of new gear.

Yeah, it's a loot-based game, so that's kind of the idea. However, normally when that happens, you're getting brand new content to keep you busy while you start a new item hunt. This patch not only invalidates some items, but the "new" items are just the same shit with higher numbers (ancients). And once someone acquires said items, it's just to run the same as grifts as before.

Don't get me wrong, it's still fun as hell, but it would be nice if Blizzard didn't take 2 months to release a patch that didn't improve the game.

@ripelivejam: If you have to make a choice I would wait. Patch 2.2 will likely be out around summertime or early fall and will have much more content. If you sink yourself into the game again this year that would be the time. New sets for every class, 4 piece sets being turned into 6 piece sets, and more significant balance updates are coming then.

@ripelivejam: I'm waiting for season 2 to start before jumping back in.

Okay. Maybe this is the place to ask this.

I just got my first character, a crusader, to the endgame. I'm Level 70, Paragon 20(?). I feel like I don't know I'm doing, really. Am I just grinding bounties and rifts for drops?

Typically a solo player with some experience in previous Diablo games. In Diablo II, I felt the most gratified returning to the story mode on Nightmare and Hell difficulties. With the inclusion of the Rift system, it doesn't really seem like grinding through the story again is the ideal endgame process. But the Bounty-then-Rift experience feels a little shallow to me, I guess? Am I missing something?

Don't grind the story unless its for you own personal enjoyment. Not really worth. The main idea is to get yourself into rifts. Regular and Greater rifts have a legendary drop rate bonus, so the most effective farming will always be done inside them. As a new player, run a bunch of act 1 bounties until you're bored. Act 1 cache rewards have a chance to drop a ring you're really going to need. Then take your fragments and run through them all. Rinse and repeat while gambling your blood shard rewards for set piece items as often as you want. You will want to run some greater rifts (the keys to get in drop off of regular rift guardians) long enough in order to get one of each legendary gem. They will also be used to upgrade these gems. After you have the ones you like upgraded, they won't be as important unless you want to challenge yourself and your build to see how far you can get.

Those are going to be your main goals in order to progress through the torment difficulties as fast as possible. When you max out on t6 you have to go into greater rifts 25+ for any kind of difficult content. It's meant to be an infinite loop for you to continuously play through. It is a bit shallow and might not be enjoyable for everyone, but if you're a likes to grind kind of player it can be a fairly satisfying loop to go through in the hopes of getting that next upgrade. If you don't enjoy that, well, the game is fairly opened up at this point. You don't have to loop through it for the best gear. You can just take whatever missions you enjoy, play the maps you like most, fight whatever bosses you want, and do a rift when/if you feel like it, but it will be slow progressing and obtaining gear that way.

They buffed my Tempest Rush build yay.

After grinding GR's to lvl my bane of the powerful gem(enforcer apparently not great anymore)last night and this morning, and getting maybe 3 upgrades to it out of like 15 rolls all at 60% or higher, I thought how 'bout a change and ran a T6 rift just now. Started in Whimsey and I kinda wondered. 14 legs later and about 30 goblins and so much loot, I was lucky enough to get an Ancient Marauders Gloves. Rolled 998 dex, 855 vit, 9% CC, and 10,951 LoH primaries. And it only cost me 7 mil or so to replace LoH w/50% CD. TY RNGesus. I wasn't aware set pieces could be ancient so that's cool. And just when I was about to step away from D3 and play more DAI or Mordor, or check on Destiny.

@pweidman: Congrats! Yeah any legendary can be ancient. Crafted, dropped, and set are all free game. This fact is currently the cause of me feeling in over my head on deciding what I should be trying to replace with ancients first.

D3 apparently wants me to play my witch doctor more. I switched to her to do a rift run for a change of pace and the first legendary drop on her of 2.1.2 was a nicely rolled star metal kukri. First one I've ever found after trying for months last year. Not ancient, but just having the legendary affix is more than I could ask for. And a couple rifts later my first furnace dropped! Also not ancient, but definitely an improvement for my jade build and wizard. Even with having these items I still feel like the new demon hunter is more fun to play gameplay wise. I'm a big fan of nuking the crap out of everything with Maelstrom clusterarrows or covering the screen with multishot. Couldn't be more thankful for my luck yesterday though. I'm definitely feeling the effects of the drop rate increase.

So far the only usable ancient I have is Cain's boots for my WD. I'm currently trying to roll an ancient arcane barb on my DH, but its slow going after using most of my forgotten souls on rerolling new items and redoing my gear for the new patch.

By the way, does giantbomb have much of an active clan in RoS for the NA server? The one I'm in right now is dead aside from 1 of my best friends who also still plays.

Just died on PS4 due to a bug, thought people might find this amusing:

First ancient item I've found (4 rerolls):

Wowzers. Good going.

@fredchuckdave: Believe it or not but the great stats on that has less to do with you getting an ancient and more you getting super lucky. Ancient legendaries don't roll higher crit damage or chance(unless it's different for the consoles), they only really effect the base affixes like damage and main stat increases(str/dex/int). Thats why ancient rings and amulets are kind of a bummer.

@neocalypso: No it's the same, I know Ancients can roll shitty, wouldn't be D3 otherwise! I'm too scared to use Mirinae on consoles so the build I'm using really only needs 1 or 2 legendary gems. Either way here was my first "serious" foray into Grifts after getting that amulet, hadn't done past rank 7 prior to that(toughness is a little low...):

Hardcore Grifts are so damn intense (albeit insanely suicidal if you're really pushing). Have maybe 20 hours on the character. Should be fun for Season 2, though sadly D3 runs like crap on my comp (used to run great pre expansion), but hey at least it runs good on PS4.