In my last Diablo III post, I had just been leveling up my Demon Hunter, trying to hit level cap before moving onto a new character in season 4.  Things were going well. I had checked out the new content in the newest patch, and I figured I’d raise the difficulty up a little bit just to try and speed along to 70. I was level 61 when it happened.

I snapped this before (or maybe after) the death message had appeared, but you can clearly see I have no health. You can also see how it was easy to happen, with all of those spells and walls sitting near my corpse. A frustrating end, though one you have to accept when you play hardcore. This is the highest level character I’ve had die though, the past high was 52, but that guy was powerleveled and died while in difficulties he had no business being in. I suppose the same should be said of this particular death, but I didn’t have a problem with Master difficulty pre-70 on the Witch Doctor. I guess I just like casters in this game, as I have come to the conclusion that I don’t really care for the Demon Hunter or his kit. Things got better towards the higher levels, but it’s still not exactly my cup of tea. The Wizard and Witch Doctor put up bigger numbers, have more survivability, and more AOE. Maybe it was just my build, maybe the class just isn’t for me. I do like the Monk and Crusader though, despite not being so bursty, but being nice and tanky. Anyway, season 4 started on Friday, so I was keen to get into game with a new character, and to forget my loss.

The entry screen gives a good summation of what to expect in the new season, and I decided to go ahead an make a wizard this time around, because I had the recent loss of the DH (and don’t want to replay that class), already have a Monk and Witch Doctor at 70, and don’t feel like playing the Crusader right now, but that’s my next character for sure. The season journey proved to be exceptional as I expected, and gives you clear goals that you can use in Adventure mode that you’d be doing anyway, but the tracking of these tasks is nice.

Soon after starting up my game, Eri popped in with a brand new Barbarian, but had also mentioned running a new wizard up into the 20’s solo. We were burning through content, hit level 11, and I said we should go over to the new zone to unlock our Kanai’s cubes in the seasonal mode (I have it open on my non-seasonal hardcore characters). This was perhaps a bad idea, as we got crushed by the first named we encountered, and our lowly new characters have already died!

That was quick. Two deaths in two days… not boding well for the future of my hardcore characters. My Witch Doctor and Monk are both on Torment I but because they won’t benefit me with seasonal rewards, I don’t want to play them at the moment. However, it is required to grind out a bunch of paragon levels to access the post T6 difficulties, so I’m going to have to devote some time to them if I ever want to see the “true” endgame. For now though, I’ve already rerolled a new wizard which I’m intending to level to 70 and beyond. I want to get it done quickly though, so I can work on the paragon stuff, as the paragon levels do transfer to the non-seasonals after the fact, which is a nice bonus for them.

So that’s where I am now. So far I’m really enjoying the new stuff that keeps coming out of Blizzard’s Diablo team. Keep it up y’all!

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This post marks the end of Blaugust, and the collective blogosphere will breathe a sigh of relief. I have sort of forced myself into this whole blogging every day thing, along with updating The Digital Backwoods daily and doing the whole Nuclear Throne Dailies, and I think if nothing else, I might use those dailies as daily post fodder for days when I’m not in the mood to write. I might just keep up the practice, and I might not. I’m not entirely sure at this point, so I guess we’ll find out together!