Finishing up 36 in the next few days. Fuck whatever idiot thought "Use Winged Scarabs" was balanced. 20 ex for one achievement. Some of the others were not nearly as expensive but still questionable from a "they expected people to do these without trade?".
End of league buildapalooza:
- Storm Secret HoT autobomber. It's definitely squishy but the map clear is worth it. I was able to do Uber Elder deathless fwiw. Probably won't exist next league.
- BF/BB + Kitava's Thirst Chieftan had promise, I just couldn't get over the delay and screen clutter from bladefall. I think the build had scaling issues from early to mid game.
- Fireball + Kitava's Thirst Necro also had promise but I had to drop it because it was tanking my FPS in some situations(like Blight).
- Another attempt at mines. I thought putting detonate on left click would help, but it instead revealed a different problem. 1 mine is fast but not enough to clear. 5 mines is too slow but enough to clear. Sab might be fast enough, but I was playing Scion for that Indigon and Mana Flask abuse.
- VD spellslinger necro. IDK how so many people play this build. Those balls are so fucking slow. And I animation cancel my barrage way too often. The latter is the main reason I dropped the build. Reliable gameplay is paramount, which is also an issue with Kitava's Thirst builds.
- Was going to play int-stacking wander assassin but dropped it. I don't think I can play builds with clear and single target skills anymore. The gameplay of switching between to the two sucks. Flaccidly KBing down an almost dead rare blows.
- Kay's Spiders and Spectres. Hilarious and fun clear dampened by clunky on-kill spawning of spiders in places you can't get kills(bosses).
- ED/Contagion. Nothing new to say here, great league starter. Started as chaos spellslinger, dropped soulrend eventually. Would have dropped spellslinger as well if I thought putting up with 1-2 gameplay was worth it.
- Penance Brand Inquisitor. Mathil made the clear look good but I admittedly never invested enough to get the cluster jewel. Build is frustrating without Holy Conquest.
- Some wacky OoS Archmage Kitava's Thirst Assassin. Dropped when I figured out triggered spells don't trigger OoS.
Maybe I should track how many builds I try each league. Going forward, I'm pretty sure I'm going to prefer builds that allow you to dps and move at the same time. I just can't seem to not get myself killed trying to dps the boss.
Few more thoughts on Harvest. I have appreciated, when looking for gear, that there's a whole new dimension of "I can fix that". It used to be people that listed T2+ res belts with an open suffix at the same price as belts with a useless 3rd suffix. Harvest lets you buy gear with only 1-2 affixes that you actually want, as long as the remainders can be removed. It's been very handy when looking for a ring to cover 120+ resistances because all my other slots were non-negotiable.
That said, I think what a lot of people are missing in this conversation is what Harvest really represents: it reduces non-killing mystery time. In general, people don't like classic crafting because it's an RNG fiesta. What they really mean is that they don't know how much time and resources they are going sink into it. Trade is another example of something you don't know how long it will take.
The only major system that should have a big question mark is killing shit. You don't know how long until your next exalt drops, but who cares, you're having fun blowing shit up. Trading and crafting have no such distractions. Harvest crafting was definitely overpowered(+3% spell crit, L20 hypothermia, 30% more ele damage helmet I made 30 minutes is proof of that), but I hope GGG learns the real reason most people wanted it.
