SO I'VE BEEN..

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the slow update AGAIN. Lots of important real life stuffs had happened to me and sometimes your plan gets ruined that way. Anyway, I'm back safely and that's all that matters. Better than gone forever. I also heard that Actor Robin Williams died while battling severe depression. Strangely i was also depressed around that day but I didn't know what happened to him. He was one of my favorite actors from my childhood till now. Let's not forget the good things about him! Okay back to why I'm here to begin with.

You may not be familiar to some of the phrases I will be using so here's a guide:

PTR= Public Test Realm
DPS= Damage Per Second also refering to people whose role is to do damage
HP= Health Points meaning the amount of life you have

So, i found out that both Diablo 3 PTR 2.10 and World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor Beta patch have been updated while you all and I were separated. So I took the liberty to do some testing! Took a while for me to download the Diablo 3 PTR 2.10 but it was worth it because it's anytime better than just looking at the patch notes every week or watching someone else play it.

First, Warlords of Draenor? Arms and Fury Warriors are going to be pretty happy because the updates on warriors were mainly on their defensive capabilities. Are you ready?(:P) DPS warriors can now use shield barrier! Along with Devastate which has 30% chance to refresh Revenge and Revenge itself(only useable in Defensive Stance). This is HUGE because DPS warriors before were lacking in terms of self sustaining themselves compare to the other classes. Impending Victory, Die by the Sword then Ravager and that's it. It's like trying to copy a rogue or a mage but obviously they would be a lot better at it. Because of that, I prefer to play Gladiator Stance Warrior. I needed something defensive to constantly accompany me and that was Shield Barrier. I tried Fury first with the talent which removes Bloodthirst's cooldown in a few 2v2 skirmishes and I was untouchable in 1v1, 2 DPSes won't kill me as easy as before anymore. It is safe to say with this new update killing warriors first will not necessarily be THE path of least resistance. The best way to kill a warrior now is to disable him/her with stuns or anything similar as long as possible or kite to prevent him/her from gathering rage to use shield barrier effectively. Pretty much like killing a Protection Warrior. Arms is more luck dependent than fury. Because as Fury, I only need to spam Bloodthirst for rage and glorious heals(and occassionally Revenge) then shield barrier and Arms only has Charge, 10 rage from every non-crit auto attack, Devastate and Revenge to rely on for rage. If you get lucky, you can use Revenge more often and therefore more rage. Revenge still refreshes on dodge and parry though. Despite being unkillable in a 1v1 situation, my Fury DPS was too weak or underpowered to overpower the other classes' self heals unless I go Battle Stance. As Arms, you will need to be smart in managing the rage you get deciding how much you should use for offense and how much of shield barrier you would need. It would be a lot easier if you have a healer for a partner obviously(lol). If not, hopefully Warriors will have more access to the leech stat so you can switch to Defensive Stance to play defensively and try to get your HP up to a comfortable level then switch back to Battle Stance. Otherwise, you will only be delaying the inevitable or try to hang in there for the win. Overall this new defensive playstyle feels good but I think the absorbs might seem too strong sometimes but at least your DPS will become limited for playing defensively. Maybe it is meant to be strong enough to prove its point.  So I don't think non-warriors will have to fear them for this change unless it's an Arms Warrior maybe(lol) but respect their new defensive capabilities. So throw all ur disables at them with RESPECT and a little fear(lol) when you burst them down. Much better if they don't have shield barrier up because it only lasts for 6 seconds. All of this might change since we're still in the Beta stage but that's how it is for now. Last thing about it, nothing new for Gladiator Warriors.

Now for the Diablo 3 PTR 2.10! I have not tried the season mode so I've been playing the normal mode. The first thing I tried was the Greater Rifts. Killing ONE greater rift guardian will grant you 1-3 Legendary items. 2 on average. Sometimes none at all but it could be a bug. I've not found the Cesspool and Greed's Domain so far.. didn't expect them to be so hard to find. So you can expect that you will be getting legendary items more consistently per day and perhaps more abundantly. Opening a normal rift will cost you ONE rift key fragment and you still will get 6 rift key fragments per Act Bounty Run. Too bad the normal rift guardians won't 100% drop the greater rift keys but they have been dropping for me fairly often like every 2-3 normal rifts runs. Every Greater Rift Key you get in Torment 3 difficulty, you can open around 2-3 Greater Rifts so that's like 100-150 Blood Shards and 2-9 legendaries. If you think about the Blood Shards, this means you will be getting 500 Blood Shards more often. So if you don't get anything good from Kadala, you won't feel as bad as before because you know you will be getting your 500 Blood Shards again fairly soon. Only obvious downside to all of this is that your chance to get the legendary items you need is still at random. So luck will still play a major role in this game unless Blizzard changes that.

I was lucky enough to complete the green Earthquake set for my Whirlwind Barbarian in 2 days so I could test it ASAP. Turns out it's not as fun as i thought it would be and I'm glad I knew that sooner than later. Elites who can root you can be disastrous if I can't use Leap Attack to break out of it. And Leap Attack is also my main DPS ability since it also casts Earthquake(Triple Earthquakes baby!). Earthquake also doesn't cover a lot of ground so it can be frustrating to try to put all that damage on enemies who tend to run away from you unless you use the freezing Earthquake rune but it's just so boring to look at in my opinion without the right tools. Rimeheart is probably needed for this build to be good. So at the moment, I've been trying to figure out a way to improve the whirlwind build's DPS without relying on Earthquake and maybe the Immortal King's green set too. I find the Raekor Barbarian Set to be useful for defense. Furious Charge can break out of roots and most of the time i can use it when I need to. So most probably I will use Raekor. If not I'll try to get the Ice Climbers and see if there's anything better than Raekor. For now, I'm thinking of a Lightning Whirlwind Barbarian combined with some interesting Legendary Gems. I'll let you know the results.

I definitely wish I could add videos and pictures into my posts but for now I am not capable yet. And I will when i am (:P). That's all I want to share for now. Be sure to take good care of yourselves!

Signing off,
Beaglesrock!