Tomorrow at 5pm PST starts season 26 for Diablo 3. Unlike past seasons I won't have the time to blow through the season journey overnight but I do plan to play it this weekend some and hopefully get through it within a couple days.
My witch doctor is next up in my season rotation to play and I plan to run the Haedrig's gift set (Zunimassa's) through till the end. Zuni's is an S-tier glass cannon build utilizing fetishes and poison darts.
While leveling I'll do what I always do and use a makeshift build utilizing the skills of whatever random legendary items drop. Once I get 4+ pieces of Zuni's though I'll start to transition to poison darts. There are a couple very key pieces to this build that will make it tough to fully transition to unless I get lucky with RNG.
My build will utilize builds found on Maxroll.gg and Icyveins.com. There's no need to deviate from these builds as they utilize all the key skills and gear you need to reach max DPS with this build. I will utilize fill in items as needed until I get all the key items though.
The season journey for me usually relies on the following steps:
1) With your rebirthed or fresh hero created, run the challenge rift first for extra materials.
2) Run regular rifts at the highest possible difficulty you can complete. Typically you jump between hard-expert-master difficulties. Note that enemies hit harder and take less damage about every 10 character levels. Generally you out level your gear doing this so it gets much slower to clear rifts of higher difficulties until your gear catches up to your character level, thus the jumping back and forth.
Do this until you hit a point where you can craft a level 70 weapon with ilvl reduction on it. Make sure it's a 2 handed rare item and don't re-roll for ilvl reduction until you get one with % chance to do something in one of the secondary skill slots. Always re-roll the stat that's opposite of that one because it gives you the best chance to roll ilvl reduction.
Once you can equip this 2 handed lvl 70 weapon at a lower character level, then switch to T3 rifts immediately. As things get harder to kill, slowly lower yourself back to T2 then T1 until you hit character level 70.
3) Ensure you spend blood shards on Kadala while leveling to get specific items that drop at these levels.
4) At level 70 target your season journey to get your Haedrig's gifts. You can look ahead at next steps to maximize efficiency so you can set the difficulty you're capable of completing and doing all season related journey items that are at that difficulty and below it. Ensure you start
5) Equip full Haedrig's gift set and start your end game build. Keep doing seasonal journey items. Occassionally you'll have to run extra rifts and bounties to stock up on materials required to make progress.
6) The hardest part of the season journey is largely the seat dungeon mastery. I usually make 1 attempt at this once I have my Haedrig's gifts all done. If I fail then I simply save this checkbox for last because it's so much easier once you have your end game build going.
Note: Season 26 adds a new end game activity called Echoing Nightmares. I plan to play this only a couple times to get the item required to augment an ancient. This saves me from wasting a level 50+ gem to augment an ancient which is required as part of the season journey.
Guide to Echoing Nightmare: use your best rift busting build and strategy. However, there are 4 one time use pylons in this place. Ensure you only grab them at key times. My plan is to grab each one around 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% overwhelmed statuses so I can spread them out to help when necessary.
Follow up after finishing the season:
This may have been my fastest season yet. Easy conquests and really good builds available for all classes in haedrigs gifts. It took me 2 days of game time and I was done.
Overall the seasonal mechanic was boring and avoidable. The drop rate to get the keys to enter is near impossible. My friend got 0 in the entire seasonal journey and I got 2. However, you're able to get credit for leveling 3 gems to 70 if you don't use them until you have 3 of them.
I learned that Zuni's poison dart build isn't that good anymore. It's very glassy and you have to stop to setup your DPS which makes you vulnerable. I was able to solo up through 80 on it but it's not as fun to play as Arachyr's which is top tier.
Also DH and Monk need nerfs because they are super easy to play and can push Grifts easily. Other builds and classes need buffs.
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