[Diablo 3 Blog] 1 Year into RoS Blog.

I know it's been a while since I've had a blog, but figured I would spend the time to gather a few memories together since my last D3 Blog post and record it for history forever! Old Blog Entry

I'm still a member of the Team Liquid D3 clan in the US server (even though the actual D3 forum was closed) but at least the clan is still active and playing Season 3 right now! The last blog ended at preparing for 2.1, so this one will start with... 2.1!

2.1, The Hype, Meet'N'Greet, and then The Spam - Paragon 600 to 666
It's kind of funny looking back at remembering how tough T6 used to be. Goblin packs used to be almost impossible to kill solo, and needing to recruit some heavy hitters was almost required, especially as a monk. This was my very first successful goblin pack kill, and much joy was to be had.
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Of course, as soon as 2.1 hit, Goblin packs would be so trivial, that you purposefully invited lower level people to carry to some free loot for some extra karma.

I was even selected to be the first monk to participate in the Diablo 3 Meat'N'Greet community outreach thing (Link). Which I totally forgot about until today.

For Season 1, none of the new gems or gear was that interesting to me, but I did create a seasonal Crusader to gamble the build-enabling shield. Wasn't too enjoyable, and I never felt like ranking on ladder. Demon Hunter was still by far the easiest class to play at end-game, just dropping sentries and letting them wipe the map. So I was still EZ-mode farming with DH.

The biggest buff to Monks in early 2.1 was the modification to the Sunwuko set to spawn clones after spending spirit. Problem was the most efficient way to spend spirit was to spam Mantras and Sweeping Wind. That allowed you to just keep generating spirit, but required some intense spam. I hadn't used any software or hardware macros before but was about to make the dive. But the new legendary gems introduced was a pretty fun new grind to do, and raised the power level of every class quite considerably. My favorite by far was the Boon of the Hoader gem. Back then gold was actually semi-hard to farm:
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But after a few months of using that gem on DH, I went from a few million gold to.... 20 BILLION. and haven't had to use Boon since.

Early in Season 1 / Era 1, low 40s was the limit to what most Monks could do solo, but 4 player groups would be able to go further, so I kept playing Demon Hunter specifically to level a few gems past 40. But one of my early highlights was reaching Rank #4 Solo Monk in the US. + Show Spoiler +

. I had just gotten the elusive Witching Hour and a Sunwuko Shinies that had a socket (they didn't come natural back then), and both were a few % upgrades.

As the season dragged on, I became too frustrated with Mantra spam and ended up farming loot/xp on Demon Hunter. Got bored enough to level my Hardcore monk to 70, and then flirted with the popular Barb and Crusader builds. But I did go back to Monk to hit Paragon 666 + Show Spoiler +

^_^.

2.1.2, Blizzon 2014 Hype, The end of SpamAge, and Torch Quest 2000 - Paragon 666 to 733
I had stopped playing Monk because it wasn't fun to spam two buttons 10 times a second, so when the devs said during Blizzcon it was going to change, I was hyped. A +500% bonus was huge, but it also meant the obsoletion of a great portion of my current gear with the announcement of Ancient Gear, even my precious Band of Rue Chambers + Show Spoiler +

. But preparing for patches is half the fun of gaming! And thus began the Quest for the perfect Incense Torch. Here's a chart I made to tell myself how awesome my new Torch would be:

The change to Maruader for DH essentially marked the end of my playtime on DH. I just loved the automated gameplay of the sentries, and having to actively participate wasn't fun for me anymore compared to melee monkin.

Once 2.1.2 went live, all that preparation saving up a Tzo Kirin's Gaze paid off and farming for ancients was proceeding as expected. I did also complete a solo GR40 with the buffed Sunwuko + Show Spoiler +

. Of course, the only thing I actually wanted was an Ancient Torch, as it seemed like I just needed one to complete on the leaderboards. By the time the end of Season 1 / Era 1 was annoucned, I had pretty much given up and made my final push on the Solo Monk leaderboards, capping out at GR46. + Show Spoiler +

. So of course, that same day I had given up on obtaining a Torch for leaderboard ranking... one drops. It was my 20th Incense Torch drop since 2.1.2, and first of 3 ancient torches I would find (to date). Fortunately I still had time for one last leaderboard push, and was able to get up to #34 before the season ended:
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Season 2, and the demotivatingly long PTR 2.2 - Paragon 733 to 833
I went from 1 monk to 3 level 70 monks, and had enough gear and gems to have multiple builds, having a solo 火Tzo-Fire Monk, a 雷 DW-EP Monk, and a 雷² GR Monk. Around this time I also finally discovered the Numlock trick and that made T6 farming much more enjoyable. Of course, I was starting to tire of Farming with Tzo-Fire and DW-EP was frustratingly crappy solo damage output, so I decided to merge the two into a DW-Firebell setup. I would fondly refer to that a DW Gong-Mode, and was the origin of the Play Your Way submission that was selected as the Monk build for Round 7 of the series. (vote!) I even decided to record my very first gameplay youtube video when I submitted. (Link, Channel)

When the Season 2 started, started my 4th Level 70 Monk, and intended to just gamble a decent pair of Gungdo Gear and then stopping. Gungdo was an amazing item that spread Exploding Palm to every target caught up in the explosion, which made chain explosions one of the greatest events in D3 that will never get old! The new gems and Gungdo gameplay was fun enough to keep me playing S2. It was so fun that I tried to clear rifts using EP only, and actually ended up achieving US 70th (#6 solo!) player to complete the S2 Conquest: Speed Demon ! + Show Spoiler +

. Then it became common knowledge that XP% was multiplicative when in Greater Rifts, and thus began the speed-GR fad.. that hasn't died yet. I leveled up to Paragon 600 in about 1/10th the time it took before.

Of course Season 2 was much shorter than the first, as the PTR was online and completed in record time! The upcoming changes for Monks included removing perma-serenity and buffing the Raiment set to be a dashing strike set. With the 1 year anniversary buff doubling XP, I grinded up to 780 in non-seasons and 666 in Season 2.
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With only a few days left to rank in Season 2 and Era 2, I had to get back into the Greater Rift mode and was able to rank up to the top 300 for Season 2, and #56 in Era 2. + Show Spoiler +

. Of course, the main problem now was I had to combine two stashes full of stuff down to one, which is a mini-game all by itself. I even suicided my Hardcore character to free up a slot -_- #Microtransactionsplease

Season 3 to present day! - Paragon 833 to 843
Once S2 ended, all that XP rolled up to bump me up from Paragon 780 to 833. The new Season 3 items didn't really interest me, but the fluff items - Pennant, Portrait, and transmog did. So that's exactly what I did. Grinded to 70 solo mostly punching stuff in the face and the getting power-geared by a few helpful Team Liquid clan members to be able to solo T6 to complete the remaining achievement points.

Plus after nearly 10,000 rifts, I was able to get my very first cow rift in Season 3 as a fresh 70.
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Got the new Pennant, and new Portrait, so it's back to non-seasons for me, where the new hotness for Monks in 2.2 was the addition of a new sword In-Geom that reduced cooldowns by 10 seconds for up to 15 seconds, which is amazing with Raiment for speeding through rifts. (DS Spam!). Of course, that spaz-fest got kind of irritaing pretty fast, so I went ahead and started gambling the new Barb and Demon Hunter sets. The new Wastes Barb set plays a lot like a mix between the old Monk Tempest Rush using Whirlwind with a cool SW: Cyclone proc, and is actually pretty fun. Demon Hunter got two sets updates, and I tried both - the Nat's with strafe was another channeling type build and the Unhallowed Essence, which I used with a Kridershot and Ball Lightning. Both were pretty cool changes of pace! I like where the current design changes are going, and hope the new Monk set in 2.3 is going to be awesomer than Raiment!

That brings things up pretty much to present day! Hope you enjoyed reading. I had a chuckle reading my last D3 blog just before this.

I like to snapshot my D3 profile to track how many kills and stuff, so here's the latest:

Next Blog... 2016!

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