Friday, April 28, 2017

Shrekt

I havn't posted in awhile, so I thought it was about time to shitpost about some random epeen nonsense.

In Season 10 of Diablo III, Blizzard decided not to listen to the enormous library of constructive posts regarding class balance changes and instead decided to do their own thing yet again. This included buffing the highest performing classes even further and introducing Primal Ancient Legendaries.

Primal Ancient Legendaries (or PALs) are basically ancient legendaries that have rolled perfectly. They drop at an extremely low drop rate and are usually pretty crap. This is mainly because a) legendaries usually roll with terrible affixes, and b) terrible legendaries drop most of the time. Getting a well rolled PAL Furnace is extremely unlikely.

They also introduced a requirement prior to them dropping on normal/seasons. You need to clear a GR70 first.

This aspect of PALs has created enormous controversy within the Diablo III community, revealing some interesting aspects about the majority of people who play it. For most players, this 'gateway' is ridiculously unfair, requiring insane amounts of playtime to get thousands of paragon levels, perfectly rolled Ancient gear and leveling your gems as high as possible, not to mention a build that is different from what they are playing. This dismay has been expressed adamantly on the forums, with many people complaining that GR70 is far too high. For example, this post containing the following:

"... I can hardly do T13 let alone GR 70 with my DH. Now I know some will say, ''change this skill'', ''add this item'', blah, blah, blah. But the point I shouldn't have to min max that much! I have level 60 gems, 6 pc set, Ancient items, even Augments. I'm not an idiot or new to the DH either. It's just that GR 70 is a insane Gateway. Make the gateway 50 or 60 or take it away completely."

I had not realized this would even be a concern and initially interpreted the complaints as people joking/trolling. Admittedly my best geared D3 character farted at and completed a GR70 while I pushed to GR90 and beyond. Reading through the comments, it seems the community is very much split on just how easy a GR70 actually is. While I would calmly place my token on the 'is' side of the argument, it seems many, many players would disagree.

So I decided to conduct an experiment: How long would it take me to get to GR70 in Season 10 from scratch?

I decided to play a Demon Hunter, a class I had not invested time in since Season 1 and therefore have no understanding of their current meta. To be fair, I have played every other class in a season prior to this one at some point. Additionally, the Demon Hunter still appears to be the squishiest class in the game (at least on paper), so it would provide an additional challenge.

The end result is as follows...


I attempted a so-so GR70 about 15 hours in after completely solo leveling to paragon 463. I had no ancients, no augments, non-ideal gear rolls, level 50 gems and no prior attempts. I had 4 minutes to spare. What is annoying is that I know I could have done it much sooner if I had not screwed around trying to get Elemental Arrow to work better with the Marauder's set. Probably around the 13 hour mark.


So, in conclusion, people complaining on Diablo forums is nothing new and the GR70 gateway controversy is just further proof that some people don't know how to play the game. Which, for a game going on 5 years old is pretty sad.

I shall patiently await the Necromancer.