u/Thirteenera

Im super excited for the ability to tame bosses - and while i expect it to be a giant bait, i am prepared to be baited.

That said, the ascendancy is a bit weird in that its hard to choose the direction.

• Option 1 - we get Tame Boss, Bear, second bear option (60% mainhand dmg for companions) and something else (im not fan of idols - see below)

With this setup we get the powerful bear bonus, but we will be restricted to martial weapons. What this means is that it will be harder for us to do a minion focus, and we might also struggle to get additional companions (i.e. from chest) due to spirit reservation costs. I expect bosses to reserve a big chunk of spirit. This means the benefit from 2nd bear skill might be limited, as it shines more when we have more companions.

• Option 2 - we get Tame Boss, bear/stag/owl, and the free triple. While im not too excited about stag/owl, the triple has a very powerful starkonja effect built into it. Stacking it with Starkonja would result in a significant defensive layer. Downside is that without 60% conversion from 2nd bear option, we might find ourselves lacking damage (though perhaps this is mitigated by them adding a lot more companion nodes). Upside is that we can roll with a scepter, allowing us a more minion centric build.

• Option 3 - we get bear/stag/owl and free triple, and the second bear. On paper, this seems like best option - we get conversion and starkonja all in one. But we also lose the primary fun aspect of Spiritwalker, aka boss taming.

Why am i not talking about idols? Because honestly the idol ascendancy seems to suck imo. Here's why:

• The ascendancy gives you buffs for every idol you have slotted (10% dmg to companions and 2% reservation efficiency per idol), and these are pretty good buffs. But it also gives you -2% all ele res for every non-idol slotted.
• The problem comes from the fact that a lot of idols.... suck. Instead of having more defenses (like es/energy shield) you will need to slot "more area of effect" or "increased accuracy rating" or "increased curse magnitude" in your gear. This feels less like an upgrade and more like a sidegrade. Theres a couple interesting unique idols, but i dont want to have EVERY (or almost every) socket in my gear to be filled with idols - and if i dont do that, then this ascendancy loses its point.
• The idols competing with the runes is the biggest issue. You lose a big upside (increased defenses / resistances) for a kinda eeeeh upside AND you are punished for every slot where you take a rune.
• +10% companion damage per idol is strong but will likely be overshadowed by the 2nd bear skill. The mana reservation efficiency is great, but you end up sacrificing too much for it mo.

Overall this leads me to believe that best option will be either 1 (offensively) or (2) defensively. It will all come down to how much spirit bosses reserve, and whether you need to rely on scepter to realistically get another companion.

What are people's thoughts? Do you agree? Or am i thinking the wrong way here?

You might know some of those. But maybe there will be a couple that will be useful to you.

1. Dont forget to grab your mercenary from the Vessel zones. Ive seen so many people who just completely forgot they are a thing

2. Following on from (1), dont forget that you can barter for stuff using mercenary tokens. An the vendor has some VERY GOOD stuff. I've found some multi-GA items, rare aspects, etc.

3. All those "boss trophy" things you are picking up? They are in your Consumables tab, and their only use is to be amalgamated 5 at a time into random boss uniques. Its very likely you're sitting on a few dozen of random uniques (and yes, these can ancestral/GA as well!)

4. The way to summon bosses has been changed. You no longer use keys/materials to summon bosses - just to loot them. So that means you can go and attempt ANY LAIR FIGHT without worrying that you will die and lose your keys. You only use key to loot the chest after you win.

5. I know that Temis is the new capital, but if you're completing a lot of whispers, it might be a good idea to set your favourite portal to Whispering Tree. This way you can just press your portal hotkey to return there instead of having to manually scroll and find it every time. Temis is much easier to click on map than Whispering Tree! (EDIT: As pointed out, there's now crows in most major towns that let you turn in whispers there)

6. Speaking of which, some people might not know that you can favourite a waypoint! Right click it on map - and that will make you ALWAYS teleport there when you use your portal!

7. 3-1 for charms and seals is VERY powerful. I've had maybe 10 6-slot seals so far, and ALL of them came from me doing 3-1 recipe in cube with the shitty legendary 5-slot seals. Same for nice set charms, ones that give you things like +3 skills. Just 3-1 them to get a random one, or reroll a specific one if you need.

8. You can reroll the value of Ancestral Unique item's aspect in the cube! So if you have a unique with great stats but minimum roll of its power, you CAN reroll it in cube (keeping the stats!).

9. Do not salvage Grand gems. Salvaging royal and below is fine, but if you salvage Grand ones, you lose 90% of their value. It costs 1mil fragments to make a grand, but salvaging them only gives you 100k back!

10. It might seem that you cant trade charms/seals as you cant put them in trading window. but you actually can! If you invite someone into party, and then drop the charm on the ground, they can see it and pick it up - Drop Trading like in the old d2 days!

11. When you are creating a unique charm using cube and ancestral unique, THE STATS AND VALUE OF THE UNIQUE ASPECT DONT MATTER. The newly created charm will have RANDOM stats and RANDOM aspect value. So dont waste a great rolled unique thinking you will be able to carry that to the charm.

12. If you select "Butcher sometimes appears" for the Pit passive tree, if you fail to kill butcher in the short timer before he leaves, that pit will be considered failed, even if you have time remaining! So be careful

13. Tempering an affix CAN GIVE YOU GA. It takes on average 7-10 tempers before you see a GA, but its 100% possible. You can get more tempering attempts on an item by using a Scroll of Restoration! (EDIT: Im told this requires an ancestral item!)

14. Contrary to 13, you CANNOT get GA when rerolling/adding affixes in cube! You can get GA if you just recycle items (i.e. 3-1 uniques) but not when you are adding/rerolling affixes!

15. There is an item called Kullean Tuning Prism. It allows you to SAFELY tranfigure an amulet, keeping it modifiable, and adding an extra UTILITY aspect to it. This lets you have amulet with two aspects. HOWEVER there is a bug - if you try to change your imprinted aspect after giving it one with Kulle, it can brick the amulet! So make sure you IMPRINT FIRST, and THEN KULLE. Once you have kulle's on it, do not change your imprint. Again, kulle's does NOT make your item unmodifiable, so you can transfigure it again after if you want!

16. You can force specific resistance affixes you get in cube by adding a gem of corresponding color. This cant be done with All Resist though sadly.

I will add more if i think of any - but feel free to leave your ones in comments too!

So the way set is meant to work is, you cast a sigil, that gives you a 60 second buff. The lower the time on the buff, the more bonuses you get. You can also reduce the timer further by killing monsters inside your sigils.

Now if you just let the buff expire normally, it works fine. It ends its duration, gives you its final burst ability, and then starts again when you use next sigil. However if you kill monsters inside your sigils (which, as you can imagine, you do all the time), it will often brick.

In this state, instead of having a 60 second timed buff, your character will have a "Ritual is Ready to Start" buff with no duration. When this happens, your charm set is bricked - it will never count down, it will never refresh, and it doesnt give any bonuses. Its as if you had no set at all - and the only way to sort this out is to either get a loading screen (i.e. change zones) or remove the set charms and replace them. As you can imagine, this is a hassle at best, and cant even be done at all (i.e. in the pit) at the worst.

F**K

THOSE

EXPLODING

BLOODBAG

MONSTERS

Seriously. 90% of my deaths this season are related to the fact that i cant see those tiny fkers explode under my character. They do SO MUCH DAMAGE, and are VERY HARD TO SEE (especially when your build is fire and makes entire screen constantly explode). AND for some reason they spawn like twice a second.

So if you pull a monster with this affix and dont immediately notice that it spawns them, a few bloodbags under your character will just kill you.

I dont mind poison pools. I dont mind lighting orbs. BUT THE BLOODBAGS HAVE TO GO.

You want constructive feedback? How about:

1. Make them MORE VISIBLE. So that i can actually SEE them and avoid them.
2. Make them spawn less often. At the moment the monster literally seems to sht them out like some beans after a taco night
3. They do insane amount of damage compared to other damage sources. Possibly because they are balanced around being avoided - but see point 1 about why that doesnt work
4. Maybe make them a bit slower? They run like they are turbo charged. So not only are they small, deadly, invincible, and constantly respawning, BUT THEY ARE ALSO FAST.

So there is this skill you can take via war plans for The Pit that makes butcher randomly appear - if you kill him, pit is complete, and if he kills you, pit is failed. It's a nice little time saver every so often.

But here's the thing. Butcher has a mechanic where If you don't kill him after a... Minute? Two minutes? He runs away. Normally this isn't a problem. But apparently it counts as failing the pit timer for some reason.

I was just pushing t9 pit, and while I can clear everything reasonably fast, butcher is tanky as fuck. I had abouy 75% of the timer remaining when he spawned, and I started fighting him. I wasn't in danger of dying but he is a SPONGE and i could t kill him in that 1-2min timer. So he ran away.

And that failed my pit. It just said timer failed. Even though I didn't die, and I had PLENTY of time left

So yeah, be aware - him being tankier than greater lair bosses means this point in Pit tree can be bad on high torments.