It occurred me despite my recent lust for ARPGs that I've never really played a Diablo game which seems kind of crazy in hindsight, I imagine thats kind of like being a fan of platformers and having never tried Super Mario Bros. Started up the demo and not bad.
Didn't feel right until I tried the Barbarian though. Then it was perfect. These games are never quite as satisfying as they are when you run straight into a crowd and knock them all down.
Was thinking about buying X-COM 2 next month but heavily leaning towards picking this up along with Grim Dawn.
Never played an ARPG online before, the online community for Diablo 3 on PC still pretty active?
The way the D3 community goes is there are people for the first month or two after a patch and then it slowly starts dying down until the next patch, since each major patch could easily be sold as a $10 expansion. There's a LOT of content in major patches for this game (We're at 2.4, the next big one will be 2.5, and there will be balancing patches inbetween and maybe minor features and item tweaks).
At the end of the current patch lifetime they open up the PTR for the next major patch with a 2000% increased drop rate for top stuff, which allows you to mess with builds and such. Most of the community is usually on the PTR during this time. Either way you won't be wanting for players to join up with, at least once you get past level 70.
A bit of info: The actual game doesn't start until level 70. Think of that time going from 1-70 as a sort of extended tutorial, letting you figure out interactions of certain items and different affixes. The power curve in the game once you hit 70 is just absolutely insane. You'll go from hitting for millions to probably billions of HP. The difference between the highest and lowest level 70 player is probably several orders of magnitude higher than 1-70.
The story mode should get you comfortably through the beginning levels, or at least mostly. Join up with the PA crew and someone will probably power level you the rest of the way, because levels 60-70 can be absolutely grinding (pun intended)
Im discouraged. I have had 2 Rimeharts, a fire amulet, Tasker and theo, in-geom, ice climbers, and a twisted sword all drop. Ive cubed 20 hellskulls, which are the 2nd rarest crusader shields in the game. Nearly 400 paragon levels of this crap. Still no Akarats.
Im rolling barb and maybe going back to crus later.
This may be my fault.
Yesterday I got the Heart of Iron, Aquila Cuirass, Akarat's Awakening, Justice Lantern, Convention of Elements, two The Mortal Dramas, and a better Zeal of the Invoker. I think I absorbed everyone's potential lucky RNG rolls and ruined the game for them.
TOGSolid on
+1
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Crusader is 70, got my 4/6 but I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with this since i can't seem to get the damage to break past t2, I guess I should go through and re-roll my shit stats at least
I really want to try the 6/6 bonus though, watching the 500% thorns damage from the horse shred things up makes me think 600% I can actually direct will be fun
Crusader is 70, got my 4/6 but I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with this since i can't seem to get the damage to break past t2, I guess I should go through and re-roll my shit stats at least
I really want to try the 6/6 bonus though, watching the 500% thorns damage from the horse shred things up makes me think 600% I can actually direct will be fun
The 6 pieces bonus basically is your DPS
Yup, I jumped straight from doing T2 to T6 (and shortly thereafter to T8) after getting the 6 piece. Grinding up to unlocking a lvl 20 Grift was what took the time though.
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited January 2016
I had to use Bombardment - Barrel of Spikes + Mortal Drama + Belt of the Trove prior to the 6 piece bonus to get things to die in any reasonable amount of time
Speaking of gearing up, my gear is slow going on my new Barb, but I did just get this
Getting a Trove early is good news though.
Trove makes you not have to have bombardment on your bar which is a huge gain in flexibility and endgame survivability.
Invokers is really strong from just hitting 6/6 all the way to grift 70+
But the weapons (mainhand and cube ) , shield and belt are all on the rare end of the drop table which can be really annoying.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
0
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
The biggest click moment in Diablo is when you can play your build as intended. Thats when you start really making progress.
0
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Level up that BoTT to 25 before equipping it on a thorns build.
Youll get more use out of a pain enhancer until the BoTT self-procs.
I had to use Bombardment - Barrel of Spikes + Mortal Drama + Belt of the Trove prior to the 6 piece bonus to get things to die in any reasonable amount of time
Speaking of gearing up, my gear is slow going on my new Barb, but I did just get this
Dread Iron absolutely clears house once you get a Blade of Tribes. Even without Avalanche or Ground Stomp on your bar you will annihilate TX. Really good revamp for that item.
Crusader is 70, got my 4/6 but I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with this since i can't seem to get the damage to break past t2, I guess I should go through and re-roll my shit stats at least
I really want to try the 6/6 bonus though, watching the 500% thorns damage from the horse shred things up makes me think 600% I can actually direct will be fun
The 6 pieces bonus basically is your DPS
Yup, I jumped straight from doing T2 to T6 (and shortly thereafter to T8) after getting the 6 piece. Grinding up to unlocking a lvl 20 Grift was what took the time though.
Yup this is where I'm stuck now
Just gotta get lucky before I burn out on the crusader treadmill
The Might of the Earth one: if your damage is too high, you can't do the required leap-groundstomp-earthquake combo on elites because they die too fast. And if the monster density happens to be too low combined with too high damage on your part, freezing and killing a mob every 10 seconds becomes extremely difficult. For anyone attempting this, I suggest taking off your Dread Iron as a first step.
how good is that mighty weapon you need for it (blade of the tribes)? like if you manage to get a regular one, you should use it over an ancient or should you just cube it and use its abilities with an ancient weapon? considering you probably just want to cube furnace it seems like if you don't get an ancient one you should just cube it immediately if you have an ancient weapon already.
With the huge earthquake bonus damage and the free damage it gives your for shouting, you should really use a regular blade of the tribes over an ancient anything
Like an ancient furnace will be about 30% more damage and 50% to elites, about a 1.9x benefit to earthquake. Tribes is 2.5x at minimum.
Blade of the Tribes having +200% Earthquake damage is the same reason why Dread Iron is part of the build. Despite not having Avalanche or Ground Stomp on your bars, 200% Avalanche damage is huge. You still get free Avalanches anyway, even if they're unruned, I mean. It's still free damage.
That all said and done, though, I don't really like what Leapquake does to your action bar. Honestly I kinda feel like it's a mess of a build. You need War Shout and Threatening Shout (Blade of the Tribes), Leap and Earthquake (Lutsocks), Boulder Toss (Skular's Salvation, plus it resets your cooldowns)... that leaves room for exactly one flex ability, and you'd be crazy not to run Battle Rage in that slot.
So there's no room for Ground Stomp or Avalanche as actual abilities on your bar. That's a little sad, I think.
Blade of the Tribes having +200% Earthquake damage is the same reason why Dread Iron is part of the build. Despite not having Avalanche or Ground Stomp on your bars, 200% Avalanche damage is huge. You still get free Avalanches anyway, even if they're unruned, I mean. It's still free damage.
That all said and done, though, I don't really like what Leapquake does to your action bar. Honestly I kinda feel like it's a mess of a build. You need War Shout and Threatening Shout (Blade of the Tribes), Leap and Earthquake (Lutsocks), Boulder Toss (Skular's Salvation, plus it resets your cooldowns)... that leaves room for exactly one flex ability, and you'd be crazy not to run Battle Rage in that slot.
So there's no room for Ground Stomp or Avalanche as actual abilities on your bar. That's a little sad, I think.
I disagree. Ive been playing around on non seasons, and I am playing around on it right now on seasons, and so far I have dropped EQ and battle rage off my bar, and added avalanche and ground stomp, and I like the way it feels and plays even better. Damage seems fine.
If you are reading this add me.
D3: HexDex#1281, PSN: DireOtter, Live: DireOtter
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
They could permanently grey out the ability on my bar, and I'd still sacrifice a slot just to have Cave In on EQ
With the huge earthquake bonus damage and the free damage it gives your for shouting, you should really use a regular blade of the tribes over an ancient anything
Like an ancient furnace will be about 30% more damage and 50% to elites, about a 1.9x benefit to earthquake. Tribes is 2.5x at minimum.
okay, I haven't theorycrafted anything out so I wasn't sure how much of the damage increase was tied in to the orange text vs the damage amp
also I haven't played much since I've been trying to get over pneumonia, but I will keep this in mind to use blade over anything else. thanks
Not sure that's worth losing physical earthquake, but maybe if you used tectonic rift for avalanche charges and the boulder reducing the cooldown?
More avalanches would have to outweigh slightly weaker earthquakes AND no battle rage - bloodshed. Also ground stomp can't stun as often as leap - death from above, which is pretty useful for interrupting boss abilities.
After putting it off for what seems like forever it's finally done. Season Journey complete. Thanks to everyone I was blazing through TX with earlier today for helping me knock it out when RNG wanted to cooperate.
Normally I'd agree 100%. I've enjoyed seasons twice so far; Season 1 since the season only item made Condemn Crusader a thing again (and in an even more fun way than it was in beta and release at that), and the earlier parts of this season's journey. I'm also REALLY hoping they use this season as a base going forward. No season specific items and a free set finally made it feel like less of a chore.
Playing through the first six chapters of the season journey were actually fun. Find a group to shoot the shit and level, get the first four pieces of the set as a group, get our last two pieces solo, then meet back up and grind out everything else from there. With how fast you got a set it made the first four chapters a breeze to get the pet. It felt like plowing through your favorite arcade game. Like, I've beat Turtles in Time who knows how many times between arcade, SNES, and Genesis (Hyperstone Heist might as well be TiT), but it's always fun to play. That's what the first four chapters felt like. The next two were a bit more grindy but not too bad or overly so, actually enjoyable given how many people are playing seasons to group with or if you want to solo it you can grind a tiny bit to knock it out.
After that, especially to get the stash tab and then the final chapter, are still way too grindy and annoying. Don't like hardcore? Too bad, level up a toon anyway. Have fun grinding legendary gems to absurd levels even if you don't really want to. Have fun shooting dice on rift layouts to clear one under three minutes on TX, especially if you get knocked out of your return to town spell and miss the mark by a literal second or two. Mix all that with any number of class specific issues and RNG loot issues trying to find that one specific build defining item you have non-season and bleh.
I guess the TL; DR is overall there's a solid mini-game with the season journey they can continue to tweak to make better, even if I still sort of hate seasons.
+1
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
As a side, I believe you don't have to actually close the rift in 3 minutes because when I did mine I looked immediately after killing the RG and had credit.
Yeah I feel that the conquests this season are a bit much. It's where the season turns into a grind.
45 solo nonset took a lot of tweaking and I only got it because of Akarat and Trove. I tried a bunch of builds before I got it, and burned a ton of mats and time on a novelty.
50M gold meant I levelled a boon to 50 but it's mostly about spotting a baron in the distance so you can get your gf up. I tried Corvus strategy but I couldn't fit dps and GF.
6 set bonuses 55 is a huge drain on your stash even if you have 2 classes because you need to save up a ton of gear for each different build, roll it all into decent stats, need mats to fit it all, different legendary gems
1h campaign is a huge investment, requires 4 people probably on mics with the right classes and builds and can still rng crap on you.
Blergh, the one season I decided not to play HC they require me to level a HC character.
I've been thinking about the 6 set bonuses GR55 thingy. I have Invoker, Akkhan, Light sets for my crusader, and my barb has all four sets + Bul'Kathos weapons (only one of which is ancient though). The rest seem pretty straightforward, still need some individual items for the builds, but I'm not sure what to do with Akkhan's. I could put together an Akkhan Blessed Shield build if I ever find an Akkhan's Leniency to cube. Is that a good idea these days? I think I also have gear for some kind of a Heaven's Fury build. Any suggestions?
Yeah I feel that the conquests this season are a bit much. It's where the season turns into a grind.
45 solo nonset took a lot of tweaking and I only got it because of Akarat and Trove. I tried a bunch of builds before I got it, and burned a ton of mats and time on a novelty.
50M gold meant I levelled a boon to 50 but it's mostly about spotting a baron in the distance so you can get your gf up. I tried Corvus strategy but I couldn't fit dps and GF.
6 set bonuses 55 is a huge drain on your stash even if you have 2 classes because you need to save up a ton of gear for each different build, roll it all into decent stats, need mats to fit it all, different legendary gems
1h campaign is a huge investment, requires 4 people probably on mics with the right classes and builds and can still rng crap on you.
I've done avarice accidentally several times now. it's all about either picking a farm spot (fields/cemetary/corvus) and getting good at it or waiting for a gilded baron to pop up in a rift (you will lose out if not with friends/not a wizard). The 45 rift is also easy because you're basically using your rubbish "don't want to salvage yet" legendaries. cindercoat, magefist, and whatever other legendaries boost your dps significantly. I did 8 set dungeons didn't take me that long to level up a 2nd char and throw bad gear at him.
I realise that these goals are all sideshows and cost time but let's be honest, diablo 3 is just a really fancy grindfest. you farm items so you can farm items more effectively. ad infinitum. I feel that complaining about grinding for a and not b is a bit disingenuous.
Roland felt easier than the condemn build Akhan for me. I finished both Condemn felt really shaky on dps / defense even though my Roland set was worse than my Akhan.
Roland
Johanna weapon + shield makes for a fairly straightforward sweep attack build, Defenders as a large damage reduction with then stun rune.
Provoke to feed extra wrath, zodiac to push cooldowns down. Movement speed from Iron Skin with large CDR from set bonus and zodiac was enough to move quickly even if it wasn't speed farming. Trove + Bombard further pushes it.
Light without Akarat bracers seems harsh. You need that wrath feedback. I didn't even attempt yet, gambling bracers.
Yeah I feel that the conquests this season are a bit much. It's where the season turns into a grind.
45 solo nonset took a lot of tweaking and I only got it because of Akarat and Trove. I tried a bunch of builds before I got it, and burned a ton of mats and time on a novelty.
50M gold meant I levelled a boon to 50 but it's mostly about spotting a baron in the distance so you can get your gf up. I tried Corvus strategy but I couldn't fit dps and GF.
6 set bonuses 55 is a huge drain on your stash even if you have 2 classes because you need to save up a ton of gear for each different build, roll it all into decent stats, need mats to fit it all, different legendary gems
1h campaign is a huge investment, requires 4 people probably on mics with the right classes and builds and can still rng crap on you.
I've done avarice accidentally several times now. it's all about either picking a farm spot (fields/cemetary/corvus) and getting good at it or waiting for a gilded baron to pop up in a rift (you will lose out if not with friends/not a wizard). The 45 rift is also easy because you're basically using your rubbish "don't want to salvage yet" legendaries. cindercoat, magefist, and whatever other legendaries boost your dps significantly. I did 8 set dungeons didn't take me that long to level up a 2nd char and throw bad gear at him.
I realise that these goals are all sideshows and cost time but let's be honest, diablo 3 is just a really fancy grindfest. you farm items so you can farm items more effectively. ad infinitum. I feel that complaining about grinding for a and not b is a bit disingenuous.
I just feel that most of the Conquests are outside of the path of the progression. Which is why it chafes, I got pretty up their on my Crusader this season but to get the extra stash I have to do a ton of things that don't really advance my character.
For me 45 nonset wasn't "let's put in some legs to make it work" I started out like that and went through 5 builds, the last 3 that Google claims should work. It took maybe 6 hours of burning about 250 forgotten souls on rerolls, test retry and all of that is now wasted because almost non of these items are any good in any regular build.
The gap between the Conquests and the other Season path goals feel large and the Conquests when they add a tangible reward for the first time seem to have been placed way higher.
I don't mind these challenges existing but it as the only way for the extra stash is what annoys me. Because I had to step out of what I enjoy of the game into tedious work to get on that path.
That sounds like an incredibly unusual amount of enchanting to get The Thrill.
You kind of have to weigh dumping valuable resources to complete a goal sooner vs. saving resources and letting well-rolled, non-set items gather for a while... especially if you're just going to abandon those items.
Always keep in mind that conquests and harder journey steps might keep you stuck in a chapter, but do not preclude you from completing higher objectives. For example, you can be stuck in chapter 7 and still complete GR60 and 3x55 gems, both from chapter 8.
All other Season goals are already done by just playing.
Edit and part of that was 60ish rolls to get a socket on my Unity which is the kind of ugh that happens. Getting crit onto 3 different shields also really sucks because of the high amount of crap stats a shield can have.
Posts
Uhh, I don't think we needed to know about that.
The way the D3 community goes is there are people for the first month or two after a patch and then it slowly starts dying down until the next patch, since each major patch could easily be sold as a $10 expansion. There's a LOT of content in major patches for this game (We're at 2.4, the next big one will be 2.5, and there will be balancing patches inbetween and maybe minor features and item tweaks).
At the end of the current patch lifetime they open up the PTR for the next major patch with a 2000% increased drop rate for top stuff, which allows you to mess with builds and such. Most of the community is usually on the PTR during this time. Either way you won't be wanting for players to join up with, at least once you get past level 70.
A bit of info: The actual game doesn't start until level 70. Think of that time going from 1-70 as a sort of extended tutorial, letting you figure out interactions of certain items and different affixes. The power curve in the game once you hit 70 is just absolutely insane. You'll go from hitting for millions to probably billions of HP. The difference between the highest and lowest level 70 player is probably several orders of magnitude higher than 1-70.
The story mode should get you comfortably through the beginning levels, or at least mostly. Join up with the PA crew and someone will probably power level you the rest of the way, because levels 60-70 can be absolutely grinding (pun intended)
I dunno, I wouldn't mind hearing more about the secret behind the endless wank.
This may be my fault.
Yesterday I got the Heart of Iron, Aquila Cuirass, Akarat's Awakening, Justice Lantern, Convention of Elements, two The Mortal Dramas, and a better Zeal of the Invoker. I think I absorbed everyone's potential lucky RNG rolls and ruined the game for them.
The 6 pieces bonus basically is your DPS
Yup, I jumped straight from doing T2 to T6 (and shortly thereafter to T8) after getting the 6 piece. Grinding up to unlocking a lvl 20 Grift was what took the time though.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Speaking of gearing up, my gear is slow going on my new Barb, but I did just get this
Trove makes you not have to have bombardment on your bar which is a huge gain in flexibility and endgame survivability.
Invokers is really strong from just hitting 6/6 all the way to grift 70+
But the weapons (mainhand and cube ) , shield and belt are all on the rare end of the drop table which can be really annoying.
Youll get more use out of a pain enhancer until the BoTT self-procs.
Dread Iron absolutely clears house once you get a Blade of Tribes. Even without Avalanche or Ground Stomp on your bar you will annihilate TX. Really good revamp for that item.
Trying to fish the set out of GR bosses, Kadala, and cube upgrades with little luck so far
Nope on Pain Enhancer. You aren't getting critical hits to proc it. Powerful is a better choice though only sort of.
Ooops yeah, you're correct.
Efficacious Toxin might be another good'un.
Yup this is where I'm stuck now
Just gotta get lucky before I burn out on the crusader treadmill
jump and shout and everything dies
edit: i forgot the part where you throw a dang rock and it does billions of damages
im ramza
The Might of the Earth one: if your damage is too high, you can't do the required leap-groundstomp-earthquake combo on elites because they die too fast. And if the monster density happens to be too low combined with too high damage on your part, freezing and killing a mob every 10 seconds becomes extremely difficult. For anyone attempting this, I suggest taking off your Dread Iron as a first step.
how good is that mighty weapon you need for it (blade of the tribes)? like if you manage to get a regular one, you should use it over an ancient or should you just cube it and use its abilities with an ancient weapon? considering you probably just want to cube furnace it seems like if you don't get an ancient one you should just cube it immediately if you have an ancient weapon already.
Like an ancient furnace will be about 30% more damage and 50% to elites, about a 1.9x benefit to earthquake. Tribes is 2.5x at minimum.
Being able to drop more Earthquakes (+Avalanche) more often and giving them a huge damage bonus is vital.
That all said and done, though, I don't really like what Leapquake does to your action bar. Honestly I kinda feel like it's a mess of a build. You need War Shout and Threatening Shout (Blade of the Tribes), Leap and Earthquake (Lutsocks), Boulder Toss (Skular's Salvation, plus it resets your cooldowns)... that leaves room for exactly one flex ability, and you'd be crazy not to run Battle Rage in that slot.
So there's no room for Ground Stomp or Avalanche as actual abilities on your bar. That's a little sad, I think.
Battle.net Tag: Dibby#1582
I disagree. Ive been playing around on non seasons, and I am playing around on it right now on seasons, and so far I have dropped EQ and battle rage off my bar, and added avalanche and ground stomp, and I like the way it feels and plays even better. Damage seems fine.
D3: HexDex#1281, PSN: DireOtter, Live: DireOtter
okay, I haven't theorycrafted anything out so I wasn't sure how much of the damage increase was tied in to the orange text vs the damage amp
also I haven't played much since I've been trying to get over pneumonia, but I will keep this in mind to use blade over anything else. thanks
Have you tried call of arreat for leap?
Call of Arreat + Wrenching Smash covers that need pretty well.
D3: HexDex#1281, PSN: DireOtter, Live: DireOtter
More avalanches would have to outweigh slightly weaker earthquakes AND no battle rage - bloodshed. Also ground stomp can't stun as often as leap - death from above, which is pretty useful for interrupting boss abilities.
Agreed, but I really wanted that banner so toughed it out!
Playing through the first six chapters of the season journey were actually fun. Find a group to shoot the shit and level, get the first four pieces of the set as a group, get our last two pieces solo, then meet back up and grind out everything else from there. With how fast you got a set it made the first four chapters a breeze to get the pet. It felt like plowing through your favorite arcade game. Like, I've beat Turtles in Time who knows how many times between arcade, SNES, and Genesis (Hyperstone Heist might as well be TiT), but it's always fun to play. That's what the first four chapters felt like. The next two were a bit more grindy but not too bad or overly so, actually enjoyable given how many people are playing seasons to group with or if you want to solo it you can grind a tiny bit to knock it out.
After that, especially to get the stash tab and then the final chapter, are still way too grindy and annoying. Don't like hardcore? Too bad, level up a toon anyway. Have fun grinding legendary gems to absurd levels even if you don't really want to. Have fun shooting dice on rift layouts to clear one under three minutes on TX, especially if you get knocked out of your return to town spell and miss the mark by a literal second or two. Mix all that with any number of class specific issues and RNG loot issues trying to find that one specific build defining item you have non-season and bleh.
I guess the TL; DR is overall there's a solid mini-game with the season journey they can continue to tweak to make better, even if I still sort of hate seasons.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
45 solo nonset took a lot of tweaking and I only got it because of Akarat and Trove. I tried a bunch of builds before I got it, and burned a ton of mats and time on a novelty.
50M gold meant I levelled a boon to 50 but it's mostly about spotting a baron in the distance so you can get your gf up. I tried Corvus strategy but I couldn't fit dps and GF.
6 set bonuses 55 is a huge drain on your stash even if you have 2 classes because you need to save up a ton of gear for each different build, roll it all into decent stats, need mats to fit it all, different legendary gems
1h campaign is a huge investment, requires 4 people probably on mics with the right classes and builds and can still rng crap on you.
If the whole thing was easy to solo, it would be absolutely trivialized by grouping.
But I'll echo what was said before, enough with the hardcore leveling. Too many game systems have removed the challenge, it's just tedious.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
I've been thinking about the 6 set bonuses GR55 thingy. I have Invoker, Akkhan, Light sets for my crusader, and my barb has all four sets + Bul'Kathos weapons (only one of which is ancient though). The rest seem pretty straightforward, still need some individual items for the builds, but I'm not sure what to do with Akkhan's. I could put together an Akkhan Blessed Shield build if I ever find an Akkhan's Leniency to cube. Is that a good idea these days? I think I also have gear for some kind of a Heaven's Fury build. Any suggestions?
I've done avarice accidentally several times now. it's all about either picking a farm spot (fields/cemetary/corvus) and getting good at it or waiting for a gilded baron to pop up in a rift (you will lose out if not with friends/not a wizard). The 45 rift is also easy because you're basically using your rubbish "don't want to salvage yet" legendaries. cindercoat, magefist, and whatever other legendaries boost your dps significantly. I did 8 set dungeons didn't take me that long to level up a 2nd char and throw bad gear at him.
I realise that these goals are all sideshows and cost time but let's be honest, diablo 3 is just a really fancy grindfest. you farm items so you can farm items more effectively. ad infinitum. I feel that complaining about grinding for a and not b is a bit disingenuous.
Roland
Johanna weapon + shield makes for a fairly straightforward sweep attack build, Defenders as a large damage reduction with then stun rune.
Provoke to feed extra wrath, zodiac to push cooldowns down. Movement speed from Iron Skin with large CDR from set bonus and zodiac was enough to move quickly even if it wasn't speed farming. Trove + Bombard further pushes it.
Light without Akarat bracers seems harsh. You need that wrath feedback. I didn't even attempt yet, gambling bracers.
I just feel that most of the Conquests are outside of the path of the progression. Which is why it chafes, I got pretty up their on my Crusader this season but to get the extra stash I have to do a ton of things that don't really advance my character.
For me 45 nonset wasn't "let's put in some legs to make it work" I started out like that and went through 5 builds, the last 3 that Google claims should work. It took maybe 6 hours of burning about 250 forgotten souls on rerolls, test retry and all of that is now wasted because almost non of these items are any good in any regular build.
The gap between the Conquests and the other Season path goals feel large and the Conquests when they add a tangible reward for the first time seem to have been placed way higher.
I don't mind these challenges existing but it as the only way for the extra stash is what annoys me. Because I had to step out of what I enjoy of the game into tedious work to get on that path.
You kind of have to weigh dumping valuable resources to complete a goal sooner vs. saving resources and letting well-rolled, non-set items gather for a while... especially if you're just going to abandon those items.
Always keep in mind that conquests and harder journey steps might keep you stuck in a chapter, but do not preclude you from completing higher objectives. For example, you can be stuck in chapter 7 and still complete GR60 and 3x55 gems, both from chapter 8.
Edit and part of that was 60ish rolls to get a socket on my Unity which is the kind of ugh that happens. Getting crit onto 3 different shields also really sucks because of the high amount of crap stats a shield can have.