Diablo was the first game I ever bought for my perfoma Mac when I was a kid. I have played out each game since. I played the betas. I have reached a point where I do not know what to do.
I have not finished the campaign. In fact I haven’t even finished act III. Both my barbarian and sorceress have appeared to have reached a plateau at around level 35.
At around level 30, in world tier II, I started getting really terrible drops. Magic only, legendary that was worse that what I had. Finally around 35 for my sorceress and 37 with my barb, I got fed up with the terrible drops and just took the first positive change I found and went back out to see if this would yield better loot.
The first bear I meet I use all my health potions on. My attacks seem to take less health away. I finally make it to a dungeon. Can’t make it to the boss because I keep dying.
I figured I sold my sweet gear, let me just jump back to world tier I and grind till better loot falls. Bears still three hit me, and I still get crap loot.
I changed my skill load outs, made best use of the loot I got and continued to try and grind to get better loot. I still only got magic and crap legendary.
What am I supposed to do at this point? I can’t make it to a dungeon to fight a dungeon boss without having to TP back to replenish my potions a half dozen times. Can’t move the campaign forward, simple crowd of minions melt me in a second. Monsters don’t even drop health globes. Am I just supposed to start a new character and hope I don’t repeat this same mistake again? How are you supposed to recover from a mistake like that?
If you haven’t already, switch to world tier 1. There’s definitely a lull in gear around those levels but stick with it - it gets better.
If you didn’t already, take a look on Google or YouTube for starter builds for your classes to make sure synergies are working as effectively as possible. Then maybe try to either party up with people and just hang out while they kill enemies, or go to the world events and hope that others come along and clear it with/for you. Hopefully some drops from the chests will help, but focus on the murmuring obols. Spend them on the gambler in town to hopefully get lucky on some nice rares or legendaries to get you back on track.
What kind of Sorc did you build? I can send you what I’ve been running which seems to work really well. I’m not a pro or anything so I’m sure there are better meta builds, but my ice build is fun.
I have done a few builds I’ve found on the interwebs, for both my barb and sorceress, but I feel it’s my equipment keeping me back. Mainly the armor. I also can’t seem to make my play style match the builds. I have built fire sorcerers since the beginning, mainly finding hydra builds that would just evaporate mobs. And my barb builds are always spinning top tanks. These builds I find online do not fit these play styles. Guess I’m just old and set in my ways.
I wish I could make it to a world event. I haven’t even revealed the entire map. I leave the safety of a town and I’m toast.
Don’t get discouraged! Diablo games have always had “power plateaus” where sometimes difficulty rises to a point where it feels like a wall, but you just need to shake things up! It’s a game mechanic that forces you to reevaluate your builds. You didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just part of the game so don’t sweat it.
What I learned early on was that sorcs are all about applying vulnerability and crowd control and then applying extra damage through those debuffs via your character’s passive abilities. Frost Nova is basically KEY to every sorc build.
If you’re curious, I just made a post asking other Lemmy users what their sorc builds were here: https://lemmy.ml/post/1471224
Basically, pre-lvl 50, what I would do is start each encounter with a hydra, which applied burning damage to everybody. If my Inferno ult was up, I would use it to vacuum up crowds into a big group, at which point I would then hit them with the Frost Nova. Now they’re all bunched up, vulnerable, and frozen. I then use Chain Lightning and it’s bouncing around that tight pack of enemies doing most of my damage. Now what’s even cooler is that if you put Fireball into one of your enchantment slots, each enemy you kill now explodes into a fireball, so now you’ve got all these enemies essentially killing themselves by blowing themselves up like a box of grenades.
Don’t ignore your critical strikes, lucky hit, vulnerability, and burning. There are a lot of sorcerer passives that give you benefits whenever those trigger. It’s all about finding those synergies.
If it’s gear you’re concerned about, do some random events, gamble some obols at the curiosity vendor, or heck even drop down to World Tier 1, do some aspect dungeons and you’ll get better loot in no time.
It gets better, power plateaus are normal and part of the game! Keep going!
Echoing what @LilBagOfBunnies said. Find a build guide that looks interesting and use it for a while.
When I started I just kinda picked whatever skills looked fun, only sorta paying attention to trying to synergize what I was picking. Hit a wall around where you did and used an Icy Veins build that carried me through the campaign into T3. It was shocking how much stronger I was with streamlined abilities. At that point I felt like I understood my class and skills much better and started successfully being creative with my build and tweaking things. Just cleared the capstone and moved to T4 using a build inspired by the cookie-cutter one but with my own pizaaz.
In every Diablo there has been a new game mechanic that has taken me awhile to master. I feel like these synergies is that mechanic in this one. Feel like I need to do some more reading.
if you have no gear and are kinda stuck at the moment why dont you group up with a friend and do a few dungeons by just running behind them. then as soon as you have a few rares it should be better again with survivability.
i played my main sorcerer to 80 without any problem at any point but to be fair i did spend maybe half of the time in a group with friends. Then i played a Barb mostly solo till 50, again without any problems. i found it even easier since i had almost all codex-aspects unlocked from my main and could just slap an aspect on every item without much problems. Again i understand this is probably different for you with your main only reaching 35.
If you want, write me a message with your diablo names and i add you as a friend and we can group up a bit.
You have to have a barrier/fortify and you have to apply vulnerable. 35-50 is definitely a difficulty jump until you pick up a few legendarys.
I haven’t played Barb, but if you share the sorcerer build I can maybe point you around.
This is what happened to me. I got rid of my regen and barrier equipment. I see that was definitely a bad decision now. It just sucks that I dead ended two characters.
sorry but i dont think thats a thing, to dead-end a character. just go out there and find some gear, you are just lvl 35 you are not even a quarter into the game. As i wrote above, i am willing to help you in game. hit me up!
Nah, I agree with @healer_56, you haven’t dead-ended your characters. Do you have some obols? You can use them at the Curiosity vendor to “gamble” for better loot, and sometimes they give you good stuff. Events also give you good loot early game, so if you see someone doing an event, join in!
They aren’t dead ended! Sorcerers have barriers through skills and don’t even need gear for them. Ice Armor is a great utility to have. After you pop it, dealing damage will increase the barriers health and just having it active gives you 25% mana regen. There’s also a lot of aspects available out in the dungeons you can earn so they’re always available to add to new gear.
I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not but I found a build for leveling as Fire with aspects on it that can all be obtained from dungeons. https://d4builds.gg/builds/e77f029c-a387-4eb2-a671-1e079afb1a8b/
I could also recommend Aspect of Might and Protector to help with survivability. I don’t know how much you know about the game, but if you open up your aspect list and click on or select an aspect, it will mark its location for you on the map. Helps with finding them. Some are in higher level zones than others, so might not be available until later but start with what is accessible and it will help
Edit: Also, like others have mentioned, definitely drop it down to World Tier 1! I leveled all the way to 50 on WT1 with no regrets. I think it can actually be faster because you end up being able to kill more things faster.
