Monday (9 Jul) - A Legendary First

Monday (9 Jul) - A Legendary First

Barbed has continued to bang around the Diablo landscape, enjoying some nice success in short bursts of game time. I've continued to mess around with various styles of play, the most recent and successful so far being one which mushes together the "pound'em 'till you die" strategy with the "run for your life" strategy. The result is that Barbed keeps pounding as long as he is free of AoE type attacks (which deliver murderous amounts of damage and/or can stun/freeze). When those attacks start Barbed runs in loops that take him right back into the fight somewhere the away from the AoE. That has been working quite well. The fights can go a bit long, but Barbed generally survives the battle.

I've been changing up the gear stats a bit to see what works for me. I continue to focus on Strength and Vitality as the staple stats, but I have been changing other stats around.

Currently I am stacking "Life on Hit" on my weapons (which means what it says - I get x amount of additional life each time I hit something). On my other gear I was originally adding a lot of life regen, but it wasn't all that effective for me, so now I am adding "all resistance" stats, which reduces the amount of damage Barbed takes from all those AoE attacks.

I am always into the Auction House looking for bargains. I have been dual wielding two weapons since Silver made me give up my shield, but I recently ran across a nice two-hand weapon at a not to ignore low price of 10k gold, and decided to give it a try. If it didn't work out I figured I could resell it for a profit. Barbed took the weapon on a practice run, and when he came back he refused to give it up. Barbed is now hooked on 2-hand weapons.

Barbed is now level 56. He recently retired his first 2-hander for a new 2-hander called Messerschmidt's Reaver. It's the first Legendary piece of gear that I've acquired. It was surprisingly cheap at under 50k, as there were many others priced upwards of a million gold. The stats on these legendaries vary, and since so many are available I think some sellers give up and low ball the price. Whatever the reason, Barbed was happy to get it. The reality is that it's just another piece of gear - I don't think the legendary moniker includes any special abilities that aren't already listed in the stats. It's still cool.