Conquering Diablo 3 - Necromancer and the Greater Rifts

I've been playing Diablo 3 again. It has been a rather addictive experience. I have documented my extreme enjoyment of being a necromancer, subverting the energies of dead bodies, and raising a large, skeletal army.

It has been so much fun. But I've finally hit a wall, and need much better gear to progress. my best effort in a Greater Rift is level 82, and that's a "just barely" effort, with several deaths along the way. Lucky I'm not playing a hardcore character, or I would have restarted more times than I could care to count.

This puts me well out of the top 1000 on the leaderboard, with the entry looking to be at least Rift Level 100 and faster than 12 minutes and 39 seconds.

I have obtained one ancient item with appropriate rolls for the style of game play that the build I am using demands. It could be better, and it isn't perfect. I also have an Ancient Set Helm, and Scythe to go with this, but they don't have the item rolls that I need.

This is where the famous Diablo RNG (Random Number Generator) comes in, and you have a constant battle to get the item you want, in a configuration that you want. Often times, you'll get one, but not the other, and the only way to adjust the item is to farm for rare items in the bounty mode, in the hope that another RNG (when you transmute items) gives you what need.

Or, you can keep farming, and iterating upon your paragon levels for marginal increases in combat strength. That's where I am up to. My pants are the item that all of my focus will now go into in Diablo, with the requirement for me to now level up a disposable legendary gem in order to buff them with additional intelligence, which will in turn give me additional damage.

That's the plan, at least. Survivability with my current build is woeful at the difficulty level I'm playing at which is Torment XIII, the current highest available.

One or two hits from a monster in a greater rift will be the end of me, and for a class that devotes its combat cycle and upkeep to a dizzying array of corpses being available, that's a pretty big problem. It can be a ludicrous amount of fun, however.

For now, it is back to regular bounties in order to obtain more crafting materials in the hopes that I can reroll an Ancient, or Primal item for my character. In any case, I also need to grind some more greater rifts in order to upgrade that disposable gem in order to upgrade the Ancient pants that I already have.

Diablo 3 is a game of numbers, and tiny percentage increases in an attribute on your items can make a huge difference in combat and "quality of life" in greater rifts. There's one thing for sure, this game is giving my mouse some issues, and it is making me want a monitor with a higher refresh rate!

(I'm playing at 4K, 60Hz, with a 1080ti, but I don't have enough room on my desk for another monitor with a higher refresh rate, and I love this monitor, it has such excellent colour reproduction!)