Diablo 3: Season 5

The new seasons get me back into this game for at least a couple of weeks. It's fun to gear up and take on new challenges, it's fun to see the new gear and what it lets you do. Eventually you get to the point that you are just seeking better rolls on the gear you already have and at that point my interest wanes. But I'm not quite there yet for season five.

The leveling game is getting more and more degenerate as they make more balance changes scoped completely around the endiest of endgames. While others use their 200% damage abilities to gather resources to use their 400% abilities, witch doctors summon an invincible minion to do 600% on their behalf in the mid 20s and wizard channel their level 2 ability for 1240% all the way to level 70 while all other abilities watch on, wondering how they could participate.

But something weird happens at level 70. I count up the buffs available to me and it appears that my Arcane Orb should be doing about 775 times it's list damage of 700%. That's 542k% weapon damage. That's thanks to an offhand that multiplies it by nearly six, a main hand that multiplies it by just over three, and a set that multiplies it by 20 in addition to focus and restraint.

Does Arcane Orb really need to have it's damage multiplied by almost 800 times to make it competitive? It would appear that it does, Wizards are rivaling barbarians for second place this season, but the ones at the top don't even use Arcane Orb.

One thing that astounds me about all this is that there is this new set that gives you 100% extra damage and 4% damage reduction for every ancient item you have equipped if you don't have another set on. I'm really struggling to see how this could be competitive for wizards at least. It doesn't seem to enable any builds, it just means doing times 13 damage instead of times 20. As an option that is only available in the very, very endgame, I can't imagine it working. Maybe another class would have better luck.