@zombieseesmeat: Be careful with that opinion around Gamespot, they'll moderate you for sexism. It happened to me!
Also, I completely agree with you. I haven't seen a movie in the theaters since Watchman. That was also the last movie I purchased. I'd rather just read a book anymore, those things where people still have original story ideas.
@Doulos1382: Games media and honestly game development is full of people who wanted to be movie stars, directors or critics, so rather than continue their existing career they're shoehorning the career they always wanted into a different medium. See: anything by David Cage, The Order: 1886, etc.. The ever growing ratio of Cutscene to Gameplay.
A cynical cash grab in response to the surging popularity of the original movie thanks to one of its star's death, that's what I make of it.
There's nothing wrong with the original movie, but hey Hollywood, how about you make something new up? Remember when you used to do that? Original ideas? No? Nevermind. I'll just continue to not patronize your products, carry on.
@sladakrobot: Have you found a Gesture of Orpheus? A wizard weapon with dramatic cooldown reduction for Slow Time, that might be helpful.
And yeah, that build's ancient requirement is a bit steep in some ways, I've been putting it together this evening, I already had several pieces for it. I don't really play wizard though so most of the ancients I put into the non-required slots are off class, none the less with 6 ancients and the required rings, source, weapon, bracer and belt, I'm handling T7 pretty effortlessly with a giant burny doom laser. Definitely seems worth trying to collect the gear for.
I'd linked it because you stated you had a preference for Disintegrate, I'm sure you could integrate your Slow Time damage bonus set into it, just forgoing the rings' set bonus which would also mean you don't need the ancients as badly, using Deathwish, Etched Sigil, Ranslor's Folly, Hergbrash's Binding and the Mantle of Channeling together with that is still apt to produce something special, assuming you can fit them in around the other set.
@sladakrobot: Here's a video of a decent looking Disintegrate build. This guy tends to put out some great concepts.
As stated above, it's just going to take awhile. Keep burning those bloodshards to fill the slot you want to fill. You can pretty easily manage Torment 8+ with just standard equips of the appropriate item, throw in an ancient weapon, rerolling its damage to the highest side of its stat range and you could probably hit T10.
It can often take 5 or 6 full loads of bloodshards or more to get the specific piece you're looking for with some bad luck. Also, don't forget you can also reroll parts from one set into other parts of the same set, that is to say if you have a bunch of helmets and you need a chest, you can take a chance rerolling the spare, unused helmets from the set into the desired chest. It's all going to come down to persistence and maximizing the number of chances to get what you're looking for.
@sladakrobot: Sounds like you're doing basically everything right, but you didn't mention if you've picked up on one of the higher powered builds. There's quite a lot of resources on that front, here's a decent one:
Filtered to 'best this week' just to make sure they're up to date. It's worth looking into some videos on how a lot of them run as well, there are a lot of neat skill/set/gear synergies that do some crazy good damage.
You may already be doing this but it was the one bullet point you didn't confirm so I thought I'd toss it out there again. And if you'd rather make your own build, there's nothing wrong with checking into what other people are using to get some inspiration.
@sladakrobot: I'd recommend looking up some of the more popular builds and working towards one of them. A lot of them have some synergies that may not be immediately obvious but result in your ability to clear stuff 2+ difficulties higher than before.
Also, when looking into a build, don't worry about your sheet DPS so much as the prioritized stats. +10% damage to the powers used by the build will be far better than a tiny upgrade to sheet DPS. Most of them will focus on one element and one or two powers, so you'd want to get bonuses to those two more than just a bit more of your primary stat.
And so far as farming gear, about the best route you can take is to run bonus bounties and regular rifts at whatever the highest difficulty you can instakill most anything at, so if you're dying sometimes in T7 you might want to go down to T5 or 6 for awhile, you want to just be steamrolling. You pick up EVERYTHING, all rarities, for breaking down into crafting materials. You keep farming for mats and bloodshards primarily, any drops that end up as upgrades are just gravy. Blow the shards on whatever slot you're trying to get an upgrade for and use crafting materials to upgrade the rare yellows of the desired type to legendary.
This doesn't mean good stuff that you're looking for won't drop but burning blood shards is basically just giving you a higher-rarity weighted drop each time, and then rerolling those into legendaries is giving you a desired slot drop with guaranteed legendary, it's just increasing the likelihood that you'll find something you're looking for.
@cornbredx: Maybe that was my problem, my PC's aging so I mostly had indies, obscure titles and older games on it. About half of my 100 odd wishlist wasn't on sale AT ALL and very little was frontpaged that I didn't already have or was just waiting to get on console to play with my friends, most of which are on PS4.
That's likely to have contributed to my feeling like I was seeing a different sale to everyone else. That said, the sales on EVERY platform I frequent were really craptastic this year to me. All the good deals were on stuff I already had, often times from previous sales that were better.
I keep perhaps too close an eye on the sales and have several sites from my trading days that keep robust histories of sale prices and much of the prices on Steam, as well as the other sites and platforms, were lackluster compared to their histories this holiday. Maybe they didn't want to risk the full 80% off on things for two whole weeks.
But hey, if you found good deals, that's awesome, game on!
I guess it was a big success to the casual gamer or something. I spent a whopping 99 cents the entire sale on something for a joke.
Without flash sales the discounts never went as deep as they would've in previous sales, my wishlist was largely no more than 20% off, nothing that made me jump at the opportunity to save a few bucks.
And all of the changes made to the trade system with holding periods before trades can be made on newly purchased gifts means that I've long since given up on the trade community, which was where most of my holiday sale spending went. Get some good deals and flip them months down the line for a profit or for something I actually want. No reason to do that anymore. [edit: yeah, months later the trade pause is gone but the period of missed opportunities plus the rapid devaluation of everything now makes it too much of a risk to bother.]
Steam simply isn't what it used to be. It's settled its niche and now has little interest in pushing boundaries.
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