It occurs to me that I've been able to create a combat flow all of my own, without looking up builds, which is both effective and fun, and that's pretty cool. I'm dashing through enemies to get behind or inside groups, throwing down caltrops, hitting them with a shadow-imbued barrage at close range, and either blowing everyone up, quickly bursting them down, or evading/dashing back out if it's a more dangerous, long-term fight. Thanks to my passive synergies, I'm dazing and knocking down enemies, which increases my crit against them, and I'm gaining attack speed bonuses from the close-range knife and arrow attacks, which trigger a big damage bonus against the crowd-controlled enemies inside my caltrops. None of this requires any legendary item properties, but I've found a couple that can play into it, including a sword that triggers chilling explosions off frozen enemies, so I've switched my caltrops spec from enhancing crit chance to cold damage that causes chill to take advantage of that; groups explode from both cold and shadow damage now. I also have a legendary aspect that drops stun bombs when I evade, so I can get right in the middle of a group to do my usual debilitating combo and then evade out if it's a fight that's going to last longer than three moves, leaving a present behind. The flow works both offensively and defensively; I can dash into a group or use the caltrops first if I'm being rushed. Dash propels me forward, and caltrops pulls me back, so my decisions are based on how I want to move through the battle. Either way, it's very satisfying, and I just think it's great how it's come together. This started getting strong around level 30, and I'm at 36 now; I can only imagine how much better it will become as I invest more ranks into these active and passive skills or find ways to reduce cooldowns and energy expenses. But the way this is working now and the fact that I came up with it myself just by studying the skill tree speak to strong combat design.

I'm finding the difficulty perfectly tuned on world tier 2 (the highest available from the start). My rogue can quickly eliminate large groups of squishy enemies, but when large, tanky brutes are around I need to play carefully, using caltrops and the dash attack to daze them so that barrage can knock them down, which then greatly enhances crit, allowing me to burst them down quickly with follow-up barrages from close range. But in many situations it is challenging to focus on a single enemy with that kind of efficiency. Bosses of course are especially challenging, and fights often feel like they require me to really be on the ball; I finish feeling like it was a close call. The only time I've gotten frustrated so far was when I cleared the vampire infested stronghold of Kor Dragan, which has a very demanding boss fight. As a result of the general difficulty, I feel a constant pressure to keep my gear updated as I level. Obviously endgame is a whole other demon, but right now I think this is tuned really well for a campaign/exploration/leveling experience.

I finally started playing the release version of Diablo IV tonight. I never did get very far in the Diablo III season after all (got hung up on trying to find a Ring of Royal Grandeur, as usual). I wanted to progress through its Altar of Rites system. Next season will introduce a solo self-found mode, which is how I play anyway, so maybe I'll try again to push.

In any case, there's just a little over a month left in Diablo IV's first season, and it's more important that I don't miss out here. I've done little more than create my rogue and reach town, but that's the initial hurdle I needed to clear to ensure that I can spend a lot of this coming weekend progressing through the campaign.

Beat Ashava at 5 levels under during the Server Slam.

Had a great time with the beta. Completed Act I and got my Rogue to the level 25 cap, and yet there was so much more content that I didn't touch. Time to wait for the full release. Fortunately, I want to play the Diablo III season a whole lot before then.

This weekend was the Early Access Beta.