Wow.

Before I start, I just checked the date of my last blog here: December 27th 2011. And there is a reason for that. In December of 2011 my then girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend, went on a Christmas cruise to the Bahamas. Due to Christmas I had a break from the company we ran together and I had 2 weeks time off, so I tried to catch up to all the games I really wanted to play.

Then work started again in January and it was a crazy month with a 5 year celebration of the company, which ended up being the last celebration of the company due to a really messy breakup in February. The rest of the year I was left finding my bearings and deciding what to do. I ended up starting a new company in the same industry. I started the new company while living with a friend, sleeping on the couch and also falling crazy in love with my new girlfriend. (This always happens to me btw, when I am not looking I meet somebody. But this girl really is something else) So now that everything is more or less stabilized, I have some more time to play games.

I did still buy Diablo 3 on launch day, but didn't have time to blow through it like I did with Diablo 2. I still played as much as I can, but between starting up the new company and wanting to spend time with my new girlfriend, I really didn't have a lot of spare time on my hands. Nonetheless, I do have a level 60 Monk, Barbarian & Wizard which I leveled in burst gameplay everytime I had an hour to spare. It's interesting to see how different these 3 classes play. I am currently working on a Witch-doctor and trying to get the achievement for leveling all 5 classes to 60. My monk used to be my main, but then I switched over to the Barbarian. I also have a Hardcore Barbarian, whom I have specced defensively, so I wanted this Barbarian to be an offense focused character. I also remember loving the whirlwind skill in Diablo 2, so I also wanted to make whirlwind the skill around which I build this Barb.

Getting the build to make this work though proved to be a challenge to me, mainly because I had the wrong mindset. When I first started playing Diablo 3 I still had the rule in my head from Diablo 2: Damage is King. Back in the day increasing your dps was all you would focus on. I made that mistake on my Monk too, until I started watching some Diablo 3 videos on youtube and noticed that at least half the skills these people were using were damage mitigation and crowd control. So I changed my Monk with this in mind and it worked! I switched over to my Monk again and played him way more than my Barb.

But the the fact that the Barb build was not working still annoyed me. The idea behind the Barb was that he would leap into a crowd of monsters and whirlwind around and massacre the group. I wanted to rely on two passive skills for this: Berserker Rage & Unforgiving. Obviously these compliment each other and greatly increase your damage output. The problem with this is that the active skills to mitigate damage just can't keep you alive when you jump into a big pack of monsters. In other words: I was STILL thinking the wrong way, namely the old way: Damage is King. Now of course it all makes sense, but it took me awhile, a lot of deaths and a lot of gold to repair equipment to realize that. Once I realized why exactly the build wasn't working, the first build I tried after that worked like a charm.

I have another personal blog where I used to talk about the good things games have taught me, like improving my command of the English language and I found myself thinking the same thing when I realized what I was doing wrong. Now that I realize what I was doing wrong with the build, it was easy to find a build that works. Looking back at my old relationship, I realized why the things that happened happened and why I never realized what was wrong with the relationship or what I could've and should've done. Basically the things that make me tick (my build :P) are not compatible with the relationship I was in. But I can only see that now that I am in a relationship where my build works. :)