Diablo 3: Barbarian Cold Leapquake

This build is something I've been having a lot of fun with lately. In the past, Fire Leapquake was the clear cut winner due to raw damage alone, but with some recent buffs the cold variant of the barbarian's earthquake skill is much more viable than it was before. I love playing this build because it offers great crowd control; everything is pretty much constantly frozen. Plus, it's really fun hopping around the map dropping earthquakes all over the place. While the damage output is not as high as fire, I would argue that it almost evens out because the cold variant offers more survivability and control over mobs.

This build revolves around a few key items. The most important being the Might of the Earth set and the Legendary boots Lut Socks. These items have great synergy together, as MoTE leaves a free earthquake every time you land from using Leap, and Lut Socks give you a total of 3 Leaps before the cooldown starts.

The Gear:

As you can see from the first picture, I am wearing the full MoTE set + Lut Socks. I opted not to wear a Ring of Royal Grandeur so that I can use a rare ring that gives me better stats (CC/CD/CDR/Socket). If you have a good royal ring you may want to consider Leoric's Crown for some extra CDR, or Frostburn gloves for more cold damage/utility.

Cooldown Reduction is king for this build, so the more you have the better. About 30% I'd say is the bare minimum, while upwards of 50% would be ideal with a perfect gear setup. I've got it on my gloves, shoulders, helm (socketed diamond), one of my rings, and my weapon. Now I've got a couple of different gear pieces that I swap in and out to try and find what is most optimal, but I usually hover around ~40% CDR. The more you have the faster you can Leap all over the place.

The rest of the gear is up for debate. Just try to stack cold damage and elite damage wherever possible, and try to get sockets in your rings/amulet so you can use legendary gems. The great thing about this build is that it only requires a few key items, so you are free to mix and match with different sets and legendary items (especially if using a royal ring) to try and find what works best for you/with what you have.

The Skills:

I'm using a pretty standard setup here. You definitely need Earthquake - Chilling Earth, as that is the centerpiece of this build. Which rune you choose for Leap depends on if you want to be more offensive or defensive, I'm using Call of Arreat because it synergies with my Strongarm Bracers, but if you're having trouble surviving I would recommend switching to one of the more defense-oriented runes. War Cry - Impunity is pretty much always on my skill bar, as it provides extra resistances and armor, while also serving as a backup fury generator. Plus if you're playing in groups it helps out your teammates as well. Battle Rage and Wrath of the Berserker are purely included for extra damage. Call of the Ancients are included to help with single target damage (tough elites and rift guardians).

As far as passive skills go I'm using Ruthless because that helps a lot on the larger monsters with large health pools. Berserker Rage is great because you are pretty much constantly at full fury (thanks to War Cry + Leap), so you can maintain the damage bonus fairly easily. Boon of Bul-Kathos is great because it lets me use nearly all of my skills more often, it lowers the cooldowns on Earthquake, WotB, and CotA by a substantial amount. And finally Rampage, because it is great in that it provides a survivability and damage boost by increasing your Strength by a percentage for each enemy killed, stacking up to 25 times.

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That's pretty much all I have to say on this build! Give it a try if you haven't already. I promise it's a lot of fun.

Majora's Mask remake for 3DS: Coming Spring 2015

Official box art

Fans of Zelda rejoice!!! A few days ago, Nintendo announced via Nintendo Direct that they have been working on a remake for The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which was originally released on the Nintendo 64 way back in the Fall of 2000. In a subsequent post on Miiverse, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma revealed that they have in fact been working on this port since the release of the Ocarina of Time 3DS remake which was released back in June 2011. In his post Aonuma states:

"...although we’ve been working on the game for quite some time, we didn't want to say it was being developed until we were at a point where we could proudly say that this is not going to be just another remake and that it's going to be worth your time."

It feels good to finally have confirmation that one of the greatest Zelda titles ever is going to be given a second life via a remake. Although it would have most certainly been "worth my time" no matter what, it's exciting to see that the developers are putting some extra work into rehashing the game, and it will be interesting to see just what they really mean by that when the final product is here. The projected release date is Spring 2015.

If you're finding it difficult to contain your overwhelming excitement (like me) the game is already up for pre-order on Amazon. The page has a listed release date of December 2014, but that has already been confirmed as a place-holder so don't get your hopes up too high. ;)

For those who would like to see the reveal trailer (and some gameplay footage!), here is a video clip that edited the section out of the full Nintendo Direct presentation: