Diablo was the first game I ever bought for my perfoma Mac when I was a kid. I have played out each game since. I played the betas. I have reached a point where I do not know what to do.
I have not finished the campaign. In fact I haven’t even finished act III. Both my barbarian and sorceress have appeared to have reached a plateau at around level 35.
At around level 30, in world tier II, I started getting really terrible drops. Magic only, legendary that was worse that what I had. Finally around 35 for my sorceress and 37 with my barb, I got fed up with the terrible drops and just took the first positive change I found and went back out to see if this would yield better loot.
The first bear I meet I use all my health potions on. My attacks seem to take less health away. I finally make it to a dungeon. Can’t make it to the boss because I keep dying.
I figured I sold my sweet gear, let me just jump back to world tier I and grind till better loot falls. Bears still three hit me, and I still get crap loot.
I changed my skill load outs, made best use of the loot I got and continued to try and grind to get better loot. I still only got magic and crap legendary.
What am I supposed to do at this point? I can’t make it to a dungeon to fight a dungeon boss without having to TP back to replenish my potions a half dozen times. Can’t move the campaign forward, simple crowd of minions melt me in a second. Monsters don’t even drop health globes. Am I just supposed to start a new character and hope I don’t repeat this same mistake again? How are you supposed to recover from a mistake like that?
Don't get discouraged! Diablo games have always had "power plateaus" where sometimes difficulty rises to a point where it feels like a wall, but you just need to shake things up! It's a game mechanic that forces you to reevaluate your builds. You didn't do anything wrong, it's just part of the game so don't sweat it.
What I learned early on was that sorcs are all about applying vulnerability and crowd control and then applying extra damage through those debuffs via your character's passive abilities. Frost Nova is basically KEY to every sorc build.
If you're curious, I just made a post asking other Lemmy users what their sorc builds were here: https://lemmy.ml/post/1471224
Basically, pre-lvl 50, what I would do is start each encounter with a hydra, which applied burning damage to everybody. If my Inferno ult was up, I would use it to vacuum up crowds into a big group, at which point I would then hit them with the Frost Nova. Now they're all bunched up, vulnerable, and frozen. I then use Chain Lightning and it's bouncing around that tight pack of enemies doing most of my damage. Now what's even cooler is that if you put Fireball into one of your enchantment slots, each enemy you kill now explodes into a fireball, so now you've got all these enemies essentially killing themselves by blowing themselves up like a box of grenades.
Don't ignore your critical strikes, lucky hit, vulnerability, and burning. There are a lot of sorcerer passives that give you benefits whenever those trigger. It's all about finding those synergies.
If it's gear you're concerned about, do some random events, gamble some obols at the curiosity vendor, or heck even drop down to World Tier 1, do some aspect dungeons and you'll get better loot in no time.
It gets better, power plateaus are normal and part of the game! Keep going!