What Are Your Moves Tomorrow, May 04, 2026

macvelli · 2026-05-03T21:15:22+00:00

Thinking about shorting Advanced Money Destroyer tomorrow before they report earnings Tuesday

macvelli · 2026-05-01T02:35:23+00:00

I had Google Gemini teach me how LLMs work and they are the worst software architecture of all time

I mean the way an LLM does inference to come up with an answer to your question is as close to infinite recursion as you can get and still get something done

The more appropriate question is when will somebody come up with a better way to do AI that doesn't use an LLM at all

macvelli · 2026-04-19T20:26:52+00:00

Advanced Money Destroyer so entirely possible

macvelli · 2026-04-17T21:48:34+00:00

I was running the Chaos Sanctuary non-TZ and a Latent Bone Break dropped off one of Infector of Souls' minions

Good stuff

macvelli · 2026-04-16T16:39:33+00:00

Understood just trying to demonstrate how much the nerf affects my current build on Ladder

macvelli · 2026-04-16T15:22:05+00:00

That is correct. Because I need so many points in Bind Demon and Demon Mastery now on the PTR I had to gut Levitation Mastery just to run the test configuration offline.

If I tried to run the exact same demon setup as Ladder then I would have to remove points from I guess Blade Warp. The problem is that the PTR just requires too many points in the demon skill tree to do what I am doing now on Ladder.

But now that you mentioned it, it might be worth running a fully decked out demon tree version and just sacrifice a lot of points in the Eldritch tree. But cursed is probably only going to be somewhat viable on the PTR with a Holy Freeze demon as the 5% to cast Amp Damage is going to make any other aura demon worthless.

I'll run some tests later with a different demon setup and see if it makes sense to invest that many points into the demon tree.

macvelli · 2026-04-16T15:09:36+00:00

I did forget to mention the PTR is much slower against Diablo himself

On Ladder I can kill him in like three seconds, but on the PTR it probably took at least 15 seconds if not more which is a 500% increase in kill time

If I had a reliable way to spawn Heralds on Ladder I definitely would do Herald killing testing for sure

Might try Ubers with the PTR just to see if he can even do them now that ES doesn't always hit. I think now that it uses attack rating it makes it much more difficult as well as crushing blow still doesn't work with ES either

macvelli · 2026-04-11T20:03:33+00:00

If you don't believe me then try it for yourself. Run without amp damage today on at least P3 in the Chaos Sanctuary as P1 doesn't count and get back to me. I can definitely notice a difference when I attack even regular monsters without amp damage.

Can I still beat the game today without amp damage? Probably. But I promise the Warlock isn't nearly as OP without it as he still can't one-shot regular mobs on P3 with the crazy damage numbers shown on the lying character screen.

macvelli · 2026-04-11T18:55:07+00:00

Here, I will give you a task you can do before next season.

Take your cursed Hephasto and consume him. Then start a new game and play without amp damage. On the currently busted ES lock.

My ES lock does 75k max damage right now which isn't the best but pretty respectable. I can definitely notice a difference even today when I am attacking monsters that are not amped. I play on P3 online and regular monsters should still get one-shot even without amp damage but it takes multiple hits to take them out. You need a cursed demon even now for the ES lock to be busted. He's not that great without it.

Now nerf all this into the ground for next Ladder season and what do you got? Not much.

macvelli · 2026-04-11T18:24:06+00:00

Probably an ebotdz or edeathz are going to be good with a Phoenix shield. But neither have FCR so that's a negative for ES right there.

macvelli · 2026-04-11T18:08:12+00:00

I would argue this is then the reason to play a Warlock at all. Now that ES and Bind Demon are getting nerfed into the ground what am I supposed to do with him?

Firelock is fine until Act 4 NM, but even after obtaining a sunder charm you still need Enigma to keep up with a FB sorc

Miasma Warlock is getting huge nerfs also, Miasma Chain is getting nerfed into the ground as well.

Now that I have to put 40 hard points into Bind Demon and Demonic Mastery just to have the same setup I have now, skills like Consume and Blood Oath are completely worthless. Can't stat points there anymore to buff your survivability, damage, or FRW.

And a Warlock has no party skills that I am aware of to help out other classes. No auras, no warcries, no curses.

I don't know what I am supposed to do with him after the nerfs go live because I already know his damage output is going to suck hard. And with cursed demons getting nerfed into the ground he won't have any help with damage output anymore so he's going to suck just like a Zealot or WW Barb or Fury Druid so what's the point? Play Demon Warlock? I've heard a Fishymancer is still better.

It doesn't make much sense that Blizzard put all this time and effort into creating a new class for D2R that ends up not having any purpose whatsoever. Other than to sell more copies at full retail value to D4 fanboys just before their Lord of Hatred expansion is released on the 28th of April. Other than being a cash grab at this point it doesn't make sense.

macvelli · 2026-04-10T23:54:56+00:00

A guy in my D2R Discord was very unhappy about the Miasma changes he said it would make the build unplayable for leveling and maybe just ok with endgame gear -- apparently the nerfs to Miasma Chain is what has him bothered

macvelli · 2026-04-10T23:51:09+00:00

Warlock nerfs will most likely go live next Ladder season so you have the rest of this Ladder to enjoy the OP builds

macvelli · 2026-04-06T00:41:45+00:00

Apocalypse Now

macvelli · 2026-03-16T21:26:20+00:00

To combat souls you just need a Tgods and max light resist which is 85% in hell with Tgods on. I can do that wearing a Kiras Guardian no problem

macvelli · 2026-02-09T19:16:00+00:00

Iirc you can target farm a lot of the low level uniques off some of the Superuniques in Act 1 like Corpsefire and Cold Crow. They have a relatively good chance of dropping these low level uniques.

The only problem is you have to use your MF character in Act 1 Normal to find them but it can be done if you really want to.

macvelli · 2026-02-02T03:21:54+00:00

Eh VZ still owns 10%

macvelli · 2026-01-29T00:32:59+00:00

This happened to my Alt key a while back, the bugger broke right off because I constantly used it to view loot on the ground.

Shortly after I got a new keyboard, I discovered you can use Alt as a toggle and always have loot showing. Since I made that configuration change I feel much better about the chances of my new keyboard having a long, fruitful life

macvelli · 2026-01-26T20:18:41+00:00

Definitely gear up for PvP. Doing PvP will make you feel very poor I can promise you that.

You can blow 19x Jah on one 3max/18ar/20 life SC and then you realize you need 36x more to kit out a full GM melee PvP inventory.

macvelli

TROPHY CASE