Reaper of Souls First Impression

I noticed a vast improvement in latency on the Americas server so I decided to continue playing my Barbarian there.

There was a big patch a while back, Patch 2.0 which upgraded the game and has in fact changed the log in screen to "Reaper of Souls". It came with an adjusted loot system (which is awesome), additions to the game like "Pools of Reflection" which allowed you to level up faster. But it wasn't until March 25 did the expansion "Reaper of Souls" was finally activated.

It comes with a new act, Act V, raising the level cap to 70, allowing more powerful items into the game.

Before the launch, I made it to Act 1 of Torment 3, Paragon Level 74. Torment 1 didn't seem all that hard, and the only thing that made Torment 2 slightly more difficult was that it took such a long time to kill monsters.

I thought I'd start over the game on Torment 2 after the launch, and just level up my character from there. What I noticed was the game had suddenly become more difficult, much more difficult than Torment 2 was before the launch. That's probably because the monsters are now leveling up the same time as me. Now that I'm up to Level 65, the monsters have leveled up to 65 as well. In fact, it's become so difficult that I've lowered the difficulty to Torment 1 and the monsters...just mobs and not even elites are STILL KICKING MY ASS. Holy crap. They seem to have a much higher damage this time around.

The joy in all this is that I've started to get much more powerful items, although I've noticed I haven't gotten much legendaries as I used to. Leveling up from 60 to 65 I only got ONE legendary item, but it's a really good one and it's now my primary weapon:

Additionally, the default gem that drops now is the "Marquise" gem, which automatically made all my other gems that I've been keeping and upgrading quite useless. I don't mind though. It's levels higher than the previous default gem which was I think "Flawless". As long as it makes my items much more powerful, I won't complain!

I've yet to see Act V or encounter the new artisan. But I'll get there eventually!