Diablo 3 – Season 32 Starter Guide

  • Post published:July 2, 2024
  • Post last modified:July 4, 2024
  • Post category:Guides
  • Reading time:74 mins read

The Ethereal Memory – Top classes to begin your next adventure

Introduction

This is my personal list of favorite classes to begin the next Season 32 – The Ethereal Memory, based on the Patch notes (2.7.7) and Haedrig’s gift rewards. This guide is not intended for the mid-end season and only aims for the fresh day one/level 1 start.

Season 32 Start Date is July 12, 2024. (confirmed post here)

In case you are new to seasonal themes, you can check out my old video here where I show one little trick on how to get free bounty materials to ease your fresh start with a level 1 character.

Revisiting Previous Themes

Season 32 doesn’t introduce anything new, since the support of Diablo 3 has ended. Instead, the developers now use seasonal rotations from the previous seasons. This time it’s going to be related to Ethereals. The Ethereal Memory is bringing back 21 unique weapons that first appeared in the Season 24. This theme is going to shake the Meta significantly as these weapons open more room for experiments and can push your build even further.

The rest stays the same – Altar of Rites and Portals of Enmity are available at any time and you can play all that straight from level 1.

Video Guide

Rank 7 – Crusader

Unfortunately, this class has stayed at the same spot for many seasons in a matter of speed farming and playing speed greater rifts. There is not much to be done here because most of the sets are designed only for blasting high solo or meta greater rifts.

More or less, this set is widely used for the Hammerdin build. His Blessed Hammers deal 15,000% increased damage and whenever it hits any target, you will reduce the cooldowns of Falling Sword and Provoke by one second.

This build is certainly doing a good job in mid to high Greater Rifts, but it shatters completely against other classes and sets in Bounty runs and Nephalem rifts. While his Blessed Hammer deals significant damage, that synergizes with Faithful memory and Hammer Jammers, he is not super mobile and lacks movement speed. As for the ethereals, crusaders have some decent weapons for example the Redeemer which is a must for Bombardment thorns build. and Astreon’s Iron Ward that is used in all other builds to boost crusader’s skills up to 100% and increase base crit chance and damage stats.

Even though crusader can be strong in meta group and solo, he is not superfast at the beginning of the season and this Seeker of the Light set is not helping much.

Rank 6 – Witch Doctor

In the sixth place, We have Witch Doctor with Spirit of Arachyr set as a reward from haedrigs gift. Arachyr is slightly better than Crusader in all of the activities: speedfarming and pushing Greater Rifts. But there are still some issues that can drastically affect your performance and in-game goals.

Witch doctors can utilize many different abilities to maximize speed, such as Spirit Walk, Hex + Manajuma’s Way, and passive skill Fierce Loyalty. But unfortunately, this set still lacks the abilities to deal instant damage and the range of these skills is limited. Arachyr is tied to periodic damage, just like Jade Harvester with applicable spells like Locust swarm or Haunt. These are essential to maximizing your damage with the Ring of Emptiness, but as you might guess, you lose your precious mobility. Getting close to an enemy could be a problem too, as this set doesn’t give you many toughness bonuses early on. Playing without Gurdian’s Jeopardy craftable set pieces or Spirit Harvester knife would be a suicide.

I’d say this set definitely has some flaws, but if your main goal is solo pushing, then you can try Arachyr and switch it later to something like Helltooth or Mundunugu. If you combine Ethereals such as Gidbinn or Ghostflame, Witch Doctor can be decent for farming and pushing.

Rank 5 – Necromancer

Necromancers are rewarded with Trag’Oul’s Avatar set. This set I believe is strong against solo targets like bosses and elites, but he really lacks some toughness in close combat and his spending abilities require health sacrifice to maximize damage. There are many useful skills to be used with this set- Blood Nova, Skeletal Mages, Bone Spear or Corpse Lance. All of them will deal 6250% more damage, and with the help of legendaries you can become a machine of death.

Pretty much anything can be used with this set, depending what you find first and place in the cube. And Necromancer has one really good mobility skill – Blood Rush if combined with Steuart’s boots and different passives that utilize corpses.

As for ethereals, all of them are viable for necromancer builds, but if you want to squeeze more damage out of your hero, look for Blackbog’s Sharp or Soul Harvest. Trag’Oul offers decent damage for pushing or farming Greater Rifts. As long as you have corpses or packs of enemies nearby, you are going to destroy everything on your way.

Rank 4 – Wizard

Rank 4 in my list is Wizard with Vyr’s Amazing Arcana. This set can offer high mobility and damage if utilized properly. His only one huge drawback would be Archon ability which takes some time to recharge so Wizard can be vulnerable while he is outside of that form. You might also face some difficulties in finding Swami, Fazula and Chantodo set which are perfect for this starter set.

Vyr performs quite well in Rifts and Greater rifts. As long as you have enough cooldown reduction rolled on your gear, In-Geom or Zodiac Ring, you can basically farm any activities with it.

Actually, there is one more disadvantage this set has. Since it’s essential to use Chantodo with Archon for Wave of Destruction, you won’t be able to equip any of the ethereal weapons. I’d say that Vyr is a decent choice to start your next adventure, play some Greater rifts, unlock primals, get more paragon points and switch to other sets, like Tal’Rasha or Firebird.

Rank 3 – Barbarian

Place number 3 is Barbarian and Immortal king. This set doesn’t require much knowledge to play well. Pretty much your panel will be filled with Call of the Ancients, Berserker and Warcries. It can be used for Hammer of the Ancient, Seismic Slam or Furious Charge builds.

What is more important is that this set includes 7 pieces instead of six, You will be rewarded with a two-handed mighty weapon, possibly even ancient straight from the Haedig’s gift. Of course, this weapon isn’t the best suited for the builds I mentioned before, but it’s definitely good for a start.

As for the set bonuses itself, it has enough toughness for a start. All you need to find is the Band of Might ring. And the best way to find it is to gamble shards to Kadala. Plus, this set also gives you 4k % more damage to any skills, while Berserker and Ancients are active. This means that you can use Whirlwind, Furious Charge, Hammer of the Ancients, Seismic Slam or anything else. Unless you want to push it to the limit in Greater Rifts.

Basically saying, this set has enough toughness and mobility and it stays strong early on. However, it’s not perfect as expected. While Fursious Charge is great for moving fast, it heavily depends on dense trash, and his melee abilities aren’t that effective for wide areas.

Rank 2 – Monk

Moving next, to place number two – Monk. This might be quite controversial to some of you, but I believe Uliana’s Stratagem is quite strong and efficient in most of the activities. The Seven-Sided Strike can deal tremendous damage to solo targets like bosses or explode dense packs of enemies with the Explosive Palm.

Thanks to the Ethereals, Uliana can become even faster and deadlier. You might obviously say that this set isn’t the best for speedfarming and you will be right. But that’s what we have from Haedrig’s gift. So, the faster we are, the higher the paragon and more materials we’ll have, right? So, we can improve its performance by adding In-geom. This legendary will reduce your cooldown for Seven-Sided Strike and Dashing Strike whenever you kill an elite.

Even if you are unfamiliar with this set, it doesn’t require much knowledge to play. Simply hit some enemies to attach the Palm and then hit the Sided Strike to make things boom. If you still feel uncomfortable with Uliana, I’d recommend you to switch to Inna’s set with Mystic Ally or any build with Wave of Light for an efficient farm.

Rank 1 – Demon Hunter

Well, the final place number one is, again, Demon Hunter. While the Haedrig’s gift might not be the best for this class, it still performs quite well in most of the activities, especially with the Ethereals in Season 32.

Natalya’s Vengeance have more than enough firepower to destroy pretty much anything – If you utilize all the buffs properly and equip all the necessary legendaries. For now, it’s dominating the leaderboards across all modes, but speedfarming with this set can be tricky. If you are searching for a class to push the leaderboards, then look no further.

For speedfarming, Natalya is definitely slower than Gears of Dreadlands or Unhallowed Essence, but that’s what we have to work with. However, if you finish 4 seasonal chapters, you’ll be rewarded with 7 set pieces with the one-handed crossbow which can be used straight for Greater Rift 150. Playing with Spike Traps requires some practice, but this pays off later, if you attempt to go beyond Torment 16. For mobility, we can use Vault, Shadow Power or Smoke Screen with the passive Tactical Advantage. It would be enough to move fast and keep pace with the group.

Once you find Gears of Dreadlands you will significantly increase your efficiency, and it these set pieces can be used for ZDH role in 4-man pushing.

Class table Performance (personal preference)

Time for a summary. I have provided a table below which shows what classes are the most efficient in farming and playing certain activities in Season 32. One plus (+) represents the possibility of running a certain activity and up to Three pluses (+++) for strongly capable classes.

This table is just my prediction of certain classes. It is based on their set performance, previous PTR tests, and leaderboards. This table may not reflect the actual S32 capabilities.

ClassSpeedsMeta PlaySolo Push
Wizard+++++++
Monk+++++++
Barbarian++++++++
Witch Doctor++++++
Demon Hunter+++++++++
Necromancer++++++++
Crusader++++
This table shows what classes are highly efficient in doing certain activities with Starter sets. The more Pluses the better.

Some conclusions

If your initial plan is to finish the Seasonal Journey (Guardian), then you will find no issues in completing most of the conquests: Divinity (75 Greater Rift solo) can be done simply by playing Greater Rifts. Curses! (kill 350 monsters during the Cursed chest activity) would require players to find a certain spawn tile with the Cursed chest. The best spot is located in the Path of the Drowned (Act V) You can check out my video-guide for this conquest here.

For more advanced players, here you have three more conquests: Years of War, Master of Universe and Boss Mode. Years of War requires you to clear Greater Rift 55 with 6 different sets. This means, that you’d need to create at least one more character of different class (since each of them has only 5 unique sets), find all the gear, set your skills and clear it. If you want to challenge yourself, then go for it, but I’d personally move to a different conquest, like Boss Mode.

Master of Universe is even more advanced than you think. You’ll need to obtain 8 complete set pieces and master the corresponding set dungeons with all the objectives. If you are unfamiliar with some sets or classes, then this conquest would take enough of your free time and effort.

Boss Mode requires you to kill all the bosses (except Vidian) within 20 minutes on Torment X or higher. Sounds simple, but the main issue would be the map pattern. If you are playing alone, this might take a few attempts, but one more player would solve this issue 100%. You can watch my video guide for this conquest here.

I hope you liked this guide and the information was useful. Please consider supporting me on my YouTube channel where I post different showcase videos from PTR for Diablo 3, as well as Diablo 2, video guides, YouTube shorts with memes for different games and reviews.

Thank you for reading this Season 32 Starter Guide article. Have a nice day!