Ethereal Memory – Top 3 classes to begin your adventure
Introduction
This is my personal list of favorite classes to begin the next season 24 – Ethereal Memory based on the Patch notes 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.
My personal Top list of classes to start S24
In the list below i will explain my choice and describe each class’s pros and cons in Diablo 3 for the latest patch 2.7.1.
This list Starter guide list doesn’t include explanations for endgame progression like Greater Rifts, Meta play or Specific Builds for Efficient XP farm.
I must say that in this season you are free to start any class you like the most, because if you have plans to find all 21 ethereal weapons – the class mostly doesn’t matter as you will have to play all of them anyway.
In some rare cases, you might find ethereals for other classes, which will help you get on your feet earlier and as a result to farm less. There are plenty of other YouTubers who have discussed different methods of obtaining ethereals as fast as possible. My guide is not about that.
Sadly in this season haedrig’s gift doesn’t provide many decent sets for the fresh characters. All these sets that are listed in the gift pool have not received any updates.
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.
I honestly hate how blizzard treats this class. This hammerdin is absolutely fun and strong in greater rifts, but it shatters completely in bounty runs and nephalem rifts. While his Spin Hammers deal 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 top tier build. and Astreon iron ward that is used in all other builds to boost crusader skills up to 100% and increase base crit chance and damage stats.
Despite the fact that crusader is strong in meta group and solo, he is not super fast at the beginning of the season and this Seeker of the light set is not helping much. So overall – 7th Place.
Rank 6 – Witch Doctor
In the sixth place, I put the Witch doctor with Arachyr set as a reward from haedrigs gift.
There is not much to say about witch doctors. They are better in my opinion than crusaders since witch doctors have more mobility skills like Spirit walk, Hex combo with Manajuma’s way, and passive skill Fierce Loyalty, but this class lacks the abilities that deal instant damage and the range of these instant skills is limited. Spirit of Arachyr which is rewarded after you finish all 4 chapters of the seasonal journey will not ultimately be useful for grifts, bounties or keys. This set is tight to periodic damage dealer spells like Locust swarm or haunt which are essential to use with Ring of Emptiness and firebats as a main damage dealer ability. And because of these skills, Witch doctors have to debuff all the enemies around first, and only then attack with firebats which requires you to stand still. As a result, he is vulnerable while casting and getting close to an enemy could be a problem as he lacks toughness if you don’t simultaneously maintain Hex and Soul harvest skills.
I’d say this class is for you, just like the crusader if your main goal is solo pushing and nothing else. As for the Class ethereals – they are all good, as blizzard slightly buffed them, I’m pretty sure Witch doctors can combine many sets with these ethereals and finish 150 greater rift solo at some point.
To sum up, sixth place because Witch doctor skills require you time to deal damage, you lose precious time and speed because of it, low toughness in close combat and Arachyr starter set is not perfect to start your fresh journey.
Rank 5 – Necromancer
Necromancers, once they finish chapter 4, are rewarded with trag’oul 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 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. Anything can be used with this set, depends what you find first and place in the cube. And Necromancer has really good mobility skills – Blood rush if combined with Steuart’s boots and different passives that utilize corpses. That’s all I can say about this trag’oul set.
The mid and late-season journey for necromancers stays pretty much the same -finding other sets, collecting ancients for LOD ratspeeds, fast rift farming and maybe some solo. If you are interested you can check out my build guide for mid-season necromancer where i use Blood nova.
As for ethereals, Basically, all of them are viable for necromancer builds, but if you want to squeeze more damage out of your necro look for blackbogs sharp or soul harvest.
To sum up – place number 5 because Trag’oul set is not really popular choice to begin your season, many abilities require health sacrifice and in total this set has poor toughness. Compared to other necromancer sets, Trag’oul is much weaker and less efficient.
Rank 4 – Barbarian
We have Barbarian and Immortal king set as a reward from haedrig’s gift. This set doesn’t require much knowledge to play well. Pretty much at least 3 out of all 6 skills will be active at all times – these include Call of the ancients, Berserker and Warcries. What is more important is that this set includes 7 pieces instead of six, You will be rewarded with a 2 handed mighty weapon, possibly even ancient straight from the gift (with rare luck) to begin your journey. Of course this weapon is not good for hammer of the ancients or Seismic Slam build, but at least this weapon is good for a start and to search for other sets – especially for rend whirlwind.
As for the set itself, it has enough toughness for a start, just look for the band of might ring, preferably while leveling and asking for it from kadala. It also gives you some room for the experiment since you deal 4k % more damage to any skills you use. It can be whirlwind, it can be hammer of the ancients, or even furious charge.
There are some reasons, why this set is placed in number 4. Immortal king uses close-range abilities to reach his enemies, The set also gets weaker per each difficulty and you might face toughness issues later unless you switch to other sets before you hit T16. And while furious charge is great for moving fast, it depends on a large amount of enemies to move freely.
As for the rest, Barbarian is a great choice if you are a meta player for zbarb role, and barbarians can easily do greater rifts up 150 at ease and thanks to ethereals it is now more possible than ever.
Rank 3 – Wizard
Top 3 class on my list is wizard with Vyr’s amazing arcana set. This set performs slightly faster than barbarian. his only huge drawback is archon ability which takes some time to refresh so wiz can be vulnerable while he is out of archon. and you might 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. it is actually up to you what to do, this vyr set is fine with multitasking, and once you hit your limit or get tired of it, i recommend you to switch to firebird for top tier greater rifts or tal rasha for farming bounties or rifts.
One huge reason why vyrs is at disadvantage to other sets is that it requires you to use chantodo, as a result, you are not able to equip any ethereal weapon, so I would say, that vyr is a good choice to start fresh character, finish some greater rifts, unlock primals, get more paragons and switch to another set (once you find ethereal or before that) because playing without ethereal weapon is not recommended in the season 24.
Rank 2 – Monk
Top 2 class is Monk. Monks have drastically moved upwards after the recent tweaks thanks to blizzard.
They are pretty much now decent competitors to other classes, yet they have some minor drawbacks. So in this season 24, monks will receive Uliana’s stratagem set as a reward after completing 4 chapters. As you might know, Uliana has not received any updates, however, thanks to the ethereals it can be now repositioned to higher leaderboards, but I’m not talking about 150 greater rifts.
I don’t honestly recommend you to stay on this set for long. Uliana is a fun and deadly set against huge crowd of mobs and it is also quite mobile with Dashing strike and in-geom. This Uliana set is highly dependent on two important items – Flow of eternity and Exploding palm fist. This may take much time to find them all to play higher difficulties.
I personally recommend you to switch to Inna set as soon as possible because with the recent changes this Mystic ally build is able to annihilate top-tier grifts and nephalem rifts at full speed. While bounty farming is questionable with Uliana and Inna, They are extremely powerful and fast in all other modes. if you have any doubts left, then check out my final class from the list below.
Rank 1 – Demon Hunter
This was really hard for me to choose the best class to pick for the next season 24, but I finally present to you – Demon hunter with Natalya’s vengeance.
Demon hunters have many chances to skyrocket in the leaderboards, keyfarming and bounties. While natalya’s set is not perfect and not an ultimate set for all your needs, it is still a good set to begin your journey for several reasons. First – haedrig’s gift will grant you one handed crossbow as a 7th piece, second – natalya’s rain of vengeace skill is quite useful against the crowd of mobs and you are free to use the ethereal called Doomslinger in the second weapon slot.
And last reason is that Natalya’s set allows you to experiment with different kind of legendary bonuses as this set grants you 14k % increased plain damage to any skills for 10 seconds. It can be cluster arrows, it can be multishot, or even fan of knives. It is your choice.
Once you find GoD or at least unhallowed essence pieces, you will have more room to test new ethereals like Windforce or Buriza. I probably shouldn’t remind you that these two sets, especially GoD are perfect for speedfarming rifts and bounties which is what we need at the beginning of the season, and before we unlock this possibility, Natalya’s set will just be our tool to reach the goal. Even if you stay with this set for longer, I believe Natalya can handle t16 rifts and unlock primals with no problems.
In conclusion
It is up to you which class to choose. This Starter guide only relies on the latest patch notes, haedrig’s gift and class performance. If your goal is to find all 21 Ethereal weapons, then you will play all the classes in any case. But which class has the most potential to reach level 70 fast and then boost your other classes to find more ethereals? I tried to answer this question in this guide. This article might help you even If your goal is to push high leaderboards and farm XP starting from day one.
