Rath#1342: Well, I’m 30 and I’m a scientist in the biomedical device industry by day and a gamer by night (well most nights at least).

Rath#1342: I’ve been modifying cars since I was 17 and I got my first one. It’s a never-ending quest to go faster. I enjoy taking things apart and then putting them back together to see it all works. I’m even a moderator on a large car forum.

Rath#1342: I grew up playing DOS games like Wolf 3D on an old 286 computer, and then I later moved to newer games when we upgraded to a Pentium with Windows 95. I got into Diablo when my friends starting playing it, and ended up loving the way the game immersed you in the storyline. I played some D2 for a while, and finally bought D3 about a year ago. I’ve played a lot of Blizzard titles over the years including Warcraft 2 & 3, D1/D2/D3 and Starcraft.

Rath#1342: I still like a lot of the classic RTS games like Age of Empires and Starcraft: Brood War; other good ones include the Elder Scrolls games, Battlefield and the GTA series. D3 has kept my interest over the past year because it’s always changing – new content and new builds keep it exciting.

Rath#1342: I mostly play crusader, but I also have a demon hunter, a wizard and a barb for change of pace. I’d have to say crusader and barb are my favorites since they’re melee classes.

Rath#1342: No clan. I usually just play solo or occasionally with a small number of friends. Honestly, I figure I’d end up playing way too much if I joined a competitive clan!

Rath#1342: I don’t know about embarrassing, but for a while I was playing with some really slow load times due to hardware issues. There were many times in multiplayer games where my character would have to be defended by my friends because my client and the server were ~30 seconds out of sync.

Rath#1342: I’d probably have to say when I had my current weapon (ancient bloodbrother) drop from an RG in a greater rift. Since I’m playing fire-shieldbash, and it rolled so well, it instantly bumped me up a couple GR levels.

Rath#1342: I’ve always preferred melee classes, and in D2 I had a paladin as my main character. Crusader seemed like the logical choice when I started playing ROS.

Rath#1342: I prefer to get up close and personal with enemies, but it’s also fun to bring the pain from a distance sometimes.

Rath#1342: I really like fist of the heavens. It was one of the main skills I built around when I was starting my crusader, and the firestarter-darklight build was really potent at one time.

Rath#1342: I’m running a fire-bash build with the convention of elements ring and unity.

Rath#1342: I could use a few more (good) ancient set pieces, but the biggest upgrade would be an ancient furnace. I can’t really count on one ever dropping, but if it does, it would definitely push my max solo GR even higher. I’ve cleared up to GR51 solo with ancient bloodbrother, and there’s probably room to get up to about GR53 with my current gear, but ancient furnace is king.

Rath#1342: There’s talk of a blessed hammer set coming in the next major patch, and that’s something I’d like to see. I think blessed hammer needs the following:
1. The skill can now be cast on the move (like condemn)
2. Weapon damage is increased by 500-600%
3. Hammers may now hit targets more than once (single target DPS requires this).
4. Each cast of blessed hammer creates a stackable energy field that reduces incoming damage by X% per stack.
A set like this would promote melee combat and allow freedom from CDR stacking and laws of valor: unstoppable force.

Rath#1342: I’d have to say wrath management needs an overhaul. Almost every top build requires 3-4 skills/passives focused on wrath cost reduction or wrath regen. The worst part is most laws never get used because everyone has to run laws of valor: unstoppable force. Where’s the freedom that D2 paladins had with auras?

Rath#1342: I know there are some good ones from conversations with followers in campaign mode, but it’s been too long for me to remember them.

Rath#1342: Never use 1-handed weapons (unless you’re playing ZDPS).

Rath#1342: Any of the more helpful people in the crusader forum. Someone like Acebaur#1878 for example.

Rath#1342: What is the best looking item in the game?

Rath#1342: When rifts still required 5 keys to open, I didn’t take advantage of group play nearly as much as I should have. Once I started playing with parties more regularly (especially in the rift-it-forward channels), it was pretty clear that that was the only way to progress at a reasonable rate.