Diablo was the first game I ever bought for my perfoma Mac when I was a kid. I have played out each game since. I played the betas. I have reached a point where I do not know what to do.
I have not finished the campaign. In fact I haven’t even finished act III. Both my barbarian and sorceress have appeared to have reached a plateau at around level 35.
At around level 30, in world tier II, I started getting really terrible drops. Magic only, legendary that was worse that what I had. Finally around 35 for my sorceress and 37 with my barb, I got fed up with the terrible drops and just took the first positive change I found and went back out to see if this would yield better loot.
The first bear I meet I use all my health potions on. My attacks seem to take less health away. I finally make it to a dungeon. Can’t make it to the boss because I keep dying.
I figured I sold my sweet gear, let me just jump back to world tier I and grind till better loot falls. Bears still three hit me, and I still get crap loot.
I changed my skill load outs, made best use of the loot I got and continued to try and grind to get better loot. I still only got magic and crap legendary.
What am I supposed to do at this point? I can’t make it to a dungeon to fight a dungeon boss without having to TP back to replenish my potions a half dozen times. Can’t move the campaign forward, simple crowd of minions melt me in a second. Monsters don’t even drop health globes. Am I just supposed to start a new character and hope I don’t repeat this same mistake again? How are you supposed to recover from a mistake like that?
You have to have a barrier/fortify and you have to apply vulnerable. 35-50 is definitely a difficulty jump until you pick up a few legendarys.
I haven’t played Barb, but if you share the sorcerer build I can maybe point you around.
This is what happened to me. I got rid of my regen and barrier equipment. I see that was definitely a bad decision now. It just sucks that I dead ended two characters.
They aren't dead ended! Sorcerers have barriers through skills and don't even need gear for them. Ice Armor is a great utility to have. After you pop it, dealing damage will increase the barriers health and just having it active gives you 25% mana regen. There's also a lot of aspects available out in the dungeons you can earn so they're always available to add to new gear.
I don't know if you've seen it or not but I found a build for leveling as Fire with aspects on it that can all be obtained from dungeons. https://d4builds.gg/builds/e77f029c-a387-4eb2-a671-1e079afb1a8b/
I could also recommend Aspect of Might and Protector to help with survivability. I don't know how much you know about the game, but if you open up your aspect list and click on or select an aspect, it will mark its location for you on the map. Helps with finding them. Some are in higher level zones than others, so might not be available until later but start with what is accessible and it will help
Edit: Also, like others have mentioned, definitely drop it down to World Tier 1! I leveled all the way to 50 on WT1 with no regrets. I think it can actually be faster because you end up being able to kill more things faster.