Snowbelle Part Two: Learning to Love the Orb

Fortunately that was indeed the case, with Snowbelle encountering no particular issues out on the Howling Plateau or down in the Sirocco Caverns. I should mention that I was continuing the pattern of my Diablo 2 characters from back in the day, full-clearing all areas and exploring the side dungeons that popped up along the way. This might explain why Snowbelle's level was advancing so quickly, as she clearly wouldn't have finished Act One at level 44 if I had been racing immediately to the exit in every area. That wasn't a form of grinding either, as the monsters level up alongside your character in Diablo 3 and there is therefore no advantage in terms of experience gain from clearing out every region. I was having fun though, and if there was no advantage from exploring all of the side areas, there was no disadvantage in doing so either. Snowbelle was on pace to hit the level cap of 70 at roughly the same point that she would defeat Diablo, and that was what I was aiming for.

When Snowbelle hit level 47 she was able to use the Frost Hydra rune for the Hydra skill, and I dropped the Magic Weapon skill from Snowbelle's setup in favor of this new ability. Hydra is an excellent spell due to its fire-and-forget nature, with each hydra sticking around out on the map for a duration of 15 seconds. The Arcane Power cost was only 15 points to use this skill, and while the upfront weapon damage output of 255% was pretty low, the Frost Hydra would keep applying that damage in an icy cone for the full 15 seconds. Snowbelle could toss out a hydra at the start of a fight and then let the creature operate on its own, getting an excellent return on the investment of that minimal Arcane Power cost. I didn't know if this skill would remain relevant in the long run since Hydra does not get a damage bonus from the Delsere's Magnum Opus item set. For the moment though, it was preferred over the passive effect of Magic Weapon.

I'm skipping over the first half of Act Two without going into detail since nothing much of interest happened. Snowbelle didn't run into any close calls and she cleared through the outdoor deserts at a fast pace. Maghda turned out to be a somewhat difficult opponent because her swarm of cultist minions didn't interact very well with the Ray of Frost skill, which again could only hit one target at a time. The frenzied version of the cultists after they transformed kept running into the ice beam and blocking Snowbelle from using it against Maghda herself. Fortunately these opponents couldn't do very much in terms of damage output, and as a result Snowbelle wasn't in any particular danger. Her Blizzard spell ended up doing most of the work in this boss fight due to its area effect properties, hitting lots of opponents at once and steadily chipping away at Maghda's health bar. (I'll repeat my complaint about the Blizzard visual effects here - you can barely tell that Blizzard is in use in the picture above.)

One of the few legendary items that appeared in Act Two was the Nagelring, familiar to me from Diablo 2 as one of the two rings needed to find a Stone of Jordan. The Nagelring is a fairly normal legendary ring in Diablo 3, with the unique property of summoning a Fallen Lunatic to the player's side every ten seconds. What in the world did that mean? It turns out that Fallen Lunatics are a monster found in Act Three, chubby versions of the normal Fallen enemies that detonate when they get close to a hostile target. They looked suitably crazy in the zoomed-in picture that I took here, leaning slightly to one side while clutching a dagger in their right hands. I found to my surprise that the Fallen Lunatics were a significant source of damage, with their death explosions one-shotting any normal enemy and dishing out heavy punishment even to bosses. They could deal damage in the hundreds of thousands at a time where Snowbelle's Ray of Frost was averaging 20-30k damage printouts, yikes. Whatever weapon damage modifier the Nagelring's unique ability had, it was enormous. I had ignored this legendary ring with Spyderman but it was performing well enough for Snowbelle to be worth a second look later.

I also wanted to post a zoomed-in picture to show off Snowbelle's white-colored outfit suitable for an Ice Wizard. The Purity dye that this required was expensive but worth it!

When Snowbelle reached level 51 she unlocked the Obliterate rune for the Explosive Blast skill, and I did my best to give this a try by swapping it onto the "R" key. Explosive Blast costs 20 Arcane Power and gathers energy around the player, then explodes after a delay of 1.5 seconds to hit all enemies in the Wizard's immediate surroundings. This is not a targeted spell as it automatically strikes in a 12 yard radius around the player, then goes on cooldown for the next 6 seconds. The Obliterate rune changed the damage type from Fire to Cold and expanded the blast radius from the default 12 yards out to 18 yards. All of this sounded great on paper, and with the Explosive Blast skill gaining the boost from Delsere's Magnum Opus, I had planned this to become one of Snowbelle's core skills. However, I was highly disappointed by Explosive Blast when I used it in practice. Even with an expanded radius of 18 yards, Explosive Blast simply did not hit very much and it required Snowbelle to be closer to the monsters than I wanted. The 1.5 second delay in using the skill was annoying and I couldn't get myself into the stop and start rhythm of a skill with a 6 second cooldown. I found Blizzard to be a lot more effective for dealing area of effect damage, as it had no cooldown and could be placed wherever I wanted on the map. The end result was that I ditched Explosive Blast and went back to Snowbelle's prior skill setup. This just wan't the right skill for her to use. (Explosive Blast probably needs the Chain Reaction rune to be most effective, which causes the skill to denotate three times in succession. This was not an option for Snowbelle since the damage type is Fire.)

A few levels later at level 55, Snowbelle unlocked the Frozen Orb rune for the Arcane Orb skill. This was another skill that I envisioned as part of her core lategame build; would it perform any better?

The answer to that question was an emphatic *YES*. Frozen Orb carries a hefty cost of 30 Arcane Power per casting, but it has no cooldown and can be spammed repeatedly until the Wizard's mana globe is empty. Frozen Orb launches a ball of cold that "shreds an area with ice bolts" in the game text's memorable description, dealing 950% weapon damage as Cold to everything within a 15 yard radius. The visual effects of Frozen Orb are nothing less than amazing, as the ball rotates as it travels and releases dozens of smaller ice bolts in a spiral pattern along its path. This is something that comes across better in video than in still images. Unlike the vague visuals used by the Blizzard skill, it's easy to see what's being hit by Frozen Orb and what isn't since the outer edge of the ice bolt area corresponds to the edge of the 15 yard radius of the skill. The player can always tell if the skill is landing or if it's missing, very convenient in the chaotic fights that take place in this game. Best of all, unlike Ray of Frost's inability to pierce through the first target hit, Frozen Orb easily travels right through the middle of enemy mobs striking everything in its path. It truly does shred groups of monsters in spectacularly icy fashion. And with an outstanding base output of 950% weapon damage, Frozen Orb did almost as much damage as a fully charged Ray of Frost without needing to get stuck in place channeling it.

I really can't emphasize enough how powerful the Frozen Orb skill turned out to be. It immediately outclassed Ray of Frost in every way possible, and the venerable skill was retired from use and replaced with Frozen Orb on the featured right mouse button. Between the newfound strength of Frozen Orb and the death explosions coming from the Fallen Lunatics, Snowbelle started breezing her way through everything in her path. I felt like a Greek goddess letting loose her wrath upon the pitiful fools who would oppose her. The big mobs that had taken so long for Spyderman's Corpse Spiders to chew through were brushed away with ease by Snowbelle using volley after volley of orbs. I think I was falling in love with the Frozen Orb skill!

Frozen Orb looked particularly wild on the rare occasions where Snowbelle faced off against an elite opponent with the Missile Dampening affix. This is the monster version of the Slow Time skill and it mostly functions in the same way, slowing projectiles to a crawl within the bubble of suppressed time. It looked bizarre to have multiple Frozen Orbs on the screen at once, each of them still continuing to rotate and toss out ice bolts as they slowly moved through the air. This image also captures Snowbelle's own Slow Time field with its slight orange tint located inside the elite's larger Missile Dampening globe, plus a stray Glacial Spike projectile also moving in slow motion off to one side. The boss ability probably made the Frozen Orbs more effective if anything, allowing them to dish out their area damage for a longer period of time.

I did end up making some skill changes to maximize the effectiveness of Frozen Orb. Frost Hydra was dropped in favor of bringing Magic Weapon back again, as I found that there wasn't a need for the hydras with the Frozen Orbs doing so much work on their own. I did keep Blizzard as an active skill for the moment, using it against large groups of enemies when clumped up together. An initial Blizzard overhead plus a series of Frozen Orbs fired through the middle of their ranks did wonders to thin out the opposition. Snowbelle also had the good fortune to find a two-handed legendary weapon with significantly higher stats in the form of the Blackguard sword. While it had no unique properties, the socket was handy for adding the best Ruby that Snowbelle owned at the moment.

Of course, I knew that Snowbelle wouldn't be using the Blackguard for very long. Back when I put Spyderman's report together, I had written about how all of his gear would need to be upgraded as soon as he hit level 61, as that was when the expansion-only items with much higher stats would start to appear. Spyderman had limped through the last few levels before reaching 61, with his pace slowing to a crawl in the process before he was finally able to unlock superior items. By way of contrast, Snowbelle experienced no such difficulties during the same character levels, carried along by the incredible power of Frozen Orb. When she hit level 61, she turned up a new rare staff named "The Well" almost immediately with a massive boost to damage on it. It spawned initially with a chance to deal area damage on hit, which I rerolled at the Enchantress for 595 Intelligence instead. Total Damage rating on the character sheet went up from 56k to 111k immediately, very nice. Needless to say, the rest of Zoltun Kulle's dungeons didn't pose much of a problem.

The battle with Kulle himself at the end of this area was unexpectedly hilarious. The evil Horadrim sorcerer has a lengthy villain monologue before your fight, as he executes his incredibly predictable betrayal over the Black Soulstone. I sat there watching the cutscene patiently waiting for it to end, ready to see how Zoltun Kulle would handle some Frozen Orbs. The game exited the cutscene, and in a split second the boss was dead:

I really wish that I'd been recording this at the time because I literally laughed out loud. What had happened was the Nagelring had been stacking up to the maximum of four Fallen Lunatics while the in-game cutscene played out. As soon as the cutscene ened, literally in a split second, the Fallen Lunatics detonated on top of Kulle and he died instantly. Coming on the heels of sixty seconds of cliched villain speechifying, it was uproariously funny to behold. Blah blah blah, Black Soulstone this, Black Soulstone that, and BAM! Dead in an instant. I'm still chuckling over this completely organic and unexpected moment as I write this report.

This brought Snowbelle to the end of Act Two and the showdown with Belial. I've written previously that I don't like this boss fight at all, largely because it constricts the player into much too small of an area and turns the resulting duel into far too much of a gear check. After quickly pushing through the first two phases of the boss, Snowbelle was forced to confront the massive form of Belial himself, and sadly the Fallen Lunatics didn't take part in this battle, standing around passively in the back. Fortunately it was very easy to hit Belial with both the Blizzard and Frozen Orb skills, indeed it would have been difficult to avoid hitting him if I'd tried. (Once again the Blizzard particles were almost invisible and it was hard to tell when Belial was getting hit.) One of the problems that Snowbelle had to deal with here was running out of Arcane Power to keep casting her skills. Two or three Frozen Orbs would blast away virtually any mob of normal critters, but it took a lot more of them to deal with Belial and the Arcane Power could run out fast. I focused on dodging the green projectiles coming out from Belial while throwing Frozen Orbs as much as Arcane Power permitted along with Glacial Spikes when Snowbelle's energy was running low. I must have done a good job because I landed the achievement for avoiding all of Belial's overhead attacks at the end of the fight. It looks like I'm getting a bit better at the act end bosses, or at least better at knowing their attack patterns.

Snowbelle headed into Act Three next, and the early portions of this act in Bastion's Keep are among my favorite parts of the whole game, at least from a visuals standpoint. When Snowbelle reached her next character level of 63, she unlocked the Absolute Zero rune for the Black Hole skill and I decided to give it a try:

Each of the existing five classes gained exactly one new skill in the Reaper of Souls expansion, and Black Hole was the skill added for the Wizard. It conjures a black hole singularity at the placement of the mouse cursor that deals 700% weapon damage over two seconds to all enemies within 15 yards. The Absolute Zero rune changes the damage type from Arcane to Cold (thus opening it up for Snowbelle's use) and has the bonus property of increasing the damage of all other Cold spells by 3% for each enemy hit for the next 10 seconds. This didn't sound terribly impressive on paper, and I hadn't planned to make use of Black Hole as one of Snowbelle's assigned skills, not even mentioning it in the Introduction page that I wrote ahead of time. However, Black Hole quickly proved to be surprisingly useful in practice. The sucking effect of the singularity held anyone caught inside for two seconds, effectively turning it into a kind of stun that provided useful crowd control. It also provided a very convenient target for Frozen Orbs: just throw them right into the middle of the Black Hole! Even better, hitting multiple opponents with the Black Hole would boost the damage of Snowbelle's other abilities in the process. While 3% per enemy hit might not be that much, I could usually hit about 5 enemies for a 15% bonus, and against big swarms of weak monsters it wasn't uncommon to hits 10, 15, or even more target for a truly massive amount of extra damage. In other words, Black Hole was highly useful for its crowd control properties and its Cold damage boost quite aside from its direct damage capabilities. I found myself using it much more often than Blizzard and ultimately dropped Blizzard entirely, adding Black Hole instead to the prominent "Q" button for easier use.

Another nice feature of Black Hole was its distinctive visuals. Unlike the Blizzard skill where it was hard to tell where the spell's effects were located, Black Hole created a pulsating void that radiated dark energy. Anything in the immediate radius would be sucked inside and there was never a question about where the spell was situated. I tested the use of Black Hole a bit and soon figured out how to use it most effectively in tactical skirmishes. Drop the Black Hole first to boost the damage of Snowbelle's other Cold abilities, then toss a Frozen Orb into the maw of the Black Hole. While the Orb was in midair en route to its destination, Snowbelle would plop down a Slow Time field over the unfortunate enemies as well for the 15% damage boost granted by that spell's Time Warp rune. With two different damage boosts stacked on top of the high base damage of Frozen Orb, this was a very successful combination indeed. The only real issue that Snowbelle had at the moment was a lack of life regeneration, and that was at least partially my own fault. I had probably been emphasizing Damage and Toughness at the expense of Recovery a little bit too much on her gear, something that I needed to balance out a bit more going forward.

Remember how the Fallen Lunatics from the Nagelring had one-shotted Zoltun Kulle in a split second? They came close to pulling off the same feat against Ghom in the Bastion's Keep basement:

There are the four Lunatics dashing towards Ghom as soon as the cutscene ended, which I managed to capture this time in a screenshot before they could detonate. The poor little things were already coated in poison as they raced towards the boss, who was himself illuminated by the eerie glow of a Black Hole. The four Lunatics ended up taking out roughly 2/3rds of Ghom's lifebar, and since he had 89 million HP that meant that they had done something like 15 million damage apiece. Snowbelle's Frozen Orbs were inflicting roughly a million damage at this point in time to provide a point of comparison - those Lunatics were no joke. At a guess I'd say that they were inflicting something like 10,000% weapon damage each time that they exploded, and when I checked the Nagelring's description on the Diablofans online resource, that was the same rough estimate that the website had for their damage. By now I was holding onto the Nagelring even though I'd found some newer rings with slightly better stats, unwilling to lose out on its unique passive. It made this particular boss fight a complete breeze.

Sometimes the battlefields could get messy and chaotic, usually when I was being overly aggressive with Snowbelle. This particular mess in the Caverns of Frost was stirred up when I tried to chase down a Treasure Goblin as it ran past first one elite group, then a second one. Snowbelle was running and running while tossing out Frozen Orbs and the whole thing was beyond reckless. She didn't die from this but did drop low enough that the Diamond Skin passive on her Dark Mage's Shade legendary hat did go off, which was a definite sign of danger. The Treasure Goblin wasn't even worth it, as I'd had no real luck in getting anything useful from them since the early stages of her journey back in Act One. Snowbelle did eventually chase down this retreating goblin, with me making a mental note not to be quite this aggressive again.

The highlight of Rakkis Crossing was fighting a huge group of Fallen large enough that a single Black Hole caught 35 enemies in it at the same time. That was enough for a cool 105% damage boost to Snowbelle's other Cold skills, albeit only for the next 10 seconds. Well, it was pretty useful in downing the rest of that mob! Soon enough Snowbelle had reached the Siegebreaker Assault Beast:

This boss can be pretty annoying due to all of the minions that he summons, along with his own charging and grabbing forms of attack. Spyderman never felt comfortable against the Assault Beast due to his inability to get the Corpse Spiders to focus on the boss and not the surrounding minions. By contrast, I found that Snowbelle had a much easier time against this boss. While Frozen Orb wasn't fantastic against the boss himself and there was a real problem with running out of Arcane Power due to repeated Orb spam, the Frozen Orbs were fantastic at keeping down the number of additional enemy minions. It was easy to position Snowbelle such that each Frozen Orb would hit both the minions and the boss at the same time, keeping down the total number of opponents on the screen at once. And Teleport was naturally great for blinking away when the Assault Beast tried to grab her, although there were a couple of times when I was slow to react and Snowbelle found herself tossed around. This experience helped to drive home how much more powerful the resource-spending spells like Frozen Orb are in comparison to a primary skill like Corpse Spiders. All of this was much easier for Snowbelle and she was still flying through the campaign at an accelerated pace.

There were many more elites in the various floors of the Arreat Crater and the two towers contained inside. These opponents were showing up with the full four monster affixes now as Snowbelle continued to creep closer to the level cap of 70, and the fights could get lively at times even if Snowbelle was never truly threatened. Phase Beasts were still rough opponents for a Wizard like Snowbelle, with the best defense against them consisting of different forms of crowd control (Black Hole or the freezing effect from Glacial Spike). I was glad that they were on the lower end when it came to monster health since they could dish out so much damage. The succubi were shut down via the use of the Slow Time skill, their large glowing Blood Stars particularly easy to dodge once they'd been slowed to a crawl. As for Cydaea, her swarms of spiderlings were easy prey for Frozen Orb and the ones caught in Snowbelle's Black Hole provided a solid damage boost. I was amused when her poison spit was also caught in a Slow Time bubble, although she was pretty dodgy and refused to stay inside the time field for any length of time. She's one of the easiest bosses in the game to defeat and proved to be so again here.

Eventually it was time to face Azmodan, this fight taking place with Snowbelle a mere half level from hitting 70. I've found Azmodan to be similar to the Siegebreaker Assault Beast in a lot of ways, slower and without a charge attack but sharing the same propensity to summon minions for assistance. To my delight I discovered that a single Frozen Orb would shatter the demonic pillars that Azmodan creates, which wasn't fast enough to prevent a minion from jumping out but could stop more than those single enemies from appearing. Slow Time also proved to be effective here, pulling the plug on the big fiery projectiles that Azmodan shoots out. Snowbelle was hit the most by the boss attack that causes debris to rain down from above, as there wasn't enough time to dodge out of the way of this medium-damage attack. Her health regeneration rate wasn't quite enough to keep up with the hits that she was taking during the battle, forcing me to drink a Potion one time, however that would be it as far as danger was concerned. It was another situation where the Frozen Orb skill had been more than up to the challenge.

Act Four immediately drops the player into a miniboss fight against the demon Iskatu. His gimmick involves summoning endless numbers of weak Shadow Vermin in the hopes of swarming the player, and if Snowbelle had still been forced to rely on Ray of Frost, that might have been dangerous. She had gone long beyond that point though, and large groups of frail opponents happened to be the perfect conditions for Frozen Orb to shine. Black Hole ended up capturing as many as 19 targets at one point, and Snowbelle was able to keep it stacked up at 10+ enemies for most of this fight to add more damage to Frozen Orb. In situations like this one where there wasn't sufficient Arcane Power to use Frozen Orb for the whole fight, Snowbelle would alternate between casting an Orb and auto-attacking with Glacial Spike, which would helpfully get off a Frozen effect on the boss every five seconds. Whereas Spyderman managed to get through this battle by stacking a lot of "life regen on monster kill" items to become effectively invulnerable, Snowbelle had enough area of effect damage to blast her way through the waves of shadows without worrying about her health total. This was a situation where the mass damage abilities of the Wizard class really shone through.

The Rakanoth battle afterwards was less interesting, a simple situation where the boss didn't have enough damage to get through Snowbelle's health regeneration. Even his patented telekill move only took out a quarter of her life globe, and this meant that Rakanoth was incapable of doing any real damage. Easy stuff and good riddance to a cheese boss.

Level 70 arrived while Snowbelle was finishing up in the Gardens of Hope, and this time I managed to catch the leveling notification (and Achievement pop-up) in a screenshot before it faded. Now the dynamics of the game would change: Snowbelle would continue to get stronger as she acquired more items but the monsters would remain locked in place until I increased the difficulty level to something above Master. Reaching level 70 also meant that better items would start to appear, as all of the best stuff doesn't show up in Reaper of Souls until reaching the level cap. Snowbelle would now begin to earn Paragon levels with her experience points, although I knew that she wouldn't be seeing much in the way of gains until she reached a significantly higher difficulty level. Spyderman had been clearing his way through Torment XIII difficulty and the XP gain there was about 40 times greater than Master. For the moment, I continued to avoid adding any points from of the 509 Paragon levels that Spyderman had earned. I could re-evaluate this situation after defeating Diablo and wrapping up the campaign.

I did take this opportunity to craft a new legendary weapon for Snowbelle, however. Making use of this crafting recipe was technically cheating because it required a Khanduran Rune and a Westmarch Holy Water that came from the Hordric Cache materials, stuff that Snowbelle hadn't earned since she hadn't reached Adventure Mode yet. She had more than enough of the other crafting materials though, and I didn't mind making a small exception to my rules here. Snowbelle would have her own Horadic Cache materials soon enough once she was able to start hunting bounties. The resulting Atrophy item came out with pretty lousy stats overall, at least until I was able to reroll one of the affixes into Intelligence at the Enchantress. The socket was used for a Royal Ruby, with an Emerald still not being as good of an option yet due to Snowbelle not having much in the way of crit chance yet. I combined this new weapon together with the Oculus legendary off-hand orb, which had dropped at character level 69 back in the Arreat Crater. Now she was ready to go face Diablo.

By the way, did you know that your character can stand behind Diablo during the cutscene in his final boss chamber?

I tried walking around the side of the room and ended up behind the big red demon when the cutscene triggered. Diablo spouted off his standard villain monologue to the empty air, with Snowbelle kind of randomly hanging out in the background. Fun stuff.

The Diablo fight in Reaper of Souls is a marathon, not a sprint. Diablo has an absolute ton of health, 292 million HP here on Master difficulty at a time where I hadn't seen anything else crack so much as 100 million to date. The fight takes place in three different phases and this picture took place during the initial one. I found out right away that Diablo doesn't like being Frozen very much; there's a separate graphical effect when he gets encased in ice, something that kept happening repeatedly as a result of Glacial Spike use. I had to intersperse Glacial Spikes in between casts of Frozen Orb, and every five seconds it could get off a freezing effect on Diablo, sometimes interrupting his channeled effects in the process. Slow Time also worked pretty well, both for the 15% damage buff and to break up some of Diablo's fiery pyrotechnics. I managed to catch his Flame Ring above getting thrown off kilter by the Slow Time field, with the fireballs on the left side of the screen moving outwards at normal speed and the fireballs on the right still stuck within the time bubble. This isn't a particularly dangerous phase of the battle, and soon enough Snowbelle moved on to round two.

This phase takes place in the shadowy Realm of Terror, as it pits the character against a shadow version of Diablo as well as a series of dark clones of themselves. I checked to see which Wizard spells the Shadow Clone chose to use, and it seemed to be limited to Energy Twister and Arcane Torrent. Both of these skills were used with Fire projectiles, and if you ever needed proof that the Shadow Clone was a twisted perversion of the real Snowbelle, it was those fiery tornado graphics. Fire?! Snowbelle doesn't use Fire spells, you monsters! It was extremely satisfying to dispatch this dark imposter and get back to wailing on Diablo's own terror demon. Snowbelle had to defeat three of the clones in total before she was able to return back to the main fight.

For the third and final phase, Diablo starts breaking out his Lightning Breath of Doom attack, and this was his only attack that I genuinely feared. I made sure to get Snowbelle out of the path of that brilliant beam of energy whenever it popped up, burning Teleport if necessary to do so. It turned out that she could freeze Diablo when he was in the middle of channeling his Lightning Breath if she hit him with a perfectly timed Glacial Spike, and that's what the picture above managed to capture. This was not something that Snowbelle could rely upon, however, since the Glacial Spikes could only land their freezing effect once every five seconds. Much better to just dodge the nasty thing. There are some icicle particles on Diablo in that image, the graphical effect that appeared whenever he was temporarily frozen in this fight. Snowbelle kept alternating Frozen Orbs and Glacial Spikes, dropping Slow Time bubbles whenever the skill came off cooldown for the 15% damage bonus, and after about three minutes of real world time the last phase was finally over:

There was no real danger in this battle, and Snowbelle even had enough time to stroll over to the healing fountains when her health dropped to the halfway point rather than needing to gulp her Potion. Diablo's guaranteed legendary item drop was the Aquila Cuirass chest armor, which has the unique property of reducing damage taken by 50% when your character's primary resource is above 95%. This wasn't terribly useful for Snowbelle since she was constantly using her Arcane Power resource to cast spells, but the stats were still better than her current armor and it was an easy item switch. This concluded the campaign for Snowbelle; as I mentioned with Spyderman, I didn't see the need to trudge through the entirety of the expansion Act Five now that Snowbelle had already reached the leveling cap. It was time to switch over to Adventure Mode and start the process of hunting bounties and exploring Nephalem Rifts. In many ways, the game was just beginning.