Chapter 217: Chen Mo’s Coaching Lesson
Lin Xue was happily playing the new ranked mode in the experience store.
The stream was t.i.tled ‘Crusader ranked climb’. There were many viewers with an incredibly active chat filled with discussion of the new compet.i.tive season.
Lin Xue was grinding Challenge Rifts as she interacted with chat.
“Why are there viewers asking me when I started playing again? As a player who loved Diablo, of course I started playing the expansion pack the first moment it was available?”
“Is the Crusader strong? From what I can tell, it’s alright, it’s not as good as Wizard or Warrior. Although I think I haven’t figured out how to play this cla.s.s yet.”
“Is the new update fun? Incredibly fun! If the previous Diablo was a small slice of cake, looks delicious and tastes delicious, but you’d get sick of it after a few bites. But Diablo with the expansion pack is like a drug, you can’t stop at all!”
“Where’s Chen Mo? I don’t know either, but he’s probably in his office, so we probably won’t see him. Uh, not now, I’m in the middle of a Rift, I’ll go grab him after if I see him.”
Lin Xue was also a regular at the experience store because she could try Chen Mo’s newest games here. That’s why she’d visit the experience store every few days and were now quite close with Su Jinyu, Jia Peng, Zou Zhuo and the others.
Lin Xue even bought a webcam in order to stream in the experience store.
All of a sudden, her chat went wild.
“Is that Chen Mo?”
“There’s a wild Chen Mo, quick, go catch him!”
“I think that’s actually Chen Mo!”
“Go get her, Xue!”
Lin Xue turned around to see Chen Mo entering the experience store. Perhaps he was a bit tired and wanted to relax on the sofa in the experience store.
Lin Xue was also really happy to see him, “Manager!”
This startled Chen Mo, “What…what are you trying to do!”
Lin Xue smiled, “Heh heh, it’s nothing, my viewers want to see you.”
She pointed the camera at Chen Mo, “Look, it’s a real Chen Mo! You guys have been nagging me for so long, now you guys finally have a chance to see him.”
Chen Mo was speechless as he felt like a circus clown with hundreds of thousands of viewers looking at him.
Chen Mo looked at Lin Xue’s monitor, “Are you playing the new ranked season? If you’re going to do it, stay focused on it. There’s no way you could make it to the top if this is how you’re playing!”
Lin Xue looked at the chat, “Manager, the viewers say they want to watch you play games. They’re fine with either Warcraft or Diablo.”
Chen Mo had his hand on his forehead, “You’re the streamer, why are you looking at me?”
“It’s something new! And luckily, I have an account here, you can just play on my account.”
Chen Mo was helplessly pushed onto the seat by Lin Xue.
“But it doesn’t really work if I play on your account anyways, since the game isn’t too mechanically intensive. I’ll just take a look at your equipment,” said Chen Mo.
Lin Xue let out a sly grin, “Then help me shuffle around the equipment or something, there’s heaps of stuff that I’m not using!”
Lin Xue was playing a female Crusader. She didn’t have a lot of great equipment, but she managed to transmogrify her equipment to look quite good. She didn’t have much equipped yet she had many items in storage.
“Your equipment is… straight garbage! None of your equipment are good at all, how am I supposed to play this?” said Chen Mo.
Lin Xue smiled, “You’re Chen Mo, a videogame designer, the S-G.o.d that destroyed ranked in Warcraft. Can’t you handle a little challenge like this?”
Chen Mo was speechless.
Sure it was a bit of bootlicking, it still felt great nonetheless.
“Alright, seeing as you b.u.t.tered me up so well, I’ll try and save your account.”
Chen Mo looked at Lin Xue’s abilities and drops. This build was completely garbage and would take a lot of effort just to reach 40 floors in the Greater Rift.
But he couldn’t blame Lin Xue as the players on his world hadn’t spent much time testing out builds in Diablo, nor was there an incentive to do so when there wasn’t a ranked season, so it wasn’t a surprise that the players’ understanding of the game was relatively shallow.
Chen Mo already had an idea in mind and wanted to use this opportunity to get the players some inspiration, showing them the wonders of Diablo’s equipment system.
Although her equipment was quite terrible, Chen Mo felt that he could save it a tiny bit.
After looking through the various items, Chen Mo finally found something resembling good news. As Lin Xue was the type of player to hog equipment, she had a few ancient and primal ancient equipment. She put them all away no matter how good or bad they were. She also had key items such as Convention of Elements, Aquila Cuira.s.s and Swiftmount, which could support a decent build.
Chen Mo started pressing his b.u.t.tons.
First was swapping out all the abilities, equipping Shield Glare, Bombardment, Steed Charge , Iron Skin, Consecration, Akarat’s Champion. He then swapped out his pa.s.sive abilities for Fervor, Indestructible, Iron Maiden, and Finery.
Afterwards, he swapped out the equipment too, equipping Aquila Cuira.s.s, Swiftmount, Leoric’s Crown, Belt of the Trove, h.e.l.lfire Amulet, Hexing Pants of Mr Yan, Illusory boots…
Chen Mo equipped all these seemingly useless equipment.
Moreover, Lin Xue somehow managed to have the rings The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted, which Chen Mo was very happy about.
Now he had the special effects of The Mortal Drama, Heart of Iron, and Convention of Elements.
Rolling for elemental damage, enchanting, adding gems…
After all that trouble, Lin Xue’s Crusader was finally presentable at the very least. Chen Mo looked at the attributes of the Crusader, reduced freeze time, elemental resistances, and thorns were more or less up to par.
“Alright, it’s done,” Chen Mo closed the character screen happily as he gave it his all to form a decent build out of a pile of garbage.
Lin Xue was watching Chen Mo’s every move as she watched him take out piece after piece of equipment and equipping them.
And at this moment, Lin Xue was really confused.
She only understood about 20% of what Chen Mo did.
First was the abilities, there weren’t any sustained damage sources, Steed Charge was basically just a utility skill, and Shield Glare was a controlling skill. Iron Skin and Akarat’s Champion were buffs, and Consecration is just a small AoE spell.
Out of the skills he picked, only Bombardment was a traditional damage dealing skill. However, it had a long cooldown, and it was completely luck dependent on how much damage it would do.
The equipment was even more shocking, Lin Xue only understood that The Wailing Host and Litany of the Undaunted set bonuses: While this is the only item Set Bonus the character has, their damage dealt is increased by 100% and damage taken is reduced by 4% for every Ancient Item they have equipped.
These two rings were the natural enemies of every other equipment as you couldn’t have any other set attributes with these two equipped. Chen Mo seemed to have decided on using various different equipment from different sets just to build around the rings.
But will this work?
Lin Xue is doubtful.