Blizzard shares Diablo IV Construct build strategies for Season 3, live January 23 – PlayStation.Blog

Fight through fearsome Vaults and avoid lethal hazards while fighting alongside your Seneschal Companion in Diablo IV’s Season of the Construct. On January 23, dive into a new Seasonal Questline where you’ll receive your very own Seneschal Construct. As an exclusive deep dive for Season of the Construct, we’re going to give an overview of how to earn your Construct and the Stones needed to increase their lethality. Here’s the insider scoop on key builds you can use to obliterate your enemies.

Crush, conquer, Constructs

The Seneschal Construct is obtained during the Seasonal Questline in Season of the Construct. To begin the Seasonal Questline, you’ll need to create a new Seasonal Character and select the Skip Main Campaign option to dive right in. If you have not yet completed the Main Campaign, create a new character on the Seasonal realm, complete the prologue, and then use the Skip Main Campaign option to access the Seasonal Questline.

Once your Seneschal Companion is obtained, your next step is to customize them with Governing and Tuning Stones. Governing Stones give your companion a variety of abilities, ranging from launching smaller Constructs to detonate on impact to shooting down enemy projectiles. Tuning Stones modify the skills of the associated Governing Stones, such as increasing the attack speed or instantly destroying enemy barriers. Each Construct can be customized with two Governing Stones and six Tuning Stones (three Tuning stones to modify one Governing Stone), leading to a variety of potent combinations to uncover.

These stones can be obtained in a few different ways. The primary way to earn these will be from Vaults, an all-new dungeon type that pits players against lethal hazards and enemy Constructs. Additionally, they can be earned as a completion reward from defeating the Seasonal Boss, completing Arcane Tremors in the Overworld, or by unlocking them in the Season Journey.

Defeating enemy Constructs will also drop Shattered Stone, which can be used to craft Governing and Tuning Stones at your local Jeweler.

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Once you have multiple copies of the same Governing and Tuning Stones, you can merge stones of a similar quality together to increase their overall Level. Leveling up your Governing and Tuning Stones is key to maximizing your Seneschal Companion to be the ultimate ally in your fight against the Constructs.

With your Seneschal Companion at your side, here’s some insider builds you can use to mercilessly crush your foes.

Insider scoop: Seneschal builds for the intrepid Wanderer

Each Governing and Tuning Stone in Diablo IV has its own advantages that can translate to unique playstyles and combat styles. Here’s a few builds that will have you slaying in Season of the Construct.

Bushwack Gyrate Lieutenant

Recommended classes: Sorcerer, Rogue

• Governing Stone: Bushwack
  Tuning Stones: Arcing Support, Registered Danage, Frigid Support
• Governing Stone: Gyrate
  Tuning Stones: Voluminous Support, Mockery Support, Initiative Support

With this utility-focused build, your Seneschal Companion teleports to your enemies – instantly attacking them and dealing damage to surrounding enemies. The Construct also taunts enemies and pulls them in, attracting and collecting your enemies to their position while you deal copious amounts of damage from the sidelines.

Cast skills from across the skirmish as a Sorcerer or Rogue and rain down chaos while the Seneschal grabs their attention.

Autodefense Lightning Vortex

Recommended classes: Barbarian, Druid

• Governing Stone: Autodefense
  Tuning Stones: Voluminous Support, Gripping Support, Initiative Support
• Governing Stone: Lightning Bolt
  Tuning Stones: Multi-shot Support, Piercing Support, Seeking Support

This melee-focused build amplifies the area-of-effect of your Seneschal Companion’s attacks, while Gripping Support pulls in any enemies to the Seneschal that have their projectiles stopped by Autodefense.

The key part of this build relies on the Initiative Support Tuning Stone—which auto-teleports the Seneschal Companion to you—consistently drawing enemies closer and making it easier to dispatch them. The Autodefense Stone also makes you nearly immune to enemy projectiles while it’s active. The set-up on Lightning Bolt deals general crowd control damage, softening up your foes as you plunge in for the kill.

Barbarians will crush their opponents left and right, while melee-focused Druid builds (Stormclaw and Werewolf builds) will relish in the frenzied brawls this stone combination brings.

Fire Tempest Accelerant

Recommended classes: Necromancer, Rogue

• Governing Stone: Tempest
  Tuning Stones: Arcing Support, Duration Support, Voluminous Support
• Governing Stone: Focus Fire
  Tuning Stones: Dusk Support, Gripping Support, Voluminous Support

This deadly build benefits classes that deal high amounts of damage-per-second. The Tempest Governing Stone is mechanically more complex, but very satisfying to use if pulled off correctly. The Tempest Stone damage-over-time amplifies the longer the effect persists, increasing in strength as it leaps to a new enemy after each one dies. It quickly goes from not dealing a lot of damage to clearing screens if you can continue to feed the damage-over-time effect.

On Focus Fire, Dusk Support interrupts enemy attacks and reduces their overall damage output. Gripping Support helps by pulling enemies towards your companion and sets up Focus Fire to hit more enemies. Finally, Voluminous Support makes the damage area wider ensuring more enemies are hit.

Rogues and Necromancers will easily capitalize on this heavy damage-over-time build from their respective classes, harnessing the slow burn of the Tempest Governing Stone. Duration Support makes the Tempest effect last longer giving it a much higher chance to spread, with the additional duration increasing the overall damage Tempest deals.These builds are only a start. Experiment and theory craft with the Seneschal Companion to find your favorite playstyle making you the ultimate Vault plunderer. We’ll see you in Diablo IV’s Season of the Construct when it arrives on January 23.