The Oculus is no newcomer to the Diablo franchise. It started out in D2 as a wand, came back as an off-hand orb in D3 and now it’s back again in patch 1.1 as a wand… again! The item has always been interesting, but this time around it may be a little too interesting, as it has a tendency to teleport you under the map. There’s been a lot of debate about how bad it really is, but also about how good it can be! Its little unintended feature will be patched with 1.1.1, so let’s take a look at the new Unique and its potential.
The Basics
Source: MaxAmsNL.
That’s a pretty juicy potential base 20 ranks of Teleport. Obviously it has a natural synergy with 
Raiment of the Infinite. Every time you evade/teleport with Oculus, Raiment’s special kicks in (after teleport, close enemies are pulled to you and stunned for 2-3 seconds). And of course Oculus’ teleport will also trigger any other teleport related modifiers in your skill tree (like damage reduction). The obvious drawback in this tactic is that you can’t control where will you actually teleport to (teleport to random location) so you can’t exactly choose your targets but maybe you can have another approach to this:
As you can see, there are some useful ideas out there if you’re willing to try them. Especially if you’re running lightning build sorcerer:
The Archaeology Factor
The Oculus has a pretty nasty bug. Or does it? The effect clearly states it’s taking you to a random location. It turns out that for some of the players that random location is very very random. But what were they expecting? “Underground” is certainly part of “random location”!
How Often Does the Bug Happen?
Judging by activity and bug reports on official Blizzard forum and other places, it happens a lot. Most reports aren’t very detailed about the frequency of the bug, but here are a couple of them:
So the chances are that if you’re using Oculus+Evade you will eventually get stuck.
How to fix this?
- Don’t use the Oculus until the patch
- Use town portal or a waypoint
- Don’t use the Oculus until the patch
- Leave the dungeon
- Don’t use the Oculus until the patch
- Log out
Putting the bug aside, since it’ll only be around for another week or so, the Oculus is not what it was in D2, not even close. But it has a lot of potential if you’re willing to play and think outside the box. It’s definitely worth trying out. Just, you know, bring a miner’s helmet and maybe a canary until August 8th.