6125

Thanks for all the enthusiasm, @sharaleo. Although I already play every season, it’s awesome to see all these tips. Really enjoying them.

6126

Yeah, reading all these tips from @sharaleo really reinforced how many viable (not necessarily optimal!) ways to play the game if you just want to melt faces with different gear combinations. I’d looooove those bracers for my tempest rush monk but I’ve just gotten too used to my SSS build.

6127

What is the best strategy for farming high level gear? Is it just rifts on the highest difficulty you can efficiently do them at?
Is it better to kill all the mobs for just get to the end as fast as possible?

6128

I find reading the thread to be the best strategy personally. Others may disagree.

6129

I’m not sure about farming but relying on drops is rather inefficient. I find the easiest way to get armor is through Kadala, and for specific weapons to cube a rare to a legendary but I still haven’t found a great formula for rings and amulets.

6130

The answer is speedrunning, cube crafting and gambling. Crafting is great when you are targeting an individual piece - upgrade rares or reforge existing legendaires to get better rolls and or ancients. Same with gambling, though once you get to the stage of trying to get all replacement ancient gear, initially stick with gambling for armour peices as they are much cheaper and spend your mats upgrading/reforging weapons and jewelry.

Speedrunning is just any variation to your build that encourages getting into and out of rifts, grifts and bounties as fast as possible, typically with a focus on a buffed movement skill so traversal is super fast and targeting a difficulty where a typical elite engagement is in the order of a few seconds.

The goal is to get from one elite pack to the next with as much speed as possible, ignore everything else. Speedrunning a rift should take no longer than 4 minutes, preferably closer to 2. In this way you are maximising the number of chances for gear to drop. There is lots of stuff that supports these builds - Nemesis Bracers, In-Geom, Illusionary Boots, Warzechian Armguards, Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, Bane of the Powerful is more useful for speedrunning than pushing, etc. Some build excel at this - DH UE, WD Perma-Chicken, Monk ranged Wave of Light, and some are less so, like my current Necro Rathma build - ymmv.

You kind of need the mats from bounties and rifts for any crafting anyway, so a speedrunning variation is always a good idea. Also, by the time you have built up a couple of hundred paragon levels or so, switching out some items for those that support speedrunning become a lot easier as the paragon can cover some baseline damage and mitigation.

6131

Oh and the oldest rift speed farming trick in the book, if your speed build is squishy because you switched out a few mitigation items for speed items - slot the Boon of the Hoarder legendary gem and wear or cube a GoldWrap belt - instant invincibility in rifts ftw!

6132

So I should target a 2 minute time on running rifts for farming? I guess I better done down the difficulty level quite a bit.

6133

Well…to a point. Ideally you want to be running 2 minute TX rifts, or even TXIII once you really get going! But you need a good setup and paragons to get there start with, so chicken and egg! I probably would not go below TIV for farming as you still want decent drop rates, but even a fresh 6 set with complimentary yellows and a compliment of legendary gems should be pretty much creaming TV-VII.

And 2 minutes, while an admirable target, is still uber quick, some builds just won’t get quite that fast. The first three builds I mentioned will all do it - heck I’ve done ridiculous 90 second clears at TX with perma-chicken (the most fun build in the game, IMO)! But I’ll have to be content with 4-5 minute clears with my current Rathma Necro as it juts lacks the mobility.

My plan this season was a perma-chicken WD just for farming, incidentally, just because that build is so darned quick. You can easily solo the ‘kill all the bosses in 20 minutes at TX’ conquest, hence my choice as an alt. That and it also runs Int as mainstat, so gear drops are transferable without a wasteful re-roll.

6134

Shouldn’t you farm with the kind of character you want to play since the loot will be geared toward that kind of character? My two favorites are barb and necro. Actually my necro isn’t quite 70 yet, but he is doing the whole minions thing.

6135

I always forget the items I already have on me by the time I get to the computer, but I tried to look a few of them up today so that I can show you.

I finally did beat Magda, with a simple tweak. I didn’t change my Demon’s Set, I just changed out the crappy Legendary gem I was using. After you said to run Challenge Rifts to get more Legendary Gems, I did that once and I got a Legendary gem that reduces melee damage to me by 10% (11.5% after I leveled it up).

For my cube I had these powers:

Weapon: Dashing Strike increases the damage of Dashing Strike by 100% for 1 second, stacking up to 5 times.
Armor: While below 20% Life, all attacks are guaranteed Critical Hits.
Jewelry: Summons a Fallen Lunatic to your side every 12 seconds.

I also found some more useful things I wanted to extract and slot there instead, but that requires materials I didn’t have.

So for now, I went to Magda with just the tweak of changing the Legendary gem from

Gain 20% increased damage for 30.0 seconds after killing an elite pack.

To this instead:

Gain 10.0% melee damage reduction.

And I was hoping that was enough of a change, since I was so close to being able to beat her at Torment IV.

And it turns out, that was enough!! I beat her.

So, my next and final goal for Chapter IV? To finish Greater Rift 20. I didn’t have that unlocked yet, so I was going to try to implement some changes you recommended first, and things I’d been wanting to do on my own for a while too. But for that I would need material. So I did the Act II bounties and got the material I needed, and I extracted the power to move unhindered from these shoes I had. I know you recommended that above, so I decided to take that as my Armor cube power instead of critical hits when my health is low. Honestly, that wasn’t as badass as I was hoping anyway. It turns out it’s pretty rare for my health to be below 20%.

And the other cube power I replaced was summoning those little suicide bombers over time. I replaced that with the power from the broken promises ring:

After 5 consecutive non-critical hits, your chance to critically hit is increased to 100% for 3 seconds.

I also equipped Cesar’s Momento, and replaced a couple of skills, like switching to Tempest Rush to take advantage of it.

And I was able to finish the Torment IV Rift last night using these new powers. I won’t lie, I did die a few times when I got completely swarmed by elites. Being able to move freely does help a lot though, and dashing everywhere helps a lot too.

I really don’t like Tempest Rush though. It’s nowhere near as cool as the ability I was using before. Still, it synergizes well with this equipment, so I stayed with it.

So now I’ve unlocked the Greater Rifts up to higher than level 20. So tonight, I’ll give the Greater Rift at 20 a shot. That SHOULD let me finish Chapter IV and get the final piece of that Monk set.

6136

I always farm for mats (DBs, bounties, crystals) with whomever can run fastest and highest because the drop rate of mats increases with difficulty. I only switch characters when I trade them in / use them.

6137

Yeah, the point about those bracers is actually key. Synergy with skills, set bonuses and other legendaries are where most of the power spikes really come from post 70.

I hadn’t played the necromancer past like 20 initially because I planned to take my time and have fun with it this season, but after getting the Rathma set I was still very squishy and felt kind of stuck around T4-5. But I had almost no other drops yet and one good ring that doubled the mages I could summon and made them last longer bumped me up to like T7-8 pretty comfortably.

Rng is also a fickle whore. Last season it took me weeks of gambling and upgrading rares to get the pet gloves for my witch doctor, I just got them yesterday for my necromancer on my fifth try.

Also don’t neglect those legendary gems! If you’re jewelry doesn’t have a socket, roll off whatever stat you can afford to get one and do those greater rifts to get the gems you want and level them up to 25 at least. They are as important as the rest of your gear once you get going.

Also sent you a video Rockman8. Just a handful of examples of builds in action and how the skills and gear stack up to enable piles of murder.

6138

What kind of mages do you summon? All the guides I have been looking at suggest the singularity type.

6139

That’s what I’ve been using mostly. That’s partly why the ring is so powerful, because you blow all your essence on the summons to make them powerful, so adding an extra one and making them last longer is awesome. After some more pieces and some tweaks I’m pretty comfortable in TX Now.

I’m still missing some things and I could easily get better rolls on most things, so I’m feeling OK with it.

6140

I’ve been having a lot of fun with this. I am hoping to get a QT3 invite to grow my friendly player pool =) Although the public games aren’t bad really…Also playing a Necro. However it seems like every group has 2-3 necros in it. New class is new I guess.

6141

I tried the Greater Rift 20 today. This monk build is quite exciting. You have to keep attacking and moving, attacking and moving, and dashing dashing dashing to stay alive. Very satisfying when done well. It requires quite a bit more player skill than the lazy witch doctor.

I’m about 90% of the way through the rift. I had to pause it for dinner, and Tom’s Friday night stream, and my wife watching TV. But I’ll be back for the rest of that 10%.

6142

How do you “pause” it? Never heard of such a thing.

6143

If you’re playing single player (ie non-public in game settings) the escape menu will pause.

6144

Beware, I think it disconnects after a while when you pause. Not 100% sure, but I think I have paused in rifts and returned to a d/c popup on the main menu.