I had mentioned it later on when talking about the Vault, but I took your suggestion and listed the crown right upfront in the top section. Thanks!
You definitely want to run whatever you can do decently fast, that is why I tried not to talk about what gr level to run, but what you can do efficiently. Lower than gr45 though and you should just do normal torment rifts as at least then you'd also get death's breaths. Once players are geared and out there I think they will fall into the flavour of the month comps etc.
Looking at the bnet and reddit forums and I see a lot of players are still struggling to get up there!
also speed grift 45 is really low since just about everybody can solo a 58,
Just about every body? really? I think not!! My Monk is only doing 40 but I have not really pushed him yet. I don't enjoy rifts at my toons limit, it takes away the fun of a faster run and I don't care what any one says but Grifts are basically unrewarding.......up grade gems and a couple of legs yay!!
First thank you for checking out my article. I spent weeks (23 in-run hours!) meticulously gathering data for it so I really appreciate the people who spent the time checking it out, even those that did not end up personally finding it useful.
I realize a lot of it seems like common sense or standard advice, but a quick hop in game and I often see T10 as the most popular for Rifts & Bounties (they can't all be missing a RRoG right?). Joining Para 700 Greater Rift runs and groups were running GR 65s in 10 minutes despite advertising "Speed Runs" and refusing to drop down lower.
I thought maybe they knew something I didn't. So I gathered all this data to find out, something I hadn't seen anyone having done before. For these people, the (long) Data section with analysis will be the most helpful, and I certainly learned a lot doing it.
Lastly thank you to all the people who decided to comment or email me with thanks, the encouragement to keep creating stuff like this is really appreciated.
I average 120 to 160 bill an hour running 65s in 6 to 10 minutes. The 6 is when you get a good rift with a good RG for a SWK Monk. Were your tests done with 2 supports characters wearing xp gear(Cain+Born+Hellfire+leoric) as well as everyone in party with ruby in helms? More importantly, did you do all your tests with the same %xp bonus in party?
Hi Alckor, thank you for chiming in. The key here is that it is all relative. This answer is going to be a bit longer since we have to talk about scenarios.
I know from my data gathering that the total amount of XP per grift is fairly constant. For example a solo gr 55 w/ Ruby in helm + Leoric's Crown will net you on average ~5.6 bil xp. With the same gear, a solo gr 50 is average ~3.7 bil xp, and solo gr45 is ~2.6 bil xp. You can decrease the total xp by running with less XP gear, and you can increasing it by adding more players, and again by adding more players with XP gear or even more with reflection pools. The key here is that the amount of XP per rift for a given group and gear is constant, no matter how long the clear takes.
Once you have picked your gear and your group, the only thing you can change is what GR you run, which changes how much xp you get per run, and how long you take to clear it. These are the only two variables at play at this point. In my solo example above, whose numbers will be much lower than group numbers but nevertheless are constant xp per rift (as group ones are), I can see that running gr55 in 10 minutes gives 33.6 bil xp/h, but a gr 50 in 5 minutes gives 44.1 bil xp/h. A gr 45 in 2.5 minutes would give me 61.8 bil xp/h. Once you hit reliable 2.5 minute per run in my experience you can't get any faster (likely movement speed limited), so it's pointless to look at data in lower grs once you are doing 2.5 min per run. If you can, just set that as your new baseline.
I ran these comparisons in group setups and in solo and the way that run time against gr level affected xp/h proved true in every case I could manage to run.
So changing comp and xp gear is great for running a "fast" higher gr, or getting more xp out of your already fast runs. But once you have decided on your comp and gear (a discussion for another time), choosing the right gr level really depends on your clear speed.
But let's not make any mistake here, unless you are at Paragon 1000+, you will care about more than just XP, things like legendaries/h and bloodshards/h will also matter. That is why lowering down gr levels to chase 2.5 minute runs is not always the right decision for most players. Most players will want to up the difficulty to follow the rule of thumb of roughly 5 minute runs to get a good balance between XP per hour and the other rewards.
I encourage you to run your own tests with your group however. Try running 5-10 gr 65s and record your times and xp (print screen key before/after runs is great for this, the file timestamps!). Then try running 5-10 gr 60s and do the same. Report back! We'd love to hear your results.
I will certainly test this myself and report back, when I have a decent sample.
Another point is upgrading gems. I am currently upgrading my gems at level 75+ @ 1% chance. I have no chance of upgrading them at 60 but I do have that 1% at 65. Getting a good group to do a few 75s to upgrade gems would be better, but that is not always an option, and I've gained 5-6 gem levels this way so far which is great.
I'm @ Paragon 888 right now and other than gems I do not really see anything else than xp that matters to me. So maybe that 1000+ paragon you're mentionning for not caring about bloodshards / leg per hour is a bit overkill. But then maybe I'm just lucky, who knows.
So I made a guide on the best ways to farm materials and settled (at least for me) the Close on RG debate. I hope it is useful to others.
http://gaming.ofbeaton.com/2015/09/28/diablo-3-efficient-material-gathering/
I also included a lot of data analysis that I did for back up my claims.
Hey, thanks for the comment!
I had mentioned it later on when talking about the Vault, but I took your suggestion and listed the crown right upfront in the top section. Thanks!
You definitely want to run whatever you can do decently fast, that is why I tried not to talk about what gr level to run, but what you can do efficiently. Lower than gr45 though and you should just do normal torment rifts as at least then you'd also get death's breaths. Once players are geared and out there I think they will fall into the flavour of the month comps etc.
Looking at the bnet and reddit forums and I see a lot of players are still struggling to get up there!
First thank you for checking out my article. I spent weeks (23 in-run hours!) meticulously gathering data for it so I really appreciate the people who spent the time checking it out, even those that did not end up personally finding it useful.
I realize a lot of it seems like common sense or standard advice, but a quick hop in game and I often see T10 as the most popular for Rifts & Bounties (they can't all be missing a RRoG right?). Joining Para 700 Greater Rift runs and groups were running GR 65s in 10 minutes despite advertising "Speed Runs" and refusing to drop down lower.
I thought maybe they knew something I didn't. So I gathered all this data to find out, something I hadn't seen anyone having done before. For these people, the (long) Data section with analysis will be the most helpful, and I certainly learned a lot doing it.
Lastly thank you to all the people who decided to comment or email me with thanks, the encouragement to keep creating stuff like this is really appreciated.
Something seems off,
I average 120 to 160 bill an hour running 65s in 6 to 10 minutes. The 6 is when you get a good rift with a good RG for a SWK Monk. Were your tests done with 2 supports characters wearing xp gear(Cain+Born+Hellfire+leoric) as well as everyone in party with ruby in helms? More importantly, did you do all your tests with the same %xp bonus in party?
Hi Alckor, thank you for chiming in. The key here is that it is all relative. This answer is going to be a bit longer since we have to talk about scenarios.
I know from my data gathering that the total amount of XP per grift is fairly constant. For example a solo gr 55 w/ Ruby in helm + Leoric's Crown will net you on average ~5.6 bil xp. With the same gear, a solo gr 50 is average ~3.7 bil xp, and solo gr45 is ~2.6 bil xp. You can decrease the total xp by running with less XP gear, and you can increasing it by adding more players, and again by adding more players with XP gear or even more with reflection pools. The key here is that the amount of XP per rift for a given group and gear is constant, no matter how long the clear takes.
Once you have picked your gear and your group, the only thing you can change is what GR you run, which changes how much xp you get per run, and how long you take to clear it. These are the only two variables at play at this point. In my solo example above, whose numbers will be much lower than group numbers but nevertheless are constant xp per rift (as group ones are), I can see that running gr55 in 10 minutes gives 33.6 bil xp/h, but a gr 50 in 5 minutes gives 44.1 bil xp/h. A gr 45 in 2.5 minutes would give me 61.8 bil xp/h. Once you hit reliable 2.5 minute per run in my experience you can't get any faster (likely movement speed limited), so it's pointless to look at data in lower grs once you are doing 2.5 min per run. If you can, just set that as your new baseline.
I ran these comparisons in group setups and in solo and the way that run time against gr level affected xp/h proved true in every case I could manage to run.
So changing comp and xp gear is great for running a "fast" higher gr, or getting more xp out of your already fast runs. But once you have decided on your comp and gear (a discussion for another time), choosing the right gr level really depends on your clear speed.
But let's not make any mistake here, unless you are at Paragon 1000+, you will care about more than just XP, things like legendaries/h and bloodshards/h will also matter. That is why lowering down gr levels to chase 2.5 minute runs is not always the right decision for most players. Most players will want to up the difficulty to follow the rule of thumb of roughly 5 minute runs to get a good balance between XP per hour and the other rewards.
I encourage you to run your own tests with your group however. Try running 5-10 gr 65s and record your times and xp (print screen key before/after runs is great for this, the file timestamps!). Then try running 5-10 gr 60s and do the same. Report back! We'd love to hear your results.
I will certainly test this myself and report back, when I have a decent sample.
Another point is upgrading gems. I am currently upgrading my gems at level 75+ @ 1% chance. I have no chance of upgrading them at 60 but I do have that 1% at 65. Getting a good group to do a few 75s to upgrade gems would be better, but that is not always an option, and I've gained 5-6 gem levels this way so far which is great.
I'm @ Paragon 888 right now and other than gems I do not really see anything else than xp that matters to me. So maybe that 1000+ paragon you're mentionning for not caring about bloodshards / leg per hour is a bit overkill. But then maybe I'm just lucky, who knows.
Thanks for the reply.