This seems to boil down to personal opinion but I'm curious what other people's thoughts are. I can definitely see pros and cons to both.
Right now my character can tune the difficulty down to low torments and run through elite packs, collect chests and come up with about 5-6 legendary items every couple hours. However I can also ramp the difficulty to Torment VI where I can farm excellent xp but legendary drops are nearly non existent since I kill a fraction of the enemies in the same time but net's me a huge bonus to the xp gain.
Now here's my thoughts on both. If I choose to grind legendaries, I level considerably slower. However, I find really interesting pieces of gear including good ol fashion upgrades, legendary recipes for my blacksmith etc etc. Doing this seems to be considerably more fun for myself personally because I absolutely love seeing those beams of green and amber light shooting up into the sky whenever I get a legendary drop. I'm playing a barb and currently have 3 pieces of my new immortal king set and having the 4pc set bonus that essentially turns my barb into a pet class seems like it would be fun as hell. However, I realize nearly every piece of gear I get will become obsolete come RoS, which brings us to the counter piont.
I can opt to forgo legendary farming and up Torment to VI. Here I can farm regular trash enemies for an extreme boost in xp gain. I level at least 3-4 times faster doing this, if not more, than the previously mentioned legendary farming. However, the downsides here are pretty much that I very rarely come across any kind of legendary drop at all. Also, this method of grinding becomes very tedious and boring. I personally am not equipped to deal with elite packs. At best, I can survive them while ignoring them to kill the regular white trash, but killing them would drop the efficiency of the level grind which defeats the entire purpose. However, I do gain xp very quickly and as a result, I can probably gain many times more paragon levels grinding this out in preparation for RoS so by the time it's out, I'll have a nice level advantage that will continue to benefit me and won''t get replaced like the level 60 gear would.
All that being said, neither way seem to be optimal except for killing time right now. Once RoS comes out and I get my character to 70, loot drops will be itemized in a way that my old gear will be replaced making loot farming obsolete. Alternatively, level 70 enemies will be supplying an incredible xp boost compared to what we're seeing now making leveling up much more efficient as well, making level grinding now potentially a pointless waste of time. IE: If it takes me an hour to grind out 2b xp it may only take me 10 minutes to grind that out come level 70 (these numbers I'm just plucking out of the air here but you get the idea)
As it stands right now, I'm doing a bit of both to mix things up but I'm curious which people find to be better. There really is no wrong answer here, so feel free to chime in with your thoughts for discussion.
Personally. Do what is fun. If you grind para and hate it or get burned out, imo that will detract from your longevity of the game. When I'm having fun I level faster... Or more so time flies by faster. Time flies when you are having fun. Just my opinion.
Personally. Do what is fun. If you grind para and hate it or get burned out, imo that will detract from your longevity of the game. When I'm having fun I level faster... Or more so time flies by faster. Time flies when you are having fun. Just my opinion.
I agree, do what you enjoy. Sometimes I go after xp and achievements, other times I like to play through all the acts. Doing 1 thing all the time gets old fast, at least for me.
If it takes ages for you on T6, then you're too slow and will neither get lots of XP or lots of legendaries. We did some extremely fast T6 runs earlier this week - but the group composition was just perfect to yield us insane XP and lots of legendaries (I found more in those 3-4 hours of farming than on some entire days before). We tried the same yesterday - it was just too slow, netting both only little XP and due to the slow killing speed probably also not a lot of legendaries. It was fun for a couple of runs just because of the T6 challenge, but we then lowered it to T5. Today I played T1 with my friends to kill the Skeleton King on all twinks before the patch tomorrow. We then ran act 3 in Normal - just because we had to finish it for one character to reset and didn't want to waste time before the football match @television started.
There's a sweet spot to get both XP and legendaries, and that's what I prefer the most. It completely depends on the group - sometimes it's T3, T4, T5, and in some rare cases may even be T6 (wizard power). With some of my twinks it's rather between Master and T3. Still, I just switch all the time; playing on one difficulty in one area with one build all the time is extremely tiresome for me. I love that the new difficulty system offers something for everyone; it's not simply "get to MP10 or feel like you're totally gimped". I see many T6 capable players just running T1 for fun. That's what it's supposed to be.
To all those incentives for difficulties we'll see a new one in RoS: gold. Where can you get the most gold? Because at some point some people will run out of gold, and without any means of gold trading it will not just be about experience or items, but also about how to get those coins to feed the Mystic. It's a great time to play Diablo! ;-)
I happen to agree with Xenocow, Legends at level 60 are useless at least for me, so mostly grinding XP. I view it was the more Paragon points you have going to ROS the better. Everyone will start gearing up when ROS launches and all gear will get replaced at 70. IMHO.
Grinding gear is all in all rather stupid. Gear will be replaced day one of RoS(unless you find jesus). where paragon levels will not. However. Xp will be gained rather fast in RoS with bounties and all that. So why rush it. Find the middle ground. Decent xp and decent drops. Items that change your build is fun, but not needed. But fun have never killed anyone right ?
If t6 is great for xp, but terrible drops, and t1 is the opposite...why not just do t3 or t4?
There's a good reason but suffice it to say, the build I use to farm T6 xp takes advantage of the fact that the white trash mobs don't die instantly. I'm running Furious Charge/rend + lifesteal build on my barb. Since I run with Merciless Assault, my Charge instantly refreshes so long as I hit 5 enemies with it and since the trash on T6 has a ton of health, I can Rend entire groups of enemies (think 20+) for insane amounts of lifestealing then mow them all down by running over them with Charge over and over.
If I were to drop the difficulty, the build ceases to function. The white trash dies too quickly and when they're dead, I lose all my lifestealing from rend and it makes it much more difficult to instantly refresh the cd on my charge.
Also, because of the very nature of the build, it's terribly designed to handle elite packs. The problem with elite packs is that the white trash around them blows up way too quickly and by the time they've take 10% of their total life, everything else around them has died. When this happens, refreshing charge is much more difficult and I no longer have enough lifestealing that the other 30-40 enemies bleeding from Rend were providing, which is when the build fails and the elite pack kills me. Lowering the difficulty doesn't solve the problem, in fact it makes it worse. The white trash dies even quicker yet the elite pack is still extremely durable and deadly. By the time I lower the difficulty enough for this build to handle elite packs, I'd be at no higher difficulty than a regular clearing build would be, at which point it'd just be better to run with a clearing build, which is exactly what I do when I go legendary farming.
However, if I simply skip elite packs and just focus on killing large groups of regular trash enemies, I can make a solid 1.5b xp per hour, more if I can manage to get pools of reflection and keep them active without dying. It's not the massive amounts of numbers some of these insanely geared groups of players are capable, but it's a respectable number IMO.
If t6 is great for xp, but terrible drops, and t1 is the opposite...why not just do t3 or t4?
If I were to drop the difficulty, the build ceases to function. The white trash dies too quickly and when they're dead, I lose all my lifestealing from rend and it makes it much more difficult to instantly refresh the cd on my charge.
I get you there, I had a similar issue last night. Its an interesting one to have.
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Right now my character can tune the difficulty down to low torments and run through elite packs, collect chests and come up with about 5-6 legendary items every couple hours. However I can also ramp the difficulty to Torment VI where I can farm excellent xp but legendary drops are nearly non existent since I kill a fraction of the enemies in the same time but net's me a huge bonus to the xp gain.
Now here's my thoughts on both. If I choose to grind legendaries, I level considerably slower. However, I find really interesting pieces of gear including good ol fashion upgrades, legendary recipes for my blacksmith etc etc. Doing this seems to be considerably more fun for myself personally because I absolutely love seeing those beams of green and amber light shooting up into the sky whenever I get a legendary drop. I'm playing a barb and currently have 3 pieces of my new immortal king set and having the 4pc set bonus that essentially turns my barb into a pet class seems like it would be fun as hell. However, I realize nearly every piece of gear I get will become obsolete come RoS, which brings us to the counter piont.
I can opt to forgo legendary farming and up Torment to VI. Here I can farm regular trash enemies for an extreme boost in xp gain. I level at least 3-4 times faster doing this, if not more, than the previously mentioned legendary farming. However, the downsides here are pretty much that I very rarely come across any kind of legendary drop at all. Also, this method of grinding becomes very tedious and boring. I personally am not equipped to deal with elite packs. At best, I can survive them while ignoring them to kill the regular white trash, but killing them would drop the efficiency of the level grind which defeats the entire purpose. However, I do gain xp very quickly and as a result, I can probably gain many times more paragon levels grinding this out in preparation for RoS so by the time it's out, I'll have a nice level advantage that will continue to benefit me and won''t get replaced like the level 60 gear would.
All that being said, neither way seem to be optimal except for killing time right now. Once RoS comes out and I get my character to 70, loot drops will be itemized in a way that my old gear will be replaced making loot farming obsolete. Alternatively, level 70 enemies will be supplying an incredible xp boost compared to what we're seeing now making leveling up much more efficient as well, making level grinding now potentially a pointless waste of time. IE: If it takes me an hour to grind out 2b xp it may only take me 10 minutes to grind that out come level 70 (these numbers I'm just plucking out of the air here but you get the idea)
As it stands right now, I'm doing a bit of both to mix things up but I'm curious which people find to be better. There really is no wrong answer here, so feel free to chime in with your thoughts for discussion.
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps...
it is time to die.
If it takes ages for you on T6, then you're too slow and will neither get lots of XP or lots of legendaries. We did some extremely fast T6 runs earlier this week - but the group composition was just perfect to yield us insane XP and lots of legendaries (I found more in those 3-4 hours of farming than on some entire days before). We tried the same yesterday - it was just too slow, netting both only little XP and due to the slow killing speed probably also not a lot of legendaries. It was fun for a couple of runs just because of the T6 challenge, but we then lowered it to T5. Today I played T1 with my friends to kill the Skeleton King on all twinks before the patch tomorrow. We then ran act 3 in Normal - just because we had to finish it for one character to reset and didn't want to waste time before the football match @television started.
There's a sweet spot to get both XP and legendaries, and that's what I prefer the most. It completely depends on the group - sometimes it's T3, T4, T5, and in some rare cases may even be T6 (wizard power). With some of my twinks it's rather between Master and T3. Still, I just switch all the time; playing on one difficulty in one area with one build all the time is extremely tiresome for me. I love that the new difficulty system offers something for everyone; it's not simply "get to MP10 or feel like you're totally gimped". I see many T6 capable players just running T1 for fun. That's what it's supposed to be.
To all those incentives for difficulties we'll see a new one in RoS: gold. Where can you get the most gold? Because at some point some people will run out of gold, and without any means of gold trading it will not just be about experience or items, but also about how to get those coins to feed the Mystic. It's a great time to play Diablo! ;-)
Running t6 Cata4 and CotA for massive XP.
There's a good reason but suffice it to say, the build I use to farm T6 xp takes advantage of the fact that the white trash mobs don't die instantly. I'm running Furious Charge/rend + lifesteal build on my barb. Since I run with Merciless Assault, my Charge instantly refreshes so long as I hit 5 enemies with it and since the trash on T6 has a ton of health, I can Rend entire groups of enemies (think 20+) for insane amounts of lifestealing then mow them all down by running over them with Charge over and over.
If I were to drop the difficulty, the build ceases to function. The white trash dies too quickly and when they're dead, I lose all my lifestealing from rend and it makes it much more difficult to instantly refresh the cd on my charge.
Also, because of the very nature of the build, it's terribly designed to handle elite packs. The problem with elite packs is that the white trash around them blows up way too quickly and by the time they've take 10% of their total life, everything else around them has died. When this happens, refreshing charge is much more difficult and I no longer have enough lifestealing that the other 30-40 enemies bleeding from Rend were providing, which is when the build fails and the elite pack kills me. Lowering the difficulty doesn't solve the problem, in fact it makes it worse. The white trash dies even quicker yet the elite pack is still extremely durable and deadly. By the time I lower the difficulty enough for this build to handle elite packs, I'd be at no higher difficulty than a regular clearing build would be, at which point it'd just be better to run with a clearing build, which is exactly what I do when I go legendary farming.
However, if I simply skip elite packs and just focus on killing large groups of regular trash enemies, I can make a solid 1.5b xp per hour, more if I can manage to get pools of reflection and keep them active without dying. It's not the massive amounts of numbers some of these insanely geared groups of players are capable, but it's a respectable number IMO.
Bringing torment and pain to others.
Your damned soul wallowing in your sin.
Perhaps...
it is time to die.