A few days ago, I asked about Sage's builds in this thread. Seeing a build is one thing; but it's not the same as playing it, and some builds really surprised me when I tested them. Also, sometimes builds are exaggerating in their advertisement (there are probably 100 builds called "best build ever" in our DB, so which one is the best)? Therefore, I decided to compare them. And I call this the:
Brainless Builds Comparison
Why "brainless"? Because Torment farming is boring and monotonous, and I want to be able to watch something while playing and not having to pay attention to cooldowns, CoE rotations, and so on. Also, I don't have time to practice a dozen builds for 5 hours; I just have a go at it. So here are my rules:
12 minutes of rifting.
No practicing of the build; just have a go!
No goblins, except for Blood Thiefs.
Always test on T8 and T10, go higher if build looks promising.
I test all the builds that were proposed in this thread.
Obviously there is still RNG involved, but it's a bit smaller since all tests are conducted by the same player, it's always about the same paragon, gems, and the same skill level (i.e., very low ;-)). Also, I've been playing all classes on and off for 2 years now but never went for a DPS role in groups or solo pushes, so I have no crazy augmented gear that would skew the results.
In addition to the Death's Breath per session (take that times 5 to get the DB/hour), I also make my own very subjective assessment of each skill according to 4 categories:
Off (offensive): Perceived damage output, burst on elites.
Def (defensive): Toughness, especially how much I had to dodge.
Speed: How fast does it *feel*.
Lazy: Can I just randomly push buttons or are their cycles, rotations, timing, resource handling etc?
Okay, enough rambling. Here's a playlist with *all* videos (34 so far), and below you find the table with the results!
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(*) The 181 DB on T11 were with insanely good rift RNG, so I did a re-run. See Q&A for details.
(²) All Tal Elecrocute runs were unfortunately a bit flawed (bad RNG etc.), so numbers are a bit lower than they should be. Still, Tal EB is stronger. See Q&A.
Q: Why are you not running T9? And why not focus on T13?
A: The answer is in this simple graph. Going from T8 to T9 is only a 9% improvement in DB drops, but obviously the usual 19% increase in difficulty, so it's a bad trade-off. T10 and T11 are fine again. T12 and T13 are overall really bad for Sage's builds. The reason for this is that Sage's does not *double* your DB drops, but it drops *an additional one* whenever a mob drops any DB (regardless the amount). So when you get 3 DBs on T13, Sage's just gives you a fourth, which is a small benefit compared to T8 where you have a 85% chance for a single DB drop and thus almost double your DB gain. In short, T8, T10, and T11 are the best tiers for DB overall.
Q: 12 minutes of rifts is a laughably short time. Why not run longer?
A: I did 34 runs of 12 minutes, so that's already 7 hours of videos. If I had run a full hour run that would be 34 hours. Including setup time of builds, editing the video, uploading, and so on, the patch would be out before I'd be finished. However, I did an estimate about how high the error rate is, and I was surprised to see that 12 minutes might be better than expected (see next question). But bottom line, I'd rather run more builds on more difficulties.
Q: How high is the error rate?
A: (TL;DR: About 12%). For the monk SWK LTK build on T11, I actually got insanely good RNG. As you can see in the video, basically elite-stacked open area maps non-stop. I immediately new the 181 (which would sum up to 900 DB/hour!) was an outlier. So I did another run, and as I had hoped I got "extremely unlucky" with only long tube maps except for one Oasis (but that had one had almost no elites). I also hit the endstone two times, which means losing 2 times ~25 seconds where I'm just standing around. So this 145 is the lower ceiling, and therefore I think if we take the average for that run (163) and assume an error rate of very roughly 12%, it might not be too far off. Which is very surprising and makes DB hunting less RNG-dependent than other activities, such as GR key farming!
Q: So looking at your numbers, it looks like some classes just suck at DB farming. Should I make an LTK monk?
A: Absolutely no. First, look at these charts: T8 and TX comparison of top builds per class incl. error bars. As you can see, all of them are basically in range of their respective error bars. Second, those results are for *me* and are more representative of *my* personal build preferences. Third, running Torment will also yield a lot of loot; you should always run Torment on your main class (or at least a class where you get useful loot, like a barb when you're gearing a LoN bomb crus).
Q: I'm an author of one of the builds. You played it all wrong! Can you re-do the run?
A: In short: no. One of the perks of labeling this comparison "brainless" means that if I failed your build, it's not good for a brainless player. Of course your build might still be awesome! Feel free to make your own "pro-player comparison" where you showcase each build including hours of practice ;-) That being said, if you're the author of one of the builds and want feedback, feel free to post here or PM me. Or if you're not an author and have questions, of course post as well!
Q: Build X for class Y sucks, you should've run my build Z. Can you run it?
A: Feel free to post your build. If I have time and a build piques my interest, I might have a go at it. However, after recording all those videos I have more DBs than all other (white+blue+yellow) mats combined, so I'm currently running non-Sage's builds (ironic, isn't it).
Excellent stuff! So what did you decide for your Sage DB farming Build?
Well as I've said before, after doing all this I have obviously more than enough DBs and actually lack other mats... so I'm now playing non-Sage's builds. For that I love the LoN monk, because it can do T13 as well as GR70s easily. But there's so much other stuff as well...
If I had to pick one of the specs from above it'd probably be your build on T10 or T11. It was just so much fun!
Thank you for the right up, and all the videos. I didn't really think that adding a sage set was viable. Watched your video, and lowered down to T10 on my monk WoL - and wow a very significant difference!
Hey Bagstone, I like that project. I can confirm that as a DH, you can farm up to 600+ DB by just using UE6p Multishot builds on Torment 13.
The huge difference between those two builds is, you can play the Shadow/Sage build with very bad items and still be very efficient.
If you want to keep up the 600+ DB rate with UE6p Multishot, you need some decent items first.
So the Shadow/Sage is a very good build at the start of a season, but becomes less efficient as soon as you have some decent items for the UE6p Multishot build(s).
I guess that's a good point: The three classes that apparently lack a bit in terms of Sage's builds (barb, DH, WD) probably can just speed farm T11-13 on non-Sage builds and get the same DB/hour. Haven't thought about that.
I felt really bad about the DH testing though. You made the builds look so easy in your video and I definitely struggled to get into it... but as you write in both build descriptions, they take some time getting into, and I only played them for half an hour. Anyways, thanks for the builds; I hope there's new/different Sage's builds for DH+WD in the future, as I felt both classes lacked most in that department.
Not sure I'm gonna update this, it's a lot of work. It's also just an example of a few builds; there's probably many more DB builds out there that I could test this season already, but not sure I'll have the time.
In terms of gear: I think they're all about the same. Yes, WoW is probably the rarest item required for all those builds, but the build also works without it; you just will have to run it on T8 for a while. Some builds really need an In-Geom to work, and that's actually a relatively rare weapon as well - in S8 it took me 630 paragon levels to find one. And for all builds you need the RoRG, which can be a pretty hard item to get. I'd say it's tough to give a rating on how difficulty it is to gear. I'd rather just see for which build you have the items.
How high you can go with the selected builds: that's really very subjective. Look at the Crusader; yes, it *can* do T13, but it's not really a good decision. With the crusader, I'd do TX, maybe T11 if I get better gear, same for monk+wizard. DH, WD, and barb have a little issue if elites start getting too much HP, so even at my paragon 1500+ I'd recommend T8 or T10. Basically, start doing T8, if you think it's overkill try TX and then T11. If you notice that your In-Geom isn't up all the time (if the build includes one) or you die or the elites don't die almost instantly, lower it again. It mostly depends on power level and gear, more than on the build.
I am sorry, but I cannot agree that you gave full stars on crusader build. In my opinion, this build is way too weak. Terrible toughness, not enough damage. Overall very unstable. Boss kill is way too slow. You even died in boss fight. You spent 5:50 to run a whole rift. This collectively saying that you should not run this gear or build in T13. I am sorry, but that is the fact. The cold truth. No offense.
P.S. I have fully geared Akkhan Norvald build. I cannot be satisfied with this build at all. I think you know what I mean. What I don't understand is that the fact you gave full stars on that pathetic(sorry) build.
I am sorry, but I cannot agree that you gave full stars on crusader build. In my opinion, this build is way too weak. Terrible toughness, not enough damage. Overall very unstable. Boss kill is way too slow. You even died in boss fight. You spent 5:50 to run a whole rift. This collectively saying that you should not run this gear or build in T13. I am sorry, but that is the fact. The cold truth. No offense.
P.S. I have fully geared Akkhan Norvald build. I cannot be satisfied with this build at all. I think you know what I mean. What I don't understand is that the fact you gave full stars on that pathetic(sorry) build.
That's fair, and it's exactly the reason why I wrote "SUBJECTIVE" in the intro to those ratings.
Of course this build shouldn't run T13. No sage's build should run T13. You can see by my numbers that actually TX is the sweet spot for the crusader. It still has 3 stars because its relative strength to the other builds. The only other builds that have similar damage were LTK monk and EB wizard - both of which also received 3 stars, but both of which shouldn't run T13/T12 either. The reason why I ran T12/T13 on those classes was merely to show that T13 is not worth it, because I know a lot of people seem to think "I need to run T13". Which is wrong. There are paragon 1500 top players who farm T11 all day because they know it's the fastest.
Anyways, my subjective assessment is based on relative strength. And in relation to the other builds, the crusader was among the strongest of them all. Also, forget about the rift closing time, really. How fast you clear a rift is 80% about the rift and 20% about your build. I always roll my eyes if people say "this build runs average 2 minute rifts". Yeah well... there are rifts which are impossible to close in 2 minutes, by design. And there are rifts which you can clear in one minute, if your damage+mobility is high enough. That's why the "rift clearing competitions" never really got a lot of audience: it was more about fishing 10 open maps in a row rather than anything else.
P.S.: On Reddit someone also had concerns about the crusader, and after some talking he linked his crusader and we discovered some issues that were holding him back. I'm not sure if that's the case for you, probably not, but I'm just saying that sometimes there are other reasons as to why a build is perceived as rather weak.
I am sorry, but I cannot agree that you gave full stars on crusader build. In my opinion, this build is way too weak. Terrible toughness, not enough damage. Overall very unstable. Boss kill is way too slow. You even died in boss fight. You spent 5:50 to run a whole rift. This collectively saying that you should not run this gear or build in T13. I am sorry, but that is the fact. The cold truth. No offense.
P.S. I have fully geared Akkhan Norvald build. I cannot be satisfied with this build at all. I think you know what I mean. What I don't understand is that the fact you gave full stars on that pathetic(sorry) build.
That's fair, and it's exactly the reason why I wrote "SUBJECTIVE" in the intro to those ratings.
Of course this build shouldn't run T13. No sage's build should run T13. You can see by my numbers that actually TX is the sweet spot for the crusader. It still has 3 stars because its relative strength to the other builds. The only other builds that have similar damage were LTK monk and EB wizard - both of which also received 3 stars, but both of which shouldn't run T13/T12 either. The reason why I ran T12/T13 on those classes was merely to show that T13 is not worth it, because I know a lot of people seem to think "I need to run T13". Which is wrong. There are paragon 1500 top players who farm T11 all day because they know it's the fastest.
Anyways, my subjective assessment is based on relative strength. And in relation to the other builds, the crusader was among the strongest of them all. Also, forget about the rift closing time, really. How fast you clear a rift is 80% about the rift and 20% about your build. I always roll my eyes if people say "this build runs average 2 minute rifts". Yeah well... there are rifts which are impossible to close in 2 minutes, by design. And there are rifts which you can clear in one minute, if your damage+mobility is high enough. That's why the "rift clearing competitions" never really got a lot of audience: it was more about fishing 10 open maps in a row rather than anything else.
P.S.: On Reddit someone also had concerns about the crusader, and after some talking he linked his crusader and we discovered some issues that were holding him back. I'm not sure if that's the case for you, probably not, but I'm just saying that sometimes there are other reasons as to why a build is perceived as rather weak.
I am just paraon 800 atm, no augment on geat. Not even perfect gear, but most legendaries.
I followed the saged guide "triumvirate" but i put the aquila cuirass into the cube for more survivability. On t12 everything (except the rift boss, who needs like 1 sec of thornriding) is onehit. I am close to switching to t13 and i think this build is okay for t13.
Also in the guide i took as an example, the guy went t13: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mGmqDF9jb0&t=262s&list=PLQzfpKz9SxkEl1DdrknH91nmt2ZRnXPS5&index=9
The one thing that is important is that you dont mess up. If you are not in akkhams champion and land bombardment you will lose much time because the huge damageboost misses. Same goes for iron skin of course. But after a few rifts of training this shouldnt be a problem.
What is also important is that you make good use of condemn so that all enemies get hit by the bombardment.
So maybe i would remove some stars of "lazy" ;D
Everything else important is explained in the video of baromir linked above. So if you have all this, you should not have a problem at least running it on t12 perfectly.
Yeah, if you remove the stars on "lazy" the difficulty shift goes up, for sure. Thorns crusader (all builds) are among the strongest and easiest T13 clearing builds. But in my combination (not caring about Bombardments and cycles and playing it faceroll, lazy-mode) TX is optimal. It's the way how I treated every build: with the utmost least possible respect
Good advice! Yes, I would consider all those alternatives as well for an actual run, I think most builds also mentions those as alternatives. I didn't use Gloves of Worship because I only did 12 minute runs, so no huge effect; I never play solo (except for the videos), so I never use Unity (also I think this build needs no toughness); Avarice Band is great if you want to increase rift keys/hour, but that was not a priority for me. I'm not so sure about the AC rune - I think it's like a weaker In-Geom, but I might have to try that.
Note that I'm not the creator of any of those builds; make sure you comment on the build itself to let the creator know!
Awsome job here. I would add my comment on bombardment cruz. You could use gloves of worship and have +25% movement speed, +25% toughness, 50% CDR!, and more exp, gold most of the time. For tougness change lantern for unity. Also I use averance band so no globe pick up. Also I use akhan with rune that remove cooldowns. With all these you can spam bombardments and have laws all the time. Toughness you get from fact you can die while akharat is active. I play on tX on hc. I will give it a full test tomorrow.
You do not have the second life from akkarats if you take the cooldown rune, as only the prophet rune gives a second life. If you manage to find a speed shrine every 10 minutes there is no need for avarice band anyways, because you also get 20 yard increased pick up radius from that shrine.
I never run Sage sets, but I can only confirm here, that running T13 is a waste most of the time.
So if you're lacking DBs it's totally viable to give Sage builds a try.
There are some classes that are really fast on T13 but if your clear time compared to T11 is only ~20% slower it's already not worth it, which is frankly for almost all of us
And remember 1 griftlvl is close to 20% more monster hp. So since the difference between torment levels is equal to 5 griftlvls it's double the HP you have to fight...
for wizards I prefer T11 with avarice band instead of manald heal. it's super fast and paralysis for example sometimes wont proc for some seconds, so that's a total waste of time too, IMO.
Hey, this has become super-awesome since you started with questions for others to answer.
Back then I had wondered what might have happened to the old "Flash Fire Wiz" for there was only a build using that new(?) Paralyze ring, but now it looks like the old queen is back
Awsome job here. I would add my comment on bombardment cruz. You could use gloves of worship and have +25% movement speed, +25% toughness, 50% CDR!, and more exp, gold most of the time. For tougness change lantern for unity. Also I use averance band so no globe pick up. Also I use akhan with rune that remove cooldowns. With all these you can spam bombardments and have laws all the time. Toughness you get from fact you can die while akharat is active. I play on tX on hc. I will give it a full test tomorrow.
You do not have the second life from akkarats if you take the cooldown rune, as only the prophet rune gives a second life. If you manage to find a speed shrine every 10 minutes there is no need for avarice band anyways, because you also get 20 yard increased pick up radius from that shrine.
I did some tests today and I cant fing shrines fast enough. There are many pylons and I was procing save life pasive too often. I switched gloves of worship in cube for gold wrap. I still like akarat rune to remove 15 seconds from cooldowns. I always run in one go skin->bombardment->akarat. This often gives me second bombardment really fast.
Of course the second life passive works when you have it selected, but the Prophet Rune would give you another life (a 3rd life in the case of Indestructible passive selected). But for torment farming and GRs up to 70-75 the cooldown rune is better for sure. I used to do it that way with gloves of worship: put in a bovine bardiche at the beginning of the game, get all the shrines there (preferably cooldwon and speed shrine last), then go rifting, if you don't find either cooldown or speed shrine within the ten minutes, make a new game and repeat.
T10 is not very appealing to me. I only consider builds that can run at least T13 very fast speed.
Point of this build is to get as much DBs possible in a short time without putting too much effort
And if you can read numbers you can see that this BAD build can get some insane numbers with little to none hussle.Also There is no point to go t13 with a sage build for reasons that has ben discussed before.
Pls learn how to read a forum post before disagree with the OP
1) I saw this thread on the official forums and it was claiming to get an extremely high DB/h. Of course I couldn't resist to compare it! Here's the build:
It's okay, but not as good as the other wizard imho. It's a decent alternative if you don't like the other build though. My comments to this build can be found in the thread.
2) Desolacer poked me on Twitch that he had come up with a new build and I promised to test it. So I did! Here's the build:
I wasn't convinced at first, but very surprised how well the build performed. It might've been due to lucky rifts, but still - that doesn't inflate the numbers as much, as I showed in my FAQ. So basically this is a really interesting alternative, especially again for people who don't like the other builds or don't have them. It's also really nice to see something with the Roland's set which is currently the "worst" set for the crusader and receives a huge buff with patch 2.5 (so it'll only get better!). Very nice idea, further highlighting the incredible diversity that D3 currently has.
The 2 DH builds chosen in this seem pretty sad. I think maybe just too outdated. Maybe we no longer have streamers/youtubers updating players with new builds, though at the same time it does let players go out and actually design their own builds. I timed some sessions at 12 minutes each on my seasonal DH with one of my DB builds and have gotten to as high as 168 DBs without killing goblins. Setup might not have even been that optimized either since I had never timed runs on it before back when I was using it. Fairly sure most of my setups I've used over the past couple seasons would at least beat that 120 in 12 minutes. Wonder how long till a streamer will start working on builds and find a similar build to any of the ones I use.
On another note, i didn't even hit 600DB/hour rates like you're getting when I tried playing shadow/sage back in the day. It's like the hardest build to play, lol.
I also think the rift makes more than a 12% difference, especially with ingeom setups. Maybe I just suck really bad at running into dead ends, but some rifts are way better than others.
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Brainless Builds Comparison
Why "brainless"? Because Torment farming is boring and monotonous, and I want to be able to watch something while playing and not having to pay attention to cooldowns, CoE rotations, and so on. Also, I don't have time to practice a dozen builds for 5 hours; I just have a go at it. So here are my rules:
In addition to the Death's Breath per session (take that times 5 to get the DB/hour), I also make my own very subjective assessment of each skill according to 4 categories:
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Build Comparison Table (12 minute rifts, no goblins, T8, TX, T11+ opt)
Q&A
Q: Why are you not running T9? And why not focus on T13?
A: The answer is in this simple graph. Going from T8 to T9 is only a 9% improvement in DB drops, but obviously the usual 19% increase in difficulty, so it's a bad trade-off. T10 and T11 are fine again. T12 and T13 are overall really bad for Sage's builds. The reason for this is that Sage's does not *double* your DB drops, but it drops *an additional one* whenever a mob drops any DB (regardless the amount). So when you get 3 DBs on T13, Sage's just gives you a fourth, which is a small benefit compared to T8 where you have a 85% chance for a single DB drop and thus almost double your DB gain. In short, T8, T10, and T11 are the best tiers for DB overall.
Q: 12 minutes of rifts is a laughably short time. Why not run longer?
A: I did 34 runs of 12 minutes, so that's already 7 hours of videos. If I had run a full hour run that would be 34 hours. Including setup time of builds, editing the video, uploading, and so on, the patch would be out before I'd be finished. However, I did an estimate about how high the error rate is, and I was surprised to see that 12 minutes might be better than expected (see next question). But bottom line, I'd rather run more builds on more difficulties.
Q: How high is the error rate?
A: (TL;DR: About 12%). For the monk SWK LTK build on T11, I actually got insanely good RNG. As you can see in the video, basically elite-stacked open area maps non-stop. I immediately new the 181 (which would sum up to 900 DB/hour!) was an outlier. So I did another run, and as I had hoped I got "extremely unlucky" with only long tube maps except for one Oasis (but that had one had almost no elites). I also hit the endstone two times, which means losing 2 times ~25 seconds where I'm just standing around. So this 145 is the lower ceiling, and therefore I think if we take the average for that run (163) and assume an error rate of very roughly 12%, it might not be too far off. Which is very surprising and makes DB hunting less RNG-dependent than other activities, such as GR key farming!
Q: So looking at your numbers, it looks like some classes just suck at DB farming. Should I make an LTK monk?
A: Absolutely no. First, look at these charts: T8 and TX comparison of top builds per class incl. error bars. As you can see, all of them are basically in range of their respective error bars. Second, those results are for *me* and are more representative of *my* personal build preferences. Third, running Torment will also yield a lot of loot; you should always run Torment on your main class (or at least a class where you get useful loot, like a barb when you're gearing a LoN bomb crus).
Q: I'm an author of one of the builds. You played it all wrong! Can you re-do the run?
A: In short: no. One of the perks of labeling this comparison "brainless" means that if I failed your build, it's not good for a brainless player. Of course your build might still be awesome! Feel free to make your own "pro-player comparison" where you showcase each build including hours of practice ;-) That being said, if you're the author of one of the builds and want feedback, feel free to post here or PM me. Or if you're not an author and have questions, of course post as well!
Q: Build X for class Y sucks, you should've run my build Z. Can you run it?
A: Feel free to post your build. If I have time and a build piques my interest, I might have a go at it. However, after recording all those videos I have more DBs than all other (white+blue+yellow) mats combined, so I'm currently running non-Sage's builds (ironic, isn't it).
Excellent stuff! So what did you decide for your Sage DB farming Build?
Well as I've said before, after doing all this I have obviously more than enough DBs and actually lack other mats... so I'm now playing non-Sage's builds. For that I love the LoN monk, because it can do T13 as well as GR70s easily. But there's so much other stuff as well...
If I had to pick one of the specs from above it'd probably be your build on T10 or T11. It was just so much fun!
Thank you for the right up, and all the videos. I didn't really think that adding a sage set was viable. Watched your video, and lowered down to T10 on my monk WoL - and wow a very significant difference!
Thanks for all the hard work :-)
I felt really bad about the DH testing though. You made the builds look so easy in your video and I definitely struggled to get into it... but as you write in both build descriptions, they take some time getting into, and I only played them for half an hour. Anyways, thanks for the builds; I hope there's new/different Sage's builds for DH+WD in the future, as I felt both classes lacked most in that department.
Not sure I'm gonna update this, it's a lot of work. It's also just an example of a few builds; there's probably many more DB builds out there that I could test this season already, but not sure I'll have the time.
In terms of gear: I think they're all about the same. Yes, WoW is probably the rarest item required for all those builds, but the build also works without it; you just will have to run it on T8 for a while. Some builds really need an In-Geom to work, and that's actually a relatively rare weapon as well - in S8 it took me 630 paragon levels to find one. And for all builds you need the RoRG, which can be a pretty hard item to get. I'd say it's tough to give a rating on how difficulty it is to gear. I'd rather just see for which build you have the items.
How high you can go with the selected builds: that's really very subjective. Look at the Crusader; yes, it *can* do T13, but it's not really a good decision. With the crusader, I'd do TX, maybe T11 if I get better gear, same for monk+wizard. DH, WD, and barb have a little issue if elites start getting too much HP, so even at my paragon 1500+ I'd recommend T8 or T10. Basically, start doing T8, if you think it's overkill try TX and then T11. If you notice that your In-Geom isn't up all the time (if the build includes one) or you die or the elites don't die almost instantly, lower it again. It mostly depends on power level and gear, more than on the build.
This should be pinned!
Thnx bagstone
I am sorry, but I cannot agree that you gave full stars on crusader build. In my opinion, this build is way too weak. Terrible toughness, not enough damage. Overall very unstable. Boss kill is way too slow. You even died in boss fight. You spent 5:50 to run a whole rift. This collectively saying that you should not run this gear or build in T13. I am sorry, but that is the fact. The cold truth. No offense.
P.S. I have fully geared Akkhan Norvald build. I cannot be satisfied with this build at all. I think you know what I mean. What I don't understand is that the fact you gave full stars on that pathetic(sorry) build.
That's fair, and it's exactly the reason why I wrote "SUBJECTIVE" in the intro to those ratings.
Of course this build shouldn't run T13. No sage's build should run T13. You can see by my numbers that actually TX is the sweet spot for the crusader. It still has 3 stars because its relative strength to the other builds. The only other builds that have similar damage were LTK monk and EB wizard - both of which also received 3 stars, but both of which shouldn't run T13/T12 either. The reason why I ran T12/T13 on those classes was merely to show that T13 is not worth it, because I know a lot of people seem to think "I need to run T13". Which is wrong. There are paragon 1500 top players who farm T11 all day because they know it's the fastest.
Anyways, my subjective assessment is based on relative strength. And in relation to the other builds, the crusader was among the strongest of them all. Also, forget about the rift closing time, really. How fast you clear a rift is 80% about the rift and 20% about your build. I always roll my eyes if people say "this build runs average 2 minute rifts". Yeah well... there are rifts which are impossible to close in 2 minutes, by design. And there are rifts which you can clear in one minute, if your damage+mobility is high enough. That's why the "rift clearing competitions" never really got a lot of audience: it was more about fishing 10 open maps in a row rather than anything else.
P.S.: On Reddit someone also had concerns about the crusader, and after some talking he linked his crusader and we discovered some issues that were holding him back. I'm not sure if that's the case for you, probably not, but I'm just saying that sometimes there are other reasons as to why a build is perceived as rather weak.
I am just paraon 800 atm, no augment on geat. Not even perfect gear, but most legendaries.
I followed the saged guide "triumvirate" but i put the aquila cuirass into the cube for more survivability. On t12 everything (except the rift boss, who needs like 1 sec of thornriding) is onehit. I am close to switching to t13 and i think this build is okay for t13.
Also in the guide i took as an example, the guy went t13: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mGmqDF9jb0&t=262s&list=PLQzfpKz9SxkEl1DdrknH91nmt2ZRnXPS5&index=9
The one thing that is important is that you dont mess up. If you are not in akkhams champion and land bombardment you will lose much time because the huge damageboost misses. Same goes for iron skin of course. But after a few rifts of training this shouldnt be a problem.
What is also important is that you make good use of condemn so that all enemies get hit by the bombardment.
So maybe i would remove some stars of "lazy" ;D
Everything else important is explained in the video of baromir linked above. So if you have all this, you should not have a problem at least running it on t12 perfectly.
Yeah, if you remove the stars on "lazy" the difficulty shift goes up, for sure. Thorns crusader (all builds) are among the strongest and easiest T13 clearing builds. But in my combination (not caring about Bombardments and cycles and playing it faceroll, lazy-mode) TX is optimal. It's the way how I treated every build: with the
utmostleast possible respectGood advice! Yes, I would consider all those alternatives as well for an actual run, I think most builds also mentions those as alternatives. I didn't use Gloves of Worship because I only did 12 minute runs, so no huge effect; I never play solo (except for the videos), so I never use Unity (also I think this build needs no toughness); Avarice Band is great if you want to increase rift keys/hour, but that was not a priority for me. I'm not so sure about the AC rune - I think it's like a weaker In-Geom, but I might have to try that.
Note that I'm not the creator of any of those builds; make sure you comment on the build itself to let the creator know!
I never run Sage sets, but I can only confirm here, that running T13 is a waste most of the time.
So if you're lacking DBs it's totally viable to give Sage builds a try.
There are some classes that are really fast on T13 but if your clear time compared to T11 is only ~20% slower it's already not worth it, which is frankly for almost all of us
And remember 1 griftlvl is close to 20% more monster hp. So since the difference between torment levels is equal to 5 griftlvls it's double the HP you have to fight...
for wizards I prefer T11 with avarice band instead of manald heal. it's super fast and paralysis for example sometimes wont proc for some seconds, so that's a total waste of time too, IMO.
Hey, this has become super-awesome since you started with questions for others to answer.
Back then I had wondered what might have happened to the old "Flash Fire Wiz" for there was only a build using that new(?) Paralyze ring, but now it looks like the old queen is back
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
thank you for this awesome guide!
And if you can read numbers you can see that this BAD build can get some insane numbers with little to none hussle.Also There is no point to go t13 with a sage build for reasons that has ben discussed before.
Pls learn how to read a forum post before disagree with the OP
I've added two new builds/videos:
1) I saw this thread on the official forums and it was claiming to get an extremely high DB/h. Of course I couldn't resist to compare it! Here's the build:
http://www.diablofans.com/builds/87243-2-4-3-t13-mh-sage-db-speedfarming
And the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXSP0izY4Ew
It's okay, but not as good as the other wizard imho. It's a decent alternative if you don't like the other build though. My comments to this build can be found in the thread.
2) Desolacer poked me on Twitch that he had come up with a new build and I promised to test it. So I did! Here's the build:
http://www.diablofans.com/builds/87414-2-4-3-roland4psage3p-shield-bash-600-db-h-torment
And the videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw2FUMz75fc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4nP1f-uCbU
I wasn't convinced at first, but very surprised how well the build performed. It might've been due to lucky rifts, but still - that doesn't inflate the numbers as much, as I showed in my FAQ. So basically this is a really interesting alternative, especially again for people who don't like the other builds or don't have them. It's also really nice to see something with the Roland's set which is currently the "worst" set for the crusader and receives a huge buff with patch 2.5 (so it'll only get better!). Very nice idea, further highlighting the incredible diversity that D3 currently has.
The 2 DH builds chosen in this seem pretty sad. I think maybe just too outdated. Maybe we no longer have streamers/youtubers updating players with new builds, though at the same time it does let players go out and actually design their own builds. I timed some sessions at 12 minutes each on my seasonal DH with one of my DB builds and have gotten to as high as 168 DBs without killing goblins. Setup might not have even been that optimized either since I had never timed runs on it before back when I was using it. Fairly sure most of my setups I've used over the past couple seasons would at least beat that 120 in 12 minutes. Wonder how long till a streamer will start working on builds and find a similar build to any of the ones I use.
On another note, i didn't even hit 600DB/hour rates like you're getting when I tried playing shadow/sage back in the day. It's like the hardest build to play, lol.
I also think the rift makes more than a 12% difference, especially with ingeom setups. Maybe I just suck really bad at running into dead ends, but some rifts are way better than others.