So.. this is 1.5 years old, but I'm gonna bump/necro this. Obviously with the change to Sage's set, things become a bit different; while Sage's set in my opinion wasn't as good as just getting more damage and going to higher GR tiers (because it only added one instead of doubling it), now with up to EIGHT DBs per pack on T16 it becomes a different story. Also, since I did my initial sampling over two years ago, since then power creep has changed a lot of the variables.
I'm not sure if I want to re-do all of it, and I probably can't, due to time constraints. But I'd be interested in picking some of the "top Sage's builds" and take a closer look at them again. So:
1) What are the flavor of the monthpatch Sage's builds? (Links appreciated)
2) Are there any completely new or fundamentally changed builds compared to what I tested initially?
(Obviously no new sets have been introduced, but maybe some of the revamped stats have shifted powers or even enabled new supplementary items to shine.)
Edit: Nevermind. I got a ton of responses on Reddit and pretty much everyone agreed that it's just not worth it anymore to run Sage's - the bottle neck is elsewhere (mainly yellow mats).
Yeah. Damn. You got me. Or rather, the game got me. S12 has me fully hooked. But from previous seasons I know that might end any day ;-) Today's the last day my group has *said* to be online, so if they really stop playing as of tomorrow I might do so as well. But well... not necessarily very likely. We'll see. Still got some goals in mind and some keys to throw away
But no shortage of DBs and even if, T13 (with no Sage) is just better, so I personally would discourage anyone from running Sage's at this point. Sage's on T13 will only yield about 20-25% more DBs and you WILL sacrifice more DPS by replacing 2-3 pieces of gear with Sage's, no doubt. Pre-T13 and depending on your class, Sage's is still great though (especially on wiz/monk/crus with bad gear).
I tried the Tal EB build on HC yesterday, but since in the beginning you have no In-Geom/Goldwrap up and I have really bad gear for it right now, I procced almost immediately and chickened out. Went back to UE MS DH which wrecks T13 (on HC, unbelievable). I'll probably also start a DH in S12 (though I might only play a few hours, barely any time these days) - so that's really the main reason why I personally have neither time nor interest in doing this all over again. But if anyone feels like they need a time filler until season start, give it a go an re-test all the builds ;-)
hey bagstone any chance to see an updated list for 2.6.1? arent you running short of DBs yet?
I'm running out of mats, not DBs
I need DBs on HC, but can't really test there for multiple reasons (not enough gear, no DBs... oh the irony, and obviously every death means end of testing :P).
So no update planned - also because it took a ton of time and I don't have that time right now, and I couldn't just test one or two builds but I'd have to test them all. However, as pointed out I think running Sage's on T13 isn't worth it anyways (you'll always sacrifice more power than the small increase in DBs), and on T10-T11 now all those builds are insanely viable. So basically: either run non-Sage T13 on your preferred class, or try any of the builds, including the "lower ones" that are now much more powerful even on T10+.
I'll put this on my todo list and see if I can get to it when I have the time. A bit busy at the moment... setting up the build, recording the videos, and so on takes some time ;-)
Update!!! For the longest time we thought the Necro would have no Sage's build - obviously, because all class sets have the default 6 armor pieces. No way to fit in Sage's. But then today this build came to my attention and as you can see, there's room for the Sage's set! So I came up with the following:
There's probably still a lot of room for improvement, but that's all I got so close to the season start (in which I'm not going to play Necro). I got decent DB on T8 and TX, but died 2 times on TX so I decided that T11 was not possible (tried and and confirmed). My gear is just way too bad. Maybe with better gear this can actually be a contender for the top builds, as it's not too far away! As usual, Sage's sets aren't made for T13 anyways - if you want to farm T13, just use your regular Necro farming build.
Thanks to masterbob96 for the inspiration and svr to bringing this to my attention!
I see that once you kill RG, you complete rift right away. If I want to continue on with the rift until there are no more levels, are there an cons to that?
I complete the rift and go back and kill some more monsters.
If you continue after the rift until you hit the end stone, you stay in town idle for 30 seconds. It's just a waste of time. Besides, in rifts you should only focus on killing elites, and most rifts have barely enough elites to complete the progress bar (I had a few rifts where I killed every elite and hit the end stone, so I had to go back and kill trash to be able to complete).
There is no reason to *not* close the rift after the RG is dead. I know some people and most public groups tend to do that; but it leads to super inefficient gameplay and is literally a waste of time. If you are 2 or more people in a group, it's even best if one of you just teleports out and waits at Orek to close (RG loot is global so no one misses by not being there for the kill).
And I closed immediately after the rift guardian. For DB efficiency, it might be usefull to clean to minimize the closing cooldown out of the overall duration of the rift.
I think it's common standard to do this, and I did that... but when you kill elites and elites only, you sometimes run into the end stone and have nothing to kill. (With UE DH you don't have that issue because when you shoot once to kill an elite, you also wipe the entire screen of enemies. UE SO OP.)
I agree with everything you say. But would you be so kind to share those other, more efficient DH Sage's builds? I have time at some point in the future I might try them out and add videos, at least of TX/T11 (I found the T8/T12/T13 videos to be pretty useless and only did them to highlight that T8 is good for lower paragon/worse gear and gems, and T12+ is almost always worse in terms of efficiency because of the Sage's implementation of "+1" instead of "*2").
I just took the best Sage's builds I could find in our DB, and other DHs I talked to told me their weren't better ones. So if you say there are... well, where are they? ;-)
I mainly play DH UE, and I'm much faster with it. Mainly because I have nearly perfect gear and each ancien piece is reinforced with 80+ gems. I find a bit frustrating to play T8 to farm DB. I don't play T13 either but T11-T12 are the best spot in my opinion.
I tend to say that to farm DB, just use a "speed farm" version of your most used build. The quality of your gear and the fact that you're used to this build should largely compensate the fact that this is not a "DB build".
Yes. YES! Absolutely signed 100%. Do what you enjoy most, and if that happens to be a non-DB build, then go for it. Like you say - playing a build you enjoy, perfecting the gear for it, improving the playstyle, and going 2-3 tiers higher will definitely compensate for running an optimized DB build.
I haven't done a comparison of non-Sage sets yet - mainly because it's impossible as there's MULTIPLE builds per class that absolutely wreck TX+, for some classes even a dozen if you consider all variants, so testing all of those would take ages. But I personally didn't run any more Sage builds after this comparison, but just some non-DB builds (Archon MH wizard on T13, Akkhan/Invoker/Norvald horsing on T11). I think I'll look back at this next season for the start, but beyond that... I agree with you. Non-Sage builds are more interesting for me (at the moment).
And UE is definitely a very addictive builds. Takes quite a lot of gear to become T13 capable though.
I'd be curious to see your 168 DB build and like to try that myself. The builds aren't outdated, the issue simply seems to be that the top DH builds/sets do not allow good combination with the Sage sets. I talked to some DHs and they said that basically Sage's is okay-ish for the beginning, but once your UE gear is good enough to clear T11+ it's just so much faster and better that it's not worth it to use any of the clunky builds I tested.
Also keep in mind that "testing your own build" means that you have more experience with it and play it much better than someone else who just takes a build, slaps items/skills on, and gives it a go (that's why I labeled this "brainless comparison"). I didn't work on my playstyle for an hour or so for every build, I treat every build with the same disrespect
In the end all of this is just a sample comparison and not the definitive truth. Just helped me to see how many different builds there are and test some of them; I ended up playing some of those recently but just picked the one that I liked with regard to playstyle, even if I sacrifice a few percent efficiency. After all, it's a game...
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.
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!
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
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.
So.. this is 1.5 years old, but I'm gonna bump/necro this. Obviously with the change to Sage's set, things become a bit different; while Sage's set in my opinion wasn't as good as just getting more damage and going to higher GR tiers (because it only added one instead of doubling it), now with up to EIGHT DBs per pack on T16 it becomes a different story. Also, since I did my initial sampling over two years ago, since then power creep has changed a lot of the variables.
I'm not sure if I want to re-do all of it, and I probably can't, due to time constraints. But I'd be interested in picking some of the "top Sage's builds" and take a closer look at them again. So:
1) What are the flavor of the
monthpatch Sage's builds? (Links appreciated)2) Are there any completely new or fundamentally changed builds compared to what I tested initially?
(Obviously no new sets have been introduced, but maybe some of the revamped stats have shifted powers or even enabled new supplementary items to shine.)
Edit: Nevermind. I got a ton of responses on Reddit and pretty much everyone agreed that it's just not worth it anymore to run Sage's - the bottle neck is elsewhere (mainly yellow mats).
Yeah. Damn. You got me. Or rather, the game got me. S12 has me fully hooked. But from previous seasons I know that might end any day ;-) Today's the last day my group has *said* to be online, so if they really stop playing as of tomorrow I might do so as well. But well... not necessarily very likely. We'll see. Still got some goals in mind and some keys to throw away
But no shortage of DBs and even if, T13 (with no Sage) is just better, so I personally would discourage anyone from running Sage's at this point. Sage's on T13 will only yield about 20-25% more DBs and you WILL sacrifice more DPS by replacing 2-3 pieces of gear with Sage's, no doubt. Pre-T13 and depending on your class, Sage's is still great though (especially on wiz/monk/crus with bad gear).
I tried the Tal EB build on HC yesterday, but since in the beginning you have no In-Geom/Goldwrap up and I have really bad gear for it right now, I procced almost immediately and chickened out. Went back to UE MS DH which wrecks T13 (on HC, unbelievable). I'll probably also start a DH in S12 (though I might only play a few hours, barely any time these days) - so that's really the main reason why I personally have neither time nor interest in doing this all over again. But if anyone feels like they need a time filler until season start, give it a go an re-test all the builds ;-)
I need DBs on HC, but can't really test there for multiple reasons (not enough gear, no DBs... oh the irony, and obviously every death means end of testing :P).
So no update planned - also because it took a ton of time and I don't have that time right now, and I couldn't just test one or two builds but I'd have to test them all. However, as pointed out I think running Sage's on T13 isn't worth it anyways (you'll always sacrifice more power than the small increase in DBs), and on T10-T11 now all those builds are insanely viable. So basically: either run non-Sage T13 on your preferred class, or try any of the builds, including the "lower ones" that are now much more powerful even on T10+.
Update!!! For the longest time we thought the Necro would have no Sage's build - obviously, because all class sets have the default 6 armor pieces. No way to fit in Sage's. But then today this build came to my attention and as you can see, there's room for the Sage's set! So I came up with the following:
Sage's Corpse Lancer for DB farming
There's probably still a lot of room for improvement, but that's all I got so close to the season start (in which I'm not going to play Necro). I got decent DB on T8 and TX, but died 2 times on TX so I decided that T11 was not possible (tried and and confirmed). My gear is just way too bad. Maybe with better gear this can actually be a contender for the top builds, as it's not too far away! As usual, Sage's sets aren't made for T13 anyways - if you want to farm T13, just use your regular Necro farming build.
Thanks to masterbob96 for the inspiration and svr to bringing this to my attention!
If you continue after the rift until you hit the end stone, you stay in town idle for 30 seconds. It's just a waste of time. Besides, in rifts you should only focus on killing elites, and most rifts have barely enough elites to complete the progress bar (I had a few rifts where I killed every elite and hit the end stone, so I had to go back and kill trash to be able to complete).
There is no reason to *not* close the rift after the RG is dead. I know some people and most public groups tend to do that; but it leads to super inefficient gameplay and is literally a waste of time. If you are 2 or more people in a group, it's even best if one of you just teleports out and waits at Orek to close (RG loot is global so no one misses by not being there for the kill).
I agree with everything you say. But would you be so kind to share those other, more efficient DH Sage's builds? I have time at some point in the future I might try them out and add videos, at least of TX/T11 (I found the T8/T12/T13 videos to be pretty useless and only did them to highlight that T8 is good for lower paragon/worse gear and gems, and T12+ is almost always worse in terms of efficiency because of the Sage's implementation of "+1" instead of "*2").
I just took the best Sage's builds I could find in our DB, and other DHs I talked to told me their weren't better ones. So if you say there are... well, where are they? ;-)
Yes. YES! Absolutely signed 100%. Do what you enjoy most, and if that happens to be a non-DB build, then go for it. Like you say - playing a build you enjoy, perfecting the gear for it, improving the playstyle, and going 2-3 tiers higher will definitely compensate for running an optimized DB build.
I haven't done a comparison of non-Sage sets yet - mainly because it's impossible as there's MULTIPLE builds per class that absolutely wreck TX+, for some classes even a dozen if you consider all variants, so testing all of those would take ages. But I personally didn't run any more Sage builds after this comparison, but just some non-DB builds (Archon MH wizard on T13, Akkhan/Invoker/Norvald horsing on T11). I think I'll look back at this next season for the start, but beyond that... I agree with you. Non-Sage builds are more interesting for me (at the moment).
And UE is definitely a very addictive builds. Takes quite a lot of gear to become T13 capable though.
I'd be curious to see your 168 DB build and like to try that myself. The builds aren't outdated, the issue simply seems to be that the top DH builds/sets do not allow good combination with the Sage sets. I talked to some DHs and they said that basically Sage's is okay-ish for the beginning, but once your UE gear is good enough to clear T11+ it's just so much faster and better that it's not worth it to use any of the clunky builds I tested.
Also keep in mind that "testing your own build" means that you have more experience with it and play it much better than someone else who just takes a build, slaps items/skills on, and gives it a go (that's why I labeled this "brainless comparison"). I didn't work on my playstyle for an hour or so for every build, I treat every build with the same disrespect
In the end all of this is just a sample comparison and not the definitive truth. Just helped me to see how many different builds there are and test some of them; I ended up playing some of those recently but just picked the one that I liked with regard to playstyle, even if I sacrifice a few percent efficiency. After all, it's a game...
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.
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!
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 respectThat'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.