I started with a full defensive CM build with Crystal Shell, Prismatic Armor, and the CD reduction rune on frost nova, as well as Cold Blooded, CM, and Evocation as passives that were unchanged throughout. I took the fight time and my char sheet dps to compute the DPS Multiplier, which is the effective dps gain of the build. For example, at 100k dps using the full defensive build I would expect an effective dps of 247k. I also computed relative DPS of each spec meaning switching from Prismatic to Storm Armor increased dps by about 36%.
And in case there's any confusion, 'x' in the table means that skill was used.
| Storm Armor | Shocking Aspect | Pinpoint | Shards | Prism | DPS Multiplier | Relative DPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.47 | 1 | |||||
| x | 2.78 | 1.13 | ||||
| x | 2.99 | 1.21 | ||||
| x | 3.01 | 1.22 | ||||
| x | 3.36 | 1.36 | ||||
| x | x | 4.06 | 1.65 | |||
| x | x | x | 4.25 | 1.72 |
The interesting information is that Storm Armor is about a 36% dps gain over prismatic armor. When you add Shocking Aspect it's a 65% dps gain over prismatic armor and about a 36% dps gain over pinpoint barrier. Adding Diamond Shards further increases the dps gain but it's only about a 4% dps gain by itself when you use Shocking Aspect. The dramatic decrease in survivability for the fight makes it very not worthwhile, but that could easily change depending on the fight. Rak for example, would probably be just fine with DS or prism.
I also expect the values for Shocking Aspect to be dependent of crit and attack speed, since it only procs on crits and higher attack speed should lead to more procs from WW, so with 50% crit, I'd expect the damage to increase by about 16%, or I'd expect the total dps gain to be about 90%, for a relative dps of 1.9. With a crit % of 52% I would expect Shocking Aspect to double your dps over prismatic armor, roughly speaking, with the same APS of 1.965 or so.
For reference, my stats at the time of the data collection were 104k dps buffed (110k with pinpoint), 1.965 attacks per second, 20 APoC, 1298 LoH, 1.5% Life Steal, 641 resist all and 4588 armor unbuffed, with 40.5k hp and 43% crit with Scoundrel. I also had about 400 life per second regen, just to complete the stats.
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Nice guide indeed!
Just one addition - I'd put M6 over UE, maybe even over LoN. UE is better for Torment farming, but for GR farming and especially early pushing you definitely want to go M6. It's so powerful, and I expect more grenade builds coming up as people experiment further.
But... but... Angzt did? Before the start of the season, he featured Desolacer's guides, which can still be found on the frontpage as most recent news.
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Ah yes, a caching mistake, but also fixed now; CTRL+F5 and it should work.
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Try leaving *all* your communities chat channels or, if that doesn't help, the communities itself.
Davlok posted this on Reddit and it seems to fix it for most people. It's very annoying though if you are in some invite-only communities, but it does seem to do the trick for now.
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Well, we'll get 2.4.3 eventually. Just sit here and wait.
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I would go for monk. Out of the three classes (barb, monk, WD) the monk has by far the best free starter set. Lootshare (double barb) is a good argument, but from my experience diversity and synergy trumps loot share. WD is king in the first 3 hours of a season (pre-T6) and the last 3 hours (the final push), but for speed farming... not really. It'll be at least 10-15 hours before you get into GR70+ where actual class composition starts to matter. And at that point, you can still switch to WD/monk or even wizard (I think for most of the season I'd recommend farming with wizard and switch to monk/barb/WD for the final push a few weeks before the season ends).
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ol_baid, bryan1234203, and all the others who requested an update:
Season Journey now updated to S9 on the Tracker. Required some major changes that messed up some of my scripts, but I did some quick tests and it should all be fine. As usual, let me know if you find any mistakes.
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Someone asked a quite similar question yesterday, but more specifically about WD in the WD forum. Read my reply there, it will be similar, but might have some more nuances.
Now more specifically about group composition:
Ask yourself how long you want to play together, and how determined your friends are. In particular, are you only going to play for like 2-3 hours a night for one week, or for the first 30-50 hours of the season? Usually a season looks like this:
For the first two steps, WDs are the absolute king. 1-2 WDs will absolutely boost your leveling by A LOT. However, as of step 3+4, WDs fall behind, simply because their combined mobility+kill speed is not as good as other classes. The other classes are all "meh" for leveling, so it doesn't matter here. For step 3-4, DHs are clear #1 in my opinion, closely followed by monk (though it depends on RNG, or how fast you get In-Geom). That's not to say other classes can't farm easily here; but they're just a bit behind or require much more specific/better gear. For step 5 then, it depends on which conquest/what kind of pushing. Finally, #6 is probably where wizards start to shine for paragon farming, and obviously meta groups for pushing. Important note: DO NOT OPTIMIZE YOUR GROUP FOR STEP 6. Class switching takes 10 minutes in D3, and gearing up a twink takes a day at most if you have a group who helps out.
I'd suggest to go for 1 WD, 1 DH, 1 monk, and the last one being monk/barb/wiz. If you have two WDs to begin with, I'd recommend one WD to at least keep it optional to slowly switch to wizard on day 2; it'll speed up your GR60+ gem upgrade rifts significantly, trust me. For solo, the answer is: Crusader. Invoker is an insane starter set, and lets you easily transition to LoN bombardment, which works up to GR100. Downside: Crusader sucks in groups. And not just "it's mediocre"; it absolutely sucks and does not synergize at all with group play. Crusader in its current state is kind of like holding a sign saying "screw you I want to play alone" (which sucks; I love Crusader and would like to play it in groups).
To add to your tips:
Don't go overboard with the bosses for low-level rare items, don't do it all the way from 1-10. We usually just do bosses if someone feels completely gimped in terms of gear. Which happens after 5-8 levels of doing the kill streaks leveling method. If your group has 2-3 non-WDs, I'm not sure if kill streaks is a good idea; you might be better off doing rifts. (Also because by doing kill streaks you get no mats+gear+gold, so you gain up to an hour over a rifting group but spend more time running T1 rifts at 70 initially.)
After a lot of testing, I personally think that Cain's set is not worth it. You gain a very small bonus of XP, but you spend a lot of materials and gold early on, including the time wasted to get the recipe. And the worst thing is: at around level 35, so 15 minutes later, the level 23 items of the Cain's set are so bad that they gimp your DPS by more than what the bonus XP offers. If you have fun spicing up your leveling go for it, but don't go out of your way. If you get it. make damn sure that at the very latest on level 42 you throw the set away and replace it with rares. Otherwise you run around with DPS-gimping low level crap.
A few seasons ago I did a looooooooot of testing and planning for the level-up stuff. In the end, we shaped off a few minutes, but in no relation to the time invested. A friend of mine did probably 20-30 test runs on PTR for 1-70 and got to 70 first in our region. But 5 hours later their lead vaporized because it's all about drop RNG. In S4 we had a sub-par double barb group wth no goals, but found two ancient HotA hammers and got to #1 early on. Last season one group member bailed on us a few hours before season start, and then we didn't find any decent loot in the first ~15 hours, so our insane planning was all for nothing. Lesson learned: have fun and pray to the RNG gods. If you have nothing to do practice the 1-70 leveling, it will help for the first 2-3 hours into the season, but beyond that there's nothing you can do besides preparing builds.
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- WD is by far the best solo class, at least in the beginning. You'll be able to hit level 70 about 1 hour or more earlier than any other class if you do kill streaks instead of rifts. Drawback: You'll be starved for gold, mats, and gear once you hit 70. I suggest to do lots of boss bounties and occasional rifts in between to make sure you have approx. 1m gold when you hit 70 (which is what you need). Build? Doesn't really matter, key is one spell: Haunt. Before getting any 6 piece set, all spells for all classes suck. The game is about multiplicators, and the 6 piece bonus of all sets does that, it multiplies your damage by a factor of ~20. BUT the WD spell "Haunt" deals so insane damage that it's very very powerful before you get any of the sets, so you can just pick 5 other spells to use as well while you spam haunt. For exact leveling specs Google "WD 1-70 leveling guide" or something like that, there'll be a thousand. Also take a look at our frontpage and forum in the week before S9 starts; there's usually lots of guides being posted closer to season start.
- T6 breakpoint is simply when you get the 6 piece set. Without it, you'll run ~T1 for some gear and keys, then 1 rift T4 to unlock the GR20, then clear the GR20, do the bosses in the season journey to get the free set... and once you have the free set, you jump right into T6-T8. You'll then steadily progress higher and higher to approx. T11, and there you'll stay. No one, I repeat NO ONE in their right mind runs T13. Even high-end players with best possible gear oftentimes run T11 because T12/T13 are just so much slower with a minuscule gain in what you get out of it. Essentially, you always want to be able to almost one-shot elites (or kill them in 2-3 seconds). If it takes longer, go lower.
- Level-up must-have skill: Haunt. There are tons of level-up guides as I said if you Google. I don't want to post one particular here as I don't want to favor one or the other; tons of people put work into it, and I can't post them all, so I'll rather post none. (I would just have to Google as well, to be honest ;)). I've started WD so often that I know pretty much by heart what to do.
- Try to group up with a DH and monk, if you have the choice. Fourth class wizard or barb. DH is just absolutely insanely fast at T6-T11 rifts. Monks the same, very fast, but also versatile as they can go support (give you more survivability) when things become too difficult. Wizard is a bit slower in the beginning but adds insane DPS a bit later, let's say 15-20 hours into the season when other classes start to struggle. That is, if your group stays together that long (which is a lot of fun!). Key is that you always want to clear as many rifts as fast as possible; best is an average of 2-4 minutes, not more. If your rifts take 5+ minutes it's fun, but you're slowing down your progress. We usually push for 2-3 hours but then go back to speed.
- RE: tips for conquest progression and free set: not sure what you mean here. Free set? Finish chapter 4. Conquests? Different story.
I'll update my Season Journey Tracker (see signature) once S8 has ended. That'll give you an idea what you need to do to get the free sets.
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Since they changed a few more things this time, and the total number of items per chapter differs, I'll have to do a more thorough testing and rewrite the logic a bit before releasing the S9 version. I'm not sure when I'll have time to do that. As soon as it's done I'll see if I can add that beta button. Should've done it a long time ago so people on PTR can cross-check, but this time of the year usually lacks one thing: time.
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Also, as someone who reads a lot on the forums and tries to grasp the community's perspective from all sides (not just the top players or the casuals, but sort of both) I can tell you that there are people annoyed/disappointed in every range. I know people who still play 500h+ every season, but that's just a handful. I know people who play only a few hours, not even until Conqueror, and even more people who don't play at all. Their complaints are always very similar: there's nothing to gain but paragon. For a non-hoarder the stash tab is meaningless, and the cosmetic rewards or achievements are just not enough.
Diablo is a loot-based game. Remember the Blizzcon video where past Diablo developers were just providing brief statements or single words about what makes the Diablo universe? Multiple of them shouted "loot". But in Diablo 3 right now, loot is meaningless. It is given to your for free at the start of each season. With Challenge Rifts, you will play with fixed items (not even your loot) and you will not even get loot (besides the reward if you make it into the top of a leaderboard, which is obviously only an option for a very small number of people). I'm a Diablo Fan, but Diablo 3 is moving into a direction which is, in my opinion, betraying its origin. It's not about "me having played thousands of hours". It's simply about the developers making changes that are wrong.
And I can tell you from looking at the statistics of Diablofans views, Reddit views, counters on my Diablo tools like the Journey tracker, and most importantly by just looking at the leaderboards (on some of them you get ranked with a GR40ish) that I'm not the only one. If in a game with 30 million sold copies only a few thousand are still playing at all, I think it's fair and just to discuss how to improve the situation.