Yeah I also did AT/Pit runs in some as well though and actually got pretty good XP, but again this is all before the grind got bad. I never made it to 97 I also didn’t care about XP either. Again I’m just a magic finder so it doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned though the solo XP portion of any game far outweighs any one type of leveling as a group. Try running AT+Pits in P8 games and see how fast you skyrocket. The issue now is that P8 games because baal runs are less common can stop people from that turbo leveling.
Experience past 70 is so convoluted that group play can actually lead to lower XP per kill compared to playing solo on p1.
At level 90, killing Baal in Hell:
- 8 players killing Baal together = 126,148 XP per Kill
- Solo Kill Baal in p1 game = 245,647 XP per Kill
- Solo Kill Baal in P8 game = 454,267 XP per Kill
In a full game, smaller parties are favored over one large group.
It also doesn’t help that group XP is only within 2 screens away. Most TZ are not group friendly. Throne is the most group friendly zone in the game. Everyone piles up in the same location and the mobs spawn in a designated area. There is no worry or fear of missing out on XP due to being out of range.
I said this before they even launched. Trying to mimic a baal run in a TZ is impossible unless it is perhaps diablo/baal runs. That being said you’re comparing XP for a baal kill when until a certain level the waves are the major source of XP.
The TZs cap at 71, resulting in champs at 73 and uniques at 74, all higher than normal zones in nightmare. Similar bumps occur for normal as well. And it’s far, far easier to deal with the boosted mobs in nightmare than it is the DoE in Hell where almost everything is cold immune when playing a cold based build.
You aren’t going to be doing TZs during a playthrough, only after you knock out Baal. A better solution would be to allow access to a TZ if it spawns in an act you’ve beaten, so you could have access to at least some of the TZs during a playthrough, gaining more zones as you progress.
Not for a bowazon it isn’t. Those bow drops are absurdly rare outside of TZs. In fact my only actual upgrades prior to being able to finally make Harmony came from TZs, and a couple of the bows that dropped from a NM TZ came fairly close to Harmony in power, minus the bonus +fire damage.
The TZs do help with leveling itself. Outside of the TZs with stupidly low density (Outer Steppes, Plains of Despair, Arcane Sanctuary, etc.) they result in significantly faster leveling than trying to tackle A1 Hell without a way to pierce immunities. For SSF TZs are a very welcome way to level and farm for gear upgrades. I managed a nice Carrion Wind from a TZ that normally would be next to impossible to get to drop even from Baal (quest version). And I’ve seen significantly more Ceremonial Bows from TZs than even in A1 Hell.
Farming speed makes a huge difference. TZs open up gear that would take ages to find in Hell. It isn’t a trivial boost. The nice thing is that they managed to help boost the reward schedule without actually increasing drop rates, and instead only increasing TC availability.
Baal was just an example of how Experience gained differs as solo, solo in p8, and full party split. You can calculate it for each wave if you so choose.
Yes, I am aware. Every wave in Throne is level 69 and Baal himself is 75. Throne room is TC69.
Exactly, the zones aren’t available until AFTER you complete NM. I was referring to going back to NM to farm said bosses during your Hell playthrough if said zones happen to be Terrorized. Especially Andy since she is still level 75 in hell. You can run NM bosses with almost equivalent Hell loot without the massive resistance penalty of Hell.
This doesn’t make any sense. Monster drops are only affected by 2 things: their treasure class and nodrop value which drops based the number of people in the game.
The Diamond Bow is the only bow in TC72. Which only the elite mobs would drops. The trash mobs in NM TZs all drop equivalent to Throne waves…
Again, can’t access them until you already played through the difficulty. If you have already killed Baal to gain access to TZs than it means you can do also Baal runs on said difficulty which are exponentially better experience than Terror zones in all difficulties until you get into your 90s.
Carrion Wind has an ilvl of 68. It can and does drop off throne waves.
You honestly need to take a deeper dive into how itemization works. You gain virtually nothing going from clearing lvl 69 throne waves to clearing level 71 trash mobs universally in NM terror zones.
Hell offers better loot in level 85 zones at least through to level 84. At which point you get greater access a few uniques at TZ 86 and 87 that require ilvl 86 and 87 to roll. For example, Tyrael’s Might can only be found off mobs level 87 or higher that also roll TC87. At level 89, you gain TZ 91 which allows GCs to roll 45 life.
Exactly. Hence the MFing of bugged Terrorized Andy in NM. Elderich or Shenk as an alternative since you are a bowzon 
As a Bowzon, the best farming spot for you is actually Hell Stony Tomb. The monsters are only lightning or poison immune. There is only 1 unique on level 2 that is cold immune. Cold build is also the better option over Fire.
Make it multiple terror zones instead of just 1 and I think it would be a lot better. The way it is now, the zones I want are so rare that it’s becoming frustrating waiting for them. Been sitting around waiting for Worldstone or Trav, but according to Terror zone tracker, they’ve hit at early AM, when I’ve been sleeping last 3-4 days. Only decent terror zone I’ve got in the last week was one CS run for an hour. Really underwhelming. And I play a good 4-5 hours per day, at the least.
The TC availability is what allows the bows to drop more. I get lots of stag bows, but almost no Ashwood or Ceremonial bows until I hit TZs for some reason in NM. It’s always been like that. I’ve only seen one Matriarchal bow though, and it was a rare off a TZ pack. Guess that one’s still high enough on the TC tiers to only show up infrequently even in a NM TZ.
Bowazons are reliant on those class specific bows for realistic upgrades most of the time. It’d be a major boost to them if we could gamble those types of bows. It’d still be RNG of course, but it’d be an alternative path while leveling just like TZs are.
This is heavily gear dependent for solo runs. You need to remember kill speed comes into play. If it takes me 3x longer to kill Baal’s waves for a 2x gain I’m losing EXP per time unit vs. a TZ. Same reason NM TZs exceed A1 Hell kills due to the immunities.
Kill. Speed. I get far more drops overall in a TZ per time spent than in Baal waves. It took me until nearly LV 80 to finally clear those waves at a speed comparable to TZ mobs, and that factors only EXP into the equation, not items. TZs will produce far more items for solo players than Baal runs. I know how itemization works. I also have felt just how much nicer and smoother the reward schedule is when farming TZs vs. traditional play.
I think that may be where I got my Carrion Wind actually, since she has a propensity for dropping rings. Now I hunt for a Lo rune from the Countess so I can replace my Peace armor. I’d lose the +2 skills but would gain much needed resists and more importantly (since I haven’t found any good replacement armor/unique yet) get rid of that random auto-cast LV 15 Valkyrie, which is worse than my manually cast +18 Valkyrie. Really wish devs would add logic to the procs so they don’t overwrite more powerful manually cast versions.
Ashwood is TC 39 and Ceremonial is TC 48. Having a higher TC would actually reduce the probability of a drop being either Ashwood or Ceremonial as there will be a greater number of items to pool from.
Matriarchal bow is TC 54, it can drop basically anywhere in A4+ in NM.
It really isn’t though. Unless you are playing offline (where TZs are inaccessible) or playing SFF, experience is far superior in Baal or CS runs when grouped.
I suppose this is probably why you are only level 84 still.
If you are fire or ice, sure. For strife of multishot, raw weapon damage is more important than the +skills.
If it takes you 3x longer to kill level 69 mobs compared to level 71 mobs then I don’t know what to tell you…
Which, again, are easy to address if you know where to farm for your build.
NM cows is even better for raw number of items. Hell Den of Evil provides higher quality items that both Baal or all of Terrorized NM and poses almost no risk to a character. Literally 1 unique in the zone which is slow to boot. The only resistance that you need to worry about is fire but the shaman fireballs are easy to dodge or you can simply cast valk near em to redirect agro.
Oh? This clearly shows you don’t:
Good luck with the Lo from Countess, her special rune drop table doesn’t change with TZs. Those runes are still capped at Io in NM and Ist in Hell. Her standard loot table is the only thing that changes when she is Terrorized. Probability of a Lo is better off the ghosts in the tower than Countess
Countess unterrorized can drop up to Lo off normal drop table. It is an awful way to attempt to find HRs though, but she can drop it. Honestly for the most part farming countess is trash other than Tkey and perhaps farming during TZ time because there are quite a few unique packs along the way.
Right, but because it’s toward the higher end of the TCs for NM it rarely does thanks to it being a class specific item which has a much lower drop weight than mundane items.
Depends. The item first has to roll as class specific and then as a specific TC tier. It’s the class specific weighting that comes into play here. The TZs throw things for a loop in terms of weights because of the maxed out TC once you’re at a certain level, but also because regardless of level the TZ will likely be higher TC capable than the mundane version of the zone it’s replacing. Get a zone with good density and if you can kill fast, you get a lot more from them than any other means. This is a good thing since it adds both flavor and an alternate path for gearing up. I wouldn’t have half my gear without the TZs they introduced. Only reason I’m doing ladder is because of the TZs. I prefer offline solo due to the obnoxious issue online where you hit mobs with freezing arrow and they continue moving toward you because the server side code didn’t “catch” that they were hit properly until several shots in.
I’m always SSF. I don’t group. This also means I don’t get rushes either. That’s one of the reasons a better approach to TZs would be to allow you to get them in the acts that you’ve completed rather than tying it to Baal. This is especially handy in Hell where those immunities mean major slowdowns in progress.
Baal’s waves have very high HP. TZ mobs don’t (for most of them).
DoE is nearly all cold immune. Terrible killing speed for a frostmaiden. Especially Corpsefire with is absurdly high HP.
I’m farming her in Hell, not NM TZs. Granted, it’s almost a fool’s game trying for her very top tier rune, but I’ve gotten it multiple times before from her. Last season I got lucky with a Lo off someone in NM, probably one of Baal’s waves. At least I got my Pul rune for Wisdom, which makes farming Hell countess less frustrating as I don’t get frozen constantly now.
I know where to farm, it’s just a matter of “is my gear good enough to farm those areas?”. The TZs helped that quite a bit. And they’re more enjoyable than Baal ad nauseum as well. 
I am aware. Hence this:
Yes, ever level has opportunity for multiple championship/unique packs.
Anecdotal evidence. I have not seen greater number of class specific gear in TZs.
Stony Tomb is optimal for cold builds. Just ignore Creeping Feature on level 2 or let merc take care of him.
There are multiple level 85 zones for farming but to each their own 
i just log 10 min and Terror Zones is just very underwhelming nothing bad but also nothing exciting just a waste of time for the dev compare balancing the skill and fix the bug , total waste of time and priority , a other big 0 for d2re team