I have a confession to make.
Late last night I did three 2-man GR120s with another WD.
I hope this doesn’t mean I’m turning to the dark side of group play. 
4 Likes
What?! Vegen super powers revoked.
No it doesnt as there is no light or dark side, as i have said many times play the way you like.
He’s not saying that in this moment, he says you refuse to better yourself, you have had plenty of pointers lately on SOLO efficiency wich you refuse to do because you like to play a certain way. I think you are biased against group players by dragging them into every discussion.
This is the same situation, he is not mentioning group play in this instance, you have had plenty of pointers on SOLO efficiency, he even said he plays both solo as group.
I do not believe i have attacked you personaly, someone put words in my mouth like “solo players are bad” wich i didnt say, i have clarified i’m not out to get you, i have not called you names or adressed anything personal about you as i dont know you personaly. What i have done is debated against YOUR stance about group players being anti social and its “all” the group players fault. I HAVE called you stubborn and playing the blame game against everything and everyone, all wich i dont believe is personal. But ofcourse you are making statements wich i dont agree with, so i am debating against your opinions, but that is a forum.
Did you perhaps miss the wink icon at the end of the sentence you quoted?
I didnt take it too serious as i did put a like to your post . But my reply was maybe put more towards the thread for creating a us vs them. I believe both can co exist and everyone can play the way they like.
Thats not what i said. U refuse to adapt even for solo play. U cant make God work even though its faster for keys and u refuse to learn. U gave up. Thats just 1 example.
U also dont like to play lower GR even though its more efficient. Also u playing HR and console where pretty much no competition exist and still complain.
Not rly im just stating that the issue isnt in that u being competitive. U have big issues with ppl who are better/put more effort than u and complain about it. If something u are attacking group players.
3 Likes
This about sums up meta group players…LOL.
https://fb.watch/aTk9-9vd-8/Back to exp pools.
Now I’m at paragon 3500 and pool farming in groups is clearly efficient. In solo, farming pools with my DH is already slightly more efficient than not farming (considering only the exp and forgetting item amount).
But with my monk, I still get a little less exp if I waste time for pools. Maybe after paragon 4000 it starts to pay off.
Strange season. Normally these limits have been much lower.
Its quiet ez to check with paragon calculator and it rly depends on the player, which GR they farming, how good they are at finding pools etc.
For example (using maxrolls paragon calculator): For a monk which farms gr125 in 2 min. Finding pools is “worth it” if they are 3105 paragon or higher and finding a pool and starting next GR takes 52 sec or less. As 52 sec or lower will results in higher exp/h.
When i say “worth it” mean more exp. I wouldnt do it if it took me 50 sec on avrg as the small exp increase for the extra work aint worth it for me + making NG when the good spots been checked. However as my avrg is 30 sec or less its obv more efficient.
That’s the problem - for me at least. I am consistently seeing it take me 10 minutes to get 10 pools…granted, there are some variant routes that I haven’t been trying that may improve this for me.
I’ve now hit p1800 and getting just over a paragon level for each GR120. Going to a GR125 offers very little rewards for me XP wise. And there’s no way that I’m going to be speed farming GR130 with s6 impale, especially HC. Solo simply cannot compete with group play - it’s being artificially killed by poor game design and bad game balancing.
Lower gr means pools will be worth it sooner. Check the paragon calculator for when u should get pools based on your gameplay.
If it takes u 10 min to get 10 pools that means u dont have a proper route. That has nothing to do with group play.
10 pools might take a long time (without any cheats naturally) if trying to get them in one game.
But even if I need only 3 pools, it’s really hard for me to average only 30 sec extra time. I could get 30sec as record time for 3 pools solo maybe.
- If I’d had good luck having pools in really good spots. But as I don’t assume this, I check a little farther also which takes more time.
- If I wouldn’t need to swap to pool build (for me that includes couple of seconds extra for putting shards etc to stash, due to accidentally deleting things in a hurry otherwise)
- Includes quite a long time of making new game after each pool hunt
- Not including cow lvl, since constant usage in solo would require making them for each run
My average for finding single pool at solo might even be almost as high as 30 sec, calculating everything extra caused by it. But getting 3 pools single run - I admit my average goes way over 100sec (total for 3) due to occasional bad luck runs + not doing everything as fast as possible. I haven’t calculated exactly, but it could be even close to 150sec.
But I understand my whole playing strategy, including gr and pools, is more based on fun and relaxed than totally efficient. I just try getting some efficiency flavor there without making it a job.
Instead of flying trough levels at 1-3min, I often do 3-6min runs and actually fight some mobs. And instead of blinking myself to as many pool places as possible with teleports, I like to fly trough some routes which is a little more peaceful. I even sometimes pick some rings and amulets from one-shotted elites.
So, with speedruns requiring only 1 pool, season 25 solo monk could start taking pools already before paragon 3000.
But slower people like me, 142 at 5-6min (and sometimes 130 at 3min) + slower pool find → it’s just seems overall inefficient hobby before paragon 4000. But I do it now anyway 
As I said earlier, I was just doing the act 1 routes (southern highlands, forsaken cemetary, leoric’s). I tend to get a very low spawn rate at each location. I chose them cos each area is very small and easy to check.
I seem to be unlucky then with spawning. Or else, other areas have a higher spawn rate than the 3 that I typically check.
I’m only p1800 and it was established earlier that it wasn’t worth my time (albeit I was obviously at a lower paragon level when I originally started this thread). But, with it now approaching 1.2 paragon per GR120 run, that means an awful lot of runs and to be honest, it makes the game a lot less fun for me personally, and more like work, or a chore.
Are u also checking outside leorics? Beyond the gate since i get pool there almost every game. Its like 5 pool spawns or so there.
When I play solo i switch build before going for pool. For DH i use god with echo fury (see my seasonal DH on EU). All about maxing speed.
In this video he shows some common spots (There are more but its a start). Some which are just way better than those in act 1.
https://youtu.be/3yWYMLqpZw4
Try it out and practice. It shouldnt take more than 30 sec to find a pool. So make sure u work on improving until u find one faster than that.
1 Like
thank you, will check this out. I still don’t think it’s worth my time at p1800 farming for them.
I did 10 GRs last night and none of them were good - quickest time was 4.5 mins, a full min slower than my typical run beforehand. It seems like the difficulty of the GR120 has been bumped to GR125 by the game. The mobs feel harder to kill too. 10 GRs last night - 3 of them just under 5 mins, 1 just over 5 mins and the rest around the 4.5 minute mark. I know 10 GRs is a small sample size though. mobs and maps and pylons were horrid in all 10 GRs. It’s almost like the game got harder cos I hit a certain paragon level.
I have a feeling that because we tend to do higher GR levels in “speed runs” this season the difference between good maps/ bad maps and good mob types/bad mob types becomes even more accentuated.
With the xp bonus on the helm shards, the pool xp flies by super fast. I don’t really target pools anymore. I get my 10 doing keys. Sometimes I’ll get 10 pools on like 4 or 5 alts. Burn them all out. Get like 50 paragon (im in the 3k range). Rinse, repeat. Then I have a bunch of keys too.
That gives you 4.1-5% more XP, and only on enemy kills, not GR closes. And the GR close makes up the majority of the XP. It’s like +2% more XP on average during speedruns.
XP is flying by because this season theme is very powerful. The extra XP on the helm shard has very little to do with it.
OK I need some advice here on that calculator. So under the “XP Gain and Pools” section with my current 1 550ish paragon and GR98 which I can do in 2 minutes it says pools needed for greater rift is 1,45. That doesn’t mean 1,45 pools is worth the same as doing a GR if I do it faster than 2 minutes right?
Cause I have a bunch of cowsticks and can get those pools in less than two minutes. But it doesn’t seem right and that number of pools decreases when paragon goes up.
Damn I thought it was on the close as well. But still, 2% is worth the few seconds to swap out to Leoric’s helm and ring and Hellfire ring at least.
Possibly, but I have been consistently doing GR120 runs between 3.5 min and 4 min for 2 weeks now. I have the odd one taking longer than 4 mins, and have had like 1 or 2 near 5 mins or just go over 5 mins by a fraction. But this was consistently crappy times longer than 4.5 minutes, which I haven’t seen before. I feel like I’m hitting softer too, but haven’t changed any gear/skills/passives. Unless my 8 year old niece has changed something when I wasn’t watching. I guess I better double check.
I did have something very weird happen Wednesday night - finished a GR and went back to town and suddenly the game got mega laggy with the action/audio timing - say clicking on the Blacksmiths table to salvage gear would see the audio action 2 seconds later. I exited the game but couldn’t get back in (no seasonal access). Checked the network settings via network test on the PS4, had Internet but no NAT (failed). Checked my iPhone, iPad and laptop, all looked good and worked without issue. Checked router/modem, no problems there. Rebooted PS4, same issue. Ended up rebooting the router and doing another network test and this time it worked, but the auction/audio lag was still there. Quit and restarted D3, which seemed to fix the problem. It was after this that I had the 10 GR run that was super bad. I’ve had the PS4 for 6 years and have near 20 years IT experience and I have NEVER seen the PS4 do this before. EVER. I have never seen this action/audio synching issue before with D3 either.
I haven’t ran any GRs tonight, doing a few rifts for keys, but have been up nearly 20 hours and way too tired to risk doing GR120 runs, especially with HC. Will test further tomorrow.
I wish that paragon would fly by faster lol!
I thought that the XP bonus would apply to everything, including closing the GR?