I’ve just realized that I’ve been farming wrong for years. I’ve been doing bounties to get visions to basically double dip. Today I hit areas of Act 2 with lots of monsters and generated 7 or 8 visions generating tons of mats and one piece of usable gear. That was faster than doing the bounty.
I also realized that the best way to get a new hero in a 2nd character type up to 70 fast is to do the same thing. You equip your hero in your 2nd character type with Level 70 gear and good gems {incl LOD) and your character can blast through all the visions you get sub level 70 with ease playing at T6 (max level for a hero at less than level 70.)
For those who do not play group, you can also quickly develop your 1st hero of the season this way once you hit level 70, have added a follower and equipped the follower with immortality and Spalders of Zahara. You’ll die a lot, but with the Spalders of Zahara, you really won’t suffer any penalty as long as you haven’t pushed your T level to the point where you can’t finish the vision.
Some times we discover new things
Usually one only does bounties to get the unique items like Gloves of Worship and rings of Royal Grandeur. Because after that visions are better for getting the runes and also giving lots of legendaries and lots of other stuff.
When the Zakara shoulders are not needed Homing Pad are better for uninterrupted teleport.
When you die a lot, your gear gets damaged and at some point, you have to go back to town to get gear repaired. With Zahara, you don’t have to do that. Also, when was the last time you needed to open a town portal in the middle of a fight? Homing Pads don’t give better stats than Zahara.
Homing Pads are better, especially for wizard, necro and WD. Interrupted teleport is much more annoying than that cheap repair. Indestructible gear won’t help if your character dies into a crowd, and respawns into another crowd, only restart will help or Homing Pads. It happens from time to time in grifts.
All of my followers use Homing pads. I don’t have to TP out of a fight very often, however, I play a lot of Hardcore and “dying a lot” is not a good option.
I find that the most effective use is after killing the RG or finishing a Bounty and not wanting to fight the random monsters that try to stop me from leaving.
Especially the unkillable leaper that keeps attacking while talking to Urshi.
I understood that Homing Pads only protect town portal not teleport. If you use a town portal, you are just going to return to the exact same spot when you return. When you’re reborn, you have a few seconds to run away before you suffer damage or can use a spell (like teleport).
With respect to Hardcore, I totally agree with yessquire. I quit playing hardcore years ago and don’t expect to play hardcore ever again since I’m 76.
I think the point is to complete whatever objective you are after, and then move on to the next thing. So there is no returning.
The playstyle is not for everyone but even Blizzard promotes that with objectives like full story in one hour.
Outside of that, the Pads are more of an escape mechanism. If you die, there is the option to revive in town anyway. For hardcore characters it’s naked and level 1 and the only option - your spirit cannot return to your gnawed and chewed body, and your gear is looted and distributed anyway.
You don’t need to tell me I’ve used those shoulders a lot many years ago when it was a lot easier to go broke in early game.
Homing pads are (also) great when farming nephalem rifts for keys. After killing the RG and having picked up the loot you’re often swarmed and interrupted by nearby monsters attacking you and hindering a fast TP to town.
Edit: I see Yessquire made the same points before me.
As was mentioned above Zakara and homing have the same rolls. The choice betweein uninterupted teleport and remove annoying repair is very situative. Teleport is better on ofc HC and for fishing / searching some special items (for example components for staff of herding). In other cases Zakara can be used. Some builds that havent a demands for shoulders slot can use both.
The reason I always use Homing pads on my follower is to avoid annoyance.
When I finish a bounty, the entire area will be clear. As soon as I teleport to another bounty or town, some monster will materialize on the edge of the screen. 100% of the time it will hit me with 1/2 a second on the TP timer. Kill that monster. Literally stand there for a minute with no other monsters appearing. TP, and guaranteed another monster will do the same thing.
Don’t think I have ever used the Zakara shoulders. If I am dieing to the point I need to repair, I turn down the difficulty a bit.
I normaly farm visions in act 1 - The field of Misery, then i go trough Halls of agony lvl 1-3, and maybe act 2 Temple of firstborn, and then i reset the game. Basicly any big map areas with lots of monsters are good to use. But if you play barb/crusader/monk you also get lots of " Bovine Bardiche " Cow sticks. You can easly get 2-4 visions in the cow lvl. Normaly 2-3 from killing monsters and i end with the event thingy where you get 4-5 chest from killing around 170 cows. So nice to do vision hunting with people who have a few cow sticks each to use.
Yeah, I only keep a couple on-hand at any given time to “force the issue” when PL/gearing others. Sometimes the maps just won’t cooperate. Other times, party leader forgets they have one open/skipped already. Sometimes that’s me!
I had double ancient Leorics, L130 Gem of Ease, Red in Crown, and almost did a 1-70 level for the party in a single cow level. I still think it must be possible, if massacre is sustained the entire time, and Enlightened Shrine is found/timed right. Anything to spare me boring T6 Nephalem Rifts.
I actually don’t mind burning Petrified Screams, even early season, except last season had multiple instances where someone died, freaked out, and left the party. This puts the EN into a weird state and NO ONE gets the XP/reward.
I don’t think throwing yourself on monsters at T16 Visions would solve anything. I’ll suggest a replacement; find a way to include St. Archew’s Gage in your build. Usually you can achieve that by directly equipping it thus losing some damage, but it worth the hassle. You’ll be fighting lots of Elite type enemies in a Vision and the barrier will keep refreshing with each time you get attacked by one.
I doubt opening and finishing eight Visions back to back are faster than completing two acts full of bounties. The varying depth of Vision floors and fulminating them one after another takes time as much as clearing them. You still have a consistent reward in bounties but Visions can be unreliable or waste time just to fulminate them repeatedly. The point of Visions are getting loot fast and moderate experience reward; and it’s perfect just for that.
I don’t play group. Where I was dying a lot was doing low level vision on my 1st character to get legendary gear before I got my character to level 70 and to get crafting material. I was also doing visions with mostly rare gear, again to get legendary items and crafting material so I could improve my gear when I didn’t have much of any legendary gear. My suggestion about using Zaahara was to do with pushing in visions early as a way to get better gear quicker when playing solo.
With respect to homing pad use in Nephalem rifts, the only time I do Nephalem rifts anymore is speed runs for achievements. I get more than enough Keystones from Visions that I don’t need to run Nephalem rifts.
On another note, I did some vision farming at different T levels in Act II. I cleared the Oasis, Desolate Sands and Shrouded Moors and cleared every vision that appeared. I did the clears at T10, T13, T14, T15 and T16. The best results I got was on a run in T16 with 330 Forgotten Souls. The 2nd best run was in T14 with 231 Forgotten Souls. The 3rd best run was another T16 run followed by a T13 run followed by a T10 run. A big factor in the T16 runs was that I hit a Goblin Picnic on both T16 runs. Without the Goblins the 1st T16 run would not have produced as much material as the T14 run.
Visions in T13, T14, T15 and T16, I think, will all get to GR 90 Monsters. The amount of mats you get from the Visions is more dependent on the number of Visions and the number of floors in those Visions than the torment level.
So we’re about to conclude that T16 is as good as any lower T level to get visions. About rift keys; if one really want’s to do some GR speeds for paragon farming, normal rifts are better for keys. And with GR speeds one also gets an abundance of loot.
