If you’re sticking to pubs (which is what I mostly do unfortunately), you’ll be lucky to find a group that can clear 115 in less than 5 min. I would say for public groups 105-110 is the sweet spot. When it’s lowbies I’ll just carry them through 95s and level new gems.
I have a similar level barb as yours (1600), my consistent solo range is 121. I played with some noobish meta teams and here are my results. (My teammates were at similar paragons as I am - around 1400-1700)
Me+WD - 125
Me+WD+support barb - 126
Me+WD+support barb+monk - 129
These levels were all reached at first or second try.
Thank you Rage for the detailed answer. That is a lot of new info and gear change to digest. I think I will move incrementally - I will swap out BoM for CoE and see how I can still stay alive.
At the level I am playing (up to GR 130), killing the RG was never an issue - went down within a minute. So I am not convinced yet why I would need to specialize so heavily for this purpose.
I did 120 with 1289 paragons with azure setup istvans and echoing fury anybody pushing frenzy did notice one thing in common you can clear one level easy and another 100 keys and nothing there is real wall also my personal thought, call it conclusion is that we orbit around wrong idea focusing solo elites i think if we want clear higher we need do something for density scaling and only thing I can imagine is going very high area damage setup because there is no way for perma zerker elites are always in group with minions in solo they will follow you, how bad this biuld suffer from split damage is visible on rg like Hammelin or saxtris when minions pop suddenly damage stops, i am currently playing my WD and cruss for paragons I’ll go back to frenzy little latter and I’ll try to play it like generator monk ultra high ad like 140+ area range, with high life per hit and cooldown
Rage, you write: " As for the “staying in place and do nothing” problem, what I do is hold down the force attack key much of the time, which I have in an easily reachable place ( the ~ key). If I’m worried that my Barb won’t actually be able to reach my intended target because of high density, I just hold this down and attack in place. This makes sure you’re at least hitting somebody ."
I must be missing something big here…
Where is the force attack key? In options key bindings I can only see “Force stand still” and “Force move”. So how do you set up this force attack action?
I think you’re generally not going to contribute too much (except your doubled shouts) until you get to the RG. Compared to Bazooka WD, your damage in density is super low. But: you could take Flavor and hope for a power pylon at the boss. As for WW: generally, just on the boss.
With either of these setups, you really need supports to help keep you alive. So if your WD blows up all the trash and some blues and only one yellow elite is left standing, it’ll probably be best to just move on, rather than the whole group waiting there protecting you while you finish off that elite (unless, of course, he’s inches from death).
Since, with this setup, we’re mainly concerned with single target, the Smite rune on Frenzy takes care of that for you.
Offensively, this will be roughly equivalent to Aughild, since both give you two separate 1.3x multipliers, with a little extra value on higher attack speed- due to Stricken stacking- making up for the lost 20% elemental on Doombringer.
Defensively, 30% armor will give you between 16 - 18% mitigation. Aughild’s actually only gives you 40.5% mitigation vs elites (100 * .85 = 85 , 85 * .7 = 59.5 , 100 - 59.5 = 40.5). So 30% armor plus Mortick’s is considerably better than what you get from Aughild, but of course only when WOTB is active, otherwise it’s considerably worse.
Nope, doesn’t matter.
Anyway, this setup will probably be about equal to using Aughild. Give it a try and see how it goes!
Oh, you definitely don’t! You can definitely get the job done at GRs in the 130’s just with the basic setup. The variants I offered are for min-maxing.
I meant “force stand still”. I actually do think of it as “force attack”, though, since that’s more accurate as to what it does. For instance, I use it a lot with WW. In this case, holding this key down while also pressing WW definitely makes you attack using WW, even with no enemies around, but you certainly don’t stand still (i.e. you don’t just spin in place).
So yeah: with this build, I hold down both “force stand still” and Frenzy much of the time that I’m in density. This prevents those situations where my Barb might be stuck and unable to reach his intended target, which if you’re only holding Frenzy, will result in him just standing there, doing nothing.
You can try out running the “high-AD setup” I discuss in the OP, which has 138% AD, but I can tell you now it won’t significantly increase your speed at clearing density (about 4.5% faster at most, with weaker single-target due to slower Stricken stacking). I broke down the numbers on that here:
The issue is that your base damage gets chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces, the more density you’re facing. So adding more AD doesn’t significantly improve your clearing speed. It’s good up to 94%, because it doesn’t conflict with other damage rolls, but beyond that, you have to start sacrificing AS, CHC, CDR, or Elemental%, all of which are a bad trade.
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Thanks Rage for all the replies!
__
In the solo department, I hit GR 121 at aprox 1400 para. I’ve got 1-2 minutes that i may be able to fit another level or two into, but I’m close to the wall at this point (and seems like everyone else is about in the same place) and been more interested in tinkering and reforging for RGK gear lately.
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Sure thing, man. Good job on the clears. And yes, the damage wall is the real deal…
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Hey Rage,
Yesterday I cleared GR122 in 10 minutes (18,5k main stat) and got myself in the EU leaderboard.
This was after I the jackpot and found a primal compass rose with str, chd, socket and attackspeed so I rolled chc on it. This was a relief for me after spending thousands of shards on rings, upgrading yellows and reforging for a usable compass rose.
Before the compass rose I had cleared a few times 122 but with EF setup I had te feeling I did more damage with the axe. Also because I have 2 primal EFs, one with STR, AS CDR and one with STR, %dmg and AS (haven’t rolled anything on the last one yet). What also helped me witht the clears was the force stand still which I wasn’t using before.
This is how my gear looks like now.
https://www.d3planner.com/137744985
I rolled CDR instead of CHD on the BoM because I still miss CDR on my Oathkeeper otherwise my CHC/CHD ratio would 50% - 600% rougly. Is this a wise decision? I also have a non ancient COE with CDR, CHC and CHD with 192%.
To clear higher GRs i’m looking for a better Oathkeeper and ancient ring with the stats you described in your awesome guide 
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Hey Barudi,
Congrats on the clear, and making the leaderboard. If you can do 122 in 10 minutes, I’m sure you can go 1 or 2 higher without spending a ton of keys. Also, nice find on that primal Compass rose. Other than rolling a useless secondary, it’s pretty much perfect.
So: the reason I call for hitting 46.67% CDR in the guide is that this lets you pop Wrath right as you get to your CoE damage phase, and have it up for that phase and the next one. Then, on cooldown, you miss only one damage phase, and catch the next one. If you fall below 46.67, then you miss this synchronization, which costs you a bunch of damage.
It looks like you’re sitting at 43.01%, which means you pretty much miss a damage phase on each WOTB pop, unless you wait an additional 16 seconds to get to the next damage phase. Both of these (wait, or pop WOTB out of sync with CoE) cost you a bunch of damage (at least 10%).
But, the way for you to get up to 46.67 is to roll AS on your Oathkeeper to CDR, and keep the CDR on your BoM. This costs you a half frame on your Frenzy, and 50% CHD, which collectively costs you about 12% damage.
If you switch to the CoE you mentioned, you can have both CDR and CHD, but you’d still have to reroll your OK to CDR, and you end up losing some damage from less Str and CoE not being at 200% (about a 4% damage loss).
Oof. Ok, you basically have 2 options:
- Maximize Wrath: Roll AS on OK to CDR, keep CDR on BoM.
- Maximize base damage: Keep AS on OK, roll CDR on BoM to CHD.
I would tend to favor the first approach, since having Wrath up more often not only gives you damage but also protects you from CC. But the second approach will also work. Just don’t mix-and-match the two. You either want to get your CDR above 46.67% (option 1), or just focus on increasing your damage (option 2).
Thanks for your advice Rage! I’ll roll CDR on my OK and try to push a higher. I’m really happy that I won’t have to worry about a compass rose so I can use the mats for a better OK, TP and APD (higher stun roll).
I’ll agree on the first appoach uptime on WoTB makes the difference. I’ll update my progress. One final question, the % increased dmg on the OK is multiplicative right?
Yes!
It’s definitely hard to find an A+ OK, since you need not only to roll the right stats but also a good damage range and 190+ on the Legendary affix. Good luck!
Need advice to choose between two ancient CoE:
6% AS
50% CHD
5% CHC
200% CoE
or
50% CHD
5% CHC
6% CD-R
176% CoE
Note, with the second CoE I can reach 48% CDR, with first I’m at 45,41% and it won’t be easy to reroll other stuff to get over 47%
With the first ring I’m at 31% AS
Hey, i give my Frenzier second chance after 2 weeks and im doing much better when i applied Rage’s advices.
130 was closed in 4 keys, but on all 3 i was able to kill boss 1-2 minutes after time. I had Erethon on my 4th try and it was easy.
My setup is little strange, prob not very optimal if comes to numbers (cdr and as) and biggest change i made is drop Stricken. Yes, i put gogok and with Aughild i benefit from additional cdr, Echo take care my attack speed.
Erethon at 31k mainstat in gr 130 was like 2 minutes, but rift was much more fluid for me.
Here’s builid and items i used today and 130 with it was made. Will continue pushing ofc.
https://www.d3planner.com/939962373
/e
after i made 5x 130 and i clear’d two of them, gogok instead stricken was stupid i think
Here’s screen from one of my clears: (with stricken already)
https://i.imgur.com/lLAmC1r.jpg
Sadly i cannot record.
So im running EF + Aughild in fire, ill give it 100 more keys and we will see how deep it will go.
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Hmm, that’s a bit problematic. It’s not so much an attack speed problem, as going with ring 2 only costs you a half frame while WOTB is active. But, that weaker affix roll on CoE is also -8% damage.
I guess I’d still go with ring 2. Having Wrath in-sync with CoE is very valuable.
Cool, good luck, Red! And well done on the 130’s. Glad I could help you out.
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I just login, second key, 131 felt under control
https://imgur.com/xqn3swL
Im still EF + Aughild with weapon master as last passive
This time i had RoRG on finger for as and loh lines (i got str dual crit pBoM but i wanted to play with right as ammount and some LoH - trade for 50 cd)
No additional AD yet (paragon only), im very tanky but idk exactly why 
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I just dropped an ancient AZ:
2780.4 DPS1519-1893 Cold Damage
17% Cold Skills Damage
901 STR
2311 LPH
My previous non-ancient AZ:
2262 DPS
1116-1344 Cold Damage
20% Cold Skills Damage
IAS 7%*
CDR 10%
My OK has:
2277.8 DPS
Dmg range
IAS 7%
17395 LPH
CDR 10%
*I was hoping to get a better AZ soon so I never bothered to roll the 7IAS to AD.
I’m assuming the damage bump to ancient is enough to outweigh the 17% vs 20% cold damage, so I want to roll CDR on the new one. I’m pretty low paragon (1200), and already have LPH on the OK, so I’m thinking it might make sense to roll the LPH to CDR and keep the STR? LPH on both weaps might be nice for more sustain though? I haven’t really pushed high enough to see if that or damage is my wall I guess, so maybe it’s hard to help me if I can’t answer that question, but I was looking for advice. I’m a solo player also, so it’s unlikely I’d augment with a gem over 90-100 range (especially since ideally I’d want one that I could have AD and CDR on), so the 901 str seems tempting to not give up.
Any advice?
Hey Insidious,
Your new ancient AZ is definitely better than your old non-ancient one. Congrats on the find!
You have a little bit of a dilemma on your hands (I seem to be telling people this a lot lately!)
So, with your other gear as it is, even if you roll to 10% CDR on the new weapon (rerolling either Str or LpH), you won’t quite make the 46.67% breakpoint you need to sync WotB and CoE.
I guess what I would do is keep the Str, for now (or, you could reroll the Str to AD). And in the future, if you get another CDR roll on a ring, this will enable you to reroll the AZ again, this time to 10% CDR, allowing you to reach that breakpoint. Having LpH on both weapons is definitely nice- definitely helps with the healing.
I’m SSF only also, by the way!
I think that with your paragon, if you get 5-6 rank 90 or 100 augments on your gear, you’ll be able to hit at least GR 115. How high have you gone so far?
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Thanks for the advice! I actually haven’t tried to push since I did a 105 in around 10 minutes! I’ve gotten a few upgrades and gem levels since then so I should try to figure out what my limit actually is!
S20 GR 134 down @ 3200 para(26k str) with the Aughild variant.
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