World leaderboards are moving fast with the mantle change. Top 200 is almost all 137+. I expect by end of season 22 it will be all 138+. I love to see the progress just from the slight buff to mantle of channeling. And as Seras said it is very noticeable. I don’t see any reason to ever switch to crimson now. band of might and stomp are to big to give up now that the damage between the builds is even smaller.
What exactly was the buff to MOC?
Put it like this. Imagine you get a 4 corner fester with swarms and phasebeasts. Then you proceed to pull the entire map like you should. Then you group them up real nice and start to hardcast rend. Before mantle was a complete waste. The 1 second delay made it only valuable when you were not doing anything but ww. You will get some uptime in between casts so some rends will benefit from 25% and you also the the 25% damage reduction too.
1 Like
Yeah, and what you’re describing if the Rend fisherman’s dream. Throw in some grotesques or slashers/phase and you have 50-70% progression on Floor 1. If you get a Condi in that mix, you’re so far ahead of the timer that you can skip the next 3 floors and not sweat it.
And yeah, that constant 25% DR is nothing to sneeze at. I really think that the damage from Mantle + Stomp elevates the Core build above Crimson’s–less sacrifices with gear rolls, less CDR and RCR required, better toughness with COE.
I hope they fix the EU leaderboards soon.
I want to get back to trying for a GR130, but I want it to be recorded.
1 Like
The only thing worse then them not resetting is when they just don’t work.
Something that’s never been 100% clear to me - in the guide for some stats your choice depends on whether your “low paragon” or “high paragon”:
Shoulders and Chest
- Vitality (low-Paragon) or 15% Rend damage (high-Paragon)
Gloves
- Strength (low-Paragon) or 8% CDR (high-Paragon)
- Vitality (low-Paragon) or Area Damage (high-Paragon)
Weapons
- Vitality (low-Paragon) or Area Damage (high-Paragon)
Rings
- Strength (low-Paragon), Area Damage (high-Paragon), or Average Damage (high-Paragon) or 8% CDR
With respect to considering the Crimson’s build, the guide mentions being at least 3500 paragon. It also has this table covering how you don’t need resist all on your shoulders and chest when you get above 6000 paragon:
Paragon Range Must-Have All Resist Rolls Low (0-3000) Shoulder, Chest, Pants, Boots, Belt Medium (3000-6000) Shoulder, Pants, Boots, Belt High (6000-10K+) Pants, Boots, Belt
I see other clues in the discussions, e.g. Chris and others mentioning being of 20k or 30k main stat before considering rolling str to %dmg on your weapons.
I also want to make sure I have this right: when we say “high paragon” we mean “effective paragon”, counting augments, right?
I’m currently 2473 paragon with 7290 str from augments, bringing my effective paragon to 3931 (assuming my math is right).
Honestly, I dropped vit as a defensive stat as soon as possible. With BoM and core build, you’re a tank regardless. I only found I’m having troubles at GR 141.
I put zero points into paragon and running around with 515K hp for all of my clears. The only defensive stat I take is Allres. Roll them on your shoulders, chest and bracer where possible. I would say bracer last once you’re into 6K paragon range.
With respect to vit I’m the same. Of the pieces that the guide says “vit for low paragon” (shoulders, chest, gloves, and weapons), I only have vit on my chest piece. My health is at 532k with no paragon dedicated to vit. It would drop to 453k without the chest vit but then I’d just switch some paragon points to vit if necessary so effectively it can be viewed as trading str for cdr/ad.
Which I guess is what my question really comes down to - at what paragon level do you trade str for cdr/ad?
Part of my question too was just more generally wondering, “what do people mean when they say ‘high paragon’?”
It varies a bit, and somewhat depends on whether you just distinguish “high” and “low” paragon, or include “medium” paragon as well.
Personally, I guess I’d say that 0-2000 is low, 2001-5000 is medium, and 5000+ is high.
You just need to look at what % of your STR you’ll be dropping to pick up those other stats, and what they’ll get you.
For instance, if you had 20000 STR, and are trying to choose between rolling to AD or keeping STR on a weapon:
That STR is taking you from 19000 to 20000 STR, which is an increase of (20/19 = 1.0526), or +5.26% damage.
Adding extra AD gives a damage increase that trends towards the % increase in your AD. For instance, if you go from 100% AD to 124% AD, then your damage would theoretically be increased by up to +24%, with an infinite number of targets packed into a 10 yard radius.
Obviously, that’s not possible, but assuming you are fighting in even modest density, you will generally see 60-75% of this amount, or in other words, in this example, about 14 - 18% extra damage. If you already had 154% AD and were going up to 178%, this would be a 15.58% theoretical increase, and again, you’d probably see 60-75% of this, or about +9 - 12% damage.
As for CDR, you’ll be choosing this based on “build function”, plus any damage you might be getting from Crimson. “Build function” just means hitting whatever marks you might need to keep up WOTB, reach certain breakpoints with some builds, etc.
The damage CDR gives you via Crimson’s has diminishing returns (and unlike various other things in this game that some people think have diminishing returns, these ones are real). For instance, if you had no CDR anywhere and equipped the Crimson set, you’d go from 0 to 20% CDR, and this would increase your damage by (1.2/1.0 = 1.2), or 20%. But, if you then picked up two more 10% CDR rolls, for instance one on each weapon, this would bring your CDR up to 35.20%, increasing your damage by (1.352 / 1.2 = 1.1267), or 12.67%.
With Crimson, paragon, diamond in helm, and rolls on Amulet, Shoulder, Gloves, and both weapons, you end up with 60.26% CDR. In this instance, adding another 8% roll on a ring takes you to 63.44% CDR, which adds only (1.6344/1.6026 = 1.0198), or only about 2% damage.
Anyway, hopefully you get the idea: the value of each of these stats is conditional.
3 Likes
The only time vit should be wanted over any other stat is on helm 1000 vit>130 all res. Any time a stat can roll 650 max, vit has the second lowest priority or weighted value since we can get that from paragon points. End game you really only want it on legs and boots and helm and maybe bracers. health point in general your belt can be a big help if you have one rolled correctly. You want str/allres/vit/life on belt. The only places that can get questionable for newer players is usually shoulders and chest. These two slots can be some of the hardest rolls to get but at high paragon(6k+) shoulders should have allres/area/cdr/rend and chest you want allres/elite reduction/rend with melee reduction. Losing str on both slots is only 3% damage for me at 43k main stat.
Totally get it, thanks guys. Two follow-up questions:
Second-lowest to what?
Base Paragon or Effective? I feel like I should know this by now… I figure you must mean Effective but you could mean Base given that augments would tend to correlate to your Base Paragon. I’m about Base 2500 and Effective 4000 so I’m Medium either way you slice it. I get your main point that you just have to look at your main stat and other factors and make an informed decision.
I’m about 25k str so from everything I’ve read here I’m in that range where it’s not wrong to be thinking about shifting to AD and CDR. But more importantly I just need to learn how to play it properly. I laugh every time I read Free saying you can’t just play it any old way you want. 
What, you mean I can’t reach GR140 with TS-Falter???
p.s. I’m not running Crimson - never tried it.
1 Like
I generally mean Base… though I guess giving a scale based on Effective paragon is perhaps more valuable.
Most people can pretty easily achieve 100 points of augmentation, average, on each piece of gear, and of course the max is 150, so that’s between 1300 and 1950 extra Effective paragon, in most cases. I would just sort of throw that on top of the ranges I gave before.
So, something like:
0-3300 low, 3301-7000 medium, 7000+ high.
Great questions, DM.
When I wrote the guide, I considered low-Paragon to be anything under 5K, with obvious caveats that players with 1-4K have major advantages over players with 400 Paragon. These days, I prefer to think of low-Paragon players as those who lack the main stat necessary to compete in the tier range they should, with the best possible optimization given their gear and gems, fall within. Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap with player skill and experience, but I think you get the idea.
Generally speaking, by Paragon 5k, you have the gear, main stat, and gem levels (if you’ve been grinding them in groups) to really push the build to its absolute limits. I consider this the high-Paragon starting place, though much of what distinguishes high from low is about what you can sacrifice on gear to achieve your best clears.
I’ve always played solo except for bounties and regular rifts. It was only recently I picked up on the fact that you had to run groups to get gems to 150, and it was reading this thread here that I finally realized that. So I started gearing a zbarb but haven’t made the jump to actually try to get in a group.
Now you’ve got me contemplating more seriously doing that… well I’m paragon 2477 and my total augment gem levels is 1454 on 12 pieces (avg 121; non-ancient FoT), so I’m 346 short of max. I wonder how many base paragon I’d earn if I got in groups to get 12-13 gems to 150.
Partly what’s got me thinking this now is that I played a season for the first time (21; I wished I’d played 20 instead) and I’m sitting here with 3 primal Slanderers to replace my current one, but before I augment at 125 should I take the plunge and get that gem up to 150? And once I do that well damn we all know I’ll proceed to get 13 gems up to 150 and pray for a decent ancient FoT to finally come along.
Every time I think I’m ready to drop this game it keeps pulling me back in… and I have to say this guide and all the discussion and analysis here is a big reason why. My son is like dude play rocket league or modern warfare. But seriously after he started destroying me at Civ5 and Warcraft 3 I had to find my own safe place.
My son is 1 year old, he sits on my lap and smashes the keyboard repeatedly haha.
Pretty soon I’ll be washed up and he’ll pwn me in counter-strike which is my other game besides D3. 
3 Likes
Ah, now I see how you cleared 140…
The “kid smash” method!
1 Like
So, you’ve already taught him Seismic Slam…
1 Like
Yeah, DM, that’s the way to go. Grind your gems in groups.
To be honest, I’ve always hated that aspect of D3–true end-game progression in gems and bloodshard cap is gated behind a single mode of play (groups), and the in-game interface to facilitate such play is clunky, unwelcoming, and obtuse. Mind you, I was at one point the Rank 1 NA non-Season zDPS Barb, among the very best in the game at the time. I still like playing the role, but I really don’t like the need to be so focused and efficient.
Don’t get me wrong–playing zDPS Barb can be incredibly rewarding, but so many NS groups have ridiculous expectations about efficiency that you’re likely to find the process grating. Good luck.
Ha! My safe space lately has been Doom Eternal–or was until The Ancient Gods released and kicked me in the teeth. Can honestly say I’ve never played–and beaten–harder skill-based content in a game. But yeah, you gotta have your niche, and if D3 still tickles your fancy, then I’m extra glad this guide (and the larger Barb community) help you on your end-game journey.
Please let us know if you have more questions. We’re always here to help!
I got sucked back into Overwatch 