[Guide] Zodiac Rend (Season 20)

Barbarian
3096

The more I think about it, the more I want to revise my answer.

I want to define fishing as the point* where your gear, skill, and main stat no longer guarantee you consecutive succesful GR clears. More importantly, it’s the point* at which your cumulative skill and gear cap (this includes main stat) requires some considerable adjustment to be made in order to secure a new personal best with a build.

Above, I used the term “point,” but I asterisked it to indicate that I don’t think of it as a specific coordinate. Instead, think of the point as a range of GR tiers. For example, someone might start fishing at GR 100, waste 50 keys, then clear GR 101, 102, and 103 in rapid succession without any susbtantial adjustments or upgrades. Was that fishing?

Well, from the player’s perspective, yes, they fished at GR 100, but potential under-the-hood gameplay improvements or simple RNG allowed them to progress further once the initial hurdle was overcome. Thus while fishing definitely encapsulates what top-tier players encounter when they burn 5000+ keys to hit a new PR, it also encompasses the random hiccups that less experienced players encounter when pushing.

That less experienced player may simply learn more about what Rage was talking about–optimal maps, mobs, etc. They may become better at controlling Pylon spawns. They might even find a really good Ancient item, or upgrade their main stat by a few thousand points. Regardless, “fishing” is difficult to define as a singular phenomena that can be quantified at all levels of play for all levels of players. But I believe it can be defined as a term relative to the difficulty of progression encountered by the player.

If you burn 70-150 keys trying to clear 133, yes, that’s fishing for you, though it likely wouldn’t be for a player with double your main stat and Paragon.

Follow me?

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3097

Thanks gents for yourresponses, pushing can be a complex animal. There’s a lot of discipline, skill, and patience involved with being a “pro-pusher” that I don’t have. I guess I classify myself as a very “casual-pusher”.

I see myself throwing in the towel well before crossing this bridge. Heck, I just might jump off the bridge, “Goodbye, cruel world”.:laughing:

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3098

I guess I’m the master of the light fishing category. Once I switched to core my 131, 134, 136, 138, and 140 clears were all under 100 keys. I am already over 100 keys for 142-143. First time that has happened. I’ve always been more focused of efficiency farming paragon in 4 man metas. I’m finally starting to see the gap get smaller and smaller. When I have a chance at rank 1 I will throw all the keys at it. 147 just isn’t in range for me yet.

2 Likes
3099

Once you close a single rift, and open another, you’re fishing, after that, the number of rifts you open and close is kind of irrelevant, as you’re still fishing lol

3100

Got those better boots, better slanderer, shoulders with AD and rend, then the rank 9 on LB with the 130 GR milestone.

ty for the help \o/

https://i.imgur.com/OtR5JQh.png

2 Likes
3101

So true., RNG can be ridiculous. I opened a 127 the other day (for an easy clear) to work on augments and I could clear it. :flushed::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

3102

I ran a 132 this morning and got a great festering woods map with a condi. I was able to gather 2 blue packs and 3 yellows. I had great progression, but I ended up not clearing. Then I decided to allocate the paragon point that I earned and saw that all my paragon was in vitality, because yesterday I was running zbarb and I forgot to reallocate my points. A possibly missed opportunity for a clear. :thinking:

3103

Thank you for the wonderful guide - I read this almost every time I step into playing my barb.

I haven’t played for a few seasons…does season 20 still represent the same thing for season 23?

3104

You’ll need to make a couple changes due to the follower updates. Followers can now equip a full complement of items, and some of these can “emanate” meaning that our character benefits from the legendary power equipped on the follower.

The current best follower for Rend is the Enchantress. For pushing GRs, equip her with Nemesis Bracers, Flavor of Time, Oculus Ring, Smoking Thurible (immortality), Krede’s Flame, and Homing Pads. The rest of her gear doesn’t matter, as long as you get her to 25000 Int, which maxes out her abilities.

For speed GRs/T16s, you’ll want to replace Krede’s Flame with Avarice Band, wear Gloves of Worship (T16s), and/or the Sage or Cain set, depending on what resource you need to collect.

For abilities, take Temporal Pulse, Amplification, Erosion, Fate’s Lapse.

3105

If playing groups yes, solo is slightly different due to the introduction of follower emanate feature where if the follower equips flavor of time amulet and nemesis bracers that you get the benefit of those even though you are not wearing them. There are other emanate items.

3106

I thought we didn’t want to take temporal pulse because we don’t want any CC.

3107

Well, TP ends up being less of a problem than Charm. And to take nothing at all from that tier, you have to make a whole new character, which is a pain.

TP is also just a slow, so, not hard CC, meaning it doesn’t negatively impact your ability to Spear/Stomp mobs.

3108

Yeah I did make a whole new character, and it was a pain! Actually I was creating one anyway for zbarb, but I did use the old one for zbarb and the new one for rend so I could unselect TP.

BTW I was careful not to select anything from that tier on my first character - I think what happened is I put an all skills focus on her and then all the skills stuck.

What I’m running into now is that TP is recommended for some other builds, like EQ and HotA. I’ve just left it unselected so far but was wondering what y’all do. From what I understand the main benefit of TP is that it procs Trapped. I know Trapped procs itself to a certain range which maybe is all you need for rend, but having broader proccing for EQ would be advantageous.

EDIT: p.s. I’ve been giving MotE a spin this weekend, which naturally led me to your guide, in which you say to take TP. In the q&a section you have the “my friend told me” bits, and later in the thread some of you joke about that, i.e. depending who your friend is maybe you should listen to them. Well my friend Free told me to make sure I don’t select a level 15 Enchantress skill, but my friend Rage told me not to worry about it. :slight_smile:

For non-seasonal I have toons for all the different builds, not that I’ve played all of them, but I throw the gear there for that mythical day in the future when I’m going to try them all out. But because of that I’m limited on toons for seasonal so I’m using the same one for Rend and all the other builds. I know it doesn’t matter that much - just one more detail to consider.

3109

So, TP has almost no upside or downside for Rend. Doesn’t really help with damage, but since you can yank mobs around with Spear + Stomp, doesn’t really hurt your grouping either. Best is probably to not take any skill from that tier, but if you have to make a whole new character, probably not worth it.

For Leap, TP has both upside and downside. Upside, because it can help out your damage by ensuring that more distant enemies are actually being CC’d, so you get the Trapped bonus on them. But downside too, since it can make grouping more difficult. I used it on 136, Deal used it on 145. That’s probably enough of an argument that it’s worth taking, right there.

3110

TP=bad. You don’t want anything slowing large groups of mobs. It is also on a 4 second CD and always active. The ideal situation is to have the mobs follow on their own. In an 80% slow situation they will not be able to. Charm is on one target and on a 18 second CD. Not a big deal.

On a side note I just love when I get 4 corner festers with fattie/zombie/chicken and spawn a power. Then get a sewer with speed at the door. Skip to third map still with the lead and get a caves. It just makes me so motivated. LOL!!!

3111

Hmm, the issue I’ve had with Charm is that, in addition to the one enemy who is actually charmed, you end up with a bunch of mobs clustering around that guy, rather than around you. If that mob is a fallen/imp/ranged , he often runs away, dragging significant density with him.

I guess the safest thing is still probably to take nothing from the first tier.

3112

Lol that’s the answer I was hoping for since I’ve gone to the trouble of keeping it unselected!

3113

This is purely (or at least primarily) because of her cdr skill, right?

I wear broken crown, avarice, sage’s, cain’s, and rrog to get all those resource bonuses at once. Cain’s of course is always good; always need keys. Gems you end up with a surplus eventually but still, nothing better to put there anyway. DB’s maybe you end up not needing depending how much you use them, but might as well stockpile them if there’s nothing better to wear.

But anyway, whether you’re swapping out just avarice or avarice+rrog for kredes’s+oculus like me, it’s a bit of a pain - easier to just switch followers. Downside for speeds is you lose the cdr, but that’s fine if you have key/gold farming gear with extra cdr. I’m wondering what others do - switch items on the Enchantress or swap followers?

3114

I dunno. Maybe it’s just me but avarice has never been a thing for me. I have never used it once even back in my noob days. And for krede’s if you need the fire benefit you are not playing the build properly. You should have unlimited resources if you are running the builds the right way. So that said oculus/rorg with both cains and sages are the only way you need to run the followers. There is no need to switch. Unless I am missing something or overlooking a reason why someone would need resource regen or damage reduction in t16 is beyond me. Band on might should be more then enough to keep someone alive in t16.

3115

I appreciate the pickup radius bonus - nice to just swoop up the progression globes and gold practically before you even see them. You’ve got me considering if I can do without it. In season I still like to max gold collection so I can empower rifts. Part of it I guess is just the fun of watching numbers go up.