[Guide] Zodiac Rend (Season 20)

GR 123 down in 14:00, 1,272 paragon, 18.2K strength.

Good for Rank 869, first time I’ve made it onto the leader boards this late in the season.

I swapped Nerves to Berserker, no deaths through the rift. Got Cold Snap as the RG, with half the time left on Conduit, dropped it pretty quick.

Thanks for the help and advice everyone. Who knows, may even take on a 124 before the season ends lol

3 Likes

Grats and good luck with the 124.

1 Like

Thanks MB!

https://imgur.com/a/yAOIivv

Rank 869! So excited when this came up

2 Likes

Nice job, Phoenix, way to slug it out!

2 Likes

Congrats bud, that’s fantastic.

Given how fast you’re still progressing (you haven’t hit the “wall” yet) I think you can easily nail a 125 before end of season. Keep pushing!

2 Likes

Thanks guys!

Conduit + FoT got me home. Such a powerful combination.

I’d guess there’s at least a few weeks left in the season, so I will definitely give 124 a shot soon. 125 if I can get there would be amazing.

Was interesting to look at some of the toons around my rank. They all have massively more paragon than I do. The guy below was over 1,900, and the one above was almost 3,000. If I doubled my paragon, I’d still be 500 short of him.

There’s a lot to be said for getting lucky with maps/pylons.

Nice work, Phoenix. You’ve got more gas in the tank. Just focus on improving play, refining your pulls with Spear, and being more mindful of rift conditions/density.

1 Like

GR 124 down, 13:19.

1,276 Paragon, with a lot of 2-3K paragon players around me still, so very happy with that.

https://imgur.com/3BXk5OP

Good for rank 626.

The slowest 125 would get me ranked in the 570’s. Guess that’s the next target.

6 Likes

Way to go! Now just Slice and Dice your way to 125!
Good Luck. :smiley:
:peace_symbol:

1 Like

way to go Phoenix, I was finally able to take down gr124 yesterday with few seconds behind yours, I finished mine around 13:28 I think (gr124 took me about a week to finally beat it XD).
Still trying to push couple more levels if possible until the end of the season and is wondering if you guys can give me some advice on what gear I should be rolling for with my shards at the moment, any suggestion to help me improve will be awesome, thanks, guys! I learned so much from this post and been an awesome journey.
https://www.d3planner.com/842591234

3 Likes

You got pretty decent gear for 1700 paragon. My setup is almost identical to yours, so you can take this all the way up to 128-130 if you’re patient enough.

A few recommendations:

  1. Get pants with All Res (do this first, you can get these pants fast)
  2. Get trifecta gloves (so you can add another Area Damage or CDR slot)
  3. Reroll the WW damage on boots to Armor

You’ve got 4 CDR slots with 2 that are less than 8% (Shoulders/Neck) so I’m guessing keeping wrath up is tight with an Ambo/Doom setup. I know because I’m also rocking 4 CDR slots and I’d love to get that to 5 which will give me a lot more margin for error, but for me that requires trifecta shoulder/rings which I’m not holding my breath on.

As you get to 127+ you’ll need more area damage, but before that it’s not crucial. You’ll be able to take down GR12-126 with some fishing for sure.

thanks for the input, I do run into problem with keeping up wrath sometimes with my current CDR, so I’m wondering what’s the ideal CDR that I should be aiming for the ambo/doom setup?

I will definitely look for All Res pants in the meantime, thanks again for the detailed suggestion.

For Istvan set four CDR slots is ideal but for Ambo/Doom, five makes your life a lot easier. The easiest way to get the fifth is to add it on your gloves by getting a trifecta roll.

I roll with four CDR slots (I need the AD) and most of the time I can keep wrath up by hard casting a lot, but there are times it drops when I don’t have density.

In your case four CDR items will be very tight because you’ve got two subpar rolls (5% FOT and 7% shoulder). You will def want to add CDR on your gloves (or rings if you’re lucky).

gotcha, I do have another gloves with CDR and I been using it up until yesterday when I got that primal gloves, I will link it below.

furthermore, I know it is all about rng, but what’s the most efficient way to get better neck and rings? I tried to shard them for a while and even did some reforging for a while but was fruitless (I reforged them like 50+ time each already but stopped cause realizing bounty may be not the best thing to do at current stage.

thanks again!
https://www.d3planner.com/800588760

Dude… your ancient gloves are infinitely better than your primal ones!

To be honest the primal ones are garbage and you might as well disenchant them for the souls. I think a lot of players feel obligated to wear primals even if they roll like crap… the only real benefit of primals is for items with unique properties that can roll wide ranges (like yang’s recurve or lamentation). Otherwise primal armor vs ancient armor is marginal.

There’s no “efficient” way to get a good FOT or trifecta rings… you just gotta be lucky. FOT - I’ve used up over 1,500 bounty mats and the best one I’ve gotten is the sad one I’m wearing now. If you really have nothing better to do then knock yourself out on bounties, but they are the biggest waste of time in the game since you don’t get anything for the time invested… no paragon, no keys, no items, nothing.

Rings - I gamble rings… not the best deal at 50 shards, but not as horrible as amulets at 100. Ideally you want to use your shards on armor pieces until you’re happy with what you’ve got in all the armor slots. What you do after that is up to you… I

aww alright, I will just stick with my old gloves (I want them shiny primals XD)

Ok, so I will just shard for better pants with All Res, level for paragon and hope for the best for my accessories, they can be so depressing when farming for them D:

Its pretty simple. Not really!!!

#1 For BOM and COE/FOT/Istvans blades use bounties for rerolls
Focus on rings first as their loot pool is 24 and only has 3 main stats. Chances are good that your primal will roll great stats. After that roll you istvans till you get area/cdr with decent base dmage. This will help you avoid 1h swords 16 possibilities in their loot pool. And last reroll your flavor of time until you get any okish rolls. This piece is the second hardest item to roll right in the game. Just get something manageable. Amulets have 18 in their loot pool.

You will notice a theme here. Use bounties for items with large loot pools and don’t waste shards on these items. They can be used in better spots.

#2 Bloodshards-Only roll shards on armor pieces. They are cheaper which means more chances and more mats in your bank. You want to roll you biggest need until you get something decent. That doesn’t mean perfect or primal. Whatever you need most roll it except for belts. You only want to get lamentation from upgraded mighty belts.

#3 Upgrade rares. All those mats you saved up from rolling bloodshards correctly will pay off here. Again you want you upgrade what you need most for endgame pushes or speeds if that’s what you fancy. The key here is you want to upgrade items with low loot pools. In order of rank with total loot pool as well.

1)Lamentation(7)-only upgrade mighty belts
2)Shoulders(10)-upgrade until you get at least CDR/Rend. Other combos can be better.
2) For season might weapons(8) your looking for a great ambos and BKs are a bonus
3)Gloves(11) roll until you get at least crit/crit/area
4)chest(13) roll till you get at least str/vit/rend.

Follow this exactly and you will have the best possible chances across the board. I have been using this method for 4 years.

ALWAYS FOCUS ON YOUR BIGGEST NEED WHILE STILL FOLLOWING THESE RULES. THE THING TO EXCLUDE ARE QUAD GLOVES/QUAD FOT/TRIPLE SHOULDERS. These three items are like winning the lotto. If fact your best possible gloves for the core build is area/crit/crit anyways so no point there.

7 Likes

wow Chris, thanks for the in-depth analysis, that cleared up a lot of questions, now I have an even better idea of what to roll for and push for until the end of season in couple weeks, thanks again

Awesome write up Chris. Definitely some good advice here.

GR130 Down!!! Rank 85

Horrible second floor + Blighter couldn’t even stop me.

That concludes my fishing expedition for the season. My original goal coming out of a 5 year hiatus was to simply complete GR120 and make it onto the ladder, but this community kept me engaged and encouraged me to keep pushing. It’s been a fun and satisfying 6 week journey. Thanks fellas!

https://imgur.com/7neNxhQ

11 Likes