Having brought over a season wizard to main Diablo 3, I proceeded to move a non-season meteor wizards gear onto the Season 30 wizard, inclusive of meteor build and cube. I did this for a name change, and will ultimately delete the previous “main wizard”. Having built the new Meteor wizard, I noted the stats for damage, Intelligence, recovery etc were all marginally improved on previous because a set of boots were better, and I put on a higher augment. Job done, I proceeded to run Greater rifts.
Previously on this build using the main Tal Rasha meteor build wizard (which I have not yet deleted), I farmed 135 GR with an approx. 1/5 completion ratio allowing me to upgrade legendary gems. It was also possible, though harder to complete GR level 139, giving me level 141 legendary gems. Additionally, I gained a paragon point every few rifts. On the “identical build” put onto the recently arrived “season wizard” but slightly improved as stated above, that came over after season 30 closed, I ran several rifts, namely 140, 135, 130 and 125. The only one I could complete in time was the level 125 rift. Undeterred, I ran approx. 28 more 130 rifts and failed to complete any of them in the 15 minute time frame. It appears the Greater Rifts have got much harder, and I am unable to complete a level 130 GR, let alone a 135 GR. Note the season character brought over an additional 127 paragon, and in running the above experiment I have gained 8 further paragon. Total paragon is now approx. 3700 (previous pre season runs made at approx. 3570 paragon).
Has anyone else found it impossible to complete Greater Rifts lately, at the same level as they were doing pre season 30? Truly it is impossible for me to complete a 130 GR, where I used to farm 135, with the ability to finish a 139 GR. I thus am unable to upgrade legendary gems. I get about 1 paragon per 5 rifts at 130, where before at 135 I could get paragon faster. IM now “stuck” and unable to progress. The closest I have got was a 130 GR where I summoned the Rift Guardian with 1 second left on the clock (no joke - literally 1 second) , and it took me minutes to kill that… another failed 130 rift.
I could try putting the gear back onto the original character that I have not yet deleted, and see if this results in a failed 130 GR run.
Additionally - In a 2 player GR run with a friend where previously I could carry them through a 130 GR, today we failed to completed several 125 GR runs. Further evidence that the GR’s have got much harder.
The power that the Altar grants, while harshly nerfed from its original debut, are still rather significant. I doubt your marginal gains from slightly better gear accounted for like, 45% extra damage to elites, immunity to CC, passability, etc.
theyve made a lot of changes to gear affixes including set bonuses. How old is the gear from your old character? I know I have 2 rabid strike weapons- one with the old affix and one with the new. Is it possible some of the gear is legacy gear bonuses? and also, the altar bonuses are still pretty strong- and noticeable without them.
Tals Meteor build was nerfed in the S30 patch.
The nerfed, “permanent” Altar helped balance out this nerf in seasons but in NS… it’s a straight nerf due to lack of Altar.
Just goes to show that NS really wouldn’t be broken if they added in the nerfed Altar. You still need a ginormous amount of paragons to do GR150. It would be a lot more enjoyable to grind out those paragons in NS with the Altar though.
If your paragon and gear are only slightly better in non-season than your paragon and gear was in S30, yes, it will be harder.
The problem, as others have stated, is you do not have the buffs from the Altar. On top of that you do not have the buffs from the shards. Both were strong seasonal themes, and, even though they heavily nerfed the Altar, they did not nerf the Shards.
Going forward, your non-seasonal characters are going to hit like a wet noodle until your non-season paragon gets substantially more than your seasonal paragon finishes at. Some math peeps could probably give you a better estimate, but P3700, 100-200 paragon won’t be noticeable, probably going to need an extra 2000 or so for your non-seasonal to feel like your seasonal.
As others have said; the Altar and the Soul Shards made a huge difference. In the long season 28 with the strong Altar and the buffed Tal Rasha you could run gr 150s all day long with the cold meteor build with around 3K paragon (which wasn’t hard to get even playing solo).
In season 30 I stopped at GR 142 with cold meteor because they started to take too long but a 142 was still enough to hold a place at around 187 on the leaderboard. Which says a lot about the lost power in the build. I had to use Firebird to get a 150 with the use of the poison damage buff, extra fire damage, death blow damage, ring of fire damage and what else from the soul shards. And it still took many, many tries to get a good enough rift to do it. I don’t feel much incentive to try and push or even play with the Firebird in non season because it’ll be pretty lackluster.
If you are comparing earlier non-season to current non-season, then this is about the Tal Rasha and other meteor builds nerf. About the numbers of the season 30 patch / Tal Rasha meteors:
- Tal Rasha set dmg bonus was nerfed by 50% (from 2000% per stack to 1000% per stack). This causes ~5GR levels lower performance.
- Smoldering core max bonus was nerfed from 500% to 150%. This causes another ~6GR levels drop (I didn’t do detailed calculation, but ballbark value is correct).
So, if you previously could do ~GR135, with same gear you can now do approximately ~10 levels less = ~GR125.
Previously I could do 150 runs with about 100% success rate. Now I finished 146 just in time in medium ok Oreks dream, and would need almost perfect luck for a 150.
Thanks for (all) the Reply(s). I maybe confused the issue mentioning Season play.
The wizard gear was transferred from one character to another, after season 30 finished, with the additional 127 paragon applied. In running the Rifts before season 30 started I completed GR 135 on farm, and GR 139 by selecting a “good” rift to run.
Following Season 30 end I moved the gear to the other wizard (which was created for the Season 30), added the 127 paragon and ran rifts. At this point I can no longer run 135 rifts, let alone 130 rifts. It appears I am somewhere between rifts 125 and 130 now. Your response would indicate the Tal Rasha Meteor wizard build has been nerfed and indeed appears to be 10 levels less than it was. At least I now know this, and can try to farm the required paragon (again) to get up to where I was. Based on the 127 paragon from season end being applied, I need 200+ more to get back to 135 rifts. 
I can see that you’re using the star pact build, which I have no experience with.
Here is a link to a D3 planner set up from maxroll. Maybe see if changing a few things will help? The star pact version is quite resource hungry.
If you press the “chevron” to the right of the build description you can see other set ups.
If you are at 3.7k paragon, clearing say GR127, in order to gain ~8 tiers of damage from paragon alone and get up to clearing GR135 in the same clear time, you would need to get up to 18k paragon.
Good luck.
TinneOnnMuin
Thanks for the 18k paragon comment. I had no idea I would need that much. At GR 125 it takes me approx. 4 or 5 rifts to get a paragon point. Using 5 for mathematical simplicity, I now need to run 9000 GR to get this paragon. Yes, I know it will come quicker as I run higher rifts, but even so… Until I run 135 rifts again, I cannot increase legendary gems beyond where they are (137 - 141 currently), so it all has to be done on a) paragon, b) Primal gear drops.
Mathematically speaking the experience needed to earn paragon points scales progressively as you go higher and higher.
From maxroll:
Generally the first 750 Paragon levels are very fast to reach as you progress trough the game. Up to that point the experience scaling is very mild. From Paragon 750 to 2,250 the scaling is still linear but total experience adds up to higher numbers slowly. From Paragon level 2,250 the scaling gets exponential and finally reaches numbers of multiple trillions of experience points required per Paragon level. To view the full Experience Table 1-20,000 with the scaling of each level in detail click here.
Like Jazz said. The XP required for high paragon gets very large.
3700 paragon (750T total XP) is <1% of the way to 18000 paragon (98Q total XP).
Running GR130s with pools, it will take more than 200k GR130s to go from 3700 paragon to 18000 paragon.
It will take only 80-90k GR150s if you get to the point where you can speed 150s.
Thanks Again… Looks like I will enjoy playing D3 for some years to come.
It seems the issue here is you expect your non-season character to do as much damage as your seasonal ones, which they won’t. Your seasonal Wizard had not only the soul shards from the seasonal theme, but the altar powers, neither of which transferred after the season ended. Paragon isn’t the issue here, it’s the seasonal powers that gave you the ability to run 135 GR’s. Without those seasonal powers your damage drops heavily, and 127 paragon extra is essentially nothing.
To me they have ruined this game for the casual user. I am at 306.000 damage and have a weapon of 2400 power in a Rouge and cannot finish torment one greater rift on time. It is certainly not fun like it was before.
You only need to play on master difficulty to get the first four parts of the UE set. And maybe a 2-handed bow would give you more damage.
Less if you do it in seasons with a powerful theme. 
… 
I always thought Torment 1 required one to start gearing with crits in mind. There’s a few easy wins to improve crit… emerald in weapon, crit damage on gloves instead of IAS which will only use up resources faster with rapid fire. Definitely time to drop the ruby in the weapon.
And as Jazz said, lower your difficulty so you can get your haedrig’s gift to help with improving damage.
Just an update on progress. In summary, the meteor wizard has been advised in this post as being nerfed by about 9 Greater Rift levels. Having completed season 31 rolling a Natalyia Spike Trap Demon Hunter I returned to the main game with an additional approx. 250 plus paragon. This takes the wizard and all other main game characters to 4023 paragon.
Having returned to the main game, I ran the Wizard. I am unable to complete a Greater Rift 132 using it, relying on the Health potion cool down to live, and having insufficient damage to clear the rift in time. basically I cant live or kill things fast enough.
Applying the Natalyia build to the same task, I have solo’d a GR 135.
The wizard hasnt got many primal gear on, Hunter has. Wizard has slightly better (more) caldeums despairs applied.
Thanks to all who replied - I therefore confirm the GR Meteor wizard Nerf is indeed approx 9 greeter rift levels, from getting a 30% gem upgrade at 141 to getting a 30% gem upgrade chance at level 132. Unfortunately this means if I do get a wizard primal bit of gear, I will removed a 141 Caldeums despair and replace it with a 132 Despair… Pity, one ruined character.
People on D4 forums being sado’s again. I guess it’s the barb who just stands in doorways blocking real male players from entering the room and humiliates people while again thinking everything/one is his. Does a whole lot of… he says work, I say it’s just damage (wasn’t me).