PTR help for newbie

New Player Help
1

I’ve been playing D3 for several years, made Guardian several times, reached L120 a couple of times, but never done PTR.

It’s a few days before the PTR 2.6.9 and I’m trying to figure out how to get ready for it.

I’m a DH by choice so I read the Gear of Dreadlands set and built a build around that to test various skills, play patterns, added gear sets, auxiliaries, etc. to get familiar with a playstyle before it starts. If it’s like a new character in season, I set several Gem of Ease for current gear if that is possible. I’m trying to collect the best in slot gear for my inventory chest.

This may all be for nothing because I don’t know what to expect at PTR start. The only thing I’ve found is a post at PTR Season 20 test? with some comments about having to level up a new character.

So. I’m asking here for experienced PTR players to suggest what newbies might want to know in preparing for a new experience.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help.

2

If you start a seasonal character for PTR they start at lvl 1 with nothing. You won’t have access to your Gems of Ease like you mentioned. No mats, no gold, no gems, no blood shards, nada. Just like regular seasonal start.

You can copy your existing characters into PTR but they are all converted to non-season, with access to all your items, gold, bloodshards, etc. You can start testing the new sets right away by visiting the PTR vendor and buying the bag of fortune(?)(might be in the armaments bag?) - it will contain a full set for that characters class. You won’t be able to test the season theme with them, however.

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3

I build up a big stock of bloodshards (to spend them on PTR caches at the PTR vendor in town) and bounty / crafting materials for reforging.

4

I think it’s about time they gave us free materials, or just ouright remove the costs for the PTR.

It can difficult to farm regular mats thanks to the buffed drop rates.

5

One of the caches sold by the PTR vendor includes crafting materials these days.

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6

I can’t remember - did it give 500 per bag or was it 5000?

7

Nice one.

Had no idea. Thanks!

8

Not sure, but as the caches only cost 25 bloodshards each, you’d have enough to buy multiple caches per rift / GR, so you’d rapidly have thousands of materials.

9

Last PTR i wasn’t paying attention and bought a few bags, then realized I had about 20,000 of each… I know it’s quite a few.

10

It is better to do the PTR seasonal starting from level 1 so you can try the new seasonal theme/buff

11

Depends on your goal. If you just want to test the new set, then

  • save some blood shards
  • PTR copy existing chars (make sure you copy from the correct region)
  • use blood shard to buy bags from the PTR vendor, you’ll get the new set in no time

Note that, PTR Copy copies data from archive database of live server. So, there may be some (days) delay.

If your goal is to test seasonal theme, there is no alternative but create a new seasonal character.

No, it won’t work because seasonal char always starts with level 1, empty handed.

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12

What I like to do is a PTR Copy. All my current (Live) Seasonal Characters are converted to non-Season. (That’s because the PTR is for the next Season coming up). I don’t even bother collecting stuff from my in-game mail. (Since the PTR only lasts about two weeks I don’t have to worry about it being deleted in 30 days. And next PTR I will do the same thing).

At this point I have high-level Characters that can immediately test the new Sets. When I’m ready to test the Seasonal Theme I will Rebirth my main. It doesn’t take long to reach Level 70 and then I can fully gear up through the PTR Vendor, Djank Mi’em.

13

I’ve also been building up a reserve of GR keys so that when my heroes get copied from live to PTR, I’ll have a couple of hundred keys, in case I want to test the new gear pieces / armour sets on heroes with lots of paragon and see how high they can push. For example, I’m really interested to see what I can do with my Shadow/Impale DH with a new HPS.

14

Don’t go too high in GR with your Impaler or they might nerf it :wink:

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15

Oh, there’s little chance of me affecting that. Combining my seasonal and non-seasonal paragon will see me around 3900 or so. My previous best with her was a 118 or 119, I think. I doubt the new HPS and extra couple of hundred paragon will see me much past the mid 120s. I’m not some 10K+ monster that’ll hit the 140s.

16

Nice! I have about 3300 paragons non season (on my EU account) and my highest with Impale is 120 solo so far. I hope that with the new HPS I can reach 124 or 125

17

Depends largely on what you want to do and test.

In that case you should aim for non-season tests. Collect a lot of Bloodshards on non-season now and then make sure you always have a lot too on season when you log out.

There’s a merchant that will sell you all of the items for the set and the supportive legendaries for 150 bloodshards, so the more packs you can buy, the better a setup you can get.

Having loads of Death Breaths and other basic materials helps aswell. Don’t need to focus as much on act materials from bounties, as those can be bought for bloodshards too.

That’s why copying over your existing account is really important.

That is if you want to test the seasonal theme and see how it plays in and how it interacts. In that case no preparation is really needed, and leveling is quite fast and easy as you can get some great multipliers early on thanks to the bloodshard merchant and high drop rates.

Thou balancing and adjustments to new set is never done based on seasonal performance, only non seasonal.

18

Start a new character. I only play the PTR’s now - they are awesome and you can do a complete league worth of stuff in 2 weeks. Triple exp, double blood shards, and you can buy stuff really cheap from the PTR vendor. Really all you need to do is level up your gems, run rifts and greater rifts. Regarding leveling…I just think of it as gathering blue and white items (and yellow rings), goblin hunting and kill streak practice. It’s all about the attitude when you have done something over and over.

19

Dont forget you can also stock up on bounty bags just run a couple of bounty runs and put the bags in your chest they contain mats and bloodshards. that way you can easily stock up on 3k-4k bloodshards

20

Yeah, but on the PTR, bloodshard availability isn’t an issue, due to the double bloodshard buff in effect. If you run a GR90 you’ll get 900+ bloodshards per run. At 25 per PTR cache, that’s 36 caches per GR.

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