For S30 SSF, I will collect Haedrig’s on HC which means I’ll need to farm up my own set on SC.
So rather than racing from “1 to Haedrig’s” as BehindTimes has astutely pointed out in other threads, I’m thinking the play is to race from “1 to 8 unlocked altar nodes” because that would give me double bounty caches and pet auto salvaging. Then I would farm act 1 bounties for an RoRG and blacksmith plans; and visions for dbs/mats/legendaries.
T6 seems optimal for this because it 100% guarantees a legendary from a horadic cache. Going higher in difficulty doesn’t seem worth it since difficulty scales exponentially with each Torment level, whereas rewards (dbs, legendaries, etc) scale linearly.
So once I reach 70, the plan is to:
run a few GRs to get an LoD gem to 5 or 10ish (or whatever enables speed farming T6 - depends on what kind of legendary multipliers I have)
unlock up to the 8th altar node (eg: reaper’s wraps, key wardens/ubers, gamble/upgrade for a set helm, etc).
farm visions and act 1 bounties on T6
Anyone with experience gearing up without Haedrig’s have thoughts on this?
I’ve pushed with random legendary LoD setups to avoid using Haedrigs in the past just to slow the pace of the game down a bit… I’d settle in the highest difficulty that I can kill RG’s in less than 30 seconds. As better gear is acquired and it gets to the point where I’m destroying the RG instantly or within 5-10 seconds, I step it up a notch. The set pieces will roll in.
Yeah, I do most seasons (at least on one server a season), because I also save Haedrig’s for HC. (Just make sure to save something like a Transmog, so you don’t accidently unlock it in SC.) Your approach is pretty much solid. Though I would go T7 rather than T6. That way, every elite guarantees a Death’s Breath.
That’s crucial, because with your follower wearing Sage’s Set, you can get overloaded with Death’s Breath very quickly. And you’ll have plenty of mats from Visions to do upgrades.
From that point, depending on your class, upgrade shoulders & pants, and just set convert.
But you’re going to have to forget the altar. Node 4 requires a set helm, which you probably will want to keep until you have your first set. Node 5 requires 20 Forgotten Souls, which will be a long ways away. Double Bounty caches really don’t matter because of Visions. And while auto salvage is nice, having access to your first set is nicer.
Other tips:
Necro/Wizard can run T10 with 10 random legendaries + a level 5 LoD gem. Getting it to Level 13 can make it easier (One empowered and two regular upgrades, because you most likely won’t have gold at this point in time.)
DH with Shadow Set can run T10 if you focus on Shadow.
I’d probably save trying to do item conversions until you have 6 pieces of a set that has 7 pieces if you can. (e.g. Inna’s, Tal Rasha’s). Odds of getting a RRoG at this time will be low, so you’ll have an easier time getting a 6 piece than with other classes. Forgotten Souls are going to be a premium here.
There are craftable set helms (Sage, Cain, etc), however the altar requires a 6 part set helm which are not craftable. However, you can upgrade level 70 yellow helms to get a set helm.
Thanks for the detailed reply BehindTimes. My responses below:
I think T8 guarantees a db according to the d3resource site (forum won’t let me post a link to it), but it’s also more than 4 times tougher than T6 which has a 75% chance so I’m not sure it’s worth it; though maybe 1 extra GR (4 or 5 extra LoD ranks) would be enough to get me there and that might be worth the time to run? Not sure, I suck at calculating damage in D3, and also depends on what leggie powers I have.
That’s true, a bit of chicken and egg there.
Although I listed 3 linear steps in my original post, it will probably be an iterative cyclical process between steps 2 and 3 rather than unlocking all 8 nodes (or 5 in this particular case) before farming. So I would prioritize building towards a set, but if I get non-set legendaries for armor slots I already have filled, I would salvage those, and once I have enough to unlock altar nodes, I’ll do that, then go back to farming.
Unless I get lucky with a goblin floor (odious collectors) in visions, bounty caches will be my main source of blacksmith plans which will allow me to craft legendaries for my LoD while waiting for leggie drops, and therefore also to salvage more legendaries for forgotten souls (for the altar and rerolling) since I will already have craftable leggies I can wear.
I’m also theoretically cutting the time in half to get a RoRG. But I think a lot of this comes down to skill. You mentioned elsewhere in your post that getting an RoRG before having 6 set pieces of a set is low. For me, it seems high, but I’m also not a very fast player. There are 5 act 1 legendaries, so the chances of getting a RoRG with double caches is 2.5 bounty runs on average. That’s maybe 5 visions if I averaged 2 visions per bounty run. This may or may not be enough to get to 6 set pieces. Anyways, I’m fudging a lot of numbers here and there is RNG so I could be totally off.
Wow, that makes Necro and Wizard awfully appealing, but another goal I should have mentioned is that I want to complete all conquests as I’m aiming for a perfect 2100 achievement score this season. This will require speed and I think DH and Monk would be the easiest classes for that, though for my skill and experience level, DH would be the easiest, so I’m leaning towards that.
I’m also much faster with GoD DH or MS than any Wizard or Necro build.
I hear ya. I have a bit of PTSD from this lol. There have been times where I burned through 100s of forgotten souls unsuccessfully trying to get that last missing piece via set conversion. Having a 7 piece set makes that so much easier. The conundrum I often run into is how long should I wait before attempting to convert? Let’s say I have 6 pieces of GoD and 5 pieces of Natalya and no RoRG. Do I wait to get the 6th Natalya piece and then convert Natalya which has a higher chance for uniques with 7 pieces? Or convert GoD but have a higher chance of failing while also burning through all my forgotten souls?
You’re correct. 90% though I’d still say is worth it. Still, you should easily be able to handle T7 with a fairly low LoD and several pieces of legendary gear.
It’s definitely going to be faster if you can convert. Once you have your 6 piece, the Forgotten Souls will drop like crazy.
It’s slightly over 3 runs on average, but that assumes equal weight. It also will take 15 full Acts of bounties to collect every recipe.
True, Monk & DH will be far faster. DH though is pretty awful until you get a set or a Yang’s, whereas Monk + Crudest works pretty well with LoD. DH is also horrible to level with without a Cache, unless you use the HoA1 Blades. Even if you leveled up with a Necro, you’d still be blowing a ton of Death’s Breath on getting a Lord Greenstone’s Fan to make leveling semi-bearable, whereas it’s going to be faster to get blood shards to get Crudest Boots.
Correct. Remember, you’re not just converting one piece. You’re going to have multiple pieces to convert. Even with 6 pieces, most likely you’ll have 3 unique pieces, and 3 duplicates. To complete your 6 piece, you’re talking on average needing 7 conversions for a 6 piece set vs 5 conversions for a 7 piece set, assuming equal weight.
So, rather than trying to go into theory here, let’s look at a real season.
Since last season had terrible sets, a lot of people went into LoD. The first half of the video are the leaderboards of every class SSF/Non SSF at the 3 hour mark on Asia.
At 3 hours into the season, the highest DH clear was a GR24, and that was SSF & Non SSF. That’s not even T6. You had two SSF monks who were GR40+.
14 DH’s vs 20 Monks on the solo GR leaderboards at that point in time.
But, let’s look at the leaderboard at 55 minutes into the season.
https://i.imgur.com/YFOX9BJ.png
There were at least 6 DHs who were Level 60 or above. Two hours later, and the highest any of them got was GR24. That’s just how slow the beginning of the season is.
The second half of the video is my gear at the 3.5 hour mark, when I went to switch over to my Wizard. I stripped everything off my Necromancer, so you’re seeing every piece of gear I had. I would have had a grand total of 36 Forgotten Souls had I salvaged everything at 3.5 hours into the season. (And at this point, I didn’t enchant a single piece of gear.)
Also, just in comparison to the Americas server:
https://i.imgur.com/D64SeY5.png
These are the achievement points on Asia at the 2h5m mark compared to Americas at the 2h15m mark. I quit on Americas pretty much after the completion of Sprinter.
Full Americas Season Start, with the achievement leaderboard at the end:
While I didn’t include the Greater Rift leaderboards, Asia was ahead of Americas on the achievements by a fair margin, so normalizing, Americas would most likely be behind the Asia GRs. You gain a ton of achievements through completing the first 4 chapters, and at this point in the season, LoD is not going to beat a 6 piece, which will require the first 4 chapters.
The point of all of this is, it’s not going to go nearly as fast as you think it’s going to go. Getting a 6 piece within 5-6 hours is going to be extremely fast.
I never have been good at statistics :). But yeah those are both good points. And for the former point, I’ll have to decide just how important QoL (auto salvaging) is for me compared to getting a 6 piece set as quickly as possible. It’s such an incredible pain (and time consuming) picking up everything and teleporting back to town every 2 visions floors. I might be willing to take some risks depending on the RNG of drops. For example, if I have 5 set pieces already and limited forgotten souls, I’d hold off on unlocking the nodes, but if I have only 2 or 3 set pieces and 100 forgotten souls, I might be willing to risk using 50 of them to unlock up to node 8 since there is a decent chance I will have enough forgotten souls for set conversions by the time I get to 5 or 6 pieces of a set, so it’s matter of risk/reward/QoL.
Yeah, I am strongly considering Monk for the very reasons you are mentioning and if “Years of War” were one of the conquests, I’d most likely go with Monk first. When I leveled with a DH in S28, it didn’t feel too bad given I could wear all level 70 gear. My main concerns with Monk are:
With the exception of Inna (which I only have a ~20% chance of obtaining before any other Monk set, maybe higher because it has 7 instead of 6 pieces), the DH sets require less supporting legendaries and thus it’s more likely that whichever set I obtain first will be ready with a complete build sooner than for Monk.
Once I have a full speed build, I’ll be much slower with Monk (Inna or WoL) than DH (GoD). I know they are all S-tier for speed content, but I am terrible at dashing strike (constantly bumping into curves and windowless walls, zig zagging, etc) and am much faster with GoD. So the question would be what takes longer? Gearing up to any 6 piece followed by gearing up to a full speed build, or completing all the conquests and achievements once I have the speed build? I’ve never actually attempted a 100% season achievement score before so I’m not sure.
There is a ~27% chance I strike out on Crudest boots with 475 blood shards from the CR, and if that happens, given my lack of experience with Monks, I’d rather go with a DH, which has a 100% chance of upgrading into a good dagger (I don’t mind Karlei’s, especially given I’ll reach level 28 for the overpenetration rune in a minute or two); and I’ll upgrade a weapon no matter what because I’ll want as many legendaries as possible to go with my LoD (granted a dagger doesn’t have as much DPS as a 2 handed bow). I also think quivers are a decent gamble or upgrade as there are 4 out of 9 strong quivers.
It took me about 7 hours when I did a dry run in S29, and that’s without the “no level requirement” from the altar. I thought that was pretty slow, but your comment here plus the leaderboards you shared (congrats on your rankings btw :)) makes me feel better about that result. Granted that was game time, but real time was longer due to game restarts, breaks, etc. However, visions drop rates will probably be lower in S30 (if the PTR is any indication) so whatever speed I gain from the “no level req” may be offset by the lower drop rates. OTOH, soul shards may speed things up.
I wouldnt bother crafting legendaries at the blacksmith to fill slots for the LoD bonus, just upgrade yellows- even if you dont get the actual piece you need for your build, you’ll get a better leggo than the BS pattern anyway, worst case you get an item for the cube.
I like to start out with the sages set you get automatically at 70 and get some DBs comin in, until i get enough leggos to put the sages on my follower.
Still, for a filler you can use the lvl 60 leg item recipes, they still count for LoD bonus, and if I remember correctly, they are relatively cheap to craft.
So, the issue here is that while it’s true the DH takes fewer items to gear up, almost every build requires a Dawn and Yangs. There have been seasons I haven’t gotten either (my season tends to end once I complete Guardian). But since you stated you’re going after 100% achievement score, you might not need to worry about it.
As far as speed goes, one trick for the monk is to gamble swords with the DH. There’s a huge chance you’ll get an Ingeom. This will help early speed for monk, and much better odds than getting a Yang’s or Danetta’s set. As far as speed goes, you’re not slower with a monk. You just have far less control, so it feels slower. With a speed build on a monk, I can complete Boss Mode in 8-9 minutes. But you have 20 minutes. That gives plenty of room for error. Plus, you don’t need a full speed build. If you feel more comfortable though with a DH, go for it.
Though, if TinneOnnMuin is browsing these forums, he might be a better person to advise on the road to 2100. I believe he hit 2100 in 18 hours of play time, and it was all SSF.
This is one of the reasons I prefer to dual class level. I prefer consistency.
True, you can completely strike out with the monk, and Rivera Dancers aren’t as nice. To me though, Karlei’s is also striking out. Because with Rivera Dancers or no item for the monk, or Karlei’s for the DH, I’m able to get my Necro to 70 and alt class to 70 in the time it just takes the alt class to hit 70. True, if I get Crudest for the Monk or LGF for the DH, I’m golden.
Thanks.
One thing I’ve learned, pay little attention to what people say in terms of how long things take, unless they have proof. When I listen to people on just what they say, half of this forum and reddit crush me to 70. That’s why I post all these images and videos, because it’s the reality of what actually happens, not what people think happens.
And while practice is necessary to getting a good speed, practice runs are a terrible judge.
This was run on Live, not the PTR, so I didn’t get double massacre bonuses. Slightly under 30 minutes 1-70.
The fastest time though anyone hit 70 in Season 28? 38 minutes, and that’s all classes. When you exclude Season 22 & 28, only 5 people have ever leveled to 70 in under 50 minutes. One person has accomplished this 3x, two have accomplished it twice, and two have accomplished it once. Only a handful of people have even just beaten an hour leveling to 70.
Yes, classic is to go for odd pieces from crafted sets and bracers malth can drop (worst case you only get recepie).
Problem is lod requires lod gem to be lvled up to gain power and without anc pieces you dont get any extra toughness (maybe not a huge deal in sc), so even a bad 6 piece usually outshine lod.
run a bunch of GRs that you can clear fast… take the shards… just gamble gloves. you will get set gloves like crazy, then cube to convert what i do every season
Do you have a video run of this? I couldn’t find one when I looked through your YouTube channel. And now that we can wear level 70 gear during the leveling process, does it still make that much of a difference?
Let me amend that statement. I’m talking time to Haedrig’s Gift ready, not just 1-70 ready. Because I’ll level up my alt with bounties, as you really can’t cut down bounty time. But you can hit 70 doing bounties.
Level 70 gear really only matters 1-50. 50+, it’s mainly for survival. You’re not going to be taking down bosses in higher difficulties, so it’s a question of, when you reach Level 67, do you want to start running bounties on Normal/Hard then. You’re still going to have to get to 67 normally though.
(In other words, dual classing, you can level an entire character 1-70 in the Chapter 3 bounties, because you’ll most likely have cubed items as well as an LoD, vs starting the character normally, where you have to level normally, and can’t touch bounties until 67+. Thus, the alt character doesn’t actually have much of a time investment, because you’re doing something you’d have to do anyway.)
I usually use maxroll.gg to see what slot has the fewest items in it and then spend bloodshards to keep getting the item over and over and converting it into another piece of the set…seems to work very well for me mostly
