ok possibly a re-hash but… (short personal history I have been playing since D1, D2 (also Eastern Sun mod) D3 since start). I FINALLY just a few minutes ago finished a 120 in 9:44…personal best EVER…BUT ya I know it sucks, so this annoys me greatly.
A few seasons ago I watched Cratic’s videos about the Wizzy and clearing a GR 100 in @ 2.5 minutes. He was kind enough to accept a friend request and take some personal time(GREATLY appreciated) to check my gear, give me a couple pointers etc. Now… granted I have heard he is one of the best Wizard players in the world but even at season end, with 3 time the paragons, pretty good gear all augmented (wizzy named Chelan) the BEST I could do was @ 3:45ish for a GR 100!!!
Now I know I do NOT have near the skills as him and perhaps age has something to do with it, I am 65, yes 65 not a typo, but after reading many threads about how EASY it is to get to 150 etc, etc, how fast people get to 70 and so forth, WTF am I missing, is there some trick or way of playing I am missing??? The thought of soloing a 150… NEVER gonna happen… why!!! you tell me,
This season, 136 necros cleared 150, less than 10 all other classes combined. so… without ever having run any rifts with me etc to analyze playstyle… is it all about the paragons?!? or what can I do, watch, learn from to skill up. YEARS of playing and yup… still sucking wind so any constructive criticism, pointer, hints would be appreciated.
I guess it depends what you define as skill. The 1-70 race and the high GR race are typically less about skill per se, but rather knowledge of the game. And it’s a slight difference, though, some people might consider the latter to be skill.
What I mean is, you mentioned how necromancers pretty much dominate the 150. Having an equivalent skill in, let’s say, Witch Doctor, might not get you nearly that high. Thus, it’s about knowledge of the necromancer class, and how that knowledge can exploit the game in order to get high clears. Skill in my opinion should be equivalent across all classes. That skill might help a DH play 10 higher GR levels than a lesser skilled DH, but that lesser skilled DH might be able to play 10 higher levels if they were a necromancer.
What paragons do is allow an offset needed for the skill or knowledge to the game. They buy you a buffer, which allows for more mistakes.
It’s not so much skill (though there’s plenty of skill involved) but a style of play. A lot of players hit a mob of monsters, kill them, move on to the next mob, kill them, and so on. That’s the natural style of play, the one we learn from the first moment we start playing Diablo. But it will only get you so far. To clear a GR150, it takes another style of play completely and it can be very counter-intuitive to the way you learned how to play the game.
Say you’re playing a necromancer. What you’ll do is run (and teleport) around like crazy after finding yourself an ideal map (one with monster density). You’ll pull them into a massive pack, with some elite mobs mixed in, cursing them as you go. Then, when the moment is right (near a pylon, your CoE is on the right element, your standing in a circle of damage from your follower, your Land of the Dead comes off cooldown, etc.) you nuke them. It becomes a game of survival until you meet the conditions of the slaughter.
This is why things like cooldown reduction and area damage are so coveted on the top builds. This is why you hear about ideal maps and mob types. It’s a game within the game.
I can’t really help out on the GR side of things, because I don’t play past the season journey, but I have focused on the 1-70 race, and have managed to take Rank 1 at some point on Opening Day, every season since season 15.
A couple of times I never got the item I was after from Kadala at the start of the season. A couple times, I leveled up to 70 much slower than expected. But it really came down to a couple things. The strategy being used, and how many breaks you take. Under absolutely perfect play, with a perfect RNG, which is never going to happen, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is possible to go from 1-70 in roughly 19 minutes. Mind you, that’s perfect play, in that it’s never going to happen. At this point in time, I average roughly 45 minutes 1-70. What I have noticed though, is that 15-20 minutes of that is dead time.
I’d expect the same to translate over to GRs. Fish for the perfect rifts, and have a strategy that can be applied. The skill involved is applying the strategy. But the strategy alone can help offset a lot of other factors.
Most people bot, and are rewarded with thousands of mainstat skill points.
At Paragon 6,000 - 7,000, those 25,000 mainstat points overpower any actual trivial skill a player has.
Gear
You need the right affixes, with good values. A well-rolled legendary can beat a badly rolled ancient, or even a primal.
Augments
Get some Caldesann’s Despair on there.
Paragon Levels
More main stat = more damage and mitigation.
Maps / Mobs / Pylons
This is where fishing comes in. Which maps you’re after, and which mob types you favour, might depend upon which build you’re playing but generally big open maps where you can kite mobs around until you have lots of elites together are desirable versus tight corridors / caves / things with doorways or sharp corners. You also want the right pylons, at the right stage, e.g. a nice Conduit when you have half a dozen elite packs next to it, a Power for the boss (or maybe a Shield if it’s a boss that might one-shot you with a mechanic).
Player Skill / Knowledge / Experience
Knowing when to abandon a run. Knowing how to move mobs around a map. Knowing when to stay and finish off a pack versus kiting it to more trash versus just leaving it behind completely, going down a map level to see if there’s a pylon and coming back up with the power to kill an elite pack, and so.
I tend to solo push GRs (I’ve never been a fan of the 4-man META thing) and when I get clearances on the leaderboards I tend to have a look at the clearances +/- 10 places from mine and look at their paragon. Quite often I’ll see players with better clears than mine with less paragon than me, but I’ll also see players with worse clears than mine with more paragon than me.
The higher you push, the more it becomes about maps / mobs / pylons / experience. I’ve gotten a leaderboard clearance with around 4K paragon (non-seasonal) where I was beating players with 6.5K
Having said all that, even if you magically granted my non-seasonal heroes 10K paragon, I don’t think there’s any way I’d get a GR150 solo on my WW/Rend Barb as I’m under no illusion that I’d have the skill level to pull that sort of thing off.
Highest I’ve done on live is a GR129, and I just posted a GR130 on the PTR.
I’m happy with that.
guess my goal of ever making the leaderboards is not going to happen. I play solo 99% of the time, try to help older siblings the best I can with my limited skills.
I am thinking that it must be more my playstyle than any other particular reason or combination of all areas I lack. I am not the best at kiting mobs/groups even in open maps as I tend to run into another mob or get stuck and have to fight my way out at that point, unless I have a teleport/blood rush/etc up.
I am noticing currently how long it takes to kill elites (necro with decent gear augmented at 110 and 1750 para) so the idea of kiting until I get a group of elites seems suicidal to me. WW/Rend Barb needs better augments nut only cleared a 105 in season.
Is it a practice thing to get the kiting down or just past my skill level to re-learn this playstyle?!?! The ww/rend barb may be the easiest?!?! to kite with due to more freedom of movement so get from point a to b to c easier or is there more involved with it than that??
Never have been one to try and “farm” a particular rift type as you never know what the next floor is anyway, 1st floor may be the festering woods or battlefields of eternity, next may very well be a cave or dungeon anyway so… what’s the point of trying to fish for a particular rift to start!!!
thanks in advance for more tips/help… I would really love to get better just not seeing something… unsure what.
With 100 or so less paragon than you have, I cleared a solo GR128 on my WW/Rend Barb… https://i.imgur.com/7gN2Mdz.jpg
You might find this a useful read…
You’ll find numerous Barbs only too happy to offer advice / answer questions you might have. Currently discussion in there is surrounding which follower to take to be most effective solo after Patch 2.7.0’s follower changes hit live.
The higher you go with WW/Rend Barb, the more you need to group up big packs of mobs. Players that are newer to the build underestimate what this means, in terms of numbers of mobs. We’re talking about multiple screens-worth of trash mobs, and preferably 3-4 elite packs. You drag them with you using Ancient Spear / Rage Flip, and then clump them up tightly using Ground Stomp. Ideally you want to drag them right up to a nicely placed Conduit circuit and melt the lot of them. Also when you manually cast Rend, those Rends benefit from Area Damage (which is why Ground Stomp pulling lots of mobs into you, to maximise the number of mobs you can hit with it is important) whereas the auto-cast ones from Ambo’s Pride do not.
Rule of thumb… if you have less than 200 trash mobs in the pack, get more.
I’m not a wizard player and I generally play DH and WD in a terrible fashion, I barely can clear GR100 as I never have augments at all, so take my advice as a grain of salt.
When I look at top of the leader board to other Wizards and Necros, I can’t help but notice that they do not socket topaz and amethyst gems at their equipment but rubies for more armor so they can have more mitigation benefit. That’s a start. When I look at your build it feels like you lack damage mitigation while you can have more.
Also I suggest you to pay attention to other Wizards’ equipments at the leader boards. Sometimes people think the optimization is limited at primary stats and never pay attention to the secondary affixes but top players intentionally pick, optimize and use their items for every bit that might help them. Most of the time you’ll see physical resistance to be highly favored among single resistance affixes besides less damage taken from melee/ranged at their equipment.
Now let’s get past that. Your target of soloing GR150, greatly depends on what your main Set is capable of, and the current seasonal theme. Developers choose to tip the scales with Seasonal themes only, which is your only chance to hit GR150 if your class is not capable.
If you look at the leaderboards, you’ll see solo non-seasonal Wizards only clear GR143 and at seasonal they clear GR150. That 7 GR tier gap closed by nothing other than seasonal theme, because Wizards that barely cleared GR143 non-seasonal have 11k paragon levels with 150 rank augments. Compared to that seasonal Wizards cleared GR150 with 130-140 rank augments and 9k paragon.
A seven tier gap means monsters will have 3 times more health and hit 20% harder, while it doesn’t seem much, the hectic combat can knock you out easily when you’re surrounded.
To summarize it all; open a notebook and take notes which affixes and sockets the leader boards favor for your favorite class and move from there. Best of luck in seasons.
One thing to be wary of, when comparing a low paragon hero to a high paragon hero is that the low paragon hero might not be able to take the same gearing options and/or skill choices that the high paragon player can.
Using a Barb as an example, their main stat is Strength, which also gives Armour, which is mitigation. At very high Strength levels, enough Armour will be gained that they could potentially drop the Band of Might (which gives 80% damage mitigation) and include an offensive option instead such as the Convention of Elements. Try that with a lower paragon Barb and they’ll be dead real quick.
So, you might be better off comparing against heroes on the leaderboards with similar paragon levels to your own heroes.
ok went to non-season WW/Rend barb to try something(Hallertau, currently 3063 para, augments from 100-112) just had personal best for a 110 at 8:58 with 1 death. Pretty poor showing, better maps maybe could do 1-1.5 minutes less??
Sorry don’t know how to do the quote thing from Meteorblade’s comments above about dragging mobs etc, I ran a bunch of GR100 just to remember the Barb playstyle, I was trying the drag/kite thing, best I could do on trash was @ 50-60 and MAYBE 2 yellow/blue packs/elites.
Obviously I do not comprehend the kite/drag thing?!?!?! that come with practice or luck of the Rift floor?? Also as you had cleared a 128 with at this point @ HALF the paragons, I can only assume I truly do suck and be pleased with my current season necro clear of a 120 and call it a day and forget ever making leaderboards for ANY class season or non.
I find this very frustrating to be unable to achieve something that so many people think is so easy as to be a joke. Not looking for a solo 150 clear, just be able to make the boards either season or non at like 990 or something with any class!!! Not trying to be the best at anything just less than garbage at something. If any of you are real bored and want to check my toons, my “best” are Chelan- wizzy, Hallertau- Barb, Rakau-necro, have an ok monk and crusader but I don’t think either has broken GR 100
Ancient Spear
Throw a spear that pierces enemies and deals 500% weapon damage.
Rage Flip
Add a chain to the spear to throw all enemies hit behind you and Slow them by 60% for 1 second.
This is what allows a Barb to move mobs around the map. You can spear mobs that are a full screen-length away to right behind you. Let’s say you’re spinning from left to right, you can throw the spear behind you, and pull all the mobs the chain hits to the right of of you, i.e. to where you’re going.
Here’s an example of the sort of spearwork I’m on about…
Around 7 minutes 50 seconds in, he hits a Festering Woods map.
Look at how much of the map he pulls into one spot, using spear / stomps.
Around 9-10 minutes in, that’s what Barbs mean when we say density.
At 10 minutes 30 seconds, see how far behind the timer he is.
Then look how far ahead he gets when he pops the Conduit and melts everything.
One thing to bear in mind, this video shows a Season 21 clearance, where the season theme was even stronger than this season’s, but it’s still a very good clear for showing how to move mobs about and pylon management.
I leant most of the skills by watching youtube - there are many good channels that show you not only the gear setup but also how to use the skills.
I consider myself an average player, but managed to put all the 5 heros I played this season on leaderboard with my sub 2k paragon. It isn’t that hard as it sounds.
You cant come here starting with “i learn’t this from youtube”. It is very disrespectful. Actually play the game please. Like each series from the start (i wish i played vanilla D1).
