breaks added sorry about that
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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.
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I prefer the original leveling where you stop at some point… i don’t like infinite stuff…
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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.
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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. 
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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.
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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.
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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).
disrespectful to whom? Which part in my post I said I didn’t play the game?
When a new season comes out, hardcore players kill competitions within days. They play 12 hours a day in groups of 4 and do exactly what needs to be done to be as efficient as possible. The famous “town is lava”, which means to go as quickly as possible between two rifts.
You won’t see someone with 600 paragons beating a 150 rift. It’s just math. Skills are important, optimization is important, and paragons are just as necessary.
At some point, the way you play won’t change, and only increasing your character’s power will have an impact on your performance. This is the downside of Diablo’s end game. It’s a never-ending race for power.
dang!!! ok that dude is really coordinated…I will try that style on some LOW rifts see if I can get the hang of it, I had actually given up using Spear as it didn’t seem all that useful to me compared to the shout I put in place for more defense.
But as I said, I had just completed a new record for me 110 in 8:58 with my non-season barb, 3063 para, yaddayaddayadda seems pretty pitiful compared to the talent/skill level of most of the players. Same for my flavor of the month necro, the overpowered class this season, woohoo a 120, oh btw the rest of the world is 16 + level rifts higher!! but only @ 1770 para for season
I will have to work on playstyle as that seems to be the BIGGEST issue I have, other than comprehending some other factors which I have yet to hammer out. Perhaps it’s a good thing there is no new “flavor of the month” this coming season, I can try to work on just playstyle skills etc and not worry about the “next big thing”.
Please feel free to add any more constructive criticism, it’s all taken to heart as I really am trying to improve my game.
Paragons are not the end all be all of those higher tier clears.
Map layout is important, having an open area map where you can group monsters up will help your clear times greatly. Then there is pylon placement is another. Then skill at playing the build. Having good monsters that are easy to kill that doesn’t have any crazy affixes like Juggernaut. Also knowing how to play the build properly. Knowing when to skip certain mobs.
So some of the above amounts to luck. The right map that wouldn’t have any back tracking. Good monsters to beat. Good pylon placement.
You are not an average player if you learn’t how to play this game by watching videos on youtube. An average player learns to play a game by playing it.
You do know some of the best Diablo III players in the world do Twitch streams / YouTube, right? Why is it a problem if players get tips from them?
Indeed. I’ve been saying that for a while. Some people seem to think a high paragon gives players some strange magical abilty to clear high GRs with ease. That is not the case.
My classic example:
Let’s assume a player with 2k paragon has 20k main stat from all sources combined. He suddenly gains 4k more paragons (to the total of 6k), doubling the main stat to 40k. What happens to damage output? It doubles! That’s 5GRs difference! Further 4k paragons to total of 10k only increases damage by 50%.
Note that example only considers damage output. Main stat also provides mitigation which does also play a part.
The top clears are a combination of mostly just having correct tilesets, monster types and densities, and skill. Paragon contributes but it can not substitute any of the other factors.
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Hey add me , we can do o.o sometime