When does augmenting start to become worth the resources? Like what gem level should i be/what rift level does it start being necessary?
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in my opinion, dont bother augmenting anything less than a level 100 gem.
99 is okay if the gem caps out at 99.
augmenting becomes neccesary around GR100-110 depending on what build youre playing.
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When you have decent items to augment. There is no harm in augmenting items. You can repeat it as many times as you want.
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As for the corollary, when does diminishing returns in augmenting start to slow progression?
First time? Season Journey Conqueror Chapter:
After that:
Because:
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Man you come up with some ridiculous posts.
There is no optimal time, some players dont AUG anything all season cause they simply dont play enough, some only Aug 100+ and go from there. It really depends how much experience the player has and how much time investment you are going to put into the game
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Kinda surprised they aren’t asking for it to be nerfed, aren’t you?
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LOL , please NERF Augmenting . Its makes your character more powerful and is to OP 
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Imo best time is when you get a max roll or close to max roll ancient version of the item that has rolled all the mods you want/need, and start with a level 50 gem. It’s a nice boost to tide you over until you can grind out level 100 gems and then replace the augment with that.
If you manage to get a primal piece then definitely augment it with a 100 gem asap even if it’s not perfectly rolled, primals are a big bump up in damage and survivability so you should aim to use them asap.
I’d say the best time to augment your gear is around three thirty in the afternoon, whilst drinking a nice hot mug of tea and eating a biscuit.
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Well its fairly resource intensive. Requires a lot of gems and leveling a gem to 50, augmenting, then leveling it to 75, augmenting is much slower than simply waiting until you have the first one to 75. So i’m asking when augments become “necessary” for progression
I would say they become necessary when you can’t beat the Grift you’re trying to run efficiently. If that’s around 100 or 90 doesn’t matter. You could augment a few pieces at a time and bump up a few levels until you get better gear then augment a few more.
I prefer a cold beer but to each their own. Cheers! 
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For me, it’s all about time efficiency and my goals. It’s a factor of how much I intend to play in the season and how many characters I intend to augment. Plus the GR level I can clear efficiently. Different classes and different players will clear different levels at different speeds, so it’s a bit of a sliding scale depending on where you are at.
And obviously this will change if you farm solo vs. in groups, but as I farm almost 100% solo, I’ll give you a solo example roughly based on my farming. I sorta just made these numbers up, so feel free to plug in your own clear times.
Let’s say you can clear GR100 in 3 minutes, GR105 in 4.5 minutes, GR110 in 6 minutes, GR115 in 9 minutes, and GR120 in 12 minutes. Then let’s factor in about 45 seconds for gem upgrading + porting + town time. Then another minute per GR key farmed (say you farm a T16 rift in 3 minutes plus about 30 seconds close time, so 3.5 minutes total per T16 rift for 3.5 keys on average = 1 minute per GR key farmed). So we add 45 seconds of upgrade/port/town time plus 1 minute GR key farming time to your actual GR clear time to get your effective GR farming rate.
That means our effective time per GR is:
| GR | Rift Time | Rift + Upgrade/Town + GR Key Time |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 3:00 | 4:45 |
| 105 | 4:30 | 6:15 |
| 110 | 6:00 | 7:45 |
| 115 | 9:00 | 10:45 |
| 120 | 12:00 | 13:45 |
We’ll also assume you empower every rift and don’t die, so 5 upgrade chances per rift. And that you don’t bother to run below GR100 to avoid tanking your XP/hour.
And we’ll assume you do 100%s the whole way except to level from 110 to 120. And note that to take a gem from 10 levels below to your current GR level up to your GR level it takes ~3 rifts on average. So for example, to take a gem from 110 to 120 running just 120s:
| GR | Gem Start | Gem End | Upgrade Chance | E(rifts) w/ 5 chances/rift |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 120 | 110 | 111 | 100% | 0.20 |
| 120 | 111 | 112 | 90% | 0.22 |
| 120 | 112 | 113 | 80% | 0.25 |
| 120 | 113 | 114 | 70% | 0.29 |
| 120 | 114 | 115 | 60% | 0.33 |
| 120 | 115 | 116 | 60% | 0.33 |
| 120 | 116 | 117 | 60% | 0.33 |
| 120 | 117 | 118 | 60% | 0.33 |
| 120 | 118 | 119 | 60% | 0.33 |
| 120 | 119 | 120 | 60% | 0.33 |
| Total Rifts | 2.96 |
Note that, if it’s not intuitive, the expected number of upgrade attempts to get a single upgrade success with p chance of success is just 1/p. And since you get 5 chances per rift, the expected number of rifts per single upgrade success is just 1/(p*5).
So the amount of time it takes to level a gem to different levels, with these assumptions:
Gem to 90: 85.5 minutes (18x GR100)
Gem to 100: 99.5 minutes (18x GR100, 1x GR105, 1x GR110)
Gem to 110: 124 minutes (18x GR100, 1x GR105, 1x GR110, 1x GR 115, 1x GR120)
Gem to 120: 165 minutes (18x GR100, 1x GR105, 1x GR110, 1x GR 115, 4x GR120)
You can see that it doesn’t take very long at all to get a gem up to the GR level you can speedfarm in ~3 minutes. But it takes significantly longer to take a gem up to closer to your solo max, let’s say whatever rift level you can run reliably in about 12 minutes without risking a fail (failing a rift on a gem upgrade run is pretty inefficient unless you have craploads of time on your hands).
A full set of 13 level 120 augments would take 35.75 hours at this rate. Whereas a full set of 13 level 100 augments would take 21.56 hours. You could farm almost an entire additional set of level 100 auguments in the time it would take you to farm a set of level 120 augments, e.g. it takes about the same amount of time to farm 21-22 level 100 augments as it does to farm 13 level 120 augments.
Now we can see that 13 120 augments is 7800 mainstat on a single character, whereas 22 level 100 augments is 6500 mainstat on your first character and 4500 mainstat on a second character. That’s 11,000 total mainstat across two characters. Obviously if you only care about a single character, 7800 mainstat is better than 6500 mainstat. But if you intend to play multiple characters and don’t have infinite amounts of time, 22 level 100 augments is significantly more mainstat overall. So you can see that if you want to augment multiple characters, you can get more mainstat per time by making more lower augments faster, but if you want to max out a single character, you are better off taking the time to get a smaller number of augments to a higher level.
So my recommendation would change depending on how much time you have available or how many characters you intend to augment:
- Short on time or want to augment lots of characters? Your augment level should be around the GR level you can clear in 3-5 minutes. For me, that’s about GR100, but YMMV.
- Medium amount of time or augmenting a couple of characters? Your augment level should be around the GR level you can clear in 5-8 minutes. For me, that’s about GR110, but YMMV.
- Lots of time or just want to max out a single character as much as possible? Your augment level should be the max GR you can reliably clear without failing, e.g. something you can reliably clear in ~12 minutes on an average map without risking a fail on a bad map. For me, that’s about GR120, but YMMV.
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Have an up-vote for clarity, explanation and maths.
Please nerf augment because we already have a +5 main stat system
Better yet, please remove +5 main stat from paragon, as the augmenting system is a much more engaging +5 main stat system!
For the people speed-running GR150s, that have 750 stat augments on all their gear, it’s no longer engaging. What do you do to make your hero more powerful once it’s already got rank 150 caldesann’s on every item?
Aug your BOT and zClasses with 150s 
LOL
Grind GR 150 for EXP to ramp up that paragon! There’s your way to get UNLIMITED POWER!!!
Or just work on a different build. Not necessarily more power, but it’s a way to get more power for a different playstyle.
Damn… I can’t top that answer! 
Anyway…
For me it’s when the going is starting to get hard…
And, ok, I will confess I am a bad player, I am old, I dont care!.. it’s around GR90, hence my first augment is often level 8x gem…