I know life's not fair, and that comparing my life to others' just invites misery. But I still feel bummed about my efficiency.
In his Suggestions for D3 video linked on the FP the other day, Alkaizer mentions that his S3 Barb is already p700 and has all perfect Ancient Leg gear, etc. And there was that team that got the Season 2 HC GR 35 clear achievement within 13 hours. I feel like there's this huge, uncross-able gap between folks like those who can happily start farming 40-50B XP per hour (along with the blood shards, leg drops, etc. that implies) ... and me. I have one toon, my non-season wizdog, with 400 hours invested and I just got to where I can almost handle T6 solo, with Unity and invincible follower.
So yaya, L2P n00b, but I find myself wondering why it's taken me so long to get here if other players are going twice as far in 3% of the time? RNGesus is only part of the story, surely?
Are you playing solo? currently there is huge gap between solo and group play. You can gear up and get experience faster by playing in a group which is really what sets the guys you mentioned apart from the rest of the people. Well that and the fact that they are indeed really good at the game in terms of figuring out the best builds and gear combos.
Another aspect is loot share groups where you team up with 3 other Wizards and work on gearing each other up. So you basically have 4 times the chance of completing your set or getting that elusive Wand of Woh, Serpents Sparker,etc. This is how they get into T6 after just a few hours of farming T1. Basically funnel all the best gear to one guy and then have him carry the rest through T6.
I think they don't do lootshare. They work around synergy.
So, the best way to start from nothing: Level to 70 in an efficient way (I think halls lvl3 was the fastest way?).
Make a party with:
- Crusader. He can give a ton of crit damage, crit chance, attackspeed and some crowd control.
- Monk. He gives a lot of extra damage buffs, survivability (for crusader and himself), crowd control and group things up.
- 2 DH/Wiz. They are your DPSers. With crusader and monk being tanks, and them being ranged, they can go full glass canon. Just stack as much DPS they can, getting their damage doubled/trippled.
Do grifts as soon as possible. Legendary gems drop even at level 1. Pain enhancer/toxic gems are huge damage when you run around in yellow gear/random legendaries. Bott and zei's also work great on the DPSers, even if they are level 1.
This way, even without legendaries, they can push T2-3 when they hit 70, pushing it up to T6 in no time because of the high dropchances. And you don't need your sets in this setup to do it semi-efficient.
Solo play is the worst you can do in this game, if you go for efficiency. Mob damage doesn't go up in group play. Mob health increases by 50% for each extra player, up to 250% in a 4 party game. Requirements stay the same (5 bounties for a cache, 4 uber portals for a hellfire amulet, ...).
And as OP mentioned, once you get your basic set, you start paragon farming in grifts. While 40-50b per hour is hard (even with end game builds I think it is only possible on a monk), even at 25b per hour it goes really fast. (I think Gabynator did lvl 0-70 and 500 paragon in 1 day, after getting rolled back for bloodshard exploit).
TL;DR: Get a monk with full XP gear, look for a group to run grift 35-40 with, gamble on your main char.
Playing 20 hours a day has nothing to do with efficiency, only speeding it up But yeah, if you don't, it might be hard to get accepted in a group. Saw a post in general chat today looking for speedgrift, minimum P800, in season...
and I just got to where I can almost handle T6 solo
With your gear i could easily do grift 40 ... - in combination with the reward coming along side..
What are you doing? and why dont you have a tal rasha set after 700 paragon levels ? ( it was available before patch already )
You dont have a strongarms for blackhole?
With that gear you should just need to cast blizzard on some mobs in t6 and continue walking to the next mobs.. how can you call that "almost handle t6 solo" ... you would roflstamp it...
Thanks for your feedback. I mostly play public groups but the coordination is terrible. Loot sharing sounds really smart but is also one of those things probably limited to trusted friends or at least clanmates.
I think they don't do lootshare. They work around synergy.
TL;DR: Get a monk with full XP gear, look for a group to run grift 35-40 with, gamble on your main char.
Thanks for your feedback. As I expected, coordination with a zDPS is where it's at. Also a tremendous amount of class knowledge to facilitate quick decision making ... de rigueur for ARPGs I guess but the amount of time I have had to spend on the forums and watching YouTube is easily double my play time and I am still behind, even considering just the Wizard meta.
Playing 20 hours a day has nothing to do with efficiency, only speeding it up But yeah, if you don't, it might be hard to get accepted in a group. Saw a post in general chat today looking for speedgrift, minimum P800, in season...
See, I know I'm not going to join Vizjerai or anything but I'd like to play with a dedicated-even-if-we-aren't-"competitive" group that can set things up like this. At least wiz is at least somewhat acceptable in GR groups now but with the crapshoot that is public groups I'm not getting anywhere fast. I've always had to set up my gear balancing damage and toughness, it's a whole 'nother game if that consideration goes out the window.
and I just got to where I can almost handle T6 solo
What are you doing? and why dont you have a tal rasha set after 700 paragon levels ? ( it was available before patch already )
You dont have a strongarms for blackhole?
Thanks for your feedback. Until the last week of S2 I was running a WoW/Mirrorball build that I could do T3-4/GR22 with. Then I finally got my Furnace. That and my first decent FB pieces immediately jumped me to where I am now, GR36-38 solo. The reason I say struggle in T6 is because when I group to farm A1 bounties for RoRG (we used to do this on Normal, now everyone's on T6!), without my Templar the mobs chew me up pretty fast (all 3 lives, yup). Also it takes me a loooong time to kill Keywardens until a DH pops in to one-shot them. Even solo. So, yup.
If I ever saw Strongarm bracers drop, I sure didn't know it. Then again I salvaged lots of gear before I had any idea of the potential synergies. I'm only p414, mostly because of my OP ... not feeling very efficient at all man. I have a Tal Rasha set but it's crap rolled? Part of what I guess I underestimate about builds is the set bonuses. I didn't use my FB for a long time because the pieces I found were shit compared to the non-set legs I had gathered. Of course I can try putting on my TR set and do a few grifts but I don't really have high hopes for that.
In any case I don't know if that would solve the issue that finding gear and leveling is taking me forever and it's killing my motivation for this spreadsheet game.
I would say that the main problem with your "wizdog" is not the efficiency but person that is playing it... By checking your wizard you clearly don't know what are you doing which is quite impressive in the Internet age...
You have bad rolls on several pieces of gear. You don't understand that Wizard don't benefit from All resist but you need Armor on gear... WTF is that blizzard reroll on chest and blizzard on shoulders? You need hydra as it's main source of damage for you except for the 6th piece bonus. You need socket on RoRG! Legendary gem will boost your damage far beyond 6 critical hit chance. If you are using black hole the only choice for bracers is Strongarms... Lastly loose the Furnace and get ancient devastator+ancient firebirds offhand. Way more damage then from Furnace and you won't need RoRG. Get unity... You need vitality gem in helm, not diamond. Armor on String of Ears instead of All resist.
I would say that the main problem with your "wizdog" is not the efficiency but person that is playing it... By checking your wizard you clearly don't know what are you doing which is quite impressive in the Internet age...
Thanks for your feedback. I know I'm behind the meta. You've actually answered a lot of the questions I had since I started using FB (very recently, as mentioned above), so I appreciate that. There were many stat guides I tried to follow when rolling my gear but I will try what you said. It's confusing for me since IAS used to be "worthless" for Wiz and now every slot needs it for hydra BPs ... or something.
You don't put that much effort and time into the game as those "top players". It's like an amatuer dude playing Basketball as a hobby and complaining about NBA players being too good.
Spend more time in the game if it matters to you. Read more stuff on the forums and watch more guides / streams to get more knowledge that is required to be effecient in this game. Also, try to look for communities and clans that will somehow enable you to join or create a group of players on your level and that way you guys can help eachother out to progress.
You don't put that much effort and time into the game as those "top players".
Spend more time in the game if it matters to you.
Thanks for your feedback. Concerted group play does seem to be a major differentiator, and would probably go a long way to increase efficiency. I know that Blizzard doesn't give any "+1000% XP streamer bonus" or anything; every pro player's set bonuses, skills and passives work the same as a beginner's do. "L2P n00b" was an expected answer to this post and I'm not entirely innocent ... I hope I can find other filthy casuals who are willing to party up.
While 40-50b per hour is hard (even with end game builds I think it is only possible on a monk), even at 25b per hour it goes really fast. (I think Gabynator did lvl 0-70 and 500 paragon in 1 day, after getting rolled back for bloodshard exploit).
I can get 50B per hour on my wizzard in SEASON running 42-43's in ~2min. I'm sure a monk clearing greater 47-48 in 2 min in non-season gets 100+B per hour.
To the OP. It's indeed all about finding some dedicated friends/a good clan to play with. I'm lucky to have plenty of likeminded friends in my friendlist and a decent clan. I work 40 hours a week yet I'm allready 730 para in season 3 (as a wizzard, not some leeching support build). When I get home I can't do anything before I cooked so I dont even bother logging diablo. But after dinner I make sure I can have a 4 hour play session with friends where the only thing we do is rift, 30sec wait, rift, 30 sec wait etc.
Playing diablo for ~1 hour isn't efficient, before you found a decent group and farmed some trial keys your playtime will be over and your efficiency will be completely gone. So try to have a somewhat longer timeframe available, find decent groups and go ham. Add players that performed well and you enjoyed playing with and contact them the next day for more of the same!
OP, look me up and send a friend request. If I'm on, and I'm on often, I'll duo with you if you like. Have 4 wizards or so, maybe 5, Something should work.
Diablo Progress is rumored to be back up, but I'm not sure. Anyway, characters in signature.
and I just got to where I can almost handle T6 solo
What are you doing? and why dont you have a tal rasha set after 700 paragon levels ? ( it was available before patch already )
You dont have a strongarms for blackhole?
Thanks for your feedback. Until the last week of S2 I was running a WoW/Mirrorball build that I could do T3-4/GR22 with. Then I finally got my Furnace. That and my first decent FB pieces immediately jumped me to where I am now, GR36-38 solo. The reason I say struggle in T6 is because when I group to farm A1 bounties for RoRG (we used to do this on Normal, now everyone's on T6!), without my Templar the mobs chew me up pretty fast (all 3 lives, yup). Also it takes me a loooong time to kill Keywardens until a DH pops in to one-shot them. Even solo. So, yup.
If I ever saw Strongarm bracers drop, I sure didn't know it. Then again I salvaged lots of gear before I had any idea of the potential synergies. I'm only p414, mostly because of my OP ... not feeling very efficient at all man. I have a Tal Rasha set but it's crap rolled? Part of what I guess I underestimate about builds is the set bonuses. I didn't use my FB for a long time because the pieces I found were shit compared to the non-set legs I had gathered. Of course I can try putting on my TR set and do a few grifts but I don't really have high hopes for that.
In any case I don't know if that would solve the issue that finding gear and leveling is taking me forever and it's killing my motivation for this spreadsheet game.
Thansk for not being offended and explaining. it just seemed unreasonable to me.
Well your gear is ok. However firebird is not to easiest to play, nor is it very strong anymore in the way you play it.
IF you only have firebird set at your disposal i would highly recommend trying to get your hand on a halo of arlyse. With that ring you can play a melee firebird spec. mainly focusing on hydra. iam sure you can find it in the guides section.
I asume 38 takes you like at least 12 minutes, does that sound right?
well you're already in a good spot with that build / gear.
you reached like the entry point for end-end-content.
now its just getting better rolls on your gear ( or switching to a completely different set - tal rasha or desle)
While there are certain builds currently which really play well on t6 - firebird is one of them - if the right build / items are chosen.
Your build is more pointing to greater rifts instead of clearing t6 fast and efficiently.
You can optimize your gear in both ways. or you can have two wizzards - thats what i do - because iam lazy to switch.
That includes i want legendary gems for all my characters . so i automatically level more then 3 legendary gems. - i might have around 20 leveld gems. between 25 and 40. For some this might sound much, for some it wont. ..
Iam not paragon 1000 or something like that.. they probably have much more..
However its a long way/grind.
Getting the first set of gear is always taking a little longer if you dont know what to do and you disenchant the wrong items /keeping the wrong.
my fellow posters have said a lot about tal rasha already but delsere is also a lot of fun.
So just keep everything you find and one day you will have all sets and all important items for each build and then you can start choosing and experimenting.
For now if you have nothing else i would recommend just sticking to firebird. and maybe try to make the transition to melee.
Read up a little bit on t6 farming with firebird and what you could change.
LEvel a second wizard. Put your secondary gear there. Gamble for new sets. Play a lot of t6 in groups.
At the most important thing : Have a Goal. e.g try to equip next wizard. or try to equip a zdps wd i dunno.
Than think or ask how to farm for that gear most efficiently. Mostly it will be like - gamble set, then gamble legendaries for the build.
Generate the bloodshards with a character who can already farm t6 or grifts fast.
However you have nothing like that. so focus on the one thing you have. It just takes time to get the first working character.
Yes the season guys are quick because they play 50 hours in the first 2 days. in 50 hours you can get to grift 40 with a little luck and group play.
You said you played like 400 hours. Is that all in expansion, or including vanilla.
If it is 400 hours you clearly did not play those 400 hours since the last patch.
I only play solo at the moment, or at least have until this point. I have done xp grifting only twice for like 3 hours. and that was in season 2.
With my new character i leveld in grift 35 to paragon 300 in about 2 hours..
Reaching paragon 300 when ROS was released well took me muuuuuuuuuch longer.
The huge gap between you and the top is groups speed griften. which comes with big xp and big legendaries. because they do so many rifts in short time. 4 min for grift 35 or 45 depending on the quality of the group . is like i dunno 15? 20? times the xp of a t6 rift.. it really is amazing! even on 600
But.. you wont find a group if you dont already have a charactler like this . or you have good friends.
So well... you're up to you . and thats not a bad thing since you play solo.
It will just take longer for you. Significantly.
not 400 hours.. but another 50 hours maybe until you have everything together for a quick t6 wizard and a high 45+ grift wizzard.
You said you underestimated the set boni - that is correct they we'rent as good before.
So instead of saying you played 400 hours. take like the time since you aimed to get the firebird build working.
Thats the point were you really started playing.
Feel free to add me on the friend list if you are EU
I know life's not fair, and that comparing my life to others' just invites misery. But I still feel bummed about my efficiency.
In his Suggestions for D3 video linked on the FP the other day, Alkaizer mentions that his S3 Barb is already p700 and has all perfect Ancient Leg gear, etc. And there was that team that got the Season 2 HC GR 35 clear achievement within 13 hours. I feel like there's this huge, uncross-able gap between folks like those who can happily start farming 40-50B XP per hour (along with the blood shards, leg drops, etc. that implies) ... and me. I have one toon, my non-season wizdog, with 400 hours invested and I just got to where I can almost handle T6 solo, with Unity and invincible follower.
So yaya, L2P n00b, but I find myself wondering why it's taken me so long to get here if other players are going twice as far in 3% of the time? RNGesus is only part of the story, surely?
TL;DR How can I be more efficient?
Are you playing solo? currently there is huge gap between solo and group play. You can gear up and get experience faster by playing in a group which is really what sets the guys you mentioned apart from the rest of the people. Well that and the fact that they are indeed really good at the game in terms of figuring out the best builds and gear combos.
Another aspect is loot share groups where you team up with 3 other Wizards and work on gearing each other up. So you basically have 4 times the chance of completing your set or getting that elusive Wand of Woh, Serpents Sparker,etc. This is how they get into T6 after just a few hours of farming T1. Basically funnel all the best gear to one guy and then have him carry the rest through T6.
I think they don't do lootshare. They work around synergy.
So, the best way to start from nothing: Level to 70 in an efficient way (I think halls lvl3 was the fastest way?).
Make a party with:
- Crusader. He can give a ton of crit damage, crit chance, attackspeed and some crowd control.
- Monk. He gives a lot of extra damage buffs, survivability (for crusader and himself), crowd control and group things up.
- 2 DH/Wiz. They are your DPSers. With crusader and monk being tanks, and them being ranged, they can go full glass canon. Just stack as much DPS they can, getting their damage doubled/trippled.
Do grifts as soon as possible. Legendary gems drop even at level 1. Pain enhancer/toxic gems are huge damage when you run around in yellow gear/random legendaries. Bott and zei's also work great on the DPSers, even if they are level 1.
This way, even without legendaries, they can push T2-3 when they hit 70, pushing it up to T6 in no time because of the high dropchances. And you don't need your sets in this setup to do it semi-efficient.
Solo play is the worst you can do in this game, if you go for efficiency. Mob damage doesn't go up in group play. Mob health increases by 50% for each extra player, up to 250% in a 4 party game. Requirements stay the same (5 bounties for a cache, 4 uber portals for a hellfire amulet, ...).
And as OP mentioned, once you get your basic set, you start paragon farming in grifts. While 40-50b per hour is hard (even with end game builds I think it is only possible on a monk), even at 25b per hour it goes really fast. (I think Gabynator did lvl 0-70 and 500 paragon in 1 day, after getting rolled back for bloodshard exploit).
TL;DR: Get a monk with full XP gear, look for a group to run grift 35-40 with, gamble on your main char.
Basically what Riff said but add in the willingness and ability to play for 20hrs a day for the first week of a season.
Playing 20 hours a day has nothing to do with efficiency, only speeding it up But yeah, if you don't, it might be hard to get accepted in a group. Saw a post in general chat today looking for speedgrift, minimum P800, in season...
Sorry i dont understand you..
you said :
and I just got to where I can almost handle T6 solo
With your gear i could easily do grift 40 ... - in combination with the reward coming along side..
What are you doing? and why dont you have a tal rasha set after 700 paragon levels ? ( it was available before patch already )
You dont have a strongarms for blackhole?
With that gear you should just need to cast blizzard on some mobs in t6 and continue walking to the next mobs.. how can you call that "almost handle t6 solo" ... you would roflstamp it...
Thanks for your feedback. I mostly play public groups but the coordination is terrible. Loot sharing sounds really smart but is also one of those things probably limited to trusted friends or at least clanmates.
Thanks for your feedback. As I expected, coordination with a zDPS is where it's at. Also a tremendous amount of class knowledge to facilitate quick decision making ... de rigueur for ARPGs I guess but the amount of time I have had to spend on the forums and watching YouTube is easily double my play time and I am still behind, even considering just the Wizard meta.
See, I know I'm not going to join Vizjerai or anything but I'd like to play with a dedicated-even-if-we-aren't-"competitive" group that can set things up like this. At least wiz is at least somewhat acceptable in GR groups now but with the crapshoot that is public groups I'm not getting anywhere fast. I've always had to set up my gear balancing damage and toughness, it's a whole 'nother game if that consideration goes out the window.
Thanks for your feedback. Until the last week of S2 I was running a WoW/Mirrorball build that I could do T3-4/GR22 with. Then I finally got my Furnace. That and my first decent FB pieces immediately jumped me to where I am now, GR36-38 solo. The reason I say struggle in T6 is because when I group to farm A1 bounties for RoRG (we used to do this on Normal, now everyone's on T6!), without my Templar the mobs chew me up pretty fast (all 3 lives, yup). Also it takes me a loooong time to kill Keywardens until a DH pops in to one-shot them. Even solo. So, yup.
If I ever saw Strongarm bracers drop, I sure didn't know it. Then again I salvaged lots of gear before I had any idea of the potential synergies. I'm only p414, mostly because of my OP ... not feeling very efficient at all man. I have a Tal Rasha set but it's crap rolled? Part of what I guess I underestimate about builds is the set bonuses. I didn't use my FB for a long time because the pieces I found were shit compared to the non-set legs I had gathered. Of course I can try putting on my TR set and do a few grifts but I don't really have high hopes for that.
In any case I don't know if that would solve the issue that finding gear and leveling is taking me forever and it's killing my motivation for this
spreadsheetgame.I would say that the main problem with your "wizdog" is not the efficiency but person that is playing it... By checking your wizard you clearly don't know what are you doing which is quite impressive in the Internet age...
You have bad rolls on several pieces of gear. You don't understand that Wizard don't benefit from All resist but you need Armor on gear... WTF is that blizzard reroll on chest and blizzard on shoulders? You need hydra as it's main source of damage for you except for the 6th piece bonus. You need socket on RoRG! Legendary gem will boost your damage far beyond 6 critical hit chance. If you are using black hole the only choice for bracers is Strongarms... Lastly loose the Furnace and get ancient devastator+ancient firebirds offhand. Way more damage then from Furnace and you won't need RoRG. Get unity... You need vitality gem in helm, not diamond. Armor on String of Ears instead of All resist.
Change Evocation for Glass Canon when in GR....
Thanks for your feedback. I know I'm behind the meta. You've actually answered a lot of the questions I had since I started using FB (very recently, as mentioned above), so I appreciate that. There were many stat guides I tried to follow when rolling my gear but I will try what you said. It's confusing for me since IAS used to be "worthless" for Wiz and now every slot needs it for hydra BPs ... or something.
You don't put that much effort and time into the game as those "top players". It's like an amatuer dude playing Basketball as a hobby and complaining about NBA players being too good.
Spend more time in the game if it matters to you. Read more stuff on the forums and watch more guides / streams to get more knowledge that is required to be effecient in this game. Also, try to look for communities and clans that will somehow enable you to join or create a group of players on your level and that way you guys can help eachother out to progress.
Thanks for your feedback. Concerted group play does seem to be a major differentiator, and would probably go a long way to increase efficiency. I know that Blizzard doesn't give any "+1000% XP streamer bonus" or anything; every pro player's set bonuses, skills and passives work the same as a beginner's do. "L2P n00b" was an expected answer to this post and I'm not entirely innocent ... I hope I can find other filthy casuals who are willing to party up.
I can get 50B per hour on my wizzard in SEASON running 42-43's in ~2min. I'm sure a monk clearing greater 47-48 in 2 min in non-season gets 100+B per hour.
To the OP. It's indeed all about finding some dedicated friends/a good clan to play with. I'm lucky to have plenty of likeminded friends in my friendlist and a decent clan. I work 40 hours a week yet I'm allready 730 para in season 3 (as a wizzard, not some leeching support build). When I get home I can't do anything before I cooked so I dont even bother logging diablo. But after dinner I make sure I can have a 4 hour play session with friends where the only thing we do is rift, 30sec wait, rift, 30 sec wait etc.
Playing diablo for ~1 hour isn't efficient, before you found a decent group and farmed some trial keys your playtime will be over and your efficiency will be completely gone. So try to have a somewhat longer timeframe available, find decent groups and go ham. Add players that performed well and you enjoyed playing with and contact them the next day for more of the same!
OP, look me up and send a friend request. If I'm on, and I'm on often, I'll duo with you if you like. Have 4 wizards or so, maybe 5, Something should work.
Diablo Progress is rumored to be back up, but I'm not sure. Anyway, characters in signature.
WD Season 8 https://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/Kildare/84509816
Monk season 7 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/MojoJoJo/42225505
DH season 6 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/DeadShot/75655606
Angry Chicken http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/WhoDoVooDoo/68187610
What? Me worry?
Thansk for not being offended and explaining. it just seemed unreasonable to me.
Well your gear is ok. However firebird is not to easiest to play, nor is it very strong anymore in the way you play it.
IF you only have firebird set at your disposal i would highly recommend trying to get your hand on a halo of arlyse. With that ring you can play a melee firebird spec. mainly focusing on hydra. iam sure you can find it in the guides section.
I asume 38 takes you like at least 12 minutes, does that sound right?
well you're already in a good spot with that build / gear.
you reached like the entry point for end-end-content.
now its just getting better rolls on your gear ( or switching to a completely different set - tal rasha or desle)
While there are certain builds currently which really play well on t6 - firebird is one of them - if the right build / items are chosen.
Your build is more pointing to greater rifts instead of clearing t6 fast and efficiently.
You can optimize your gear in both ways. or you can have two wizzards - thats what i do - because iam lazy to switch.
That includes i want legendary gems for all my characters . so i automatically level more then 3 legendary gems. - i might have around 20 leveld gems. between 25 and 40. For some this might sound much, for some it wont. ..
Iam not paragon 1000 or something like that.. they probably have much more..
However its a long way/grind.
Getting the first set of gear is always taking a little longer if you dont know what to do and you disenchant the wrong items /keeping the wrong.
my fellow posters have said a lot about tal rasha already but delsere is also a lot of fun.
So just keep everything you find and one day you will have all sets and all important items for each build and then you can start choosing and experimenting.
For now if you have nothing else i would recommend just sticking to firebird. and maybe try to make the transition to melee.
Read up a little bit on t6 farming with firebird and what you could change.
LEvel a second wizard. Put your secondary gear there. Gamble for new sets. Play a lot of t6 in groups.
At the most important thing : Have a Goal. e.g try to equip next wizard. or try to equip a zdps wd i dunno.
Than think or ask how to farm for that gear most efficiently. Mostly it will be like - gamble set, then gamble legendaries for the build.
Generate the bloodshards with a character who can already farm t6 or grifts fast.
However you have nothing like that. so focus on the one thing you have. It just takes time to get the first working character.
Yes the season guys are quick because they play 50 hours in the first 2 days. in 50 hours you can get to grift 40 with a little luck and group play.
You said you played like 400 hours. Is that all in expansion, or including vanilla.
If it is 400 hours you clearly did not play those 400 hours since the last patch.
I only play solo at the moment, or at least have until this point. I have done xp grifting only twice for like 3 hours. and that was in season 2.
With my new character i leveld in grift 35 to paragon 300 in about 2 hours..
Reaching paragon 300 when ROS was released well took me muuuuuuuuuch longer.
The huge gap between you and the top is groups speed griften. which comes with big xp and big legendaries. because they do so many rifts in short time. 4 min for grift 35 or 45 depending on the quality of the group . is like i dunno 15? 20? times the xp of a t6 rift.. it really is amazing! even on 600
But.. you wont find a group if you dont already have a charactler like this . or you have good friends.
So well... you're up to you . and thats not a bad thing since you play solo.
It will just take longer for you. Significantly.
not 400 hours.. but another 50 hours maybe until you have everything together for a quick t6 wizard and a high 45+ grift wizzard.
You said you underestimated the set boni - that is correct they we'rent as good before.
So instead of saying you played 400 hours. take like the time since you aimed to get the firebird build working.
Thats the point were you really started playing.
Feel free to add me on the friend list if you are EU
Jalatiphra#2532
we can talk in detail or play some if you want.