Brainless Builds Comparison
Why "brainless"? Because Torment farming is boring and monotonous, and I want to be able to watch something while playing and not having to pay attention to cooldowns, CoE rotations, and so on. Also, I don't have time to practice a dozen builds for 5 hours; I just have a go at it. So here are my rules:
- 12 minutes of rifting.
- No practicing of the build; just have a go!
- No goblins, except for Blood Thiefs.
- Always test on T8 and T10, go higher if build looks promising.
- I test all the builds that were proposed in this thread.
In addition to the Death's Breath per session (take that times 5 to get the DB/hour), I also make my own very subjective assessment of each skill according to 4 categories:
- Off (offensive): Perceived damage output, burst on elites.
- Def (defensive): Toughness, especially how much I had to dodge.
- Speed: How fast does it *feel*.
- Lazy: Can I just randomly push buttons or are their cycles, rotations, timing, resource handling etc?
=============================================================================================
Build Comparison Table (12 minute rifts, no goblins, T8, TX, T11+ opt)
| Class | Build | T8 | TX | T11 | T12 | T13 | Off | Def | Speed | Lazy | Videos |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barb | Raekor | 119 | 123 | 72 | - | - |  |  | | | Link |
| Crus | Akkhan+Norv. | 124 | 148 | 134 | 124 | 109 | | | | | Link |
| Crus | Roland | - | 124 | 125 | - | - | | | | | - |
| DH | Sha-dow | 122 | 119 | 91 | - | - | | | |  | Link |
| DH | Natalya | 88 | 81 | - | - | - | | | | | Link |
| Monk (*) | SWK LTK | 126 | 131 | 181 145 | 151 | 138 | | | | | Link |
| Monk | SWK WoL | 98 | 118 | - | - | - | | | | | Link |
| Monk | Inna | 103 | 91 | - | - | - | | | | | Link |
| Necro | Pestilence | 107 | 116 | - | - | - | | | | | - |
| WD | Zuni | 100 | 114 | - | - | - | | | | | Link |
| WD | Chickn Harv. | 106 | 82 | - | - | - | | | | | Link |
| Wizard (²) | Tal Electr. | 99 | 100 | 102 | - | - | | | | | Link |
| Wizard | Tal EB | 111 | 137 | 151 | 111 | - | | | | | Link |
| Wizard | Tal AT | - | - | 133 | - | - | | | | | - |
- (*) The 181 DB on T11 were with insanely good rift RNG, so I did a re-run. See Q&A for details.
- (²) All Tal Elecrocute runs were unfortunately a bit flawed (bad RNG etc.), so numbers are a bit lower than they should be. Still, Tal EB is stronger. See Q&A.
Q&A
Q: Why are you not running T9? And why not focus on T13?
A: The answer is in this simple graph. Going from T8 to T9 is only a 9% improvement in DB drops, but obviously the usual 19% increase in difficulty, so it's a bad trade-off. T10 and T11 are fine again. T12 and T13 are overall really bad for Sage's builds. The reason for this is that Sage's does not *double* your DB drops, but it drops *an additional one* whenever a mob drops any DB (regardless the amount). So when you get 3 DBs on T13, Sage's just gives you a fourth, which is a small benefit compared to T8 where you have a 85% chance for a single DB drop and thus almost double your DB gain. In short, T8, T10, and T11 are the best tiers for DB overall.
Q: 12 minutes of rifts is a laughably short time. Why not run longer?
A: I did 34 runs of 12 minutes, so that's already 7 hours of videos. If I had run a full hour run that would be 34 hours. Including setup time of builds, editing the video, uploading, and so on, the patch would be out before I'd be finished. However, I did an estimate about how high the error rate is, and I was surprised to see that 12 minutes might be better than expected (see next question). But bottom line, I'd rather run more builds on more difficulties.
Q: How high is the error rate?
A: (TL;DR: About 12%). For the monk SWK LTK build on T11, I actually got insanely good RNG. As you can see in the video, basically elite-stacked open area maps non-stop. I immediately new the 181 (which would sum up to 900 DB/hour!) was an outlier. So I did another run, and as I had hoped I got "extremely unlucky" with only long tube maps except for one Oasis (but that had one had almost no elites). I also hit the endstone two times, which means losing 2 times ~25 seconds where I'm just standing around. So this 145 is the lower ceiling, and therefore I think if we take the average for that run (163) and assume an error rate of very roughly 12%, it might not be too far off. Which is very surprising and makes DB hunting less RNG-dependent than other activities, such as GR key farming!
Q: So looking at your numbers, it looks like some classes just suck at DB farming. Should I make an LTK monk?
A: Absolutely no. First, look at these charts: T8 and TX comparison of top builds per class incl. error bars. As you can see, all of them are basically in range of their respective error bars. Second, those results are for *me* and are more representative of *my* personal build preferences. Third, running Torment will also yield a lot of loot; you should always run Torment on your main class (or at least a class where you get useful loot, like a barb when you're gearing a LoN bomb crus).
Q: I'm an author of one of the builds. You played it all wrong! Can you re-do the run?
A: In short: no. One of the perks of labeling this comparison "brainless" means that if I failed your build, it's not good for a brainless player. Of course your build might still be awesome! Feel free to make your own "pro-player comparison" where you showcase each build including hours of practice ;-) That being said, if you're the author of one of the builds and want feedback, feel free to post here or PM me. Or if you're not an author and have questions, of course post as well!
Q: Build X for class Y sucks, you should've run my build Z. Can you run it?
A: Feel free to post your build. If I have time and a build piques my interest, I might have a go at it. However, after recording all those videos I have more DBs than all other (white+blue+yellow) mats combined, so I'm currently running non-Sage's builds (ironic, isn't it).
1
Well, to sum things up:
Primal Ancients are a minor content addition that haven't been asked for and cannot "solve" any major flaws of the loot system. They don't hurt anyone either, so I don't see a reason to complain. They could be better though.
The first iteration was just boring, instilling the notion for some players that they would have to complete a new, much, much longer loot hunt before there was nothing but plvl to gain, again. I can't agree with this notion. I accept that as of now dedicated people are able to have every slot ancient with decent rolls and big augments. But to me, the way to that point is more enjoyable than whatever may come beyond. I can't see anything negative in stretching the time frame, in which loot has a chance to be relevant. One could argue that that's the entire point to Diablo.
The second iteration is even more boring. It's still an addition and now it has virtually no chance of hurting anyone, but as others have said, this is as close to scrapping the idea as it gets. Now there's hardly anything to gain off Primals and a huge portion of the player base is excluded from ever seeing them.
What I would do:
prerequisites: make them interesting, yet not mandatory and be very careful with their obtainability
1. Remove the GR 70 gate, there's no point to that. Maybe lvl 70 and t1 req but no more. By the time I can solo GR70, I'm basically done with a season.
2. Give them a chance to be better than ancients. Maybe give them 5 primary and 3 secondary rolls with RNG rolls at ancient value. That's pure power creep without messing with anything else (like allowing for too much CDR), while retaining the chance to still find something better. Just perfect ancient stats are nice and all, but really boring.
3. Remove them from cube recipes, I dislike the entire concept of farming mats for the cube over actually farming random items. I know we need some ability to target something specific, but vanilla ancients serve that purpose.
4. Adjust their drop chance accordingly, maybe difficulty based (like super low on t1 and noticeably higher on GR70)
5. Give us separate checkboxes in the clan settings to display regular legs, ancients and primals.
2
And if I may add some basic advice of where to spend your time and ressources:
basic guidelines:
1) Spend as much time as possible in Greater Rifts, which you can clear fast (aim for 3min).
2) Don't waste any ressource but blood shards on items that are available at Kadala for 25 blood shards (all armor and offhand items)
3) If you don't need anything off bounties right now, work on other areas so you can do the bounties faster and on a higher difficulty when you get around doing them.
For the remaining items, here's a list:
need a bounty item: Do that act's bounties (well, obvious).
need a specific weapon: Farm Death's Breath in regular rifts and use the "upgrade rare to legendary" cube recipe (the yellow item can be crafted at the blacksmith, make sure to craft the right type, eg sword or 2h mace).
need a specific ancient weapon: Either go the DB route (more tries required but avoids bounties) or do bounties for the expensive "reroll legendary" recipe.
need an amulet: If your spec wants Hellfire, do that event. If you need a set amulet from a class set, put your first extra item of that set into the cube and use the "set to same set" recipe until you get the amulet. If you need Traveler's Pledge, see weapons.
need a ring: Well, anything goes, 50 blood shards at Kadala is a mediocre deal, the same applies to using the DB recipe on non-weapons. But if you have to brute force a ring, do both.
materials:
Death's Breath: regular rifts, again those that you can farm fast (not T12 or 13)
yellow, blue, white mats: Go to act 5 Battlefields of Eternity and click on all those weapon piles for white items (most mats per item). Then you can transform your excess white mats into yellow or blue in the cube.
Forgotten Souls: Nothing specific, but you get the most legendaries if you follow basic rule #1.
1
Couple of things:
You've wasted quite a few rerolls on unimportant stats. I know there's guide info that says Ancient Parthan Defender + % CC stuff is great, but if you look at the leaderboards, people mostly use Nemesis Bracers to spawn extra monsters for a faster progress.
As a result of those wasted rerolls you lack crit chance on multiple items (10 on amulet, 6 on helm and bracers) which lead to an abysmal damage output.
You completely lack area damage, fix that, it's an even higher priority than CDR (ideally your weapons should have both)
Lightning damage is wasted, you want physical because that's the damage type of your WW rune. Lacking that is quite detrimental. That Hellfire amulet is really bad, if you don't have one with decent stats, take a well rolled version of any other amulet, some legendary affixes are quite good, too (Eye of Etlich for example).
There's no point to Rend, take War Cry instead for a big toughness boost (30% dodge or 20% resist rune).
Diamonds are better than rubies for pushing higher rifts because survivability is more of an issue than damage.
Berserker Rage over Ruthless because you're always on max fury anyway.
1
If your lvl 70 char has no gear to speak of, you might just get a faster start by participating in season 9. The game basically tells you what to do during the seasonal journey and rewards you with a free class specific 6 piece set.
Any char with any of these sets is much stronger than a naked lvl70 (active players feel free to point out a niche case where this doesn't apply).
And then you just enter the treadmill:
farm bounties for bounty mats and the Ring of royal Grandeur
farm regular rifts for mats and keys
farm greater rifts to level your gems
If during those occasions you find an upgrade, equip it.
5
No really. While I agree that D2 felt better during its prime than D3 feels now, this is just a compilation of "D3 doesn't have this that D2 had, so it sucks".
1
Not mad at you, just trying to put things into perspective.
1
How many hours have you played your seasonal char? Do you have a link to your profile?
Look up the relevant solo GR guide for your class and push until 75. That basically includes the 3x 65 gems.
I would guess that you have played much less than the people posting here and probably less efficient as well, which is fine.
If you want those conquests, you will have to switch gears. Your options:
a) Find people to do the groupable conquests together.
c) Look up speed builds for your class and get the 2min TX and 20min boss conquests.
2
I got to test this and you're right, the gear requirements aren't that high, I must've catched a wrong toughness number from the vid. (edit: I didn't, but you don't need 90m toughness for gr80.)
I see no harm for you in trying, at least you'll get the joy of playing something very unconventional. That joy may be short-lived though because it honestly isn't much fun to play. The playstyle reminds me of the super early vanilla era, when you could beat the entire game with a DH @ 8k hp (eg getting one-shot by literally everything).
If you care about paragon and gem lvls(why?), this should be the fastest solo(!) route. However note that beyond that you'll never level these gems again with your regular chars, might influence the motivation to play them.
About leaderboards: I don't care about them, but given that the 4p players have reached 120 it doesn't matter if any solo class can bug its way to lvl 100. Paragon and gem lvls from the legitimate multiplayer "cheese" are still higher.
1
Hey guys, consumer pov:
1) Yes, a collection like this that summarizes the most relevant builds is useful, so thanks for the effort.
2) Instead of re-building all these with no explanatory content, I'd rather have links to the best guides to said builds.
I get that everyone likes to spread links with his name on them, but I don't really care who invented a build. I want the guide that explains mechanics, play style, interactions and item choices. And all of that preferrably in written form.
1
What's the point? Less Monks? It's coincidence that multiple endgame-viable specs are cumulated on one class.
You'd only create an even worse gap between group and solo play.