You have to pursue your objectives to remain competitive against other players and yourself. Some times, when people have reach a certain level, i.e. paragon 200 or even just level 70, they tend to lay back. I considered myself being this kind of player for a while. As of today, I still do not consider myself a professional Diablo 3 player, but definitely a better one since I've set my objectives higher.
Let's say that some one would like to push his objectives higher. Which one would he prefer? Highest paragon? Perfect gear? Highest sheet dps? Best DH NA? Knowledgable for a class? Top ladder? One could recognize there's 2 objectives more important. In fact, they aren't more important, they should be worked before the others. In Diablo 3:RoS, you must know your character and its gear before achieving world objectives.
At this point, it's easy to understand where I'm going. There's always an order to follow to remain efficient. If you're a M6, 500k dps, but you run 40-50 cooldown reduction build, you'll realize that more than often you'll be running backward to your old sentries than going forward with the need of a new one in high rift and Grift. That much CDR is useless. You should boost your dps and sheet dps first. It's good to go try and see where you stand greater rift level wise. Don't waste too much time there thought. Go back to T6 farming asap.
It's not every one who can aim for top 100 ladder the first time they play. Anybody could try for top 1000 to see what it takes. Learn more, build more dps and come back the next season stronger. Again, everything depends on how dedicated you can be. If you're planning on quitting your job next season, you may want to learn as much theory and watch top 10 player's stream before it starts. This way, more time will be available for pushing through content than learning. Beware, any class played with less than 200,300 hours (for a beginner) is not going to push far.
In this post I covered a few objectives and ideas to keep going in the long terme playing D3. Let's put this in practice with a "real" situation.
Some one, let's call him X, has a full time job or almost. This person has a girlfriend which consume a few hours here and there, but very few other activities. He's available to play 3-4 hours every day and 6-8 during the week ends for a total of 35 hours. He took vacation on the next monday assuming ladder resets again on Friday night.This is X first ladder reset. He's stressed, but he managed to go through the first 24 hours with decent gear a good starting position on the Grift ladder and good starting gear. He's still got 2 full day of farming before his gaming time go down dramatically. What should he start focusing on?
If he's ahead. he should play solo, if not, play with player of the same class to catch up with share loot. Share loot in Diablo 3 is probably the best way to farm. X join the community channel of his class and always group with 2-3 people of the same class. He'll probably be ahead unless he's got bad RNG. Anyway, grouped or not every one should be doing this way.
1) Level up your gem to 25 ASAP. Don't lose time in G rift. Here's some calculation for which reasons no one should lose time in G rift. Let's assume you have an infinite number of key and you run for 16,67 hours. If you complete your Grift in 10 minutes (100 runs) and have a maximum upgrading rate of 60% you will end up upgrading your gem 180 times. If you complete your Greater rift in 15mins and have 90%-80%-70% chance of upgrading you'll end up upgrading it 160 times. When you chose yourself which level you start the rift, you make sure that your always able to end it the fastest you can do it. If you go in higher rift level, you might end up busting even more time or quitting. You definitely don't want that. Any rift completed in 10 mins between level 20 and 30 awards 2 to 4 legendary. Your average legendary per hour will be really good, 18 legs avg per hour. I'm suggesting people to farm legendary with a rate of 1 per 3-4 minutes. You stand there following this technique.
2) You Farm highest Torment rift you can complete within 6-9 minutes. Take me for my word here, Torment 6 rift IS THE ONLY BEST WAY TO FARM LEGENDARY. you want numbers, you want to beat the odds? Find the best way to farm T6 rifts and you'll become the most geared player in the History of Diablo 3. Any one who can close a T6 under 5 mins every run is getting closer to the Holy grail and even better for 4 mins ( I agree, you need good density to close anything in between 4 and 5 minutes). Although, this guide is for beginners in Diablo 3. I suggest closing time between 6 and 9 minutes for an efficient run. here's a really nice practice tip for time saving: close your rift asap it's done, even if you still have yellow(rare), blue or more items on the ground. Go sell/salvage with pressing enter, you'll end up saving a lot of time over the course of time. go back in the rift, pick up what ever you left, do not salvage yet. Khadala will fill give you more than 1 inventory if you're buying armor pieces. Go see khadala for a first time, fill up, go salvage your left over from the rift and khadala. Go back to khadala for a 2nd time. Finish buying salvaging. asap the rift is ready go ahead and start it. Start your timer. Rinse and repeat. Your final timer for a T6 should be now 6-9 minutes + 40 seconds (10 seconds in between the boss kill and the closing).
Long term farming in a Diablo 3 season in the next post.
