EPTRoS preparation at level 60 - Paragon 161 to 263
Patch 2.0.1 launched at the end of February (to the surprise of many that assumed it would coincide with the closing of the AH). I ended Vanilla D3 with a single Paragon 100, and a few Mid 50 characters (2nd Monk, DH, and Barb) all of which ended up summing up to a grand total of Paragon 161. Communities and Clans were opened up and I joined the <Liquid> clan with a few folks on the D3 TL Sub-forum, and happily spent most of that time doing full-story-mode clears as a Tempest Rush Monk for the guaranteed legendary and then moved onto core chest runs to farm a lot of 60 loot that was (obviously) completely meaningless at 70. + Show Spoiler +
The Sword everyone Wanted for the last few months!![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/c0iFk5yl.jpg)
RoS Launch and the quest to 70 - Paragon 263
Monk is my 'main' class, so I decided to take my Monk that I had spent the last month gearing with Loot-2.0 and destroying Torment VI using my custom endless Lashing-Tail-Kick build to Maltheal's Doorstep. Of course that plan didn't work as the difficulty ramped up pretty fast, so I had to lower the difficulty from Torment to Master to finally Expert by the time I hit 70. ^_^
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DRTiDSVl.jpg)
Malth was a pretty interesting encounter, sort of reminiscent of the old WoW boss fights where you had to approach it with a long stick before being able to face tank it. I had to become a ranged monk, kicking Malth's Face with my Ytars from a far to finally get him to drop my first level 70 legendary... Leoric's Crown!
Paragon 2.0 Grind Begins! - First up... RRoG - Paragon 263-272
At level 70, Adventure Mode is unlocked, but the first thing to do was farm enough Death's Breath to unlock all the Mystic/Jeweler/Blacksmith levels. As a fresh rare-geared 70, Normal Mode was still pretty tough, and bumping up the difficulty to Master to get Imperial Gems wasn't worth it yet.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ts4BVvOl.png)
The List! I had made up of 'stuff to farm for' and the first priority was the 'BiS' Royal Ring of Grandeur we had heard so much about in the twitch preview and beta interviews. At the time I had heard of split-bounties, but didn't feel like I wanted to take that short-cut and mostly farmed solo or in clan. Luckily it dropped pretty fast for me - at Paragon 272 + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DvrRgjfl.png)
Solo Bounties - The Search for Gloves of Worship - Paragon 272-313
Act 2 bounties - the bane of my existence for around 2 weeks straight. Was still solo-farming them one by one and absolutely hated every single bounty I ever did. Running around in circles because I had picked the wrong path is always fun. I had geared up enough to be able to handle Torment 3 solo, but mostly farmed Torment 1. Even though the bag drops (supposedly) weren't affected by difficulty, I still swapped to a 300% MF suit to open in T6 just incase ^_^ While farming for the Gloves of Worship, I was able to find... Gyana Nu Kashu, Shard of Hate, Ice Climbers, SoJs, 4pc Inna, 4pc Raiment, WKL, and two Furnaces. I was still pining for a level 70 Thunderfury, but after around 1000 solo bounties, out popped the GoW finally:+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/caUF9KLl.png)
At the time GoW was bugged to have shrines last ONE HOUR, so the effect was very much abused to destroy many rifts in a row. The effect was powerful enough to bump me up a Torment tier or two. Unfortunately it was reduced to the intended 10 minutes the week after I find them. -_- Of course, abusing Empowered shrines finally made me see the light of CDR affix and the next goal was to figure out how to stack CDR so high without needing GoW. (CDR = Cooldown Reduction)
Quest for Max CDR - Paragon 313-401
So now that bounty farming was over with (for now), and CDR was the next goal, decided to try out some rifts and finally join a few crafting material communities to farm those faster. I was still rocking my TR-DS-LTK resource cost reduction buildl using legacy (level 60) Xeph and -5 LTK SoJ.... but was getting hard capped at T4 difficulty solo. The DPS just wasn't there for efficiency even though I did have fun with the stunlocks - + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vLB8vWHl.jpg)
My 火 TR-IF monk started off using 2h Daibos of Flow of Eternity and General Quangs, but neither were good options to reach max CDR, and swapped to DW by swapping to Born's Sword with Thunderfury to push past 70% CDR. After spending around 25k shards at Kadala, finally obtained an 8% CDR Kekegi's Unbreakable Spirit to reach the max cdr cap (for monks) of 74.9%.
Diversification and Rift it Forward - Paragon 401-410
Around this time I began to hear about the Rift it Forward communities, and kind of felt they were too good to be true - and abused them to level all the classes to 70, and the bags of shards to gamble game-changing legendaries like Lut Socks and Mask of Jeram. Since I already had a bunch of DEX gear, decided to make Demon Hunter my next avenue of progression.
Demon Hunting - Paragon 401-465
Leveling Demon Hunter finally showed me the light on how behind and relatively weak monks were in the world of D3. All the Resource Reduction gear my 雷 monk had just retired worked perfect for the Cluster-Arrow spamming. A spare Pride's Fall was the icing on top that made DH damage output so much higher than my monks.... and I hadn't even obtained full Maruader's yet. But once I did get Maruader 4pc and Danettas + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pZ6Huucl.png)
Holy Crusadering - Paragon 465-500
Starting from scratch as a STR class was a bit tough - needed to farm more bounties for another RRoG as well as craft whole new sets. But the crafting had been simplified by then. Took around 30k shards for full Akkhans, and was able to join and contribute to T4-5 Crusader loot share runs with ease. Again, it was sad to feel how powerful Crusader sets were compared to monk, but I had yet to obtain a game-changing flail yet. First Darklight I had came with 10% CDR and the newly buffed Firestarter rune made the game screen shakingly awesome. I had finally reached T6 efficiently.
After a week of T6 rifting, gave a recently-nerfed Captain America shield spamming build a try and didn't like it. Then had a terrible Fate of the Fell gifted to me in a shared loot run. Wow. What a weapon. Tripled my damage output. Constant damage with the little need for resource management. Even with the lowest damage roll possible, I was doing T6 easily. So now my Crusader was complete. I continued to do DH and Crusader shared loot runs - even saving TWO Rimehearts from salvage from fellow Crusaders that had intentions of using a Cold build ever. My Crusader somehow had the most luck with Swords - so many Thunderfuries and Shards of Hate that my Monk constantly pined after. + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Jp35AQHl.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kBculDtl.jpg)
Giving the rest a shot - Paragon 500-535
Decided to gamble some Barbairan and Witch Doctor sets to give those builds a try - Leap Quake and Jade Doctor. Had some fun with Freeze-Quake barb, but didn't output enough damage to contribute. Jade Doctor definitely had potential, but I didn't really like the gameplay. I had never really liked the teleport mechanic in D3, so took a pass on reliving my D3 Sorceress days again.
The new Rimehearts I picked up opened up a really fun Monk-zDPS build - Shatterstorm/palm where Exploding Palm is set off using Frostburns & Rimeheart - making it very powerful in groups and solo. It was pretty fun for a while, but the all-or-nothing balance wasn't my cup of tea solo, so mostly ran it in groups. Did finally get the last item on The List above - The Band of Rue Chambers that was not nearly as game changing as I had hoped, but did get a few Hexing Pants and Furnaces to spread among my 70s as needed.
Return of the Monki? - Paragon 535-536
After a round of complaining to Blizzard, they caved and rushed out a few buffs to 2 Monk sets - Raiment and Sunwuko. Gave the newly buffed Raiment of a Thousand Storms a spin, but couldn't really enjoy the back and forth (ping-pong) gameplay with Jawbreaker. Gave up trying to enjoy the new Raiment and hoped the monk class and sets would someday be fixed to something I could actually enjoy. + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lqK3Obxl.jpg)
Preparing for 2.1 - Paragon 536-600
Now that I had tried all the class options and builds, had to pick something to focus on, and felt that Monk, Crusader and Demon Hunter were the 3 classes I wanted to continue to play and progress in. 2.1 is supposed to 'fix' monks and introduce a new content to farm - Hellfire Amulets and Tiered Rifts. Didn't have anything else to spend blood shards on, so gambled a few more crappy rolled Tasker & Theos, upgraded my Hellskull Shield, and made sure all my set pieces of Akkhan, Raiment, and Maruader had 4 good primary affixes. Gambled the full Raekor's and Firebird's sets for their 2.1 buff as well. Spent a good 25 levels farming on Crusader hoping to upgrade my Fate of the Fell and then another 15 to find a str unity.
Upon playing on the PTR and trying out the new Greater Rifts, realized how optimized Demon Hunters are for efficiently farming them. + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UZCuVWjl.png)
A few more Rifts later and....
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TtGZ3fKl.jpg)
Ready for 2.1!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/06TiHbql.png)
