With my barbarian completed Inferno, I felt it was time to start paragon leveling him in a more serious manner. He finished at 6 so I decided to see how far I could push him. Essentially, I focused on doing Alkaizer Runs using Monster Power 1. I ended up hitting 10 by the end and switched to my Demon Hunter for a bit.
My general experience with the Alkaizer Runs is that, yes, they are fast and focused but at the same time somewhat boring. I can see how for melee farming classes like Tempest Rush monks and Whirlwind Barbarians how Alkaizer Runs probably are best suited at the moment for experience. However, it can get tiresome quickly. I think re-building the nephlam valor stacks are somewhat of a pain, which kinda demotivates me each time I go through.
Also, I tried experimenting a little by changing a few skills around my barbarian. In one case, I ended up becoming too vulnerable and died quickly. In the current setup, I’m having issues with keeping Wrath of the Berserker up. I’ve seen several ways to handle it but perhaps my gear and skill set up might be causing some issues. I think one major factor is that my critical hit chance is a bit low due to my rings and amulet pieces lacking good critical hit, thus making my fury generation low and not fueling Wrath of the Berserker appropriately. Unfortunately, the trifecta rings that everyone loves tend to be horrendously overpriced and I just don’t have the funds at the moment to make those kinds of purchases.
I figured that since I’m still not as gear optimized as I could be at the moment (without going crazy on some budget), I decided to continue focusing on my demon hunter. I managed to hit paragon level 43 on my demon hunter and I’m finding several things at the moment. First, monster power 2 is a breeze. The only thing that threatens my demon hunter at all in Act 3 are those bull creatures in the cave. Other than that, I’d have to do something incredibly stupid or be surrounded by a huge group of enemies and trapped by prisons or wallers to die.
Another thing is that it’s taking me around 3 runs to get enough experience for each level. Around the 40 level mark, I would say things drastically started to slow down. I don’t use Alkaizer Runs on my demon hunter. Instead, I do most of Act 3 (minus the bosses) and probably two zones. It does take me longer since I’m essentially hitting some of the lesser populated zones in Act 3 but I find this route to be less boring than the standard Alkaizer run. At the same time, I’m probably not getting as much experience as an optimized Alkaizer Run but I suspect that might be due to the fact that my demon hunter isn’t really a great farming class compared to whirlwind barbarians and tempest rush monks. I did switch one of my discipline skills to use Vault with Trail of Cinders, but that hasn’t really improved my overall speed.
Despite the less efficient route, I will say that I prefer this method to the standard Alkaizer Run, at least on my demon hunter. The thing is that I feel that each time you reset and lose your 5 nephlam valor stacks, you really end up missing out on a lot of possible items. I haven’t completely verified my results, but it feels as though I can fill up my bags with rares around 5-6 times per run. Unlike other people who might only pick up the top end rares, I pick up all those along with tomes and gems. I mentioned before that in the long run, I want to make sure I have enough materials for crafting. With rares, I end up selling most off to the vender. The thing is that rares sell for a good 2k per. Without using the Auction House, I can make roughly 500k/run at the moment just picking up the larger chunks of gold and selling all my rares. And this is guaranteed gold as opposed to hoping that something may eventually sell on the Auction House for the price I want.
The other thing is that I’ll find some decent rares that are not exactly the high end stuff most people are willing to pick up. Sometimes, I’ll find some awesome level reduced armor or weapon that can sell for a nice 100k+. Other times, I’ll find an item that has reasonable stats that can sell for a good 20-25k. That might not be as awesome as those 100+ million gold auctions. However, when you consider that the vast majority of drops end up sucking, you really have to take what you can get.
Lastly, I’ve been getting roughly 3 legendaries per run now. That’s not bad. Admittedly, most of the legendaries I’ve found thus far have been pretty bad. I end up decomposing them for future materials. Still though, that’s a decent drop rate that has become somewhat consistent. Hopefully, as I continue to gain higher paragon levels, I’ll see even more legendaries drop per run.
Overall, I like the way I have my runs set up on my Demon Hunter. Although I’m not gaining XP as efficiently as pure Alkaizer Runs, I am enjoying the benefits of finding decent loot, getting legendaries and making consistent gold. I still am tempted to pump up the monster power by one more just to see how well I can handle things. I think if I can increase my DPS by another 20-30k, the higher monster powers will be quite nice for farming.