To complete or not complete? That is the question that must go through every Diablo 3 player once they kill a Rift Guardian. In a group, you sometimes are faced with people who mostly do Rifts just for Bloodshards. However, I feel that many people end up missing the point of the group play mode.
For myself, I started to realize that completing Rifts in a group of 4 is by far one of the best ways to obtain legendaries. I’ve found that while spending Bloodshards help in narrowing down the type of loot you want, for the most part they are really poor substitutes compared to just joining a group and knocking out demons. It’s easy to spend thousands of Bloodshards just to end up with nothing but crafting materials. While I do think that it’s completely valid to power gear (as opposed to power level) your poorly geared alt toons in this manner, if you’re able to handle Torment 4 and above, you really are better off just killing things in group play.
Obviously, the biggest thing that group play offers is the bonus to magic find (along with XP and gold find). But that magic find bonus, especially in a T6 Rift setting is pretty huge. These days when I solo T6 rifts on my Demon Hunter, it can take hours before I find a single legendary. Sure, I can farm Bloodshards far more efficiently since I can just deposit my Demon Hunter into a high level Greater Rift. But I only do that if I simultaneously want to level up my gems.
But if I just want to get gear, taking the toon I want to gear out and playing them rather than just using Bloodshards tends to be more rewarding. Sometimes you can have small spells of dry runs but for instance tonight, I probably gained 20-30 legendaries using various toons. When I took my crusader, I was able to get more strength gear, etc. Now, I don’t have to worry about just getting a very narrow type of selection. In the case of my Witch Doctor, I found a really nice upgrade for her weapon on a T4 rift. That certainly beat spending loads of Bloodshards that can take an hour or two to farm with the results just being crafting mats.
Also, I think farming in groups can be more efficient. You do have more environmental control going solo but you cover far less ground and your kill speed more than likely is lower. Of course, truly completing a Rift front to back can take some time, but the longer you spend in a group, the higher the likelihood you’ll start receiving the “sympathy magic find buff.”
The other thing is that I just find myself gaining so much more experience in a group. When I solo these days on my Demon Hunter, it can take a large number of runs before I even see a single level. With a group, I’m finding my experience to be keeping up quite well.
At any rate, Bloodshards aren’t the be-all-end-all answers for your loot. Unless you’re in a rush to gear an alt, never forget that you still will get better gear by being part of a group, especially if you’re in a good group. Just keep going and you’ll eventually find the stuff you want.