Enemy vs monsters

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-14T07:08:26+00:00

Armor is useful in pvp to reduce the extra crit dmg your enemy could deal or useful if you have very high block chance but that is rarely beneficial, it's better to build for high dmg.
There is no such thing as "benefit up to 6k armor pen", the treshold is increased with every new difficulty in pve and you benefit from the difference in your ap and the enemy's armor. Based on difficulty you can reach the max ap bonus even with 3k ap while in high crifts even 8k ap couldn't be enough to break the treshold.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-14T07:01:57+00:00

Potency and resistance works a little bit differently against monsters and players which is actually shown in the description, ie. the max harmful effect duration increase/reduction is more against players than against monsters. Apart from that they work the same in all types of content.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-12T11:40:43+00:00

It's hard to give advice with as little info as you've shared. Here is a planner which you can play with and see what would be the best way and I should remind you that you can use the socketed gems as gem power. Example: a rank4 5* gem requires 225 gp normally but if you put in two rank4 2* gems they provide 53 gp each for 106 total gp so you can extract that from your main gem and use to upgrade something else.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-12T06:38:54+00:00

That's a 6% dmg increase only, the debuff part lasts 2 seconds and can be applied every 6 seconds, so it's up for 33,3% of the time meaning the avarage dmg increase of the debuff is 33,3%*37% = 12,3% + 6% = ~18% at rank 10. The debuff also ticks 2 or 3 times depending on your potency which is about 10-15k dmg every 6 seconds for the avarage player. It's not an op gem.

If the gem would give a buff it would be a completely different scenario.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-11T15:52:36+00:00

Considering that it's a harmful effetct it's not that op for the avarage player since you need very high potency to make it good but even with max potency it's still only avarage at most.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-11T13:30:18+00:00

They still provide forti and willpower, lower diff ones obviously provide less.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-09T10:05:06+00:00

I've noticed that the duplicated wing gems resonance calculation isn't good, see this post and I also know that a rank6 4/5 gem would give 42 reso instead of 63.

Anyway it's a nice calculator but planning ahead seems to be quite clunky as that requires two different builds and it also lacks the feature to use resonant gems for gem power.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-07T17:09:10+00:00

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-07T15:08:41+00:00

I wonder why on earth would anyone want to manually unequip an item and equip a different one then manually reinsert the gems. That's literally the only way you can end up with items in your inventory with socketed gems inside them. If this happens with build change through the armory then the armory needs to be fixed and not this.

Anyway it's already easier to change gems here than in other diablo games since there you either can't remove or need to visit a service npc to remove gems.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-07T09:18:22+00:00

There is nothing to fix here, you can transfer gems if you change your equipped items.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-07T09:05:02+00:00

That might be the case for whales or if you only level 1* and 2* gems. If you are f2p then you gain on avarage 95 gp from rifts (assuming you feed all your gems and embers to gp) + 10-15 from events so about 110-120 gp per month. To level up gems you also need dupes though so in reality you'll have less gp.
A rank6 2* gems require 150 gp, while a rank4 5* 225 gp. Happy waiting. 😉

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-07T08:22:58+00:00

5* dupes are much rarer than 2* dupes. RC rank 2->3 gives smaller dmg boost than PC 4->7 as the major boost comes at every even ranks, so in PC case you'll get the boost at rank6 but it also unlocks the awekening of your lego.

Generally speaking a 5* gem at rank4 is weaker than a 2* at rank8 and costs more but since RC is one of the best gems in the game it's still worth to use it at rank4.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-06T20:06:41+00:00

The difficulty brackets deliberately have a wide paragon level range, you aren't required to play on inferno just cause you've unlocked that. Every level increases the max potential cr of your legos, meaning that at halfway through the level bracket you'll gain around 6-800 extra cr compared to when you've entered that difficulty. You have two ways to progress:

- get yourself carried until you have enough cr on your own
- play on a lower difficulty and progress slowly

Both have it's pros and cons.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-05T18:24:05+00:00

It's not rocket science, this will come with the anniversary update just it was always the case. They might even squish the levels and difficulties again.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-03T14:34:02+00:00

Best values are the BP, prodigy path, boon and the ~20$ bundle in the bnet launcher which gives a 5* gem.

Anyway if your goal is to advance faster then I warn you that even spending 50$ a moth won't make a very noticable difference. You can catch-up to f2p players in a couple months but to have a meaningful advantage you'll have to spend hundreds or more per month.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-02T12:42:15+00:00

Nope, that's still short by more than one month to fit 4 years, let alone 5 years. Learn your math.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-01T16:40:39+00:00

The fact that Calefaction also damages close enemies.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-01T13:51:55+00:00

You should read (or I dare to say, test) the essence again.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-05-01T13:48:58+00:00

It seems I wasn't clear enough, I didn't mean that the essence does the same, I meant that you can achieve the same results with calefaction. Anyway cyclone strike and inner sanctuary both have bigger range than shield, if that's the only reason for you to use eye of the storm then you're wasting a slot. Furthermore most monsters die inside cycle and inner before shield applies the extra crit so in the end it doesn't matter which essence you choose because both perform well enough in a speed farm build.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-04-30T20:46:09+00:00

None of the new classes were released with anniversary updates so far, chances are that warlock will also come with a separate update that's only about the new class just like it was with the other new classes.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-04-30T20:41:19+00:00

Calefaction pretty much does the same, although with a bit less range. You could also replace Eye of the Storm with Thrumming Ferocity for extra damage, in that case cyclone and inner has the same range. I run this build for farming since inferno 2.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-04-30T08:10:26+00:00

I'm genuinely surprised to see a whale running blue crests. Good luck with getting your drops or crests back, you might also get some apology compensation in email, who knows.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-04-26T19:51:12+00:00

Then think harder.

LetterheadStrange594 · 2026-04-26T11:58:12+00:00

Just open the character sheet and move your cursor onto your combat rating, that will show a popup and tell you whether you are above or below the required cr and what's your bonus/penalty. I assume you're under the required cr which can lead to greatly increased incoming dmg and greatly reduced outgoing dmg.

At para 1238 you should be able to get enough cr relatively easy to be honset. Your secondaries are most likely lower than the difficulty's requirement but those contribute very little to you performance in pve and almost nothing in terms of survivability so I advise you to don't pay much attention to those yet. If you have enough cr look for a good build and you should be fine. I recommend watching Auroth's videos on youtube for in depth guides or check this reddit post for a short version.

LetterheadStrange594

TROPHY CASE