What's the best Torment level to farm on?

What’s the difference between the Torment Levels?

So, Diablo is a game about grinding. You grind for gear, you grind for experience points, you grind for materials to make gear, and you farm for Greater Rift keys in order to get more gear and more materials, which in turn, let you do higher level Greater Rifts. It’s a vicious circle that keeps many of us trapped for hours and hours. Man, I love this game!

One question that I personally see a lot of, though, has to do with the difficulty level that is most effective for a given task within the game. I think that it is generally safe to say that max difficulty is going to be the best for just about everything, except for maybe your act specific crafting gear, but we will take a look at how the torment levels work and what their rewards are. The idea is to help you determine the easiest/most efficient level for each task.

This blog itself is broken into five parts:
The numerical differences between Torments
The legendary drop rate for each Torment
The act specific crafting material drop rate for each Torment
The Death’s Breath drop rate for each Torment
And the Greater Rift Key drop rate for each Torment



Let’s start off by looking at what actually makes each level more difficult.
A monster’s health and damage are based on two things: your level and the difficulty level that you are playing at. Now the game offers dynamic difficulty, so the enemies level up with you. That can get a little scary when you’re being power leveled and your gear sucks. So, if you’re looking to just grind XP, either to reach 70 or for paragon levels, the simple answer is to play at as high of a difficulty level as you can while still moving fast enough/not dying to benefit from it. Keep in mind that enemies do almost 2,000 times more damage at Torment ten than they do at normal. This will also help us to determine which level to play at given your goal. If you want to just run bounties, the benefits begin to slow down quite a bit after Torment 7, for example.



Legendary Drops:

Let’s be honest, we’re only looking for the green and gold stuff. Drop rates are still a little hard to come by these days, especially with the recent patch that added four new torment levels. Basically, there is a lot of variance in drop rates based on the enemy type and level. We do have some information, though, that will help you determine your most effective playing level. So, let’s say that you’re just getting your Whirlwind Barbarian geared and you can play up to, say, Torment 3. At Torment 3, you have a +52% chance of finding legendary gear in the main game area, and a +90% chance in a Rift. The downside is that you’re slower than you would be if you were on Torment 2. So, if you take 15 minutes to complete a T3 rift, sure, you have a higher chance of getting something shiny, but if you can do a T2 rift in 5 minutes, well, your rate drops, but now you have three chances to get something instead of just one (3 65% chances as compared to 1 90% chance).

I suggest that you run a few rifts at each difficulty level and then use this chart to figure out where your sweet point is, the point where you're moving fast enough to clear things quickly, but still getting as much of that bonus as possible. For me, with my moderately geared barbarian, that point is between T6 and T7. For my monk, it’s more like T6.

Normal: 0% Legendary drop bonus, 25% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Hard: 0% Legendary drop bonus, 25% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Expert: 0% Legendary drop bonus, 25% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Master: 0% Legendary drop bonus, 25% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 1: +15% Legendary drop bonus, +44% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 2: +32% Legendary drop bonus, +65% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 3: +52% Legendary drop bonus, +90% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 4: +75% Legendary drop bonus, +119% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 5: +101% Legendary drop bonus, +151% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 6: +131% Legendary drop bonus, +189% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 7: +165% Legendary drop bonus, +236% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 8: +207% Legendary drop bonus, +295% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 9: +264% Legendary drop bonus, +369% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.
Torment 10: +323% Legendary drop bonus, +461% bonus in Nephalem Rifts.




Act Specific Crafting Gear / Horadric Caches

Horadric Caches, which contain your act specific crafting material and a chance for a legendary item, are those little boxes that you get for completing all of the bounties in a specific act. This is another neat way to farm for gear, or at least supplement your bounty runs with some legendary gear drops.
For me, the most important thing that comes from those bounties is the crafting material. I have nearly every slot in my stash full of legendaries whose powers I still need to extract. I used to just disenchant stuff, but now the Cube encourages me to hold on to everything… I think I have an addiction.

There are two main things to keep in mind when getting those materials. First, your difficulty level will affect the number of materials that fall from each cache. You top out at 4 materials at Torment 7, so if you’re just looking for those materials, there isn’t much reason to go higher. If you’re trying to supplement your bounties with more legendaries (to take the places of the ones that you just extracted), then you get a 100% drop chance at T6, and there is a chance for two legendaries starting at T7. The other thing to keep in mind is that you can get TWO caches from each act if you do the bonus act, first. Once that bonus act is finished, another act will automatically receive the bonus and you can continue until you have completed all five acts.

Normal - Expert: 1
Master - T2: 2
Torment 3 - 6: 3
Torment 7 - 10: 4
Chance of Horadric Cache special legendary items:
Normal, Hard, Expert, Champion: 1-20%
Torment 1-5: 25-50% chance (increasing)
Torment 6: 100%
Torment 7: 100% + 5% chance of 2nd cache legendary
Torment 8: 100% + 15% chance of 2nd cache legendary
Torment 9: 100% + 33% chance of 2nd cache legendary
Torment 10: 100% + 75% chance of 2nd cache legendary



Death’s Breath Drop Rate

Those little bottles are like… crazy valuable now. Everyone wants them, everyone needs them, they’re the drug of Diablo 3. Again, we’re looking at how long it takes you to kill stuff and how likely you are to get a DB. You can also get an extra Death’s Breath by using the Sage’s Purchase set bonus (which is craftable). I personally use a monk on T6 and the Sage’s Purchase set. That gives me a 64% chance for a Death’s Breath to drop, which actually means that I get two! If you can handle T10, and use the Sage gear, you could get up to 3 Death’s Breath!

Normal – 15%
Hard – 18%
Expert – 21%
Master – 25%
Torment I – 31%
Torment II – 37%
Torment III – 44%
Torment IV – 53%
Torment V – 64%
Torment VI – 77%
Torment VII – 90%
Torment VIII – 100%, 5% chance of a 2nd DB.
Torment IX – 100%, 15% chance of a 2nd DB.
Torment X – 100%, 25% chance of a 2nd DB.


Finally, we have our Greater Rift Keys

Again, this is primarily going to be based on how quickly you can clear each rift. The jump from T5 (60%) to T6 (80%) makes it a little more tempting to clear rifts at at least Torment 6. Keep the enemy health and damage in mind when you’re determining the level that you play at. Here, I think the best option is simply to play at the highest level that you can unless there is a dramatic difference in time from one Torment to the next.

Normal - Torment 5: 1-60% (increasing)
Torment 6: 80%
Torment 7: 90%
Torment 8: 100%
Torment 9: 100% (5% of a 2nd GRK.)
Torment 10: 100% (10% of a 2nd GRK.)


And that’s it! Those are the basic things that you need to know in order to farm more efficiently and what the differences are between the different torment levels. Hopefully, this will help you get the things that you’re looking for and enjoy the game just a little bit more.

If you're interested in Doom 4, or if you just want to read more of my rants, check out the rest of my posts :)

If this guide was helpful, please give it a like. If you didn’t like it, then give it a dislike!

Either way, thanks for your time. My name is Triston, and this is my little corner of the internet. Have a great one.

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