Since launch, I’ve been playing solo; a combination of the initial leveling to 70, and also doing bounties for gear and essential materials for crafting. Because I haven’t put my play hours into one specific character, gearing up any one of these characters isn’t happening at a fast pace. Instead, I have around 30 hours total (actual game play) across 6 different characters (as of this posting).
As a result, my level 70’s (as of this post) have what is essentially mostly starter level 70 gear. My main wizard still has several key legacy 1.0.x items (Mempo, Triumvirate, Tal Rasha Allegiance, ring) and is thus still DPS focused and doesn’t have the eHP/life sustain to do T1 elite packs effectively (it can mow down trash and certain elite mobs quickly, but incoming damage just takes chunks of life out). My new loot 2.0 wizard was finally geared out completely in level 70 items; but most key slots are rares at this point. eHP is good enough for T1 but I still need to tack on more damage.
Eventually, I will converge all the necessary gear upgrades onto my main wizard. But as mentioned in previous postings, the game (base + expansion) does not have inherent longevity (and won’t until teh first major content patch with seasonal ladders); I therefore am creating my own longevity by playing the expansion the way I am doing it.
During PTR/beta, it took me roughly 28 hours of actual game play at level cap on one specific character, to have legendary/set items in most slots. After that, it’s really about luck and RNG to get the items that you want for continual progression. And depending on what drops, the entire experience can feel unrewarding.
This hotfix of the legendary drop rates in Torment, is meant to get ahead of the above. The issue though is that outside of the class specific and level 70 Torment specific set items, is that farming for the rest of the legendary/set items will still be better in lower difficulties (where you can mow down as many stuff as quickly as possible as that particular aspect is still one of the key pieces of the algorithm when it comes to loot).
I myself have been doing bounties mostly on Hard (since my kill speed is the same on this difficulty as Normal – and 75% extra experience/gold is just gravy). My drop rate quantity here isn’t a problem (quality again is a different matter). After the hotfix, I switched to T1 even though I’m not geared yet to do it efficiently (as per the above, my legacy wizard has the damage, but cannot take a lot of hits once I hit elite packs and/or trash mobs that due ranged attacks).
I basically still got legendary drops at the same rate even though my kill speed efficiency went down by a huge factor (as I still took on elites, but it took 30-45 seconds to take them down on my loot 2.0 wizard, while I had to kite a lot on elites with my legacy one). Thus this tells me that drop rates have increased (else with my lowered monster kill rate, I would’ve seen a marked decrease in drops). Could it have been RNG was on my side? Possibly.
However, since most players efficiency is going to go down (unless they are already handling T3+), farming T1 for general legendaries isn’t going to be as good as doing it at lower difficulties. If it’s for farming the class specific sets or level 70 specific items, then the expectation is to actually see lower drops until they are effectively one shotting everything on T1.
I also gambled my available blood shards (only 300-ish); I did get a legendary Vigilante belt after around 240 shards (I gambled a mixture of items and not just belts). Because Kadala still has an overall lower chance (compared to monsters, chests and lootable destructibles) of giving a legendary, the best time to spend all 500 shards is when a specific character has gone through a dry spell especially after logging a lot of kills.
