A group of four players managed to complete the highest level of Greater Nephalem Rifts in Season 19 of Diablo 3 just a few days after it started. They exploited the great power of the Season Buff.
What is going on in Season 19? On Friday, November 22, the new Season 19 started in Diablo 3. Anyone who wants to play has to start again from level 1 to level up to level 70. For the community, a new season is always an incentive to compete with players in the Greater Nephalem Rifts.
These Greater Rifts increase in difficulty depending on the level. A GR at level 20 can be completed successfully shortly after reaching level 70. The highest GR level is 150. Here, the monsters can take much more damage and deal powerful damage in return. One must be well-equipped to overcome this challenge.
It only took four days after the start of Season 19 for the first group to conquer a Greater Nephalem Rift at level 150. In other seasons, this took longer because players had to farm their gear for longer. The quick completion this time is mainly due to the new seasonal theme of Season 19 in Diablo 3, rather than the equipment.
GR 150 in Season 19 of Diablo 3 in video – Kill of the Rift Guardian
This is shown: The group recorded how they fought through the Greater Nephalem Rift at level 150. The video was uploaded to the YouTube channel of Raxxanterax.
It is commented on by Raxxanterax himself. He explains how this milestone was reached in just under 4 days. Because they didn’t have particularly strong gear at that time.
Why did that happen so fast? Raxxanterax explains that they made good use of the season buff for this milestone. The buff summons special bonuses after certain kill streaks that rush onto the battlefield and support the players – Or inflicts a lot of damage on them.
Particularly levels 150 and 400 are interesting because they can completely destroy elite packs in a matter of moments.
- At level 150, powerful geysers appear on the battlefield
- At level 400, meteors rain down from the sky
In their portal, the group played deliberately to reach these two milestones to use them effectively and thus make significant progress.
To achieve this, they temporarily forewent certain cooldowns of the players. This would be absolutely unusual in other seasons, but makes perfect sense in Season 19 due to the important stack milestones. If one were to quickly burn through their cooldowns when they are ready, they would quickly eliminate individual enemy groups but not effectively utilize the stack buff.
For the geysers, they wanted to have as many elite enemies standing in one spot as possible so that the powerful whirlwinds could eliminate them all together. This can be seen in the video from about 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
When they reach 400 stacks, the strong meteors appear. From about 4 minutes in the video, one can see how the group pulls together some elite enemies into a pile again. Then the meteors rain down from the sky, and suddenly all elite enemies are history.
Because the four-player group was able to time these events so well, they had a tremendous time advantage in the rift and could turn their attention to the end boss there.
What’s next with the buff? In the video, Raxxanterax mentions that the geysers (at 150 stacks) and the angels (at 500 stacks) have the potential to one-shot the Rift Guardian. The streamer suspects that by the end of Season 19, it will come down to which players can time their rift so well that they can reach 150 or 500 stacks at the rift boss and take him down in one second.
This would make a significant difference at the top of the leaderboard. Because by now, Season 19 in Diablo 3 is already 10 days old, and other four-player groups have also reached level 150 in Greater Rifts.
How do you like the Season Buff of S19 in Diablo 3 so far? Are you noticing more progress compared to older seasons?
