What Difficulty Should I Farm for Legendaries in Diablo 3?

When gearing up your character in Diablo 3, you‘ll want to farm content efficiently to get the most legendary drops, experience, and upgrade materials possible. As a passionate ARPG gamer and content creator, I‘m often asked what the best difficulty is to farm for insane loot.

In this comprehensive 2,500 word guide, I‘ll cover beginner farming, max level farming, ideal end game difficulties, and how to optimize your runs based on clear speed and efficiency. Let‘s dive in!

Getting Started (Difficulties: Normal → Torment 1)

When first starting out in Diablo 3, I recommend playing through the full story mode to level up your first character. This lets you learn mechanics while gaining basic loot along the way.

Once you hit max level 70, the real farming begins!

Normal Rifts @ Torment 1: Immediately bump up to Torment 1 difficulty when you hit level 70. Torment difficulties unlock much better legendary drop rates and experience gains compared to lower difficulties.

Run regular Nephalem Rifts on Torment 1, focusing on quick clear speeds rather than the absolute highest difficulty you can survive. Spend any Blood Shards earned on gear for your build at Kadala to target specific slots.

Seasonal Leveling to 70: If playing a brand new Seasonal character, I would stick to Hard difficulty while leveling up to 70. Run bounties, rifts and the story mode to quickly gain experience. Once you start struggling on Hard, farm a bit of better rare gear, then increase the difficulty towards Expert or Master.

You want to risk dying occasionally while leveling for that bonus XP from higher difficulties. Then once 70, bump straight to Torment 1 before you start legendary farming.

Fresh Level 70 Farming (Ideal: Torment 4+)

Once you reach max level 70, Torment 1+ difficulties unlock for adventure mode. This is where the legendary gear farming truly begins!

Torment difficulties greatly increase your legendary drop rates and experience gains compared to lower difficulties. For example, Torment 16 has over a 1221% increased legendary drop rate.

Speed Greater Rifts @ Torment 4+: Run regular Nephalem Rifts and Greater Rifts up to the highest difficultly tier that you can complete in under 5 minutes. Greater Rifts offer opportunities to upgrade legendary gems.

Gamble Gear at Kadala: Spend any Blood Shards you earn on gear for your character build at Kadala. Also, craft set and legendary pieces at the blacksmith and upgrade rare items into legendaries through Kanai‘s Cube.

Difficulty Goal – Torment 4: When freshly hitting 70, I would run rifts on approximately Torment 4 difficulty. Torment 4 offers a happy balance of clear speed and 295% increased legendary drop rate. Farm here until you complete your first 6 piece set.

Advanced Farming (Ideal: Torment 10+)

As your legendary gear and overall character power increases, you can handle much higher difficulty tiers. But you always want to balance clear speed and efficiency, prioritizing quickly killing elite packs over the absolute highest survivable difficulty.

Highest Possible Difficulty – Torment 16

Torment 16 is the maximum difficulty in Diablo 3, with over a 1,221% increased legendary drop rate. However, I would ONLY recommend farming T16 efficiently if your specific character build breezes through content quickly without slowing down too much.

If you struggle to clear T16 rifts in under 5 minutes, your efficiency will plummet. In that case, drop down to Torment 10 or below based on clear times.

Adjust Down If Struggling: Generally, if you ever hit a wall where rift completion times drop off substantially (say above 10 minutes), lower the difficulty a few notches until you‘re able to speed run rifts again comfortably under 5 minutes.

High Density Nephalem Rifts: For pure legendary farming, I love to target high density Nephalem Rifts with large packs of easy to kill monsters to mow through quickly. These types of rifts maximize kills per minute while allowing you to drop elites fast. Keywardens also have a chance to drop infernal machine pieces, so they‘re top priority elites.

Key Concept – Clear Speed Is Vital: At higher difficulties, you always want to farm rifts/bounties at a tier where you can clear packs and elites FAST. This applies even if dropping down from the max Torment 16 difficulty. Your kills per minute and legendaries per hour are the essential metrics.

Optimizing Your Farming Difficulty

When pushing to optimize your legendary farming efficiency in Diablo 3, there area few key factors I look at regularly:

Target 5 Minute Rift Clears

• My personal rule of thumb is to finish Nephalem Rifts in about 5 minutes
• If a rift takes substantially longer than 5 minutes, lower the difficulty by 1-3 levels
• If you clear rifts much faster than 3 minutes, consider bumping up the difficulty

Legendaries Per Hour

• Every few hours, time yourself for 1-2 hours of continuous rifting
• Target at least 8-10 legendary drops per hour at a minimum
• If substantially higher than 10, increase difficulty; if too low, decrease difficulty

Gold and Experience Gains

• Make sure you‘re earning good amounts of gold and XP with each rift clear
• These provide ancillary benefits through empowering rifts, gear crafting at the blacksmith, and enchanting items

High Legendary Chance Per Elite Pack

• Elite monster packs have the highest legendary drop chance. So I prioritize rifts with tons of elites.
• Make sure your kill speed doesn‘t suffer too much per elite pack
• If a single elite fight ever takes more than 30 seconds, lower the difficulty

Keywardens and Goblins

As mentioned earlier, Keywardens offer infernal machine crafting pieces for the secret Uber boss realm. And Treasure Goblins can drop specialized loot including pets, crafting materials and gem upgrades.

You need to ensure you can burn these pivotal monsters down very quickly without extending clear times. If not, lower that difficulty!

If you consistently optimize around all these factors, you‘ll get your Torment difficulty dialed in perfectly for maximum legendary farming efficiency.

Let me know if you have any other Diablo 3 questions! I‘m always happy to help fellow ARPG gamers.