While the main gear attraction in Diablo 3 lies in specifically cool legendaries and class sets, there are some wonderful crafted and dropped legendaries that can both get you started and continue to support your performance in a full class set build. Most are easily accessible, though I’ll mention a few popular items that are harder to find.
Often abbreviated in class build guides as RoRG, this ring is possibly the most important support piece in any class build. Some gear pieces will provide extra defensive stats, or tweak an ability from decent to great, but RoRG is often a keystone in class builds, holding two or more different sets together within the same build. A cubed RoRG is still powerful and key to builds that use it, as it allows you to use two offensive rings instead of just one, or possibly another defensive ring like Unity. The ring rolls with not only the legendary power, but also a guaranteed Attack Speed and Life per Hit primary stat.
Ring of Royal Grandeur requires a little RNG to drop. You can find the ring in the Act 1 bounty caches, or possibly in the Act 4 bounty caches (which can drop legendaries from any of the Acts 1-3 caches).
While Ring of Royal Grandeur is probably what most people go for right after hitting 70, Reaper’s Wraps are slightly more guaranteed. The plans for Reaper’s Wraps drop at level 70 from Malthael, the final boss of Act 5. The drop chance increases with every difficulty level and it’s not that terrible a drop chance to begin with, so it results in at most a handful of tries to get the pattern.
Reaper’s Wraps are a nice beginning item because they help support playing with low stats, or incomplete sets on your gear. Sometimes a major class build will hinge on having a specific set bonus or perhaps a specific legendary power that makes resource generation or resource spending a non-issue. When starting out, you might be picking up more healing globes intentionally because you’re initially squishy, especially if you push higher difficulties earlier.
Reaper’s Wraps can also be cubed as a legendary power, which can help alts either level or begin endgame.
Unity is one of those rings you might want in solo play, but it’s a bit of a pain in the demonic derriere to get working. On the plus side, you get a guaranteed Critical Hit Chance stat on the ring along with increased elite damage done, but on the negative side, you need two rings for the legendary power to have any effect — one ring for you, one for your follower or groupmate.
Unity is able to be cubed, but you still need a second Unity on a follower for the cubed power to work as well. A cubed Unity brings the advantage that the ring doesn’t need to meet stat roll needs if all you’re looking for is the effect.
One of the things I hoped would happen with the crafting changes in patch 2.3 was a consolidation of the level 70 and lower level crafted sets. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, so the following crafted green sets often have two versions, one at level 60 or lower and one at level 70 — and the set bonuses for each are slightly different but related. I’m going to talk particularly about the level 70 versions, though advice may also apply to the lower level versions.
Crafted green sets drop most often through bounty and bonus caches, and they often all drop within the first few new Paragon levels when you hit level 70 — at least until you’ve collected them all.
Aughild’s Authority is probably the most used crafted set for pushing endgame DPS needs. Aughild’s helps support glass cannon builds such as the Witch Doctor’s Carnevil set, and with Ring of Royal Grandeur thrown into the mix, you only need two pieces of Aughild’s to pull the set bonuses off. Because Head, Shoulders, and Torso are often slots taken up by class sets, the wrists slot Aughild’s Search is often one of the Aughild’s pieces used.
Cain’s makes for a powerful leveling set, especially if you can lower the level requirement of the level 70 Cain’s using the Kanai’s Cube recipe Work of Cathan. The Attack Speed set bonus makes for great times plowing through mobs, but the set is really made for the bonus experience set bonus.
There are two bonus experience stats in your character sheet. One is bonus experience per kill, and this is controlled solely by the secondary stats on your gear that say “Monster kills grant +[number] experience.” The other is bonus experience, which is mostly controlled by what difficulty you are playing on. This number will be 0% for Normal, 75% for Hard, 300% for Torment 1, and 1,600% for Torment 6, just to name a few difficulties. Once you get up to Torment 1, Cain’s bonus isn’t that big of a deal — it’s only an extra sixth of bonus experience — but on popular leveling difficulties like Hard (75%), you’re not quite doubling bonus experience, but you are definitely feeling the effects of the set bonus.
Captain Crimson’s Trimmings:
Born’s Command:
These two 3-piece sets fall into similar types of builds, so I’m mentioning them together. Both sets show up in Diablo 3’s support builds, often called zDPS or zero DPS builds. Captain Crimson’s bonuses are more about survivability, and often this set shows up in the tankier support builds of the Crusader class. Born’s major bonus deals with cooldown reduction, which shows up in the recently popular support Monk builds that focus on healing group members.
Sage’s has gained recent popularity as the set you pair with Nemesis Bracers to farm up the crucial crafting material Death’s Breath. Like Aughild’s, you won’t often use all three pieces of Sage’s, but you’ll pick two specific pieces that fit with a major class set — and Ring of Royal Grandeur is mandatory, whether through a cubed power or equipped. With one less piece, Sage’s is less flexible than Aughild’s, and indeed some class sets have trouble or impossibilities when trying to involve Sage’s.
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