Season 31 Group Meta Guide

Many players choose to play Diablo solo, which is a perfectly valid choice. However, it is undeniable that grouping is a more efficient means of gaining power and resources. There are two main reasons for this: role specialization and split farming. For farming easier content, such as doing bounties, split farming is just much more efficient than solo farming can ever hope to achieve. Each class has multiple builds that have the potential to clear a Greater Rift Level 100 or higher while solo, which is many magnitudes harder than enemies in a 4-man Torment 16 group. Essentially, Torment 16 quickly becomes comparatively trivial with full builds, which is what enables players to split farm. The number of bounties that you need to clear does not change with group size to get the cache rewards, so four players are basically four times as fast as a single player when it comes to farming bounties. This applies to any content where the goal is speed; doing easy content with more players is almost always going to be faster and more efficient than doing the same content while solo.

The other major factor for grouping is the difference in experience gained. Not only can you do most content faster in a group, but you can also do much harder content. Once you get to 70, paragon levels kick in and give you a farmable way to gain constant power returns. Not only do you get more experience from clearing greater rifts in groups because of the group XP bonus, but groups are better equipped to do higher level GRs than solo players. This is primarily due to role specialization.

For harder content, groups are generally better suited to tackle the content due to the raw power of being able to specialize in specific roles. There are several distinct jobs in group play, which are expanded on in the Composition section below. The bottom line is that solo players are forced to do everything alone, meaning they are in charge of keeping themselves alive, grouping enemies, and doing the damage needed to clear the rift. In groups, different classes can choose to specialize in the roles that they are best suited for, meaning the classes that are best at doing damage can focus solely on doing damage, while other support classes can focus on grouping enemies and keeping everyone alive.

There are many different activities in Diablo, and most of them have different goals. For the maximum possible efficiency, your group composition will vary depending on what your goal is, namely speed or power.

For high level Great Rift pushing, your main goal is power, not speed. You do not need to worry about completing the rift quickly, your goal is just to get it done within the 15-minute time window. While pushing, there are four very specific roles that you will generally want to fill, and there are specific builds that are best at each role.

When you step into a rift, the goal is to kill enough enemies to get the Rift Guardian to eventually spawn. Thus, you need to have someone capable of killing lots of enemies. The best stat in the game for this is Area Damage, which allows you to exponentially scale your damage in AoE situations. Builds that are good at killing large groups of enemies will generally stack this stat, and prioritize attacks that are largely AoE based. For the best Trash Killer builds of each class, check out the tier list linked below.

While your trash killer will focus on Area Damage and AoE attacks, this only works when you have large groups of enemies, but is going to be very ineffective against the Rift Guardian at the end. Most Rift Guardians will be alone for the entire fight, which makes classes that specialize in clearing out large groups of monsters useless against a single powerful monster. This is why most groups choose to have a designated Rift Guardian Killer. RGKs are DPS builds that focus entirely on single target damage, and specifically focus on stacking the legendary gem Bane of the Stricken. This gem exponentially increases your damage on a target the more times you attack it, so most RGKs use fast attacks to spend minutes building up Stricken stacks to increase their damage significantly. For the best RGK builds, check out the tier list linked below.

Another important job in a group is to keep everyone alive. No class is better suited at this than a Monk, specifically, the Inna Monk Support. This setup allows you to use numerous buffs on party members constantly, giving them tons of healing, shields, and numerous buffs. In general, a support and DPS combined is more effective than two DPS, which is why the support role is extremely important in group play. For instance, some classes cannot use Squirt's Necklace since they are always taking damage while clearing rifts, and would be in danger of dying. Due to the constant shielding that Monks provide, classes grouped with a Monk can use Squirt's Necklace while DPSing, which doubles their damage. With that one item, you have effectively added a second DPS to the group already. Items and damage multipliers in Diablo are extremely powerful, which is why you usually end up doing more damage by supporting a single DPS, as opposed to letting multiple DPS work together.

As we talked about above, Area Damage is an incredibly powerful stat that is the main reason why DPS can exponentially scale their damage on large groups of enemies. Similar to what was discussed in the Tank Support section, two DPS trying to kill smaller groups of enemies is significantly worse than a single DPS killing a large group of enemies while another support pulls more enemies into the pile, "grouping" up the enemies for the DPS.

The best at grouping is the Support Barbarian, as it makes use of Ancient Spear to pull enemies from far away. Additionally, support classes in general can make use of items like The Executioner or Strongarm Bracers, which still allows you to help kill enemies and buff your allies.

This is a unique support made possible in recent seasons, and is a role entirely filled by the Demon Hunter. The >Support Demon Hunter is able to group enemies decently well, but most importantly can apply a debuff to all enemies that increases their damage taken by 150% thanks to Odyssey's End. They additionally have some other buffs they bring, but this is the primary benefit of the DH support. When you are pushing for damage at this highest level, it is hard to pass up a support that can almost triple your damage output with the buffs and debuffs they provide.

While the above is optimal for 4-man groups, you can apply it to 2 and 3-man groups as well. When you start to lower the group size, you need to choose which role to give up, which can vary depending on what you have to work with. Generally speaking, 2-man groups choose to use 1 DPS and 1 Support, thus using 1 DPS as both the clearer and RGK while the support focuses on grouping a buffing. 3-man groups will usually choose to add a support, opting for 2 support and 1 DPS given how powerful supports have become in recent patches. This almost always is a Barbarian and Demon Hunter.

• 1x Support Barbarian or 1x Support Demon Hunter
• 1x Tal Rasha Meteor Wizard

The ideal 2-man pushing group will always have 1 support and 1 DPS player. For supports, the Support Barbarian is usually ideal for their incredible grouping capabilities combined with the various supporting buffs and shouts that they bring. That bring said, the Support Demon Hunter is also an extremely strong support option that rivals the Barbarian in some groups.

For your carry slot, there are a few possibilities on what you could bring in a top-tier meta group. The Tal Rasha Meteor Wizard is possibly going to be the best option with properly grouped rifts, but the Inna Mystic Ally Monk and the Mundunugu Spirit Barrage Witch Doctor should be extremely competitive options as well, especially with more gear and higher paragon levels.

Apart from a Tal-Rasha Wizard, the other likely candidate for the best DPS will be the Death Nova Necromancer due to its overwhelming combination of tankiness and AoE damage that scales with number of targets.

• 1x Support Barbarian
• 1x Support Demon Hunter
• 1x Tal Rasha Meteor Wizard

Similar to the 2-man group, the ideal 3-man pushing group will usually have 2 supports and 1 DPS player. For supports, the Support Barbarian along with the Support Demon Hunter is the best combination. The top DPS builds are extremely durable on their own at the moment, so a Monk support is generally not needed and you can instead utilize the extraordinary offensive tools that Demon Hunters and Barbarians bring to the table. The extra support is going to net you more damage than adding a second DPS to the group in most situations.

For your carry slot, there are a few possibilities on what you could bring in a top-tier meta group. The Tal Rasha Meteor Wizard is possibly going to be the best option with properly grouped rifts, but the Inna Mystic Ally Monk and the Mundunugu Spirit Barrage Witch Doctor should be extremely competitive options as well, especially with more gear and higher paragon levels.

Apart from a Tal-Rasha Wizard, the other likely candidate for the best DPS will be the Death Nova Necromancer due to its overwhelming combination of tankiness and AoE damage that scales with number of targets.

While high GR pushing needs power, groups that are farming Paragon levels will sacrifice some of that power to go for speed instead, thus clearing lower level GRs significantly faster in order to get the most efficient means of experience. For instance, if your group is topping out at a GR 120, doing GR 110s in 5 minutes will be significantly more XP/hour than doing GR 120s in 15 minutes. For these types of groups, they tend to follow similar group composition as stated above, with one difference. In speed groups, the line between RGK and trash killer is much more blurred, with most groups choosing to go with DPS who can help with both. For instance, LoD Corpse Explosion Necromancers are great at killing trash, but are not fast about it. They are entirely reliant on specific cooldowns, which means they can only do bursts of damage every so often. This makes them not optimal for speed clearing. Instead, groups might choose to take a Wrath of the Wastes Rend Barbarian, since they are able to move extremely fast while dealing consistently high AoE damage.

"Rat Runs" are back, and with a vengeance. This will be the another strong season for the Necromancer, and the Rat Run meta is going to give any competitive group an excellent start to the season. A Rat Run consists of two LoD Singularity Mage Necromancers along with a support Necromancer and a support Barbarian. These groups will speed through the rift, relying on their extremely powerful Mages to kill anything and everything in single blows.

• 1x Support Barbarian
• 1x Support Necromancer
• 2x LoD Singularity Mage Necromancers

The next best group composition utilizes the all powerful Inna Monks. You can basically stack anywhere from 2-4 of these Monks combined with 0-2 supports for some exceptional speed clearing that is capable of pushing to the highest GR levels.

• 1x Support Demon Hunter
• 3x Inna Mystic Ally Monk

Finally, below is a completely different, Demon Hunter-based viable alternative to the traditional "Rat Runs".

• 1x Support Barbarian
• 1x Support Demon Hunter
• 2x GoD Hungering Arrow Demon Hunter

This group setup is incredibly fun and the most optimal for speed clearing early greater rifts. The key to this setup being so optimal is the incredibly high base movement speed that the DH builds offer, allowing all three Demon hunters to fly around the rift at godlike speeds without even utilizing extra support pieces for it. The two supports are incredibly at grouping large masses of enemies, allowing the Hungering Arrows from your Demon Hunters to pierce endlessly, racking up huge hits. Your Demon Hunters will never need to stop spinning, meaning they are always dealing damage while moving. This allows your group to massacre rifts, and the innate power of the GoD Hungering Arrow Demon Hunter as the single most powerful pushing build this season enables you to scale up to higher GR levels much faster than any other group composition in the game.

As a word of caution, this group is very fun to play, but the skill cap lies entirely within your support Demon Hunter. The Barbarian and GoD DH builds are quite easy to play, but the support DH build is quite intricate and requires the player to plan ahead quickly since they need to be playing ahead of the group at all times. The biggest room for improvement in your group is almost certainly going to be how well your support DH performs.

While the absolute meta group composition is great for those classes and builds, it does not really help the other classes. Just because your class is not part of the perfect meta group comp, that does not mean you are nonviable. Every class has roles they can fill, even if they are not the 100% optimal choice.

Barbarians are one of the most useful classes in groups, and specifically are the best support. Wrath of the Wastes Rend Barbarian is going to be one of the meta speed clearing DPS, while the Support Barbarian is the best at grouping in both pushing and speed clears. Almost every group comp benefits from having a Barbarian, making it one of the most desirable classes in group play. This is especially true now with the addition of the Barbarian set, Horde of the Ninety Savages, specifically with the 2-piece bonus that doubles the effectiveness of all shouts. This makes what already was a meta support that much better, making Barbarian a clear favorite for any group composition.

Crusaders are not good supports, but do have the best overall DPS build in the game with the Thorns Bombardment Crusader. This build is almost certainly going to dominate the DPS meta in group pushing for every group size. Additionally they have the best RGK build in the game with the Aegis of Valor Fist of the Heavens Crusader. Crusaders' one major downside is speeds however, as they do not have any top builds for speed clearing. As a class, Crusaders are relatively immobile compared to other classes, making them not the best choice in speed groups. However, for high level GR pushing and farming, Crusaders are one of the best choice for DPS, both for clearing and as a RGK.

With the changes in 2.6.9, Demon Hunters are now a staple in the XP farming meta, both as Supports and DPS. The new Entangling Shot Demon Hunter Support build offers huge DPS multipliers to its group members, making it an excellent choice for higher GRs. The new GoD Hunter Arrow build is also extremely strong for DPSing Greater Rifts, with some of the fastest and most efficient group compositions running 2 or more Demon Hunters in Season 25.

Additionally, Demon Hunters have one of the fastest speed farming builds in the game with the Unhallowed Essence Multishot Demon Hunter build. This build is possibly the single greatest build for split farming bounties and for speed clearing T16, making it extremely powerful early in the season.

Monks are always in the group meta, as the Inna Monk Support has been extremely powerful for a long time, with no other real contenders for the role. Monks are just very good at keeping people alive, making them essential in groups at high GR levels when damage starts to really ramp up.

Additionally, Monks have the best overall build in the game right now for both speed clearing and pushing with the Inna Mystic Ally Monk. For a bit more power and efficiency at the higher end however, the LoD Wave of Light Monk is an extremely powerful choice.

As we mentioned above, "Rat Runs" are still one of the best possible ways to start a season and to farm experience in general. The group for Rat Runs is strict, consisting of 3 Necromancers, 2 of which are running the LoD Singularity Mage Necromancers build. Necromancers work extremely well in this setup, and many high level players choose to always start seasons on a Necromancer before making their main class later on, just because this group comp is so powerful and so efficient.

In Season 28, Necromancers also get an S-tier boss killer with Rathma Army of the Dead Necromancer, thanks to its stacking single target damage.

Death Nova Necromancer are also one of the best possible builds for trash killers due to its overwhelming AoE damage that scales with number of targets.

With Patch 2.6.8, Witch Doctors went from being the worst class in group play to being competitive. With the addition of the new tier set, Mundunugu's Regalia, Witch Doctors now have a competitive build that performs extremely well in speed clears, greater rift pushing, and in XP farming. No matter what you are doing, Witch Doctors are going to be viable with the addition of this new set and the Spirit Barrage build.

Wizards have possibly the single strongest DPS build in the game going into the new season for group play. The Tal Rasha Meteor Wizard, also known as the former Bazooka Wizard, is making a big return this season thanks to some last-minute changes. They should be incredibly strong as a trash clearer, and a staple in the 4-man group meta.