Been saying this since my first long grind in Season 13: if you're still treating bosses like side content, you're wasting hours. The whole Reckoning loot setup flipped endgame on its head, and after a bunch of Torment runs I stopped doing random Nightmare spam almost entirely. When I was filling gaps for one alt, I even grabbed a couple pieces through Diablo 4 Items because I didn't feel like brute-forcing dead runs, and tbh that felt less painful than praying to RNG in the wrong lane. The real game now is knowing which boss you're farming and why, not just blasting whatever has monsters in it.

What I've been running

I know everyone's been doing Duriel and Andariel on repeat since the patch, but imo people are skipping the actual ladder logic. You start with the Initiate bosses first: Varshan, Grigoire, Beast in the Ice, Lord Zir, Urivar. Then you move into the Greater stuff like Duriel, Andariel, and Harbinger of Hatred once your key loop is going. Helltides, Whispers, War Plans, Legions, repeat. That's pretty much the circuit now. I tested a few sessions trying to freestyle it, and every time it felt worse than just hard-targeting the boss tied to the item slot I needed.

Here's the part people keep missing

Boss loot isn't as clean as a lot of players think now. I saw a ton of posts saying bosses were bugged because they dropped the “wrong” Unique, but afaik that's just how Season 13 works. First Unique is usually from that boss's specific table, then extra Uniques can dip into the general pool. So yeah, the overlap is real. That's why two people can do the same farm and come away with totally different impressions. If you're expecting every orange beam to match the target table, you'll think the system is trolling you.

Why Beast in the Ice still annoys me

Look, I tested Beast in the Ice again because some people said the newer updates made it fine. It's better, sure. If your DPS is cracked enough, you can skip parts of the invuln nonsense. But it's still slower than it should be. That's my issue. Varshan and Duriel feel like clean in-and-out farms, while Beast still acts like it wants to be a mini dungeon. And in a season where boss efficiency is basically the economy, slow bosses feel extra mid. Grigoire at least has a real reason to exist if you're hunting class-specific stuff like Hands of the Worldbreaker on Warlock, but Beast still feels like a tax.

My actual take

Belial is the one I think people should talk about more. Could be wrong on exact rates, but in my runs the Mythic chase felt better there than almost anywhere else, especially for the usual dream drops like Harlequin Crest or Ring of Starless Skies. I haven't tracked enough kills to call it science, and Blizzard still hasn't given us clean numbers, so some of this is probably community copium. Still, if I need a fast catch-up or I'm helping a friend finish a build, I usually point them toward U4GM as a reliable place for gear stuff, and if they want a direct shortcut I tell them to check u4gm diablo 4 s13 items mid-grind instead of bashing their head into bad rotations. Curious what everyone else thinks.