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[[File:TieredGreater-rift-keystone3completion27.jpg|thumb|400px300ps|Greater rift keystones are required to enterRift Complete banner.]]Greater Rifts (formerly GRs, initially known as '''Tiered Rifts''') are a higher level of [[Nephalem Rift]], meant to provide a greater challenge and greater rewards for players geared well enough to take them on. Greater Rifts are timed, and *must* be completed within 15 minutes to earn rewards. All treasure in Greater Rifts, with usually a legendary item or two, comes from the [[Greater Rift Guardians|Greater Rift Guardian]] (GRG) which is an upgraded version of the regular [[Rift Guardians]].

To enter Greater Rifts are numbered as a measure of their difficulty. A level 1 Greater Rift you must earn is very easy, equivalent to [[Greater Rift keysNormal]] by completing normal Nephalem difficulty (or less.) Greater Riftsscale up quickly though, and will become challenging for any player ability. Once you have a keyLevel 8 is equivalent to about Torment 1, click on the Nephalem Altar in town, just like you were opening a normal RiftLevel 15 is equivalent to about [[Torment 3]], and select Level 25 is approximately the same as [[Torment 6]]. There should be an infinite number or Greater Rift option.levels since each one merely increases the hit points and damage of the monsters by some percentage

Greater Rifts feature Characters can reallocate their Paragon Points while in a progress bar timer, and require players to kill the enemies quicklyRift, but can not access their inventory or skill menus ([[respec]]) while in order to progress to the a Greater Rift Guardian. Slower play in a Greater Rift will not result in the big rewardsIt is possible to return to town mid-GR, and normal monsters drop very little in Greater Rifts; players can respec and make repairs then, though it's not recommended since the big payday comes from the end bossGR is a timed race. This is a feature designed to limit exploits via equipment or skill changes, which so players must move along very quickly can't change gear or skills to be more effective against a single target before they reach in timethe [[Greater Rift Guardian]] for instance.

* Items and gold do not drop in Greater Rifts aren't yet available in , and there are no chests or other clickables. All treasure comes from defeating the Greater Rift Guardian, who drops a huge amount of stuff, about double that of a normal Rift Guardian, and has a very high probability of dropping at least one legendary item. (Note that the lack of gold and chests hurts the game; they will be introduced with effectiveness of legendary items such as [[Patch 2.1Goldwrap]] and should be testable on the [[PTRHarrington Waistguard]] before the patch goes livethat proc up in effectiveness via gold pickups or chest/clickables opening.)

The completion bar in a Greater Rift increases gradually from killing trash mobs, but jumps up by larger amounts for Elite kills. (Elites drop objects that look a bit like gooey health orbs, which count for big boosts in the progress bar when collected.) This is a feature designed to keep players from simply rushing past Elites to more quickly finish the rift by killing trash mobs, as can be done in normal Nephalem Rifts, and players will fill their progress bar more quickly by killing Elites than by skipping them, except in very rare long Elite battles.  ==Progress Bar and Rift Speed== The progress bar in a Greater Rift looks like the same as the bar in a normal Nephalem Rift, with two added slider needles, displayed above and below the bar. The total bar colored in orange, and the icon above it show your current progress towards completing the rift. The icon below it and any color in blue shows how fast you need to progress to complete the rift in time. [[File:Greater-rift-progress-bar2.JPG|left|thumb|200px|Ahead of the progress time.]][[File:Greater-rift-progress-below.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Behind the progress time.]] When players are battling through a Rift that's just at the limit of their killing power, they will often see their progress dropping behind and the bar showing blue, before they kill a couple of Elites in a row and see the bonus from Elites shoot them back up ahead of schedule. Since the Rift Guardian appears last and has very high hit points, players must be some distance ahead of the end time on the progress bar to have time to finish the Guardian as well. Beating a rift before the timer expires will grant another Greater Rift Keystone of a higher GR level. Beating a rift very quickly will grant a larger jump up in GR number, and the system seems to count about 1 level per minute. E.g. beating a level 5 rift with 5 minutes to spare would cause a level 10 GRK to drop.  Since the speed will vary quite a bit depending on the monster spawn, players can get unlucky and fail to complete a Rift due to poor enemy density. The opposite can be true as well, and players are advised not to beat a Rift too quickly if they're approaching the limit of their ability. For example, if you get a very easy spawn on a level 20 rift, you might want to kill a few minutes before beating the Rift Guardian, so your GRKs would be level 21 or 22, instead of jumping all the way up to say level 25, where you'd be over your head and unable to complete in time. Players can judge their speed in a rift and know if they need to go faster or slower depending on the progress bar. Characters who are well ahead of the time but coming close to death should look to improve their Toughness and defensive properties/skills. Characters who are having no trouble surviving but are not killing fast enough to keep up with the timer should look to raise their DPS, perhaps by trading off some Toughness or defensive buffs. (These changes can not be made in any given rift, and must be made between games.) When characters fail to complete a rift in time they can still earn the item and gold rewards for killing the GR Guardian. They just fail to earn more [[Greater Rift Keystones]] and thus can not progress to a higher level Rift. If they have no more GRKs they must restart at a level one GR and work their way back up.   ==Greater Rift Difficulty== Greater Rifts do not use usual Diablo 3 [[difficulty]] system. GRs are numbered and are easiest at #1, with a steady progression in difficulty above that. Early estimates of equivalent difficulty levels came from various sources, but tended to agree on the general difficulty range.<ref>[http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/2942zw/ptr_early_greater_rift_tips/ Greater Rift early feedback] - Sidereel via Reddit, 27/06/2014</ref> <ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoN3B3T7ES4 Greater Rift playthrough video] - ZiggyD gaming stream, 27/06/2014</ref> * Greater Rift Level 1 = Normal* Greater Rift Level 4 = Expert* Greater Rift Level 8 = Torment 1* Greater Rift Level 12 = Torment 2* Greater Rift Level 15 = Torment 3* Greater Rift Level 17 = Torment 4* Greater Rift Level 20 = Torment 5* Greater Rift Level 25 = Torment 6 As Greater Rifts must be completed within the time limit, simply surviving them is not enough to progress, thus characters built with very high Toughness but not a lot of DPS, who can grind out Torment 6 in normal play, are not well-suited to succeeding in higher level Greater Rifts.   ==Greater Rift Rewards== No gold or items are meant to drop (early in the PTR Patch testing some are still being rarely found from destructibles that haven't been completely removed) from normal or Elite enemies in a Greater Rift, there are no chests or destructibles or clickables (loose floor tiles, dead bodies, armor/weapon racks, etc). Kills do grant experience as well as Rift Progress, but the gold and item and material rewards come entirely from the Greater Rift Guardian. At the start of the PTR for [[Patch 2.1]], Greater Rift Guardians almost always dropped at least 1 legendary item, and often dropped two.    ==Greater Rift DetailsReveal==

==Greater Rift DifferencesMedia==

Screenshots and videos from Greater Rifts have an improved notched Progress Bar that lets players see how far along they are without hovering. (Normal Rifts had a similar progress bar during the beta test, before going to the featureless bar upon RoS release; a change most fans did not approve of.)

The difficulty levels are also different <youtube>BoN3B3T7ES4</youtube>ZiggyD with a very informative video showing his Demon Hunter progressing from L1 up to a L27 Greater Rift in Greater Rifts, with a party.  ==References==<font size="Difficulty 1-103" scale. It's not yet known how this differs from or expands upon the standard Normal-Torment 6 [[difficulty]] system.><references/>