Greater Rifts only drop loot from the Rift Guardians, but that loot is quite good, and apparently even level 1 Rifts drop Torment-only loot.
Since the Rifts get progressively more difficult, and completing a Rift run results in choosing between increasing the difficulty of the next Rift, or trying to upgrade a Legendary Gem (and thereby ending your Rift run, necessitating finding another Keystone of Trials), what is the benefit of doing well in the Realm of Trials?
If I throw the Rift trial, and start at a level 1 Greater Rift, won't I wind up with more loot per Keystone of Trials I find?
Is there a benefit to advancing as far as possible in the Trial that I'm missing?
Best Answer
It depends on what your goal in running Greater Rifts is. For acquiring legendary gems or other loot, it's actually much better to start at level 1 and just keep upgrading your keystone rather than your gems, so for that goal, nope, no downside to throwing the trial.
Greater Rifts have two main goals:
They do offer some other advantages over regular rifting, in that all loot is contained in the Rift Guardian, and they are much quicker to complete than regular rifts (compared to equivalent levels).
The Keystone of Trials lets you speed up the process of getting to higher rift levels. Rather than having to run rift after rift after rift to get to the point you want, the trial lets you start generally where you fit.
If your goal is to upgrade gems, though, it all comes out to the same: One Keystone of Trials = three chances at gem upgrades. This is where the higher ranks of Greater Rifts come into play, as the higher your rank, the better the chance of upgrading your gems. Personally, I'm going for gem upgrades, so the higher the rift level, the better the chance I can upgrade my highest level gem.
And if your goal is to see how far you can get, the Trial speeds that up to the point of only needing one or two rift runs to test that capacity.