Is it viable to grind above Normal for Torment now?
As I understand, before the recent patch, there was no point in doing any difficulty level other than normal to gear up for torment. The drop ammount of bloodshards and legendaries was the same in normal as in master. So basically, you grinded normal until you could handle torment efficiently and jumped straight to it.
Is it the same nowadays? My barb can't really handle torment yet. Should I just grind normal or is it better to play the highest difficulty she can handle?
Probably just grind normal.
Consider the D3 Difficulty chart (click for full size):
Also at the bottom of this page
Since gear on your Barb at end game should be legendaries, and you don't get legendary bonus drop chance until Torment 1, your best bet is generally to clear Normal quickly until you can handle Torment 1. Actually, if you look even closer, the only bonuses you get from Normal up to Master are:
- Bonus XP
- Bonus Gold Find
- Bonus Death's Breath and Legendary Crafting Mats
- Master Gives Imperial Gems on occasion
- Expert and above give double bounty blood shards
With this in mind, I would never run Hard. If you are interested in getting Blood Shards from Bounties, then Expert or Master might be worthwhile - as long as it doesn't take you twice as long to finish a run. The rest of the bonuses are nice, but generally not worth it until you get to Torment 1.