Is there a downside to throwing Greater Rift time trials?
Solution 1:
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:
- A test of your character's capabilities
- Upgrade legendary gems
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.
Solution 2:
Especially if you can do T6 rifts, which drop Keystone of Trials 100% of the time, advantages of advancing as fast as possible:
- More gem upgrades per hour (as Frank mentioned, 1 Keystone of Trials = 3 upgrades)
- Likely: more/better legendaries, depending on how quickly you go through normal rifts, how often you get Keystone of Trials. Higher tiers appear to give more/better legendaries.
- Maybe: more experience per hour (this may or may not be the case if you can't quickly clear T6 rifts)
- Opinion: more fun (blowing through easy mobs gets boring fast)
Advantages of starting at a low tier:
- More legendary gems per Keystone of Trials (usually 1-2 per Greater Rift)
- Higher percentage of time in Greater Rifts
- Unlikely: more legendaries, depending on how quickly you go through normal rifts, how often you get Keystone of Trials