Changes

Greater Rifts (GRs or GRifts, initially known as '''Tiered Rifts''') are a higher level of [[Nephalem Rift]], meant to provide a progressively greater challenge and greater with bigger rewards for as players geared well enough progress to take them onhigher and higher levels. They are found in Reaper of Souls and the console [[Ultimate Evil Edition]], but not in regular Diablo 3. Greater Rifts are timed, and *must* be completed within 15 minutes to earn rewards. All gold and treasure in Greater Rifts, with usually a [[legendary]] item or two, comes drop from the [[Greater Rift Guardians|Greater Rift Guardian]] (GRG) which is an upgraded version of the regular [[Rift Guardians]]. Normal monsters do not drop items or gold, and there are no chests or destructibles in GRifts.

'''Difficulty: '''Greater Rifts are numbered as a measure of their difficulty. A level 1 Greater Rift is very easy, equivalent to [[Normal]] difficulty (or less.) Greater Rifts scale up quickly though, and will become challenging for any player ability. Level 8 is equivalent to about Torment 1, Level 15 is equivalent to about [[Torment 3]], and Level 25 is approximately the same as [[Torment 6]]. Early in PTR testing there were The are 100 GR levelsof Greater Rifts, though there should theoretically be an infinite number since each one merely increases and during testing players repeatedly found skill and item exploits enabling them to progress all the hit points and damage of way to the monsters by some percentageend.

'''No Respecs:''' Characters can reallocate their [[Paragon Points ]] while in a an active Rift, but can not access respec or make any changes to their [[inventory]] or skill menus equipment. ([[respec]]) while in a Greater Rift. It is possible to return to town mid-GR, Skills and players items can respec and make repairs then, though it's not recommended since be changed only once the GR Guardian is dead or before entering a timed racenew Grift. This is a feature designed to limit exploits via equipment or skill changes) Gear could be changed in town during an active Grift, so and players can't change gear or skills would exit to be more effective against a single target before they reach shift around items (such as donning one of the elemental damage immunity [[Greater Rift Guardianlegendary amulets]] for instance), but this exploit was eliminated in a patch on August 5, 2014.

'''Rewards: '''Items and [[gold]] do not drop in Greater Rifts, 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 kills the effectiveness of legendary items such as [[Goldwrap]] and [[Harrington Waistguard]] that proc up in effectiveness via gold pickups or chest/clickables opening.)

# If the Rift Guardian is killed before the timer runs out he will drop a Greater Rift Keystone for .# GRKs are upgraded via [[Urshi]], and a level at least 1 higher than your current GR level.# The GRK's level is determined by will be created based on how quickly fast the Greater Rift rift was cleared. The quicker# Use the new GRK to enter a Grift of that level, the higher the GR key fragmentand repeat. 

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 , or moving slightly ahead of the timer bar showing blue, before they kill a couple of Elites in a row depending on the monster density and see the bonus from Elites shoot them back up ahead of scheduletheir relative sleepd. 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, and most Rifts "fail" while players are locked in fevered battle with the GRG.

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 [[Greater Rift Keystone]] (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 stall for a few minutes before beating the Rift Guardian, so your GRKs would be only upgrade to 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.(Or in danger of death if you're playing [[Hardcore]].)

When characters fail to complete a rift in time they can still earn the item and gold rewards for killing the Greater Rift 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 (or go clear normal Rifts until they find a GRK) and work their way back up. 

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 thatall the way up to rank 100. 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> 

As Greater Rifts must be completed within the 15 minute time limit, simply surviving them is not enough to progress. Characters must be balanced to succeed on higher level Rifts, or play in parties that create balance. A character with very high [[Toughness]] but not a lot of [[DPS]], who can grind out Torment 6 in normal play, will not succeed on highger higher level GRs since they won't be able to kill fast enough. Likewise, characters with very high DPS but a lack of survivability will die too often, and without a "restart at corpse" option they will waste too much time running back from the start of the level.

Characters need high killing power '''and ''' the ability to stay alive, to be able to finish higher level rifts quickly enough to advance.