What are the best build for farming keys p8?

I've been searching online for this, but most sites quote good builds for farming keys early ladder. I'm interested in finding an efficient and fast way to clear

The Countess,

The Summoner and

Nihlathak on hell p8. I'm also interested in the "why" aspect of it. How does the build deal with the dangers and deals enough dmg? For the sake of the question, budget doesn't matter.

I know hammer used to be always on top of the meta, but I don't really enjoy the playstyle of hammer. I was thinking maybe light soso or light trapsin? I'd like to hear a take from more experienced players.

So what do you guys think - which builds are viable for efficient

Key farming on p8?

My first bet would be : anything that teleports.

Sorc or any char with Enigma.

Dragon Flight requires enemies so is less practical.

Especially Countess's possible maze tower levels and Arcane really gives an up on use of

Teleport. Nihl is a lesser issue when you know the map reading.

After that, you have to be able to kill and not die, but that's then a matter of preference as any well-geared char can kill either Countess or Summoner.

Lightning sorc i would say. There are very few lightning immunes on the way to any of the keys and

Teleport makes arcane and countess way faster also not too hard to gear up to be able to do it

Yea definitely teleporting is important to keep it efficient. But you could use a non-

Teleport build like

Frenzy barb,

Charge paladin, or even shape shifting Druid all can scoot fast enough to keep efficiency (probably more builds).

Otherwise you gotta be able to kill medium density fairly fast and have a good survivability factor.

The following are my favs:

Energy Shield

Nova sorc

Fireball sorc, (meh all sorc builds should be viable if geared properly)
Necro (all necros are

Corpse Explosion necros)
Javazon
Trapsin
Bowazon

Most efficient (time- wise) will likely go to

Nova

Energy Shield sorc, but it can be stressful if your new to her (she’s also a great all around farmer)

Easiest will likely be the javazon, great single point damage and great aoe damage against

Nihlathak. (Also great all arounder)

Trap assassin gets an honourable mention, greatest safety.

There’s also a difference between which is the hardest and which is the worst to farm. Personally I think

Nihlathak is the hardest to farm because he has a lower drop rate, his corpse explosions are dangerous and so are a few combinations of monsters in his lair… but he’s fast to get to.

The Summoner is the easiest for me, easy to find (offline) and easy to kill.

The Countess is the worst for me, 5 levels in the tower?! Really?! Plus those archers can really hurt too, she also teases you with runes, but after while you’re like “enough

Nef and

Dol rune! Argh!”

Good luck! Hope this helps

Imo the best is lightning sorc because it is a sorc
He can

Teleport fast, deal insance single target damage, tanky thanks to ES and won't run out of mana.
Lightning over

Nova because it has better single target damage and don't have to be closed to nih and his minions (les risk to Co)

The second is javazon just because he has terrible breakpoints so

Teleport with her is annoying.

Necro can easily farm p8 nih but I didn't try to farm other keys so i have no ideal.

Nova

Energy Shield sorc is fine and perfectly safe vs Nilathak if you

Sacrifice a ring slot for

Nature's Peace
(the only potential problem is that damn Blood Mana curse)

Thanks everyone! I'm gonna go ahead and put together the

Nova Sorc and see how it performs. Thanks for the recommendations

if you want to farm keys early ladder, just do it in solo game unless you can do it almost as fast in multiplayer game.

droprate only increase by about 10% or so for 1-2 keys

Honestly? Fire(primarily -ball) sorc.
Assuming you have the gear.

Without gear, trapsins make for an easy all-round farmer though there's plenty of options. Sorcs still have the

Teleport advantage but they will have more trouble actually killing everything.

But once you get some/solid gear..I was genuinely surprised actually by just how ridiculously good a

Fireball sorc is for it, since they're no longer held back by immunities.

What you know going in is that basically any class can handle them with enough gear and pretty much any class can get to fairly solid kill speed doing so. The deciding factor is hence primarily travel speed and after that dmg optimization.

Travel speed alone eliminates anything that isn't a barb or sorc because none of the others can keep up with their

Teleport speed.

Dmg optimization after that eliminates barbs as you will take longer. That's just a fact. On higher player counts simply due to dmg output. On lower ones simply because eventually, you will end up clicking the trash mob next to your primary target on accident and waste a swing or two. Plus sorc tends to blow up everything around your target with it which means extra drops are possible so..yay.
(Though hork does make up for some of that I suppose)

So ultimately, you're looking at sorcs.
Specifically, you're looking at sorcs that can near-instantly blow up boss/SU targets on P8. That's primarily blizzard, lightning or

Fireball.

Nova can certainly kill them all easy enough but it does take a tad longer. Other builds can also still do it but tend to take even longer.
Lightning falls behind simply because the cast animation is so slow.
Blizzard falls behind because every so often, you will run into that stupid "my blizz just won't hit it!" issue.

Fireball is just plain glorious...you can annihilate anything (and I mean anything) on P8 and even if you mess up and don't hit your primary target, your FB hits the one next to hit and the aoe still hits the primary target for the same dmg.

Simply put, there's a reason my S3 FB sorc ended up holding like 3 (or 4?) of the top 5 spots in Heidi's PvM races.
I knew they were good going in but even I honestly didn't expect them to be THAT good across the board. Plus they cost a fraction to gear out of what you pay for a light/

Nova sorc so...bonus.

Didnt' test it live but maybe

Enchant sorc with

Demon Machine and ES shield will be also effective on p8 keys farm. Dmg output could be great in combo with 100% piercing though FCR will be lower in compare with

Fireball sorc.

Used to ask the same question. Answer for me was always - blizz sorc. She is capable of running all keys being dressed up like a homeless hobo. Now my answer is meteorb sorc as this is even more advanced terminator of keys (being geared as a bum as well). Add CTA later and all your problems are solved.

As for well geared builds, I am on the trapsin side - I can check at least 2 keys on ppl8 while others run

Baal (lol sorry).

I'm going for

Nova / ES Sorc. Fully decked out holding Infinity and act 2

Prayer mercenary with Insight makes you super tanky.

Static which is maxed due to

Nova synergy also has an absurd range. Which helps with kills speed on higher player counts.

Then

Nova to finish off .

if u r willing 2 trade keys,

Lightning Fury javazon summoner killer- no L.I.s and Fury ghosts mobs for runes