I am currently playing a lvl 94 retaliation Warlord on HC I can complete the Crucible on Aspirant all the way to 170 and I tried my hand at the Crucible on Challenger difficulty and I got a bad feeling at around 80.
How does the difficulty increase? Do the monsters hit harder, do they have more hp and resists?
Should I level up to 100 before continueing and farm more end game gear before proceeding any further? For example two of my items are green lvl 92 gear.
Welcome!
Monsters on Challenger are like the ones on Elite in campaign (more health, damage and other stats). Notice that your resistances are lower too.
Reaching level 100 will probably not be enough. You need better/different gear and practice too.
I only finished Gladiator long after beating campaign on Ultimate and even then I employed 4 defenses and 4 blessings. Don’t expect Crucible to be a cakewalk.
Aspirant to Challenger is a substantial jump. I currently just have base game plus Crucible, so level cap 85, Crucible max 150. All of my level 85 characters can easily do Aspirant 150. My very enjoyable but not particularly well-geared Warder can easily get to Challenger 148, but usually dies on Challenger 149 and also died the one time he got to Challenger 150. My reasonably well-geared Commando can do Challenger 150 without too much trouble, though as a tanky character it takes quite a while and I rarely bother. If I feel like doing a loot-hunting run I’ll take the warder into SoT or BoC instead, since that’s much more fun.
I’m assuming Challenger to Gladiator is a similar jump and have not made any attempt on it. I’ll see what it’s like after I pick up AoM, get some characters to 100, and start re-gearing at that level.
When you had the “bad feeling around 80” in Challenger, were you using tribute buffs? Those definitely help, though they’re not going to take you from 80 to 150 (or 170). They probably would take you from 80 to 100 which would at least get you a new start point for later, though.
