I have noticed some spikes for a second or two here and there, but nothing too impactful.

Look at my post I made below. I asked pretty much the same thing.But in summary, it looks like keep pushing GRs for xp/blood shards for armor, and a combo of Cube upgrading rares or reforging legends for weapons and jewelry. Get mats doing group bounty runs. I haven't really done groups at all, so I'll probably lean towards the former more than the latter.

Ah, that's what I was missing. Everyone is grouping to do this stuff.Might be time to start looking for a clan.

Okay. So if farming mats is necessary for tons of reforges, what's the optimal way of farming bounty mats? Do you run a couple torment levels lower and to try and get more legendaries semi quickly, or run way lower and just one shot bosses for max speed?

How do you guys typically get pieces of Ancient gear? Are you cubing the reforge with an existing leg/set piece, or just endlessly grinding for new drops/blood shard/upgrading rares in cube?I've just started pushing T12/GR58(?), and got the belt and wrist for U6-SSS build yesterday. Now it's a matter of upgrading slots. Reforging seems way to costly time wise getting the crafting mats when I could just be doing GRs for paragons but don't know if that's correct or not.