Unlikely for the time being.

I spent a few hours grinding both Sarn and Docks and the XP/hr was higher in Sarn, because of bigger packs, ease of reset, less backtracking and easier mobs, but ot each his own I guess! 🙂
City also has the added bonus/problem of Perpetus, if you can manage to take him down it’s a fair chunk of XP and loot, otherwise is very risky even if easy to avoid!

You’re right: Docks isn’t the no-brainer top farming spot like it used to be. Personally I still prefer it over any other area in Act III, but Catacombs and Library are better for experience grinding since there’s a lot more monsters there. I never really liked City of Sarn, it’s too small for my taste and I feel like I spend more time resetting the instance than farming.

I edited the original post slightly to at least include a mention of the other Act III areas.

In Act 3 Merciless, it’s more efficient and safe to grind City of Sarn till 68-70 (only 1 level lower than docks) and then start farming Library or Catacombs, the first is faster to farm since it has one entrance and one exit, so you can run the zone without ever going to town, and a Unique monster while Catacombs has little higher XP but to farm it you have to go TP -> WP to Marketplace -> reset Catacombs, making it a bit slower.

It’s safer to play in groups for two main reasons. First is auras, second the damage you take is spread on multiple targets (players) so not all mobs focus you. Regardless of the number of players monster damage remains the same, only their health increases with each additional player in the instance.

There is no increased or decreased experience gained from killing monsters in groups, you get exactly the same amount (official confirmation from patch 0.9.13e).

The biggest downside to playing in groups for most players is lag. Some abilities can cause FPS drops on low-end machines which doesn’t happen as often when you solo. Additionally if your gear is really good it’s likely you’ll clear stuff faster, but on the other hand if your equipment is lacking having just one players with above average items can carry you through tougher areas.

Also Lightning Thorns are a problem for many characters, especially for crit-based physical damage builds. High health pool and maxed lightning resistance helps. Since you’re about to hit Merciless you’ll probably want to max all your elemental resistances and stay about 6-8 levels ahead of the areas to be safe. Here’s a few tips that might help.

However we are not “breathing” through the content as from time to time there are quite mean mobs who nearly killed us. (We have decent equip and a defensive build with lots of hp% stuff etc – both of us got more than 2000hp, atleast 60% res and atleast 50% dmg reduction). So are mobs much more difficult or is this just poe or are we missing something?

The last time i got nearly killed by one of the mages lighning thornes armor in battlegrounds, I got something around 9% lifeleach but it was 3 hits and i was at around 5% hp

Thank you very much