you can abuse DS'ing down mass amounts of mobs far before max-tier / fully endgame characters. you can start with around 1800ish AC and near capped DR on a tank or melee class (im pretty sure this is reachable in bounty gear and boes EDIT: turns out dragov is sitting at 1799 AC and maxed DR in nothing but BoE gear with the exception of an E map ring and his charm), maybe even earlier than that but my characters gear hasnt been that bad in ages. in fact, some people did it at level 55 to farm AA and platinum in lasanth.
wiki.shardsofdalaya.com
yes, this publicly available guide thats been on the wiki since 2009 exposes many of the "secrets" high end shadowknights used to use in SoD, like unequipping your weapon to cancel /s 7 or DS contributing to /s 7 healing (and causing mobs to heal you when they attack in some cases). It also has some epic "secrets" like talking about how ridiculous damage shield is, how AC and DR are the best stats in the game for exp, and how bp procs are overpowered.
ignoring the bug where you can only earn 68k exp per kill towards an AA at 65, the real issue the game faces is that enemies which are challenging to fight in small quantities and provide adequate exp / platinum rewards don't really exist outside of maybe 1 area in the entire game. the other issue is that most enemies in this game are basic warrior mobs with virtually no mechanics and they're boring beyond belief to fight on their own. the only way it becomes even mildly engaging is by pulling large amounts of mobs with no mechanics together.
minor side note if any dev reads this: mobs that force you to only fight 1 at a time due to mechanics (rather than the inherent danger they present) also tend to be very uninteresting. being able to pull "hard" mobs together as you get better gear / more skill makes the game a lot more interesting. (e.g., you can outplay pulling multiple lava spirits because none of the mechanic overlaps can 1 shot a player or otherwise make the pull non-viable (by healing each other or CC'ing players.). another example of being able to outgear/outplay pulling "hard" mobs together is something like pulling a skycaller + infernal advisor together in EF instead of splitting because you have the damage to burn the advisor before it debuffs you. you cannot outplay pulling multiple infested caretakers together as double severed arteries can randomly gib an unlucky party member without counterplay)
Also the fact that mandatory questing in the game requires you to fight trivial enemies and nerfing AE damage methods makes this questing more painful than it already is, but thats a whole 'nother topic of discussion.
tldr; i got way off topic but its still a good read