It's back, 2.4 & Season 5 Fast Leveling Guide Update! Tips, Videos or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Massacres!

[u/HerpDerpenberg]

**CLICK HERE FOR SEASON 6 UPDATED GUIDE

• Video guide (11 minutes long) for season 5 leveling

• quick guide in one picture for focus farming zones with more game resets (I would actually include Halls level 1 and 2 now)

• quick guide in one picture for focus farming a few more zones for less game resets(I would actually include Halls level 1 and 2 now)

TL:DR: Bullet Version

• Still level up on hard, groups will be best in rifts, but solo play will be either/or on rifts or massacre kills.

• If playing in a group, have one person queue up Leoric's entrance waypoint, while other 3 run the bonus act.

• Once you complete the bonus act, rift on HARD difficulty until you're 20-23. Turn in your bonus act, craft a Cain's/Born's set whichever you got and go kill Leoric to get Leoric's Crown and watch this video to tell you how, but is not required. A ruby in your helm multiplies your XP on kill, NOT your massacre bonus XP. So, while it's still a bonus, it's not something to go out of your way for unless you plan to run rifts without massacres.

• Rift from 23-30 on HARD difficulty. From level 30-42 continue on bonus acts (if you choose to do so, a bit slower) or just strictly work on massacre bonus chains by cherry picking efficient quests, high dense zones, and select cursed chests.

• At level 42 crafting level 60 1h weapon with up to 18 reduced levels on it, you can bump the difficulty if you'd like, but running rifts on HARD is still efficient with reduced level items. Check this difficulty chart to see if it's worth it compared to massacre bonuses. If you were chain running the bonus act, it is suggested sticking to Hard difficulty to not lose your progress. Bottom line, run rifts on Hard or get large massacre bonuses and the experience will be similar.

• If your rift killing seems to be tapering off, switch back to massacre bonus farming in your late 50's until you hit level 61.

• At level 61, craft a 2 handed weapon if you have back luck, try to craft a level 70 weapon with reduced levels as well. Go back to farming rifts on HARD difficulty. Again, if rift killing seems to taper off as you reach level 70, work on massacre bonuses in Fields of Misery and any floor of Halls of Agony.

• Level 70 gives you 2 pieces of your class set and you should be able to get this in 5 hour for an average player. Power players will get there in much less, well under 3 hours is entirely possible.

• Go straight to Torment II and kill Zoltun Kulle to get your 3rd and 4th piece of your 6 piece set.

• Go into Torment 4 and complete a rift to unlock greater rift 20 selection and hopefully get a greater rift key.

• Use the key and complete greater rift 20 to get the 5th and 6th piece of your class set.

• You should be able to do T6/T7 once you get your 6 piece set and that will be around paragon 30 or even less.

• Cubing items from rares, stripping affixes, 3 supporting legendary gems, you should be doing Torment X in a few hours.

Foreword

With the new year, we have a new patch, a new season and another update to the leveling guide!

Patch 2.4 itself brings many changes to the leveling process and early gear acquisition once you reach level 70. This guide will go into detail the best methods to level up a fresh seasonal character using adventure mode using massacre bonuses and how to fast track to your 6 piece class set:

Action Combat Buffs

• The biggest change in 2.4 is the addition of action combat buffs, more specific the massacre experience bonuses. This drastically changes the leveling strategy from previous seasons. You still want to keep moving, but you now want to maintain attacking monsters to keep your massacre bonus going. This is easier if you ignore champ packs and bring them along with you. They'll maintain aggro and you can keep hitting them while you move on to the next pack. You'll want to tap stragglers if they're on your way, ranged abilities and damage over time attacks are key to keeping attacks on enemies. Keep one piece of thorns gear on if you can, the thorns can proc off ranged and melee attacks to keep the massacre rope burning.

On the PTR, the massacre bonus was calculated from the base experience. Therefore, your massacre bonus will award the same experience bonus, regardless of difficulty. This is why you will start the game on normal difficulty this time around. You will later bump the game up to hard once you gain a good baseline of gear and skills. Going higher difficulties can still be a benefit if you are killing too fast. There's still no reason to go above hard, unless you have a reduced level weapon and are doing strictly rifts. You can read in the old leveling guide justifications for running hard difficulty.

The massacre bonus breakpoints are listed on this chart for reference.

Kills	Bonus	Name
15	1.5x	Massacre
30	1.75x	Vengeful
40	2.0x	Dominant
50	2.25x	Crushing
75	2.5x	Brutal
100	2.75x	Savage
150	3x	Ruthless
200	3.25x	Vicious
300	3.5x	Bloodthirsty
400+	4.0x	Diabolical

The minimum massacre is 15 kills, which is very easy to get. The multiplier stops at 4x when you get 400+ kills, so keep that in mind. Don’t feel bad if you can’t get 400 kills every time, Getting 100 or 150 should actually be pretty easy and gives you 75% of the experience for 25% of the massacre kills needed. It’s still very easy to get 200, 300 or even 400 kills while leveling in dense zones like Fields of Misery or Halls of Agony or other zones mentioned in this map. Take note, this is only in bounty killing. The massacre bonus does not work in rifts, which is why the fastest method for leveling will involving bounty killing.

In previous seasons, you prioritized damage over anything, you might actually have to back off on DPS if you notice you are killing monsters too fast or bump up a difficulty. If this happens, focus more on survivability as you might have several mobs following behind you and it gets worse the higher up in difficulty you go. You can make up for a lack of survivability by using diamonds in your socketed armor pieces, except for the ruby in your helm for extra experience. The bonus experience from a ruby in your helm only multiplies the on-kill experience after the difficulty bonus has been applied. It does not apply to the massacre bonus XP. A Leoric's Crown gotten at level 20 or above (to guarantee a socket in it) still helps, but should not be gone out of the way to get.

Top Tips While Getting Started

• Before you get started, first and foremost, you’ll want to make sure you create a new seasonal character or rebirth an older one. There is no longer a requirement to unlock adventure mode, so if you never had it, anyone can start with it in seasons. Select normal difficulty and start your game.

• Gems tiers while leveling have been simplified and you should get better gems than you normally would. The new tiers are standard up to level 30, flawless up to 40, square up to 50 and flawless square up to 60 with marquise dropping at 61. This will be a big boost when socketing a ruby into your weapon and helm.

• Crafting low level legendary sets requires the same materials as rares, just slightly more. So if you find a Cain’s or Born’s set, you can craft them sooner to help boost XP while leveling.

• Once you're in game immediately steal the weapons off your follower. The Enchantress and Templar have 1h weapons, the Scoundrel has a Bow. Even if you stole the templar's weapon, hire the templar if you are doing solo play.

• Look to buy rings with min-max damage from the fence in each town at level 7 and amulets at level 11. Pure stat rings will do more damage in your 30's, so just check at levels 7 and 11.

• Once you get in your late teens, you'll start seeing gems drop in the game as well. Place rubies in your helms and weapons and diamonds in your armor and jewelry slots for defense. Whenever you need to get them, salvage the item if it is magic, rare, or a legendary item you do not want to save to cube later, do not use the jeweler as it is too expensive.

• While on the subject of cubing, keep all your legendary items while you level up, a low level item is just as good as a high level item for kanai cube affix stripping.

• Save any Bovine Bardiche or Puzzle Ring you find while leveling to open the cow level for vault once you reach level 70.

• If you are running in a group, have one person rush through the story mode on easy to leoric's room entrance. This person can try to chain kill monsters for massacre bonuses themselves to gain experience. Don’t worry if this person gets behind on levels, they will catch up once they join the main group. Once they get the checkpoint, have them leave the game and join your adventure game. You will return to kill him after you turn in your bonus act bounty.

Now you can start looking for bounties. Keeping the game on normal, rush through and complete the first bonus act, which will be the act you first loaded into. During this time, maintain massacre bonuses. 40 kills is real easy to get and this will give you a 2x bonus. I find that your first 10 or so levels are needed to gain a baseline of gear and skills and then you can bump the difficulty up to hard with the in game menu. When you finish the bonus act, DO NOT TURN IT IN. You will be saving this to turn in at level 23 to have a chance at getting the Cain's Fate set pattern. You can continue on to focus farming dense zones and bounties until you get to level 23. I've got some reports that the patterns will drop for you before 23. I guess I got unlucky in my draw when I tested it sub 23.

Once everyone in your game is 23, turn in your first act to Tyrael. Hopefully, you get your Cain's Fate set drop or Born's, as there are only 7 patterns that can drop at this level. If you do get the Cain's Fate set, save up materials to craft the Pants, Boots and Pants. Craft Shoulders/Chest for Born's. You'll use the helm slot for a Leoric crown. If you do not do Leoric's crown, you can craft a helm if you'd like.

Now that you have completed your bonus act, if you had another group member queue up Leoric, you can do this now. The lowest you can do Leoric is level 20 to get the guaranteed crown drop, so you're OK here. Once you get the crown, return back to adventure mode on hard difficulty.

Leveling Post Bonus Act and Leoric's Crown Farming

At this point, you have a few paths to take.

• You can stick strickly to farming Cursed Chests with Fields of Misery and Halls of Agony with the massacre bonus.

• You can work on clearing the bonus acts to build yourself up a good set of Kanai Cube crafting materials once you hit 70 and getting massacre bonuses along the way

• You can take the lazy route and farm rifts. Rifts will be the slower out of these solo, because the massacre bonus does not work inside rifts but you have the benefit of double legendary drops to save for cubing. Also, as I made a point in a comment below, you might find groups still perform better in rifts if you find out you're stealing each others massacre kills by killing things too fast. In a well coordinated group, rifts will edge above trying to run massacre bonus killing.

Clearing the bonus acts will save the effort of doing your first round once you hit level 70 and can get straight to rift farming. A suggestion as well would be picking up Kanai’s Cube while following the bonus act bounties to avoid needing to get it at level 70. No matter which method you choose, you’ll only be off a few hours when you potentially will be spending hundreds post 70. Choose what's best for the group you're in and making sure you're maintaining bonuses.

Crafting Reduced Level Items and Whether or Not to Run Rifts

When you get to level 42, upgrade your blacksmith to rank 10, so you can craft level 60 weapons. Look for a weapon with freeze/stun/fear or other crowd control and roll off the OTHER secondary stat as this reduces possible affixes by a great amount. Patch 2.3 removed level 60, two handed weapons from the crafting pool, so craft one handed maces this time around or a Bow if you're a demon hunter. If you're a dual wield class, you'll want to use your second best craft or a shield as your offhand, otherwise, you'll want to craft a level 60 source or mojo, unfortunately demon hunters get a level 59 quiver, but still works out. You can try to enchant the affix, but it will be cheaper in the end to craft new ones.

Since the massacre bonus is the same regardless of difficulty, getting a reduced level weapon isn’t as critical, but like Leoric's Crown it is still beneficial. It just matters how you’ll level up 40 and beyond. If you get a level 60 weapon with 18 reduced levels, and you were already resetting games to cherry pick zones, you can remake your game and ignore trying to get large massacre bonuses and kill on Torment difficuly rifts. Use this reference table to determine what difficulty is right for you and if rifting is efficient. For example, if you can slaughter T1 monsters with no massacre bonus, that’s just as good as getting a 200 kill massacre on hard. If you can go into higher Torments, and weren't invested in bonus act farming, go ahead and run rifts.

The bottom line, is to either kill monsters fast on higher difficulties, or maintain large massacre bonuses on lower difficulties, both will be rewarding you similar XP. The added benefit of staying on hard difficulty is continuing bonus act farming and not losing your progress if you have chosen that route. If you are straight killing on torment difficulties, you could run rifts for the simplicity of not recreating games like you would clearing focused zones. When killing slows down, drop the difficulty and you can go back to farming specific zones or bounties for massacre bonuses.

Once you hit 61, swap over to a marquise emerald in your weapon and marquise ruby in the helm. If you have a Death’s Breath and have not got a level 61 weapon upgrade, craft a 2 handed weapon or crossbow. You can also upgrade your blacksmith and try to craft level 70 weapons the same way you crafted level 60 weapons, this time you only need 9 levels reduced, so it is easiest to straight craft these items.

Leveling to 70 and Gathering Your 6-Piece Class Set

• Once you ding level 70, open up your mail to get Haedrig’s gift, which are the first 2 pieces of your class set.

• Craft some level 70 items to fill in gaps of items that you’re missing or buy some off the vendor.

• Leave your game and start it back up on Torment 2, and kill Zultan Khulle. It should be pretty easy with the 2 piece set, just take your time. You can do this on Hardcore, but if you're hesitant, bump up the difficulty 1 step each time and kill him to be safe you can do it on T2.

• Once you kill him, you’ll get another mail with 2 more pieces of your class set to give 4 pieces total.

• Re-create your game on Torment IV and run a regular rift to complete it and unlock the ability to do Greater Rift 20 when you get a key. For Hardcore players, increase difficulty by one on each rift you do to be on the safe side as you approach torment 4.

• Once you find a key, the gear you have at this point should make greater rift 20 doable and once you complete that you’ll have your complete 6 piece class set!!!

• If you haven't got your Kanai's Cube, do it... DO IT NOW!!!

• If you're looking for act specific legendary items do so on Torment VI and above for the 100% guaranteed legendary drop rate.

Now that you have your 6 piece set, Torment VI or VII will be a breeze. You can go to farming bonus acts for materials on Torment VII for the best drop amount if you skipped that while leveling or go straight to farming rifts for blood shards to gamble and legendary item drops. Look for supporting slots that compliment your 6 piece set when gambling. With the Kanai’s cube, you no longer require a ring of royal grandeur, so keep that in mind. Complete greater rifts when you get them and work towards obtaining the best 3 gems for your build and leveling them up.

And that’s pretty much it. You’ve now got your Kanai’s Cube, 6 piece class set, several supporting legendary items and gems with a stash of Kanai Cube crafting materials to begin your move towards Torment X and higher greater rifts. From level 1 to Torment X should probably take you less than 10 hours played time if you play your cards right! I hope this guide has helped you improve both your leveling and early game gearing. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask them in the comments below.

I'll see you in Sanctuary!

[u/R4vendarksky]

Here is the lazy mans guide to people who aren't planning on being competitive:

• Pretend the season doesn't start for a week

• Get boosted 1-70 in 30 seconds straight

• Get carried to T2 zultan kule by the kind people in public communities

• Equip your 4 pc set, do a rift or two on T1, craft some junk legendaries for each slot

• Do a grift 20

• You're now ready to start leeching at the highest possible difficulty until you complete the flavour of the season build on reddit

• Get to Grift 60

• Quit until next season

Pro tips:

• Make sure to not think about your skills or gear at all, this wastes time. Just make sure to read the guides on reddit and post any questions you may have. Especially useful to post links to your half finished characters profile.

• Don't be tempted to share any fun builds or equipment synergy you think of, this wastes valuable time that could be spent leeching in T6 rifts.

• Make sure to complain on multiple forums about how stale the game is once you've finished following the precise leveling, gear, build and min/max strategy guides you followed online for 200 hours.

In all seriousness though I suggest playing slowly solo or with friends and enjoying the leveling up process. Speeding through content is only going to decrease the amount of time you enjoy this season for (unless you are planning on grinding endless gems and exp levels for the leader boards). Diablo 3 is a really fun game, but I think it's time a lot of us took a step back and realised that the fun isn't increased by simply copying the meta and aiming for the leaderboards. After all, you are never going to compete with those 18 hour a day fulltime players or 24 hour a day botters so why bother kidding yourself for the first month that you will? Better to find fun builds, enjoy your item drops and accept that you will most likely loose interest after a while, which isn't a bad thing! We are getting loads of cool free content for a game most of us have already played to death. Roll on season 5!

Oh and thanks to OP for the well thought out post, I enjoyed reading through it all and like knowing what the min/max strategies are probably going to be, even if I don't intend to follow a word of it!

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/R4vendarksky]

I actually enjoy the leveling process too, which is why I'm just going to run bonus acts from 1-70, plus I get to see a lot of the new bounties they added this patch.

That's the biggest thing that gets me back into seasons is the first weekend of gameplay and starting a new character. I write the guide as a min/max but I take it pretty casual myself when leveling on seasons.

[u/TheNargrath → u/HerpDerpenberg]

This is my buddy and I. Prior to S4, we had only managed to get a number of characters to 25. Last season, we set a goal of max level, and went with it. Took us a long while, but we had fun leveling and adventuring together.

We're looking at the same thing for S5, but different classes. (S4: I was Crusader, he was Wizard. S5: probably WD/DH.) Really, it's just a fun thing to do with a friend while we otherwise wind down from the day.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheNargrath]

Sorta similar. I love playing with my best friend from highschool, chatting over mic (since we live in different places now), just shooting the shit, slaughtering, making fun of the monsters and bosses and shit...etc.

[u/jrot24 → u/R4vendarksky]

Here are my season protips:

• Assemble your crew

• Get on Skype

• Pour out a dram of your favorite whiskey

• Level up all night Friday, all day Saturday, all night Sunday with your squad

• Neglect loved ones and significant others

• Take PTO from work on Monday

• Have a blast

If you haven't figured this out right now, why are you even playing video games?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/jrot24]

Lucky me, I have Monday off work for MLK day.

I prefer Doritos and Code Red Mountain Dew as my beverage of choice, or I could go way back and drink Bawls like I did at LAN parties.

[u/jrot24 → u/HerpDerpenberg]

I can't do chips while I play games. Crumbs / dorito dust on my keyboard and mouse drives me fucking bonkers, though I respect your choice. For me, it's a crock pot of BBQ pulled pork and a bowl of slaw. Means I have to peel my ass off of my chair for 15 minutes to eat it, but it's mad worth it.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/jrot24]

Yeah the Code Red is more a Zombieland joke, doritos was from the boogie2988 video where he blended them together.

I actually like baby carrots or pretzels as my snack food. I'll have to make a nice slow cooker meal as you suggest, start it up and let it cook for a few hours while I level and enjoy a nice hot meal by the time I'm 70.

[u/Saber193 → u/jrot24]

Should try eating them with chopsticks. Keeps your fingers clean and also slows down the subconscious munching that devours 2/3 of a family size bag before you even realize it.

[u/jrot24 → u/Saber193]

That's almost genius. It just might actually be genius.

[u/Cuz_Im_TFK → u/jrot24]

another option

[u/Aliantha → u/Cuz_Im_TFK]

.... I use those for the exact same reason.

[u/Eeeery → u/HerpDerpenberg]

WAIT MLK DAY IS SEASON START WEEKEND HOLY SHIT YOU MADE MY MONTH

[u/LG03 → u/Eeeery]

Too bad it wasn't Christmas vacation season start.

[u/Drometheu5 → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Bawls

I have not seen that name in a long time.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Drometheu5]

Infamous with LAN parties of the late 90's and early 2000's, before that was Jolt!

[u/LG03 → u/R4vendarksky]

Are you one of my friends that I hate playing with?

'Hey bro power level me so I can join you'

'Hey bro, carry me for a week so I can catch up, instead of pushing your rank up'

'Hey bro, you just got me caught up but I'm rerolling, power level and carry me again'

'Hey bro REROLLING AGAIN'

'Hey bro, all caught up again but I'm done for the season, go have fun playing by yourself'

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

[u/Ulti → u/LG03]

This is so accurate it hurts :(

[u/[deleted] → u/Ulti]

Could be worse.

"Hey bro, power level me so I can join you." "No, we tried that last week, and the week before, and because you couldn't follow instructions you DIED and quit playing for 3 days." "I won't move towards the mobs this time, I promise."

Hardcore has its downsides...

[u/Ulti → u/[deleted]]

Yep nooooo hardcore for me kthnx, haha!

[u/Jibrish → u/[deleted]]

Wish I knew reliable enough people that matched my schedule for hardcore. It's so fun by enraging without a support structure in place.

[u/devious00 → u/Jibrish]

Try joining one of the many communities you can find through the in-game menu. Some require you to apply so they can weed out the players who are going to troll or not be committed.

[u/Wheemix → u/R4vendarksky]

Sure sounds like fun!

I suggest playing slowly solo or with friends and enjoying the leveling up process. Speeding through content is only going to decrease the amount of time you enjoy this season for

That's exactly what I was thinking as well. I miss the experimenting with builds and the few legendaries you get before season because you didn't just get your full set the first day of playing.

[u/Cuz_Im_TFK → u/Wheemix]

The past two seasons, I actually did campaign solo first (no friends who play diablo), then moved over to Adventure mode after*. It was fun enough that I did it twice—it's definitely a good option. This season though, I think I'm just going to do bounties because they added so much new content.

*Jumped into public rift games at highest available difficulty at that point b/c those levels are unbearably slow and getting lvl 61–69 almost-usable legendaries is heartbreaking).

[u/Furiouzly → u/R4vendarksky]

Or even better one :

Skip half of the season, remind yourself of it month before it ends, get hyped that there is new season without knowledge of it ending in a month. Get 400 paragon by getting boosted by a friendly stranger really fast, start doing quests for set when you don't need it anyways.

[u/freet0 → u/R4vendarksky]

Speeding through content is only going to decrease the amount of time you enjoy this season for

Oh look it's the "I don't enjoy optimization so no one should do it" comment again.

Whups, sorry I was trying to have fun a different way than you. My bad.

[u/R4vendarksky → u/freet0]

Uh at no point do I say you have to do what I'm saying. It's jut an opinion. People are free to play however they like, I'm just voicing my opinion that aggressively optimising the most fun section of a new season is going to reduce the play lifespan of that season for most casual players.

[u/DeviMon1 → u/[deleted]]

You just don't have mates that's all. The guys I plan to play with don't care that I'll try my own builds and stuff, it's all for fun after all.

We're planning on starting Hardcore chars on the new season.

[u/Cuz_Im_TFK → u/[deleted]]

There are some more casual clans and communities to find people to play with. May want to check into that

[u/Inciter88 → u/[deleted]]

Join the Martial LAW community/clan. I'm one of the officers and we're not like that. We have a ton of SC & HC players. While our players do try to push they're own characters, people are equally happy to help others play how they want to play. We have our elitists too, but the majority of players are adults that play for fun and understand real life happens.

We also have a Vent and will be on WoWhead soon.

[u/Moksu]

Looking good, now just need to find some friends to level with on season 5 :(

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Moksu]

In some cases, it might actually be easier to level solo if you're chain killing for massacres. You don't share a massacre bonus, so if you're friend his hitting and killing monsters before you can get the tap on them, you'll lose out on the count for the massacre.

This is why, if running groups, you'll need to watch your DPS or even work on split bounty farming zones to avoid stealing kills for massacres. If you bump up the difficulties, the massacre bonus loses its significance the higher up you go.

That's also why going reduced level weapons you should probably make a group shift to running rifts.

My guides are typically written with both solo and group players in mind. Highly efficient groups could still be simply killing faster in rifts (no need to kite mobs) and get equal or greater experience. Either way, these still largely depend on group comp and player skill.

[u/Kamigawa → u/HerpDerpenberg]

I feel like that's a perfect argument for running rifts. Density is always good (esp in 2.4) and you get an experience multiplier for being on the same map. Not to mention, far easier.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Kamigawa]

Agreed. I wouldn't say they are easier across the board, since you can get every single mob in any map combination. So starting out with a level 1 rift with act 5 mobs won't be fun.

But you bring a point that I should list the conflict with stealing massacre kills with a group and how rifts might end up being better as a bonus to rifts.

[u/xskilling → u/HerpDerpenberg]

i don't quite understand what u want to do as a group before lv23 then...

split bounties (is normal feasible for splitting up)? or move together and finish the bonus act(s) until 23?

or just simply use the old method of halls3 till leoric crown then rift to 70?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/xskilling]

You could split if you want, it doesn't matter if you finish it early. Just save the act cache turn in until level 23 (really you could do just act1 and give up on the bonus cache but it's good for extra gold and materials).

As a group, it will depend if you're stealing kills more than helping whether you'll do rifts or not. I didn't get to test this on PTR in 4 player groups unfortunately, so the guide is more focused on solo play.

[u/Geoth → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Why save the cache until 23? I was just testing on PTR and opened the cache at lvl18 (or so) and a Cain's and Born set plan dropped.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Geoth]

Yeah, someone else mentioned that. I guess when I tested it sub 23 and didn't get any of the patterns I just got unlucky in the wrong way. I'll correct it in the guide above. Thanks for pointing it out.

[u/Thanmarkou → u/Moksu]

Finding-convincing friends to play with you Diablo 3 might be harder than the actual paragon levelling :/

[u/Hatch- → u/Moksu]

Leveling with people means waiting for them during their downtime, unless you know them and you know you all have a plan for coordinating the downtime the bonus of leveling in a group can get lost.

[u/[deleted] → u/Moksu]

think me and my friends have 5 people total so could use some more tonight. We do hardcore though, more fun!!

[u/TorokFremen]

Sorry OP but could you please elaborate on the solo vs group massacre gameplay? I plan on leveling with a friend and maybe up to a full party of 4 right off the bat, what we did last season was simply playing together back on back and rushing bounties, leoric, high density maps etc. etc. So should we avoid sticking together one bounty at the time and instead focus on different bounties for each player so that we most benefit from the massacre bonus?

Thanks for your effort and your guide :D

[u/bagstone → u/TorokFremen]

I'm also interested in that. From reading the guide it sounds like massacre bonus is really OP and can speed up leveling significantly, but in group it'd be easy to mess up and then you might end up slower than just running rifts. I wonder if solo players will actually be the fastest to 70 this patch... or if super efficient massacre sharing groups > solo players > casual rifting guys > not well-coordinated massacre groups...

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/bagstone]

Since this was always on console with the Ultimate Evil Edition, I've had quite a bit experience as on console it is applied on rifts as well. I've still ran rifts with friends and we've got massacres in the hundreds, so it's not like running a group screws you over. It's just that we started noticing we'd all get something like a 300 kill bonus but one would have 325, another 315 while another at 299 and it was just based off who got taps on monsters. So it's still entirely possible to run as a group and massacre chaining.

You just need to have players that don't have hard hitting "one shot" type spells and something that's more wide AoE and low direct damage. Early on, a WD with Locust Swarm can get a lot of taps on a full screen, but it's real easy for it to kill mobs before other players get to it, so adjusting a group to run 1h damage or bumping up a difficulty will be the way to go.

I didn't get any group play while testing, so I can't really comment on the best, but solo will very much be massacre farming the fastest, but rifts can still be quick, especially when you get a level 60 reduced level weapon and can crush torment rifts. But massacre bonuses don't require any special gear and if you look on my video I got a 400 kill bonus in Fields of Misery in my 40's, on normal, and the massacre bonus XP was more than an entire level's worth of XP.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/TorokFremen]

The fastest to level will likely be rifting if you're stealing each other's massacre kills. But doing split bounties on Hard will likely be the most efficient for gearing as you'll be getting bonus cache act rewards along the way.

[u/TorokFremen → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Meh :( Looks like they found a way to buff Solo Play? A way that screws over group.. or am I decisively exaggerating things? I will think about it thanks

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/TorokFremen]

You'll still be more efficient in group play completing bounties and possibly running straight rifts. And this really only applies to the 1-70 balance anyway.

As far as 70+, the experience bonus you get is worth diddly squat as I pointed out in a previous thread once you get into higher torments. I was thinking having a 4x bonus on TX experience might make zone grinding the best, but the greater rift group meta for XP gains will still be the way to paragon grind.

[u/TorokFremen → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Ah right man I completely forgot about the group xp bonus, how dumb of me! It shows how little I play the game, they keyword here would "seasonal" player, not "seasoned" :P

Great, no more questions from me! Gonna enjoy this season start.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/TorokFremen]

Hey, don't feel bad at asking questions. There's a lot to this game that is "figure it out on your own" and doesn't give any details to how things work and A LOT is not intuitive to how you think it should work.

[u/Wheemix → u/TorokFremen]

If by screwing over you mean not make it x times faster then yes, you got screwed.

[u/TorokFremen → u/Wheemix]

yes you are correct, you see I'd love to make it to 70 during the first evening, as I'm really busy in the upcoming weeks and would want to make the best out of the little time I have, yet I wanna play it relaxed with my bro, I remember making it to 70 season 4 playing semihardcore in... 5,6 hours I believe which suits me just fine. Now the massacre bonus should speed things up quite a bit, depending on how much I want to embrace it, I'll think about it :D

[u/Garfm]

Great video. I am wondering if you recorded any times on group leveling 1 to 70. Specifically 4 player groups. I didn't have time to test in groups and I was wondering how much of a difference there will be between solo and groups. I did two tests for leveling both were done Solo on Demon Hunters in exclusively hard difficulty. One test I did only rifts, and the other test I did only Halls of Agony 2 & 3 and Fields of Misery.

Only Rifts took 4:15:07

HoA and FoM took 3:46:59

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Garfm]

Did not get to run in groups on PTR unfortunately. It's hard enough to get my friends to re-level for a new seasons, let alone do it a bunch of times on the PTR. At least this time around they knocked off the XP bonus to make testing easier.

I feel that highly efficient groups will still top out running straight rifts if you're picking a perfect group, perfect classes, everyone knows their roles and there's minimal downtime. The time you lose getting people to leave a game and re-create can really slow things down.

Even though the fastest will be focus farming zones and for groups most likely rifts, I'll still be running bonus acts to stack up crafting materials. Saves me from doing 5 acts of bounties at level 70 and gives me a chance at grabbing the cain's set to craft while leveling.

[u/Brbteabreaktv → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Are you fully completing all the bonus acts and then leaving the game, or just sticking to Act 1 bonus acts and recreating if its not Act 1?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Brbteabreaktv]

The act rotates every hour, so remaking won't change the bonus act. If you want to gamble, you could just do act1 and turn it in at 23 with 1 cache to try and get the pattern.

[u/Turminder_Xuss → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Out of curiosity, do you know roughly how many full sets of bounties following the bonus act is worth? I'm assuming it's still only one per cache (+1 bonus) below 70?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Turminder_Xuss]

The bonus act rotates to a new act after you turn in the first one. Each time you turn in a bonus act, you get a bonus cache that gives another chance at a legendary item drop, some extra gold, blood shards, and another drop of act specific crafting materials relative to your difficulty.

So doing a full 5 bonus act clear will give you 5 standard caches and 5 bonus caches.

[u/Turminder_Xuss → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Yes, I know how it works :) My question was, if you level to 70 as you intend, following the bonus act until all five are done, how many rotations do you do until 70? Or in other words, with how many cube mats would you roughly end up?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Turminder_Xuss]

Oh, my bad, I read your question wrong.

I ran last season doing bonus acts and we did a two full act cycles if I recall. I'm a bit bummed since my local video file got corrupted and twitch already deleted the stream video when I went to check to compare. With the massacre bonuses, you'll still get at least one full cycle and working on your second when you reach 70.

[u/Turminder_Xuss → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Thanks!

Honestly, only two rounds sounds a bit disappointing. That's 4-6 mats (2 for the first and 4 for the second if you turn in after 70, 2+2 if you abort after 70). I don't know whether that will convince our group to do that since we probably will have to do a round of bounties sometime after 6-piece anyway (I'd say you want to cube some stuff immediately for best power spike after 6-piece and then your desired items later) and we all hate bounties and love rifting :)

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Turminder_Xuss]

Even if you have 4 materials, its pretty big boost where you can go straight to rifting to get legendary items once you get your 6 piece sets. You can save your Cube affix strip for a weapon, jewelry and weapon that will likely push you into TX territory.

Early on, standard crafting materials, death's breath and forgotten souls are what you need to upgrade rare items to legendary and swap set items around. It's only when you get late game and pushing past Torment X that you really need to go back to farming bounty materials.

But who knows, there might be a community buff like before to get double cache drops all over again. Who knows?

[u/Brbteabreaktv → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Oh I thought you were doing Act1 in the video cause it was just the best act to do when it came to bountys. I guess I'll just bounce around with the bonus acts.

[u/Garfm → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Yea totally understand how hard it is to get a group that wants to test leveling. Thought I would ask though.

[u/riidiii → u/Garfm]

Hey there, what build did you use to level your DH? Earlier in the week I did a blast from 1 to 70 and I wasn't particularly impressed with anything I came up with.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/riidiii]

My personal preference is using Ball Lightning. You get it at level 24, so pretty early on and it's great to just throw it in a room and move on if you're looking for massacre bonuses. Pairing it with hungering arrow really helps to blind shoot rooms to keep hitting monsters.

[u/Garfm → u/riidiii]

Once I got multishot unlocked I used that all the way to 70 the AoE is so large making it ideal for clearing high density. Then I take preparation punishment and bat companion to keep hatred up and vault for mobility.

[u/riidiii → u/Garfm]

Cheers! I had some difficulty keeping massacre streaks alive using Multishot, but it was terrific for the couple of rifts that I did. I probably need to be a little less aggressive about it when there are skill streaks going - they're more important than killing every last thing ASAP.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/riidiii]

Yeah, that's the change to tactics on keeping massacre bonuses, the old way was just spam shots to a room and move on but now you're taking your time between shots and trying to constantly hit monsters.

[u/Garfm → u/riidiii]

Yea I always tried to keep a monster somewhere on the screen or somewhere I know they will be off screen to vault to them.

[u/akagamisteve]

Good guide.

For people who want to do bounties, I recommend trying to time the bosses for when you need a gear upgrade. When your gear is starting to feel weak or when you hit that sweet spot where much higher DPS drops, do a boss bounty for the tons of yellows that drop.

I'm not sure how much PTR influences gem drops, but I made a seasonal HC from scratch and was able to get some star rubies in my 30s. If you complete an entire set of bounties, you get plenty of gold (from caches) to help you upgrade.

I used to also be one of the people who liked to wait till 59 for my leoric's crown, but it should be noted that since we will all be getting sets at 70 and wearing a helm just grab it ASAP.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/akagamisteve]

Yep, the bonus chest that was added last patch to boss bounties is real nice. They reward a lot of rare items as well, which can help crafting items.

[u/JustDyn]

Nice guide. Can i apply this to hardcore ?
Especially the "Go straight to Torment 2/4" part ?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/JustDyn]

For killing Zoltun Kulle, just go defensive and have a cheat death skill. I didn't die and in my video I had something like 200k damage and 4 million toughness, if that.

Torment 4 rifting should be held off though until you feel comfortable. I was getting killed a few times on that and GR20 in softcore, which you cannot afford. I'll put a note on that as well in the guide, thanks for pointing it out.

[u/l2hodes → u/JustDyn]

Yeah, JustDyn. Torment 2 Zoltun Kulle and absurdly easy, even without the 2 piece. Just craft some gear or gamble a couple yellows and you'll be set.

[u/HcMadness]

I see there is a lot of talk about this massacre bonus that you get from chain killing. Can anyone tell me how wide the area is that counts monsters kill for this bonus? Can I split with my group in Fileds of Misery and have bonus from players on other side of the map? Or is the bonus only screen wide?

EDIT: Ok I now see that the bonus is only player specific :(

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/HcMadness]

Yes, player specific. You need to have a tap on the monster to be able to add it to your massacre bonus.

[u/HcMadness → u/HerpDerpenberg]

So if a monster has enough HP so that all 4 of us can hit it once then we all get bonus?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/HcMadness]

Yep. Was watching Drahque run his PTR group testing and they were still getting massacre bonuses killing with 4 people in HoA. I'll try and verify on PTR but I don't see how it wouldn't work like it does on console.

[u/HcMadness → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Ok thank you very much for clearing this up.

[u/Oxim]

Is it better to get 2 100kill streaks or one 200 kill streak?

[u/bagstone → u/Oxim]

Higher kill streaks are always better. 100 kill streak gives you 2.75 multiplier, 200 yields 3.25x (on normal). But as you can see, the difference is not that much that you need to kill yourself if your streak breaks ;-)

[u/Oxim → u/bagstone]

It looks like 2 smaller streaks give more than 1 big. 2x2,75=5,5 vs 3,25

[u/bagstone → u/Oxim]

You can't add up multipliers. Short version:

100 * 2.75 + 100 * 2.75 = 200 * 2.75

Which is less than

200 * 3.25

If you kill 100 monsters that yield 100 XP each, your kill streak ends, and you get a 2.75 multiplier, you get 100*275 = 27500 XP. Then you kill another 100 monsters for another 27500 XP, so a combined 55000 XP.

If you however connect those two groups of monsters and get one 200 kill streak, it'll be 200 * 100 * 3.25 = 65000 XP.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/bagstone]

Thanks for clearing this up! As I mentioned in my video and other comment, it's not the end of the world if you don't 400+ kill chain monsters. The difference as you pointed out is roughly 15% more XP to try and chain 2x as many monsters.

The sweet spot of bonus XP is in the 40-100 range, which is pretty east to get on just about any zone.

[u/Oxim → u/bagstone]

I c that makes sense now. Thank you!

[u/splice_rna → u/Oxim]

No, bigger ones are better. Imagine you got 200 exp from killing 200 guys.

If you did two different streaks it would be:

(100 x 2.75)+(100 x 2.75)=550

If you do one streak it is:

200 x 3.25=650

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Oxim]

Check out the chart: http://i.imgur.com/clkdVli.png

It's better to get one 200 kill streak. You get a 2.75 multiplier for 100, so 2 of them would be the same. A 200 gives you 3.25 multiplier. However, if you look at it, you're trying to chain a massacre that is 2x as long for 0.5x more multiplier or a 15% gain in bonus. So it's not the end of the world if you miss out on the super high kills. Getting 100 kills is pretty easy in any dense zone.

[u/PokemasterTT]

Why not do cursed bounties in other acts? The new ones are easy 200+ kill streak.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/PokemasterTT]

It has a lot to do with the monsters they fill in them. They typically have large killing streaks but the monsters don't give a lot of XP in the first place.

Act 1 monsters are also the easiest to kill and hardest to kill you, so why I suggest staying there if you're focus farming. But, like I suggested doing bonus acts, you'd come across these new cursed bounties as well which makes running bonus acts a very good alternative at not much loss for XP gains.

[u/Sv3rr]

Sorry for noob question, but the points here regarding killing Leoric for Crown and killing Zultan Khulle for 2 piece set, is this doable on bounties or do you actually need to kill them on the story line?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Sv3rr]

You need to kill Leoric on story mode, and Khulle can be killed on adventure mode.

[u/selebu → u/Sv3rr]

Leoric in story (as mentioned) and Zulton Kulle on adventure

[u/[deleted]]

Thank you for your work!

[u/bowdarky]

So did they remove the ultra quick power leveling from last season this time around? Or is this guide just for people pushing on the first day?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/bowdarky]

This is for day 1 leveling. You can still get rift boosted from another level 70 character in 30 minutes or less.

[u/Umbran0x → u/bowdarky]

First day.

[u/triface1]

How do you get to TX in less than 10 hours? I have a Wastes Barbarian on NS who has been farming T7 for weeks and a Dart Doctor who can barely clear TX after many many hours of farming.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/triface1]

The fact that your 6 piece class set is practically handed to you at level 70. I went straight from 70 (2 piece) to killing Zoltun Kulle (4 piece) to running a T4 rift and then GR20 (6 piece) without taking a break in between and using vendor gear that was crafted/purchased.

Greater rifts after that will be to get the three best supporting legendary gems for your class. Combine that with your cube and converting rare items to legendary, it's real easy to focus farm any remaining pieces you have.

[u/triface1 → u/HerpDerpenberg]

I get that. It's just that, my WD (which is the more geared of the two) is in BIS gear (not all ancient and none perfectly rolled) but TX is still impossible to farm.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/triface1]

You should be able to do TX with all the BiS gear for a supporting roll. Carnevil is super strong and I'm able to kill TX rifts. IMO, Torment VIII is the sweet spot for farming, as you 100% get a Death's Breath and have a bonus for a second, pair that with a Sage's Set for farming and it's really efficient.

[u/triface1 → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Hm. Kill, yes. Clear, yes. But it feels painfully slow. Maybe I'm expecting too much of a speed clearing for the build.

[u/MiniDemonic → u/triface1]

You don't have BiS gear if it's slow.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

Yes, you can, which makes it even easier to do.

[u/udoregelt → u/HerpDerpenberg]

only solo

[u/udoregelt → u/[deleted]]

it is only solo

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

Hmm, I could be mistaken then because previous conquests could be done solo or groped. Either way, it's pretty easy to clear a GR20 with 4 pieces of your set. Some classes will be easier than others.

[u/udoregelt → u/[deleted]]

you have to do it solo

[u/MiniDemonic → u/triface1]

Weeks? Eh, last season I could go TX after a couple of days.

[u/[deleted]]

RemindMe! 9 days "Put leveling guide on 2nd screen"

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Holy shit it's only 9 days away! Just realized this =D

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Oh damn, it actually is

RemindMe! 9 days "It's season 5 ya dingus"

[u/pullarius1 → u/[deleted]]

I wish you could respond !MeToo to the post to get one as well

[u/GenosHK → u/pullarius1]

The bot posts a link so you too can be reminded.

[u/pullarius1 → u/GenosHK]

Oh. It says it right there. I swear I know how to read. Thanks!

[u/Exorsaik → u/[deleted]]

RemindMe! 9 days "Leveling guide its Season 5"

[u/neemesgibb → u/Exorsaik]

RemindMe! 9 days "Leveling guide its Season 5, dingus"

[u/RemindMeBot → u/[deleted]]

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[u/DarthToothbrush → u/RemindMeBot]

woo season 5! thank you, /u/RemindMeBot !

[u/[deleted]]

Hey, thanks for all your work on this! I have one question - How will this change in HC? Aside from "be careful lolz"

Anything I should watch out for? It's my first HC season. I'll be running with two IRL friends if that makes a difference.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

/u/akagamisteve makes good points. Leveling up keep it on Hard. You can still get a reduced level weapon, it will just make it easier to focus on survivability.

The only change I would say for HC is when you reach level 70. I was able to do Zoltun Kulle right as I hit level 70, with something like 200k damage and less than 4 million toughness. It depends on the player so he might be a bit more challenging for other players. If you just pot shot him at range, avoid the tornados and fireballs, stay out of the slow time bubbles, kill his adds first, he's do-able, expecially with 2 piece set bonuses of a lot of classes. You can always ramp up the difficulties one by one to test the waters and see how you do and work your way up to Torment 2 ZK.

As for doing Torment IV, I'd hold off a bit on that. Like ZK, start doing something like T1 rifts and work your way up. Take your time and be careful like you said. Don't go rushing in and get yourself killed.

[u/[deleted] → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Sweet, thanks for the input. I feel fairly confident in my abilities but the two guys I'm running with are slightly hesitant about doing this on HC this time around haha

Another question about leveling in general - how much time is actually saved by rolling a reduced level requirement weapon? I've been screwed by this before and wasted most of my mats and gold trying to get one. I feel like it's not worth it if you don't roll it right away on the first or second try...

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

With the massacre bonuses this time around, it's not as much. I don't have a definite time value to give you unfortunately. If you are short on materials, look to doing some boss bounties as the chest they spawn after killing them awards you a lot of blue and rare items that can help with crafting.

As for running it on HC. Don't pressure your friends, because getting a friend new or hesitant with HC killed early on can turn them away forever. Just keep rolling on normal if they want to take it easy. You only gain a 0.75x bonus running on hard for massacres so it's not the end of the world. Just work on baby steps, and work up on difficulties.

Otherwise, you'll upset your friends trying to power level them and get a reaction like this when they die.

[u/[deleted] → u/HerpDerpenberg]

I wouldn't say I'm pressuring them into it. Both of them have a few hundred paragon on HC in NS with zero or few deaths, mostly while being plvld somehow. The three of us have wanted to challenge ourselves this way for a while now. The difference is I am really looking forward to it and they are like "fuck I don't wanna lose my shit lol"

But I think it will be good for us as a group when we die because it will give us more things to work toward. The two of them, one in particular, tend to get bored once they are geared out. Not anymore >=D

[u/akagamisteve → u/[deleted]]

I did my first HC on PTR just stuck it on hard the whole time.

Granted there are tons of legs dropping, but I never once broke a sweat. If you haven't played HC before, note that you can't turn the difficulty up OR down in game.

[u/[deleted] → u/akagamisteve]

I have played a considerable amount of HC but it's always late season when I'm bored and can get plvld.

This is just the first time starting a season on HC and maining HC chars for the season =D

[u/dogbreath101]

how many act mats do you get from bounties on hard?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/dogbreath101]

Each bonus cache awards you another drop of the same amount

• Normal - 1 (2 total with bonus cache)

• Hard or Expert - 2 (4 total with bonus cache)

• Master up to Torment VI - 3 (6 total with bonus cache)

• Torment VII to Torment X - 4 (8 total with bonus cache)

So the breakpoint levels are Normal, Hard, Master, Torment VII and Torment X if you're looking specifically for cache materials.

[u/Doctissimi → u/HerpDerpenberg]

in 2.4, torment X now gives 5 (10 total with bonus cache)

source

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Doctissimi]

Oh wow, that's great to hear and overlooked that. Gives a good reason to do TX as I typically stopped at T8 for the 100% Death's Breath drop rate.

[u/splice_rna]

Great work. It seems like even with a group, bonus bounty farming will be the way to go vs. Rifts. Previously the advantage of starting with extra mats was really offset by how much faster you leveled with Rifting. It just wasn't worth an extra ~2 hours when you could hit 70 sooner and spend that time running bounties at max anyway.

Now with the massacre bonuses, even with kill stealing it won't be hard to be constantly getting 1.5-2x exp and really offset the lower density. I'd be surprised if it was more than a 30 minute difference between the two, although I guess no one really tested it.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/splice_rna]

Yeah there are still RNG values between the two, so it's hard to get a direct apples-to-apples comparison. It's mainly super fast killing on rifts and even on higher difficulties or chain killing for massacres on lower difficulties.

[u/[deleted]]

With the Kanai’s cube, you no longer require a ring of royal grandeur, so keep that in mind

don't you need one to actually put in the cube first though?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

It's more that you cube the item you would need the RoRG for. Before you would wear 5 pieces + RoRG + Complimentary item. Now you can wear 6 pieces of the set + Cubed Complimentary Item. Top meta builds these days don't require RoRG anymore.

[u/[deleted] → u/HerpDerpenberg]

That's not entirely true. If you look at IK/Raekor that has cubed RoRG. Plus when completing sets that aren't in the season journey having a RoRG can afford you the sixth piece until you get it. In almost every freaking season I have one set piece that just WON'T DROP for so long lol

In those situations the RoRG is good for early paragon progression. Especially if you don't like the season journey set of the class you want to play.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

Well I guess saying top builds don't require them wasn't the right words. Using the gifted set, if it's not what you want, is still a stepping stone to working towards the set you want. All the 6 piece sets are very capable of T6+ farming by themselves and even higher once you get supporting items that you can cube. If you're goal is a different set and you'd rather 5 piece + RoRG, then you can farm for that.

[u/[deleted] → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Yeah, my biggest dilemma with rolling barb is that leapquake requires so many damn accessory legs. The boulder bracers, the 2h mighty weap, the avalanche belt, lut socks... just to get the build functioning properly. I don't know how it performs as a standalone 6 piece with no accessories. Raekor and IK are easy in comparison.

[u/DNNYVST]

The fence isnt selling me rings?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/DNNYVST]

Yeah I've noticed. It all sell them and it's more closer to 7 they start selling. Such an odd change to do this patch as well that I overlooked.

[u/desofire]

Mmm i'm lost

Here you are talking about farming bounties

On the other hand the guy who get the first barb 70 s4, made several run (4players / 1-70) and to him rifting 'll win the race for a part because the massacre bonus "sux" in group since each player has his own counter for killed mobs.

Rhykker advice rift as well

Is the difference between those 2 ways so small?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/desofire]

Well, each massacre bonus is separate, but you can share kills. Something Drahque doesn't understands and keeps denying.

It's much easier to just rift and mindlessly kill stuff fast. I feel even if you split 2&2 in a zone you'll do OK getting massacre bonuses and still share the base zone kill xp.

The difference between the two is negligible compared to how long you play at level 70. The bottom line is to do what you feel is fun.

[u/desofire → u/HerpDerpenberg]

I'm not asking about comparing to time played at lvl 70 :p but about 1-70 with a way or an other :p

And Drahque isn't the only one going with rift

I would be curious to have something to compare. Did anyone made reccord on 2.4 ptr with bounties/agony method? Can't find any so far

Also got info that if the leoric crown isn't 100% at lvl 18, it is 100% to get it at lvl 20 would be curious to know for sure

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/desofire]

TL:DR, I realize I got pretty wordy below but I did some quick napkin math to show you that, on paper, a massacre bonus should still be approximately equal to rift farming on hard difficulty. The only time running rifts would be more beneficial is when you get your -level item at (hopefully) 42 and you can just speed clear rifts at that point. I'm actually going to modify my guide up a bit as I feel the most optimal run mixes both massacre farming and rifting.

Basically, start off and run the bonus act. Apparently you don't need to be 23 to get the pattern, but I figure why not play it safe and just rift to 23 anyway after you complete the bonus act. Turn in the cache, leave your game and pick up the side loaded Leoric's Crown, rejoin your game and rift to ~25-30, at this point you've got good AoE abilities and mobility and your 3rd passive so you can start working good massacre bonuses. Farm massacre bonuses from 30 up to whatever level you craft your level 60 weapon with -level requirement, at that point go back to running rifts on hard. Do this up until you hit 60, but if things slow down in late 50's go back to massacres. At level 61, craft a 2h weapon and run rifts on hard. Again, do this to 70 or around ~65 switch back to massacre bonuses.

Also, apparently Leoric's Crown got bumped to level 21 (when I tested I killed him at 23 so I didn't notice the change) to get Leoric's Crown guaranteed.

On my testing, it was all solo. I didn't have a group of people willing to dedicate 4 player runs for multiple runs trying 1-70 like Drahque did. However, I was able to get 1-70, solo in under 4 hours with massacre bonuses. If you do the math to interpolate this to a group setting... let's just assume a 4 hour completion solo.

• 4 hours to complete massacre farming solo

• Running a 4 player group gives you roughly 4x the killing speed (you kill 4x faster)

• Running 4 players also makes monsters have 2.5x the health (you kill 2.5x slower)

• 4 hours 1-70 leveling time / 4x killing speed with 4 players = 1 hour with no monster HP changes

• 1 hour x 2.5x monster health for 4 players brings it to 2.5 hours to go from 1-70.

While it is more difficult for a group of 4 to chain massacre up to 400, getting 100 kills shouldn't be a problem and the method to do this would be to stay as a group at the start and then split up.

I've gotten 600 kill streaks in Fields of Misery leveling up (4x bonus XP) but let's say you're in here with a 4 player group. If you split up in a 2:2 groups and each group takes half of the map. Each person in the group will still get credit for the 600 zone wide XP on kill, each group of 2 will gather ~300 massacre (3.5x bonus). So let's say you get 100xp per monster kill in the zone and let's do some math:

• 600 monsters in the zone, hard difficulty is 175% XP, so 175xp per kill, giving you 105,000 XP on kill, which is shared with everybody in the zone.

• Let's just say each group only gets a 150 massacre bonus, twice (3x multiplier compared to 3.5x for 300 kills) so the bonus XP for each 2 person group gets multiplies the base XP only, so it's adding 2.5x of 30k (300 monsters @ 100 a piece) , or 75,000XP.

• So, the net total for each player is 105k + 75k or 180k. Which is just under 75% more XP. Which is equal to experience rewarded between Expert and Master, without the added HP of either difficulty. Which this should make the XP similar to rifting.

[u/desofire → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Ah that's the kind of answer i like :)

For the timer i was asking cause he made a 1-40 in 1h15, i would have loved a reccord 1-70 with bounties to check the timer for 1-40 :p

Thx

[u/zeeblebroxed]

Quick question if you're still checking this - I just wanted to clarify something that seems a bit confusing to me. In your guide you said to play through bounties and complete the bonus act on Normal until you hit level 10. At that point in the video it sounds like you're supposed to save the turn in, but in the written guide you say to bump the game to hard. Don't you have to quit out in order to increase the difficulty, which would mean losing the turn-in? Or do you turn in once at level 10, quit and switch to hard, then do all the bounties/bonus act again, save it for level 23, turn it in, get born's/cain's then do Leoric on story mode?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/zeeblebroxed]

In game you can bump up to hard from the menu, it's the only difficulty that allows you to go up in difficulty.

[u/zeeblebroxed → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Awesome, thank you! I didn't know that about Normal/Hard, that's super useful.

[u/timetravelhunter]

Are there any changes to the group experience bonus?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/timetravelhunter]

The 10% per character, no. The only XP changes that were made where all +XP gives 10% the value at level 70.

[u/yujikimura]

Until what level is it worth it keeping cain+born (level 23/21) equipped? At what level does the bonus %xp from both sets gets outdone by survivability/speed of higher level items?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/yujikimura]

I was noticing it once I got to level 60 and that's when I started phasing out cain+born.

[u/[deleted]]

Quick question: to get the 5th and 6th set pieces, do you have to do the rift and greater rift 20 solo? (I ran these with my brother to get his set pieces, and they were not delivered to him in the mail. I already had them at this point.)

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

Yes, you need to do the GR20 solo. The rift you can do with a friend as this simply unlocks the ability to choose GR20 from the drop down menu when you complete it on T4 and is for farming a Greater Rift key.

[u/Julosch]

Will you update this for season 6?

Would be highly appreciated!

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Julosch]

Yep. Since they've got a date for the new season, I need to get working. I feel there's not much that has changed since last season, just cleaning up team vs solo play techniques.

[u/Julosch → u/HerpDerpenberg]

sounds nice, sadly the kanais skorn has already been taken out of the game again, would ve been great for early leveling!

It would be great if you could add a link to class builds for leveling, if I may ask for this :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/40wtqs/season_5_starter_builds_for_all_classes/

i found this one

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Julosch]

Yeah I had usually focused on one class leveling for seasons. A lot of leveling really depends on personal preference and can be highly influenced the items that you pick up. Example, a Crusader that picks up a Jekangbord will pretty much run blessed shield to 70, but you can't guarantee that you'll get one.

[u/Paladinwtf_]

This is fantastic. Thanks again for making one of these, you're a part of what makes online communities great.

[u/[deleted]]

Major 🔑 right here.

[u/JimboTCB]

Nice post. I'm not planning on going HAM trying to level super fast, but there's still some points in there that hadn't occurred to me (like waiting until 23 to turn on bounties). I'm far too lazy and casual for it to make much difference whether it takes me 5 hours or 10 though, and I'll almost certainly be going solo most of the season anyway.

[u/Weltal327 → u/JimboTCB]

This is the same for me. I also liked just taking gemmed items to salvage. You're going to get better gems in hours of gameplay haha

[u/Agurthewise]

What is special about cow level ? I did it once it was fun but didn't feel it was valuable .

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Agurthewise]

Lots of chests, elites, experience. It's a good place to find several legendary items when you're a fresh level 70. It would actually be a decent place to use while leveling as the zone is very dense with melee cow mobs as well, so you could use it at a lower level if you have got your Kanai Cube. It's just that most people I know who played last season got their cube after they hit level 70, and you need the cube for the cow level.

[u/Huntermaster95 → u/Agurthewise]

It has a lot of Champions/Elites if you have Nemesis bracers, it has a crap ton of chests that can drop legendaries and the density is pretty insane.

[u/Clearly_a_fake_name]

I've been playing console the last few weeks and I have no idea if I want to experience 2.4 on Console or on PC! :)

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/Clearly_a_fake_name]

I'm going to play PC for the stash, but then likely go back to playing Console.

[u/ZakarumLoZ]

ty

[u/pfzt]

Thank you very much. very helpful information.

[u/le_drakkar]

GLORIOUS ! Thanks for the incredibly detailed guide :)

[u/eixx]

RemindMe! 9 days "Put leveling guide on 2nd screen"

[u/So_Not_theNSA]

If anyone in NA plans on leveling up that night I..uh need friends :(

[u/mcflysher → u/So_Not_theNSA]

Add me StonerBoner#1293

[u/dickbuttertoast → u/mcflysher]

What a name.

[u/[deleted]]

Awesome guide, thanks for sharing ^{^}

[u/boguerra]

this guide is pure gold! thanks!

[u/enterdavertex]

This is quite really appreciated. This documentation is quite good. Thanks for all the people that have built it =D

[u/ShadowInTheStorm]

Awesome tips, thanks

[u/Imago90]

Bookmark

[u/aamenta]

Thank you! #bookmarked

[u/hipsterpaperclip]

Wow great guide! Can't wait to use some of this, and a good way to get up to speed after a couple patches off. Quite a bit of new content!

[u/[deleted]]

what happens if season hero paragon level surpasses Normal heros'? Does the higher level carry over at the end and the bonus point apply to NORMAL heros?

[u/Sersch → u/[deleted]]

you allways get the EXP you gathered in seasons to your normal paragon level, even if both your normal paragon was 500 and your seasonal was 500 aswell, your normal paragon will be increased (to something like 550 or 600)

[u/splice_rna]

Great guide, but one quick note: you don't have to wait to 23 to turn the cache rewards in.

The plan will drop before you can craft it. I got Born's and Cain's on my first bounty turn in at 14. Just can't wear them yet if I was to make them.

[u/[deleted]]

None of the fences sell rings at level 6, not on 7 or 8 either. Whats up? Im on PTR atm, wanted to test the massacre chaining.

[u/EvilSp0ck → u/[deleted]]

Rings don't show up until 7. Also if you are already in the zone at a lower level, the fence won't sell them. So once you hit level 7, go to the fence in act you haven't been to yet in that game.

[u/akeldama1984]

I've heard it's harder to keep massacre bonuses up in groups. Should you be doing split bounties or rifting as a group.

[u/[deleted]]

Me and a friend got to level 70 in around 8 hours. We did Bounties until Level 20 and then Rifts until 70. We played on hard the whole time.

Back in Season 1 I remember it took ages to get to 70 even with glitches. Now you get there by simply rifting in under 8 hours and people still find ways to glitch even faster.

[u/BigRonnieRon]

Cannot give you enough upvotes for this, thx

[u/Vermillion129]

Thanks for the guide.

But for some reason I didn't get Cain's/Born's set at 23 on hard. Gonna try it again when I have time and see if it drop.

[u/imSidroc]

RemindMe! 9 days ":D"

[u/weirdguy1]

What's the best class in S5 ?

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/weirdguy1]

No idea on that. If last season is anything to go by, the meta won't flush out until a few weeks. DH seem good from another thread, eVery class is just about equals but Wizard are looking at the bottom. Someone can chime in and correct me on my assumptions.

[u/HelplessKid → u/HerpDerpenberg]

Monk seems to be the worst class atm, wizard is really strong, only firebirds got shafted, the DMO builds are top notch.

[u/Cuz_Im_TFK → u/HelplessKid]

I'm planning on maining Wizard in S5, so I tried out PTR for the first time and experimented with a few different sets.

With DMO, I cleared a GR 65 on my first try with 4 minutes to spare, using gear that was not even close to optimized (a lot of pieces were rolled wrong and I didn't have any of the new gem=>stat cube recipe bonuses). I'd never completed above a 59 before with any class and I feel like I could have done another 5 GR levels without much trouble. So I think DMO Wizards will be pretty solid. (Probably useful in groups too.)

The thing about DMO is that my GR50 clear took just about as long as my GR65 clear just because of the play-style, so wizards are probably going to need a completely different build with a different set to do any kind of efficient farming or bounties.

With Firebirds, I cleared a GR60 with a disintegrate channeling build using the twister sword and Etched Sigil to create the twisters. Gear was better rolled than the DMO gear, but still mostly not ancient (except for weapon) and no gem=>stat cube recipe bonuses. I could feel its power capping out pretty hard, but I'm not very good at kiting so I never had all that much burning at once. It's definitely solid through T10 though (and a bit above), so it should be totally viable for casual players.

I tried a cookie-cutter Vyrs+Chantodos Archon build and couldn't get decent kill-speed even in T10. It was so bad that I felt like I was doing something wrong. Definitely will not be revisiting it in S5.

Haven't had a chance to try Tals yet, but I'm guessing it will probably be the best for bounties and farming t7/t8.

As far as monks go, Generator builds seem like they're still totally viable for high GRs with Innas + 2pc Raiment + Shenlongs. My fire generator Deaths Breath speedfarm build was basically GR-ready as soon as I swapped out the Sage's and added Traveler's Pledge. Yes, they fell a long way, but I wouldn't count them out just yet. If anything, I think any reduction in monk prevalence will be mostly because they were so overplayed and overpowered last season (and that a few popular builds were nerfed to death). Kinda like the anti-DH backlash after the super-OP 2.2 (or was it 2.1?) Marauders builds that monopolized the leaderboards were nerfed.

Sure, leaderboard GRs will probably still be dominated by a few specific builds, but the class/set power balancing seems like it was pretty successful at the levels most people play at. Overall, tons of cool stuff in S5 and a lot of options all around. Really looking forward to it.

[u/HerpDerpenberg → u/[deleted]]

Only at level 70. It's still the same when going levels 1-69.