DiabloFans

I'll boil down all the things I love about D3 into one thing I love:

.. Every time I fire up a game and jump into it, as soon as I'm tearing into monsters, I'm having fun.

I'm not a leaderboard-challenging full-set-wearing 30-second-rift-clearing uber player. Don't expect I ever will be. My strongest characters, with hundreds of hours play, are far far weaker than some people I inspected on day one of the season 3 launch. But that has never made it any less fun for me to jump into appropriate difficulty content (maybe T3, T4, 20-ish Grifts, whatever) and fight. Once the explosions start exploding, monsters being sucked in or blown away, barrels shattering, body parts flying, cooldowns popping .. always pure enjoyment.

Quote from Autocthon»

Two words: Sample Bias.

Of course you're right the number of players on the game is a pretty healthy amount but that doesn't mean it's anywhere near the number of players who've bought the game.

Ah, of course. There is an absurdly low number of players - sorry, it's now increased to a "pretty healthy amount" of players (congrats, Blizzard!). And an absurdly low number of Xfire users. They just happen to be same people. What a coincidence!

They should make bonus XP average out among the party, the way magic find did at release. Of course, that unleashed its own storm of tears. You'd get the same thing from the Wizard you described, complaining that you were being rewarded for his hard work in assembling his sweet +XP gear.

I definitely agree that "Blizzard should have reacted earlier to the exploiting stuff going on".

I don't agree that the reason they didn't is greed. That just sounds like juvenile "companies are evil!" nonsense, to be frank.

My personal hunch is this:

We've seen on this very forum that what some people define as "exploits", other people define as "efficiently playing the game". And there is a strong school of thought that players should not be punished for benefiting from bugs that are Blizzard's fault.

I would bet that there is the same disagreement within Blizzard, with some people advocating for punishing players who deliberately exploited bugs, and others advocating that the bugs should just be fixed.

This particular bug was, apparently, serious enough and exploited hard enough that it swung the balance in favour of the "punish!" faction.

Quote from mannercookie»

I've had a bit of a habit of "forcing" Blizzard's hand when it came to issues that I felt were important and felt were needing immediate attention, probably not the best way to go about getting things done but hey it has been effective

Just out of curiosity, do you know roughly how many bloodshards you got from exploiting this issue?

Quote from exploitwhinne»

It's my first and only account, which I created to shine light on this whinne fest. That doesn't equal a fake account, oh you clever people.

I was going to ask if the name "exploitwhine" was already taken, but then I realized that you genuinely don't know how to spell "whine".

Ridiculous conspiracy theory. There is no way this ban wave would even be a blip on the radar of Diablo III's sales. Look at the sales figures for 2014 - RoS was the #3 selling PC title of the year, even the base Diablo III box was still the #6 seller. Banning a few thousand exploiters to try to boost sales of something that is selling millions a year still anyway? Insane.

Quote from wek1235124»

Yeah I totally agree RiffSphere but the thing is will Blizzard ever listen to what the community want (HUGE CHANGES) ? Not simple item or spell changes.

lol, they listened to what the community wanted and made HUGE changes, and what did they get? You started a thread asking for a mode where all of those changes were undone.

Quote from Sick_Gaming»

Here is the original post : http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/13987650043 if you could show it some love by giving some comments or thoughts would be apreciated , thanx in advance .

Sure! My thoughts are: that was 100% trolling and deserved to be deleted. My comment is: it's a shame that now we have to suffer through it over on these forums.

No. The one tiny nod this game has towards loot tables is the bounty-cache-specific legendaries, and that has done far more harm than good (hands up everyone who has done 100x more Act I bounties than Acts II - V combined?)

<post removed>

Here's a pro tip. Don't use exploits and get banned. By not using exploits and getting banned, you don't have to interact with the GMs. Seems simple. If I was the GM, I'd add another 2 weeks for this thread alone......

I could feel the butthurt in this thread before I actually opened it and started reading.

This banwave is hilarious, satisfying, and if it were a buffet I'd make four more trips to it. I don't care if somebody used the Hellfire exploit once or 8000 times, they got what they deserved. I take absolutely nothing Manner says to heart because all he ever seems to do it is piss and moan and whine about anything Diablo 3 related.

Every single person who used the exploit, whether it was a quick attempt or a way to cheat upwards on the leaderboards KNEW that it was against Blizzard's ToS. Even that D-Bag Gabynator, who has admitted to AND used exploits on stream, cried about his ban. What a loser.

No, I don't compete on leaderboards, so botting doesn't directly affect the way I play the game, but I also have no respect for cheaters and have NO SYMPATHY for any single person that was banned. Not one.

In fact, more should be banned.

It's gear requirement not paragon level.

"Do we know if the upgrade rare item recipe can produce a green set item or can it only produce orange legendaries?"

I was trying for a Grin Reaper and Carnievil Vodoo mask by upgrading 10 Rare Voodoo Masks and received two Zuni Set Masks, one of which I then converted to get the missing Zuni gloves I needed.

How to start a new season (season 4)

In this guide I will discuss every topic you could imagine for getting started and getting started FAST most importantly in a new season. I will be covering how to prepare for the season start, different strategies for leveling from 1-70 plus my own strategy for leveling, level 70 gearing strategies, and paragon farming.

TLDR/TLDW : Prepare by writing down skills for 1-70, Level by Cursed Chest bounties, Halls of Agony Level 3 and Rifts, collect Kanai’s cube mats while gearing to gear faster, gear pool to gear even faster(read the post if you wanna know what that means), 2-3 xp/leech builds most efficient for farming paragon levels.

Video Guide: https://youtu.be/HZuJ6OftFbU

Bounty Map: http://imgur.com/j08EaYG

Will also leave a link to the reddit post for those interested in the questions/discussion brought up there

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/3hnove/guide_how_to_start_a_new_season_fastest_170/

Links to 1- 70 skill order cheat sheets/notes for all classes below.

Demon Hunter notes and spread sheet version

Due to many requests for spreadsheets for other classes the following spreadsheets were created, the ones below are untested by me and are there just as a general idea for each class so use at your own discretion.

Barbarian Spreadsheet

Crusader Spreadsheet

Monk Spreadsheet

Wizard Spreadsheet

Witch Doctor Spreadsheet

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Preparing for the Season

1-70 Leveling Strategies

Level 70 Gearing Strategies

Paragon Leveling Strategy

FAQ

Edits

Foreword

I realize many of you may have heard some of these tips before and while I will be combining ideas and information that has been spread out into one place. I will also be providing my own insight on existing ideas and providing to my knowledge "original" tips, tricks, and strategies or at least ones that have been kept somewhat secret. For those interested in reading something (I hope) you have read no where else before skip to Hybrid leveling strategy and gear pooling.

Preparing

Preparing for the season is mostly about cutting out the time you would normally spend in game wondering what to do next, you might think it is not important but that time will start to add up if you don’t prepare. So to prepare for the new season I suggest doing a few things. First of all knowing when the season will start. Season 4 starts Friday August 28th at 5:00 p.m. for North America. Europe and Asia start times can be find here: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/19842943/season-3-ending-soon-8-7-2015

. Next you will want to figure out what class you will be playing and who you will be grouping with whether it be friends, clanmates, or random players. I highly advise forming a 4 man group for fastest leveling (sorry solo players), because of the group xp buff. Knowing what class and who you will be partying with ahead of time will allow you to get started on your journey from 1 to 70 the second the season goes live, instead of fiddling around with that once it has already begun. Additionally you may want to form a party or pick your characters based around group synergy as well. Having a person dedicated to bunching up mobs will be nice, could be a monk, crusader, or witch doctor (however wd pull comes very late into leveling). Probably the most important thing you can do to prepare though is to write out a detailed list of what skills and keys tasks you will be doing and at the levels you need to assign those skills or do those tasks. This will help cut down a lot of time wasted checking your “new” skills every 5 levels and wasting time deciding what skills to change. You can check my DH notes/cheatsheet http://imgur.com/Zgjsv61. I list out every skill and rune I will take, what level I will take them at, and which key they will go on. I also have other key tasks in that list which I will discuss later. Two finals things to do for the season is to know what difficulty you should be playing on and what leveling strategy you want to do, doesn’t matter too much which strategy as long you know what you are going to do once you enter the game. As for the difficulty you should be on a difficulty where you 2-3 shot most white mobs and also note that expert is the least efficient difficulty so its advised to either bump it up one above or drop one below.

1 to 70 leveling strategies

There are 3 fairly well known strategies to level from 1-70 at the beginning of a season. I will explain all of the strategies and my own hybrid strategy that involves using all 3 of the strategies. I will also include the “Key tasks” that are on my list that I mentioned early when I explain my hybrid strategy.

Cursed Chests

Pros: High Density, Completion Reward(chest, handin xp & gold)

Cons: Inconsistent (don’t always spawn)

This method involves doing cursed chest bounties over and over until you reach level 70. The reasoning for this strategy is that the cursed chests you will be looking for provide a lot of easy to kill mobs and are generally harmless and you get the resplendent chest, and bounty xp and gold. The cursed chests you will be looking for include: Cursed Chapel act IV, Cursed Bellows act I, Cursed Cellar act I, Cursed Court act I, Cursed Grove act I, Cursed Hatchery act I, and one that most people don’t mention but I really like it Cursed Peat act V - Paths of the Drowned. All the waypoint locations can be seen in the Bounty Map http://imgur.com/j08EaYG. So you look for the corresponding bounty(ies) in each act (only one should spawn per act as a bounty). If they spawned go complete the bounty if not remake the game and look again. Repeat until level 70.

Halls of Agony

Pros: Consistent, High Density, Low threat

Cons: Boring, No guaranteed bonus rewards

This strategy is to go to Halls of Agony level 3 in act I and clear out the entire floor leave the game and repeat. This is claimed by many to be the fastest although I think it is very debatable I think all 3 strategies are nearly equal each having its pros and cons. Pros to this strategy is its consistency since it is always there and the high density low threat mobs that Halls of Agony level 3 provides. Its packed with mostly slow moving skeletons.The con to this strategy is that it becomes boring as hell when done repeatedly for hours. So once again you just clear the entire floor back out and remake. Some people choose to do Halls of Agony levels 1 and 2 as well but they tend to have lower density.

Rifts

Pros: Increased Legendary droprate, Bloodshards, Hand in Bonus

Cons: Random Density, Random Mobs

This strategy explains itself fairly well you just do rifts until you hit level 70. Since you no longer needs keys to enter rifts you can now just do rifts back to back until 70. Reason behind doing rifts is for the increased legendary drop rate in rifts so you can upgrade your gear faster than you normally would, which can make a big difference. If you have ever gone for a couple levels without finding any major upgrades you know that feeling of the monsters becoming increasingly difficult to kill. Doing rifts should help prevent that from happening. However the drawback to rifts is the random mob types and random density which can slow things down.

Hybrid Strategy

Pros: Somewhat Consistent, Bloodshards, Hand in Bonuses

Cons: A lot of teleporting around

Ok so I am going give a brief overview of the rotation and reasoning behind the strategy then go into detail of the exact plan and key points I’m going to hit while leveling from 1-70.

So the rotation will be go into a Rift and start clearing as normal. Once 1 or 2 people find big upgrade getting a big power spike we will then teleport back to town.From there we will look for the cursed bounties I listed in the cursed bounty strategy and clear any of them if any spawned, once we do that we will also go clear halls of agony level 3. Then we will head back into the rift finish it hand it in and reset the game. I’m sure someone will ask for me to define a “big upgrade/power spike” while it all depends on how you and your group feels so adjust the following example to something that feels right. Here is an example: If your progression is <25% look for 75% dmg increase combined among members (ie 3 people each find weapons increasing damage by 25%), progression <50% 50% dmg inc, <75% 30-40% dmg inc, <100% 20%dmg inc, if you find no dmg increase finish the rift then do the cursed chest bounties and halls of agony level 3, then reset and repeat.

Philosophy behind this strategy is that you gain the benefits of getting increased drop rates and once you hit a power spike you can take advantage of the guaranteed easy xp of Halls of Agony and easy xp and loot of potential cursed chest bounties. Only downsides are the extra time spent teleporting around and again the uncertainty of rift mobs and density. Here are the exact steps I will be doing while trying this strategy.

LVL 1: Steal Follower Weapons & Find Cursed Chest Bounty or Easy Boss Bounty

Why?: The chests rewarded at the end will provide initial blues/yellows to get you started

LVL 1-12: Do cursed chest bounties and halls of agony.

Why?: Guaranteed easy mobs to get through the first few levels

LVL 6-7: Check Fence Merchants in Act I and Act II for rings.

LVL 10-12: Check Fence Merchants in Act I and Act II for amulets

LVL 16-18: Switch to Campaign go through until you can kill Skeleton king.

LVL 18: Kill Skeleton King

LVL 20: Kill Skeleton King

Why?: First time killing SK guarantees a Leoric's Crown being lvl 20 ensures socket. Put ruby in the socket

LVL 20-70: Run Hybrid Strategy rotation.

LVL 45: Craft lvl 60 Weapon roll reduced lvl req on it

LVL 60: Craft lvl 70 Weapon roll reduced lvl req on it

General Tips for All Strategies

Keep an eye out for the following items

Leoric’s Signet: %xp roll

Puzzle Ring: save for lvl 70 put into cube for greed’s realm

Bovine Bardiche: save for lvl 70 cow level

Nagel Ring: Provide huge burst dmg while lvling

Craft lvl 60 Weapon roll reduced lvl req on it

Craft lvl 70 Weapon roll reduced lvl req on it

Craft and wear Cains if you find the recipe for %xp

Level 70 Gearing Strategies

Bounties First Strategy

So this first strategy for gearing up is definitely up for debate since I have not tested it. So once you have hit 70 spend your blood shards and go get Kanai’s cube. Use up your puzzle rings and Bovine Bardiches if you found any. The reason you may want to start bounties first depends on what items you found while leveling up 1-70. If you found something worth extracting right away you can start doing bounties otherwise doing rifts and greater rifts first will be the best to gear up. So do bounties until you have the item or items you want extracted early in the cube then switch over to rifts asap because they will give much more reward until you are ready to farm mats again at t6+.(Thank you to mhgd3 for replying and correcting me here).

Rifts First Strategy

Alternatively you could start doing rifts right away and start looking for a weapon and set pieces that way since there is the increased chance of finding legendaries in rifts and you get more blood shards. After obtaining sets and once you can do about t6 or higher you can start farming bounties for the mats to reroll legendaries and extract them.

Gear Pooling

This is a strategy that I almost never hear people talk about which surprises me because it is so strong. Maybe I am out of the loop or maybe people are just too greedy and that is why it has not caught on yet but here it is. Note that this strategy will work with either of the ones previously mentioned. So what you will do is get in a party with 2 or more players of the same class as you that you trust(clanmates or friends, usually best). Determine who is going to carry (I recommend whichever person will be playing the most) then everyone will pool all of their important set pieces to the carry. For example if it were DH’s the three people being carried would give the person who is carrying EVERY piece of Marauders, Natalya’s, and Unhallowed Essence. Pool set pieces into the carry until he has finished one then bump up the difficulty as high as you can, which will most likely be t6 to start and then ease your way up. The carry then carries (hence the name) the other 3 through t6 until they finish their sets. The carry should also be handing set pieces out to the group that he finds since he obviously already has a set. To restate the person carrying should be the one who plays the most incase people leave before they finish their sets the carry will hopefully be online when you regroup. This is a super effective method for gearing up fast if you have trustworthy people to do it with because even if just one person has a set finished it will be enough to crank up the difficulty and the entire party will find gear faster and level up faster.

Paragon Leveling Strategy

So as many of you may know %xp has changed from Season 3 to Season 4. The xp is now shared with the entire party instead of just the one person wearing xp gear. They also changed Greater Rift keys so you can no longer recycle keys. This means the paragon farming meta is going to shift. Now when you are running greater rifts you will want 2-3 people wearing “leech” setup even though now it would be more appropriate to call it xp build or something since they are no longer leeching but helping the entire party gain more xp. So the builds for an xp build will essentially be the same as they were last season give or take a few skills due to the cc changes. I have a feeling running 2 people with full xp gear and 2 dps (maybe with a few pieces of xp gear on them) will be the most efficient way to farm xp but it is still up in the air as things will shift once the season pans out. Also since keys were changed there will also need to be some experimenting with exactly which greater rift level will be the most efficient for most groups. Now that it takes longer to get greater rift keys, since you can’t recycle anymore, you have to find the sweet spot between doing grifts fast but also doing one of high enough level so you get the full value out of your greater rift keystone. I imagine having times between 7-10 minutes will end up being the sweet spot but it needs to be tested further.

That is all I have to offer for now guys, thanks for reading and or watching. I will do my best to provide updates when the meta changes. Let me know your questions, ideas, and comments on how to start next season.

FAQ

Q:Any advantage to doing the previously high exp bounties (ie. clear x lvl 2) or things of that nature? Or do crafting mats / cube mats only drop at lvl70?

A:You can get cube materials before level 70 and you will still get the cache and extra xp/gold for handing in all the bounties for an act however some bounties are not worth the time to complete all of an acts bounties. If you have something that you plan on cubing once hitting 70 you could collect them while leveling but it will most likely slow down your leveling. If the correct bounties spawn in act 1 it can be efficient to clear the act. Believe it was more thoroughly discussed here which bounties to look forhttps://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/3g81kb/updated_23_season_4_fastest_leveling_guide_full/

Q:You cant cube legendaries with a lvl below 70, right?

A:You can use any level item in the cube, unless it specifies otherwise in the recipe.

Q:Can I ask why have you not included the Cursed Chest events at Howling Plateau (The Cursed Outpost) and Archives of Zoltun Kulle (The Cursed Spire - Unknown Depths)?

A:I listed the ones that were proven to be best for seasons 2 and 3. I will definately check these two out though and add them if they seem worth it. If you like them though by all means do them when you level up.

Q: see everyone suggesting to hold on to the bovine bardiche to open the cow level, but what's good on that level at all? I know there's a greater spawn of resplandent chests, but is that it? or does it have any kind of increased xp/legendary drop chance?

A:Like you said there are a lot of resplendent chests. There are also high density easy mobs to clear out that give fairly high xp. So a fresh lvl 70 will get pretty good benefit out of opening a bunch of resplendent chests to start getting your lvl 70 items.

Q:Two questions to those who've played the past few seasons. 1. With the high traffic of a new season start, does entering and exiting games to get the right bounty result in queues? 2. If doing this method at an average pace, roughly how long would it take to get to 70, assuming you don't have optimal xp gear?

A:There have not been queues in the past. Their live servers are much larger than their ptr servers. 6-7 hours at an avg pace can be done in 5 hours at a fast pace or even less with an optimized strategy.

Q: for "LVL 45: Craft lvl 60 Weapon roll reduced lvl req on it". Blacksmith/Mystic level that is necessary?

A: Lvl 10 Blacksmith and lvl 2 or 3 mystic (either way mystic costs almost nothing compared to the gold you need for Blacksmith).

Q: Can you make skill layouts similar to your Demon Hunter notes for other classes?

A: I have a bit of free time before the season starts so I will do my best to create skill orders for all of the classes before the season starts and link them here. Of course I am more experience with DH than any other class so use them to your own discretion and feel free to modify any of the skill orders to your liking and leave feedback on them.

Edits

Edit 1: Revised statements under gearing section about doing bounties vs rifts

Edit 2: Added in edit section and link to reddit post.

Edit 3: Added FAQ

Edit 4: Updated FAQ

Edit 5: Reworded Hybrid strategy for further clarity.

Edit 6-10: Added Cheatsheets for all other classes

Edit 11: Updated for Leorics Crown changes

My mom used to ban me from games all the time when I was little for leaving things on my floor.

Seems reasonable.

So, everyone keeps talking about how blizz knew about this during the PTR and did nothing about it, but can anyone post an actual link to a PTR post that mentions this? or maybe even a link to some high traffic forum somewhere that mentions it? I only see a flood of posts recently, none during the PTR time. The oldest thing i see on the forums mentioning any exploit is on 4/02 and that post doesnt even mention blood shards.