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Unfortunately it's not that simple. Items have two different levels - an item level and a required level. For example, for Manald Heal the required level is 24, but the item level is 27. So basically you can't get it from Kadala below level 27. (We had a discussion about this on Reddit before the season and together with a lot of people we gambled tens of thousands of shards on various levels between 0 and 28, and you can't get MH below level 27).

Someone was nice enough to write a script and query'd every item from the game API to list both required and minimum levels:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/6ogand/list_of_all_items_with_their_itemlevel_and/

But there's more: some items can be gambled below their item level - for example, you can gamble Gungdo Gear on a level 1 monk, Lut Socks on a level 1 barb, and so on. Initially we thought it was just a -7 level reduction, but it doesn't make sense for the case of Gungdo Gear (which are not even the lowest bracers since Cesar's Memento have both lower item level and required level). So there seems to be some special rule for some (not all) low-level gambling slots/items.

Be careful with info you find about this - basically all of this we found out a week ago. So basically any "low level gambling guide" that's older than July 19, 2017 might contain wrong information. We really had no idea and are just scratching the surface here.

Someone asked a quite similar question yesterday, but more specifically about WD in the WD forum. Read my reply there, it will be similar, but might have some more nuances.

Now more specifically about group composition:

Ask yourself how long you want to play together, and how determined your friends are. In particular, are you only going to play for like 2-3 hours a night for one week, or for the first 30-50 hours of the season? Usually a season looks like this:

1. Pre-season preparation. The more you invest here, the smoother and faster your start will be.
2. Start - 2-4 hours: depending on class composition, leveling experience, and how little you mess around, you'll be 70 between 7pm and 9pm.
3. Getting the free set: Doing the first four chapters takes around 2 hours. I call that the "pre-set" time.
4. Gearing: You have the 6 piece set and breeze through T6-T8, do some GRs to gain quick gem levels, run 1-2 bounties, and do Vaults.
5. Early pushing: Sometimes we have fun to push a bit early, i.e., try to get a rank #1 on the first night, or get a high conquest spot.
6. Endgame, welp. Congratz if you're still around for that. Usually at around paragon 600-800 there's no goals besides paragon/GR pushing.

For the first two steps, WDs are the absolute king. 1-2 WDs will absolutely boost your leveling by A LOT. However, as of step 3+4, WDs fall behind, simply because their combined mobility+kill speed is not as good as other classes. The other classes are all "meh" for leveling, so it doesn't matter here. For step 3-4, DHs are clear #1 in my opinion, closely followed by monk (though it depends on RNG, or how fast you get In-Geom). That's not to say other classes can't farm easily here; but they're just a bit behind or require much more specific/better gear. For step 5 then, it depends on which conquest/what kind of pushing. Finally, #6 is probably where wizards start to shine for paragon farming, and obviously meta groups for pushing. Important note: DO NOT OPTIMIZE YOUR GROUP FOR STEP 6. Class switching takes 10 minutes in D3, and gearing up a twink takes a day at most if you have a group who helps out.

I'd suggest to go for 1 WD, 1 DH, 1 monk, and the last one being monk/barb/wiz. If you have two WDs to begin with, I'd recommend one WD to at least keep it optional to slowly switch to wizard on day 2; it'll speed up your GR60+ gem upgrade rifts significantly, trust me. For solo, the answer is: Crusader. Invoker is an insane starter set, and lets you easily transition to LoN bombardment, which works up to GR100. Downside: Crusader sucks in groups. And not just "it's mediocre"; it absolutely sucks and does not synergize at all with group play. Crusader in its current state is kind of like holding a sign saying "screw you I want to play alone" (which sucks; I love Crusader and would like to play it in groups).

To add to your tips:

Don't go overboard with the bosses for low-level rare items, don't do it all the way from 1-10. We usually just do bosses if someone feels completely gimped in terms of gear. Which happens after 5-8 levels of doing the kill streaks leveling method. If your group has 2-3 non-WDs, I'm not sure if kill streaks is a good idea; you might be better off doing rifts. (Also because by doing kill streaks you get no mats+gear+gold, so you gain up to an hour over a rifting group but spend more time running T1 rifts at 70 initially.)

After a lot of testing, I personally think that Cain's set is not worth it. You gain a very small bonus of XP, but you spend a lot of materials and gold early on, including the time wasted to get the recipe. And the worst thing is: at around level 35, so 15 minutes later, the level 23 items of the Cain's set are so bad that they gimp your DPS by more than what the bonus XP offers. If you have fun spicing up your leveling go for it, but don't go out of your way. If you get it. make damn sure that at the very latest on level 42 you throw the set away and replace it with rares. Otherwise you run around with DPS-gimping low level crap.

A few seasons ago I did a looooooooot of testing and planning for the level-up stuff. In the end, we shaped off a few minutes, but in no relation to the time invested. A friend of mine did probably 20-30 test runs on PTR for 1-70 and got to 70 first in our region. But 5 hours later their lead vaporized because it's all about drop RNG. In S4 we had a sub-par double barb group wth no goals, but found two ancient HotA hammers and got to #1 early on. Last season one group member bailed on us a few hours before season start, and then we didn't find any decent loot in the first ~15 hours, so our insane planning was all for nothing. Lesson learned: have fun and pray to the RNG gods. If you have nothing to do practice the 1-70 leveling, it will help for the first 2-3 hours into the season, but beyond that there's nothing you can do besides preparing builds.

I've edited the thread title, because we really don't need to shout here, nor are 12 exclamations marks necessary to make your point.

Also, you might want to add the link to Nev's post:

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/d3/topic/20752065987?page=2#post-38

And possibly give your own opinion.

I can't judge how the exact details will play out, but the changes to WD and Crusader were more than necessary. Especially WDs bring groups close to the GR150 limit on PTR right now, so everyone even thinking about *complaining* is more than delusional. The WD on PTR is absolutely horridly broken at the moment, and with such broken mechanics real testing can't be done. Hopefully after this PTR patch we'll see a more even playing field.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with almost everything in there.

First of all, what he doesn't say in his "OMG they closed Blizzard North" statement is that the "3 key people", Brevik and both Schaefers, had left Blizzard North in 2003 already (yes, just one year after the development started - though it conceptually even started a bit earlier). So Blizzard North was already sort of dismantled for two years and Diablo 3 going nowhere when they closed it.

Second, the video starts by telling us that Diablo 1+2 sold 6.5 million copies and then quotes Brevik that his idea would've sold well. To be honest, Diablo 3 already has a cumulative number of 30m sold copies, almost 5 times as many as "his" earlier games. He, on the other hand, has produced basically nothing since leaving Blizzard. I worship him for the amazing games he created, but I don't like that he's just going around and giving interviews everywhere, trashtalking Diablo, but if he would've done such a better job, why in those 13 years since he left hasn't he created anything like it? Anything at all that recreates the feeling he's missing from D3? It's not really good style to talk about your former employer like that, and it's especially strange to do it when you have nothing to show to back up the claim that you would've done a better job.

The rest of the video is pretty much the typical story and "darkness" rant. He's comparing random D3 campaign areas to CS and the Throne Room... really? Please compare Westmarch to Lut Gholein and tell me which is darker. Also, he's complaining about the lack of Tyrael's post-Diablo speech, but probably forgot that that was moved into the cut scene. I'm not saying it's better, but it's really comparing apples and oranges. I agree overall that the story of D3 wasn't as good as D2/D1 (actually, I think it was really rather weak), and of course I agree like everyone that the way Cain was killed off was ridiculous. It might've as well been an accident while cooking pasta. Nevertheless, his assessment is very subjective and oftentimes not fair.

Another thing that makes me rage is the class comparison. "A wizard is just a wizard and casts spells. A paladin in Diablo 2 has a variety of different playstyles, such as being a smiter tank or casting holy spells." Holy crap, what a piece of BS? Let me turn this around: "A sorcerer is just a sorcerer and casts spells. A crusader in Diablo 3 has a variety of different playstyles, such as being a thorns tank or casting lightning spells. Or having an army of Bowmen. Or searing the enemies with holy fire from above. Or ride to Valhalla on his horse. Or pulling mobs together in a group." Seriously, are you kidding me?

And of course I expected the "no trading, boo-hoo" rant. This is just so ignorant of the history of trading in Diablo, and all the explanations of Jay Wilson, Josh Mosqueira, and others. We've been there, done that, the AH killed the game, and it's good that it's gone. And trading with it. I'd kill the fun for all my friends if I'd just hand them full sets and ancients when they come online.

I'm gonna have to watch some cat videos now to calm down. What a piece of....

With a few weeks delay, there was finally a bluepost:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/20743184451?page=11#214

In a nutshell, era 5 end was delayed so that the old patch did not affect era 6 leaderboards - because they assumed that the old group meta would go higher than the new. Sadly they were wrong, and it completely backfired. But in the end, they had their reasons. Let's hope they learn from it and don't repeat this (given how much feedback they're getting at the moment, I think they realized it was a mistake).