Obviously, one of the biggest attractions to patch 2.1 in Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls is seasons. However, if that’s not your cup of tea, you might ask, “What’s in it for me?” Fortunately, there’s a fair amount of content that can keep you busy for a few solid weeks.
For continuing players with level some level 70s you can take advantage of the improved legendary find. You’ll want to try and gear up fast to start hitting Torment 1 Nephlam Rifts. I think if you can reach around 300-500k toughness and 500k-700k dps (not sheet) then you should be able to handle Torment 1 rifts just fine. Use the public games to group up and have an improve magic find. Collect whatever you can so you have crafting materials and the gold for rerolls.
As you gear up, one of the first things you should is start thinking about the spec you want to aim towards. More than likely your spec decision will primarily depend on what you manage to find. However, you should try to retain elemental gear. There’s some easy specs to gear for like fire because of items like Magefist or Cindercoat that you can get while rolling for your set pieces. At the start, you will want to focus on elemental elite dps, using items like the above two, getting elemental damage on your amulet (if possible without negating critical damage) and other items with +% elite damage. I try to aim for around 1 million to do T2-T3 comfortable in a group setting.
If you have most/all of the crafted recipes, consider making a few sets or items like Captain Crimson’s Trimmings, Aughid’s Authority and Reaper’s Wraps. Some of these items end up becoming Best-in-Slot for classes/specs that require heavy cooldown reduction or resource reduction and gives you some starting gear to do more difficult settings.
While doing Nephlam Rifts, you will eventually start finding keys to do Greater Nephlam Rifts. Use these to get a few legendaries from the end boss as well as your first few legendary gems. Once you have a few decent gems, you will want to reroll your jewelry pieces to support them. Go for rings initially, sacrificing whatever the weakest stat is. So for instance, if your ring has main stat (e.g. dex, int), crit hit, armor and crit damage, you will probably want to try and reroll armor into a socket. While you can use and upgrade any legendary gem, you will want to focus on the ones best suited for your class/spec (e.g. no point in using a Bane of the Enforcer for a non-pet build).
During this time you will accumulate Blood Shards. Blood Shards are used for Kadala in purchasing gear. Your primary goal as you get this currency should be to procure your 6 piece set gear. Aim for items like shoulders, legs and boots first, especially if you have gear that improves your elemental damage (like Magefist or Cindercoat). At the same time, take advantage of the increased chance to find the cache-only legendaries, particularly Act 1 where you should immediately try to farm for a Ring of Royal Grandeur. This ring is absolutely essential as you build up your set pieces so you can have a free slot somewhere for another Best-in-Slot piece. Not to mention it’ll help you reduce items like the Captain’s Crimson Trimmings or Aughid’s Authority authority while still using 5 pieces from your class set gear. It might drive you crazy initially, but the Ring is definitely worth the effort.
One problem you’ll start to feel as your continue to upgrade your gear through enchanting is money. If you’re low on crafting materials (particularly rares/yellows), you might have to split your materials for salvaging and selling initially to ensure that you have a steady income and enough materials for upgrading or crafting gear. But the thing you really want is a Goblin Rift. Goblin Rifts may spawn after you kill a goblin. It’s a rare event but if you manage to get one, the first thing you’ll want to do is grab as much gold find gear as possible and respec your talent points into gold find. There’s not a lot of dangerous mobs except the end boss. But once you kill the end boss, you will get a legendary gem that only drops in this realm. This gem will allow you to make a ton of gold from killing any mob. I’ve noticed that on T6 I can make around 20 million gold per Nephlam Rift. Once you get to a certain level, you can just use rares for salvaging as you’ll never have to deal with gold problems again.
I found that once I was able to get into T3 rifts, my progression sped up immensely. Doing group rifts is pretty much the way to go since you’ll have more gold and legendaries, not to mention lowering the chance of failure. As I got more pieces for my set, I found myself being able to progress harder, especially as a Demon Hunter. Once I had my 5 set bonus along with the Ring of Royal Grandeur, I could easily carry a group in T4. The next step was to bump my DPS up by aiming for the real BiS gear, like my quiver which gave me 2 extra sentries and a solid 2H Crossbow. At this point, you really want to aim to improve on all the slots for your gear as well as do more difficult Greater Rifts so you can continue to upgrade your legendary gems. The rank 25 secondary bonus usually is well worth the effort.
One thing you can start doing to go from very good to great gear is examine people on the seasonal leaderboards. Right click on your portrait and choose the leaderboard option. From there, you can check out people doing the seasonal normal mode by class on solo mode. That will give you a pretty good idea of the gear you will want to progress higher and harder. Three things you will need without question are a pair of Unity rings and the follower item that prevents your follower from dying. Unity rings enable you to split damage between people wearing the ring. So having two of these along with the invincible follower item will allow you to absorb a great deal of damage necessary in higher Greater Rift difficulties.
On top of these simple tips, I highly encourage checking out YouTube and various people over at Twitch to see how they’re doing. Many are very helpful in answering questions, especially class specific ones that will enable you to get to the next level of progression.