For season 2, I decided to push a Demon Hunter character since for the most part I’ve accomplished as much as I could on my normal characters. In short, I felt somewhat bored and wanted to give the new seasonal game play a try. I consider myself a casual player (although I do play quite a few hours at the moment) with a fair amount of knowledge of demon hunters, leveling and wanted to share my insight in how a casual player can push a seasonal demon hunter into a reasonable state.
Motivation
First, what is the motivation for doing a seasonal character? Most people will argue that seasonal characters are geared towards streamers and pro-gamers. While that might be partially true for more hardcore style pro-gamers, there also is a reasonably sized audience for seasonal characters as well. The other major argument for seasonal characters is to establish leader boards in providing an even playing field by having people start from scratch.
So on the surface, a casual player might not really want to participate in seasonal game play. Are there any benefits? For a casual player, the main benefits for creating a seasonal character are:
- Seasonal Transmog
- Access to Season Only Items
- Large pool of public games
- Slightly higher drop rates (at least from what I’ve heard)
- Potential to play with streamers (most tend to play seasonal and seasonal hardcore)
- The general feeling of starting from scratch and experiencing the game as if you just purchased it
Also, if you are the type that only has a few characters that are maxed out, you might want to try a brand new class from scratch just to check it out. With the improved drop rate and early access to current season items, you might consider using this opportunity to give the seasonal game play a shot.
Leveling
So let’s say you decide to create a character. In this case, I would say that your best bet would be a demon hunter (either that or monk) since demon hunters are pretty strong overall. What are some things you can do to push forward in terms of leveling?
It really depends on where in Diablo 3 you are at with your non-seasonal characters. If you managed to complete the Campaign Mode, you will have full access to Adventure Mode as well as higher difficulties. The nice thing about having access to Adventure Mode is that you have more freedom to do different acts for bounties and experience. Also, you will have access to your followers. As a demon hunter, you can immediately grab your Scoundrel’s weapon, which does slightly higher damage than your current weapon and start going around the map.
I’ve seen people who use Act 1’s Halls of Agony Level 3 due to mob density and relative decent ease of killing those mobs. I suggest setting the difficulty to normal for the first 10-20 levels while you’re gaining gold. Pick up everything and check chests. Through Adventure Mode, you will be able to access each act’s merchants. So make sure that you periodically Town Portal to see what you can buy from time-to-time. Also, don’t forget that you can start crafting gear from level 4. You will want to focus on upgrading your Blacksmith as fast as possible. And if you manage to find weapons and helmets, don’t ever forget to add gems to them. For weapons under level 60, you should add the best Ruby you can either craft or find. And for helms, you should do the same so you can get bonus experience.
For myself, I don’t bother selling most gear and prefer salvaging everything, unless it’s a major upgrade. Also, I don’t bother upgrading the Jewelrycrafter nor Enchantress for a while, at least until my Blacksmith cannot be upgraded any further. The reason is that your Blacksmith will allow you to craft pretty decent leveling gear. In addition, once you’re around level 45, if you managed to have enough crafting materials, you might even be able to craft a decent level 60 weapon that has level reduction on it. By doing that you might be able to pump up the difficulty level by one, thus allowing you to gain a little more gold and experience along the way.
Also, don’t bother keeping low level gems around too long. The only thing that really matters is focusing on hitting level 70. Once you hit level 61, you will want to look for rares for upgrades since the gear will start scaling up much higher. The first thing you should really aim for is a decent level 61+ weapon with a socket. In addition, monsters will start dropping gems, blues and rares that will be very useful for crafting materials. So continue grabbing everything as much as possible so you won’t have to worry once you hit level 70.
Another thing that I do is avoid certain bosses until I’m leveling 70. I think Diablo and Malthais both drop a guaranteed legendary on the first kill. So if you want to make the best of gearing, you should save your first kills for when you hit level 70. In the case of Malthais, the most important thing he will drop is the Reaper Wraps Blacksmith plans. I think he won’t drop them before level 61 though, so again save that kill if you’re doing bounties for that moment.
Although I did mention using Act 1’s Halls of Agony level 3 as a way to efficiently level, you probably should only do that for the first 10-20 levels. After that, you will want to focus on doing bounties. The idea is that by the time you hit level 70, you should have a small collection of Blood Shards and Rift Keys. Once you hit level 70, you should start looking for a basic build and optimize that build around your gear. Lastly, you should try to make sure your gear, even if it’s all rares, has decent stats (e.g. rings with Critical Hit/Critical Damage, Legs with 2 sockets/Main Stat/All Resistance/Vitality, etc.) If you manage to hit over 300k paper damage and 300k toughness, you probably are good for master-Torment 1 normal rifts.
Early Gearing
You really want to be able to start pushing Torment 1 as soon as you have enough basic gear. The reason is that your main set items will drop in Torment 1 so you want to keep your chances up at all times. As a demon hunter, you should also try crafting a decent Reaper Wraps as soon as possible. Try to go for a Fire build (which I think is the best and easiest to gear) and make sure your Reaper Wraps have +% Fire Damage, Critical Hit (hopefully at 6%), Dexterity and Vitality. You’ll probably be starved for crafting materials for a bit so don’t go overboard if you can’t craft decent ones.
Another thing you should try doing is to hunt for a Ring of Royal Grandeur from Act 1. Again, try to do at least Torment 1. While doing bounties, start looking for a Goblin Rift. There’s some areas that pretty much have a goblin most of the time. While the spawn point can be random, you really want to find the Goblin Vault. In that manner, you can get the Boon of the Hoarder as soon as possible.
If you have enough keys, you can start hitting normal rifts. The main thing you’ll be on the look out for is the Trial Key. The reason is that you will want to fetch all the basic gems immediately. Also, Greater Rifts can yield some decent legendaries along the way.
Getting Legendary Gems
Once you get your first Trial Key, you’ll want to use it. But don’t bother fighting anything in the trial. Instead, Town Portal out immediately so you get a level 1 Greater Rift. These should be pretty easy and you’ll probably have excess time to clear it. Again, you do not want to kill the Greater Rift boss too soon. The reason is that you want to progress slowly so you can get gems and some legendaries along the way. With the three new legendary gems, you might have to progress to level 13 or so before you see all of them. In any case, make sure you only kill the Greater Rift Guardian with less than 5 minutes so you only get a single difficulty level more and can focus on getting you gems.
Boon of the Hoarder
The most important gem to get early on is the Boon of the Hoarder. I believe that Boon of the Hoarder will now drop from Greater Rifts as well. You want to obtain this gem because you can focus on earning gold early on as you do both normal rifts and bounties. Also, you won’t have to worry about the cost of upgrading gear and gems.
Broken Crown
The Broken Crown is a very good helmet pre-Marauder helmet because you can focus on building up a nice supply of gems early on. The Broken Crown drops the same gem that is socketed inside the helmet (it does not drop the same quality; that’s an important thing to note). So as a Demon Hunter, you probably will want to start accumulating a ton of Emerald gems, which means you should be equipping a green gem whenever you do anything besides Greater Rifts early on. What I did was use this item to first build up my supply of Diamonds (for cooldown reduction and all resistance), Emeralds and later Topaz and Rubies.
By combining the Broken Crown’s supply of gems with the gold you will accumulate through the Boon of the Hoarder, you should quickly be able to maximize your gem upgrading. Naturally, you should focus on creating the best Emerald for inserting into your weapon and then follow that up with maxed out Emeralds and even Diamonds for either your helmet (CDR) or other slots (for all resistance).
Mauraders Set
The most important items you will be hunting initially are your Marauders set. You should gamble for these whenever you have a chance. However, certain items have a higher percentage of rolling than others. Because of this, you might want to prioritize which pieces you should roll. This is my preference:
- Shoulders
- Legs
- Gloves
- Boots
- Helmet
- Chest
The reason for this ordering is the likelihood of being able to find the right pieces. In my case, I had to adjust my gambling slightly since I had a really tough time rolling the boots (eventually it came up but only after everything else). I ended up rolling a chest piece early on because I was attempting to aim for a Cindercoat to get more resource reduction, not to mention growing frustrated that everything except the Marauder boots were dropping.
Torment Difficulty and Gear Progression
As you accumulate your M6 pieces, you should be able to handle higher and higher torments. With proper itemization, elemental damage and a decent weapon, you can start doing T2-3 as early as having the 2 set M6 bonus. I managed to find an ancient Pus Spitter where I was able to handle T1 rifts reasonably well. But the minute I obtained my 2 set bonus, I felt the power shift quite a bit and I was able to hit T3 rifts without worry.
With the 4 set M6 bonus, you should be able to hit T4 reasonably well. Having your sentries fire multishot will allow you to hide behind corners and you should be able to kill things with decent efficiency. Soloing T6 though might be tough though unless you’re fortunate enough to have double Unity and your follower has the undying relic.
With the full 6 set bonus from M6, you can do T5 pretty smooth, even without a Bombadier’s Rucksack. T6 though starts to get painful unless your gear rolled decently and you have enough All Resistance and Vitality so that you can avoid getting insta-gibbed. By this point, you should be able to fair decently in public games and start enjoying a larger magic find bonus.
Assuming that you have your M6 (minus say a chest), your next focus should be on obtaining a Bombadier’s Rucksack and Cindercoat. Your weapon won’t be as important as long as it rolls good damage at this point. And you have some degree of free for your ring, amulet and belt early on. But once you want to hunker down and focus on doing some Greater Rift progression, you will need to really hunt for the last few items.
Greater Rift and Legendary Gem Progression
With the gear set up above, you should be able to handle anything between Greater Rifts 25-31. You might encounter some insta-gibbing for a while as you build up your gear, increase your damage and level your gems. So at this point, you’ll want to hunt for those uber rare items like a Fire base Stone of Jordan, double Unity, Witching Hour and a solid amulet (either Hellfire with a good passive like Awareness of a damage immunity amulet). You could aim to gamble for those items, starting with the belt slot. If you can’t find a Witching Hour, you might consider using a Harrington’s or Blackthornes.
Blackthornes are an interesting choice early on because of the rarity of Witching Hours. I’ve seen quite a few Blackthorne amulets drop though so combing those with the belt slot, you will be able to gain some damage resistance to elites and normal modes, which can be good early on.
Gem-wise, you will want to focus on Bane of the Trapped first because it does some of the best scaling damage and has a nice passive CC effect once it reaches level 25. After that, focus on Zei’s since the damage will scale and add a nice CC effect too. Now, with season 2 in play, you do have a few extra options with regards to gems. Most demon hunters end up choosing Bane of the Powerful for the elite bonus damage and increased general damage after slaying elites. I would argue that Bane of the Powerful is a good candidate to swap out for one of the new defensive gems. Here, you can try using the Esoteric Alteration or Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard. The idea is that if you find yourself too squishy then you can try to either avoid getting one shot or out healing the incoming damage by using either of these gems. I haven’t tried it yet but it does make an interesting possibility given the trouble I’ve been having with incoming damage.
Also, start gambling for ancient, better itemized versions of your M6 set. Don’t bother spending shards on amulets nor weapon though due to the outrageous cost for either. You could make an exception for a Stone of Jordan, but only if you have managed to find the rest of your basic gear. Now, the main things you want on ancients beyond ideal stats is higher dexterity, vitality, all resistance, armor and life regeneration. I feel that vitality is the real winner in many cases just because having higher health will help mitigate those one shot scenarios. You can get all resistance on your pants and boots, so I would value those if I managed to find some that I could reroll. I only mention armor and life regeneration here as well because they are the only other two stats where the ancient aspect makes a real difference. Although Life Regeneration might not be that great down the road, early on while you’re in the lower 100’s of paragon levels, it certainly helps, especially when you get hit and your potion is on cooldown.
Now, don’t worry too much about pushing too hard unless it’s a personal goal of yours. Do what you can and try not to destroy your keyboard (because you will get angry quite often). Even with poor gear, I still found myself being capable of doing Greater Rift 31 (I did have a fair number of deaths). I’m certain with double Unities and a few other key pieces, I would slide along easily. That part should take some time though so you really just need patience and perseverance to make this work.