The fifth Season in the Sanctuary world started on January 15th. This Season is a part of the 2.4.0 patch. While the patch doesn't feature incredible changes, such as Kanai's Cube in the 2.3.0 patch, the Season 5 experience turns out to be an unexpected pleasure. The developers have combined a lot of small changes and new features to create a marvelous seasonal experience.

Intro

The fast leveling guide

My Season 5 experience as Wizard

Conclusions

Intro

As you can see, this guide is about a fast leveling process. So, I will only describe new stuff that is effective and helps with level gains. The guide is viable for different party sizes and solo play. Solo play and party play have a different approach. This article will cover not only the process of leveling to level 70, but also a process of obtaining a free seasonal set. The free seasonal set is one of the features that has been added in the 2.4.0 patch. After you complete some seasonal achievements, you will be rewarded with a free class set. Each class has its own set. I’ve received Firebird's Finery since I played Wizard.

The fast leveling guide

General info

Okay, before we start there is common knowledge I need to share with you. Down below you will find info that navigates your actions as you level up. However, there are a lot of stuff that you have to watch out for. This stuff is not dependent on the levels you gain and plays a significant role in the speed of leveling process.

The first thing you want to remember is that each time you gain a level there will be an explosion around you. It does moderate damage. You want to make sure that you will be surrounded by many enemies when a new level hits.

The next tip I want to share with you will depend on your party size. If you are going to play solo, you want to learn everything about the Action Combat system!

It is a new feature that was introduced in the current patch. The new system works like this: each time you make an action in the world, the game starts an internal countdown and you can chain a new action to the previous one. As a reward, you will receive some benefits. Different actions will grant you different benefits. If you chain enemy kills, you will receive more experience. If you chain objects destruction, you receive a movement speed boost. Lastly, if you chain enemy destruction made by environment objects, you receive additional resource regeneration.

The experience bonus in Action Combat stacks almost indefinitely. You can reach absurd amounts of additional experience. So, to level faster, you want to chain as many kills as you can. This means that AoE spells and DoT spells are your best friends. Also, you don’t want to kill Elite monsters at once. You want them to follow you around, so each time you hit them the countdown on your kill streak is refreshed! Such move will prevent your kill streak from fading, and you are able to reach great experience numbers.

Please note: you only care about Action Combat if you play solo. The Action Combat system won’t be beneficial to your party, as party leveling is different and mostly played in Nephalem Rifts. The difference is that most of the time in solo play you will spend in the story world, farming areas with high density of mobs and completing Bounties.

Now that we are done with the solo play approach, let’s dive into the multiplayer approach. As you already know, most of the leveling process will commence in Rifts. They offer a very efficient way of leveling. It is mostly based on the approach of fast Rifting. You open up a rift. If you see that is a suitable one, you go ahead and complete it. If it is not, you leave the game and start a new session. The suitable rift is the one that has a high density of mobs, and at the same time has a decent pathing. The leveling is called fast because it is fast! You don’t want to waste your time on long corridors and other examples of the bad pathing. Of course, the main feature of the fast approach is the way you complete Rift. To make it fast, you want to spread out your group across the rift. This way, you will clear and complete Rift levels faster.

Other useful info that you want to know

We are almost done with the general info. There are only a few things left that I need to share with you! They are Stat priority and a few tips that work across all leveling process. So, the priority of Stats. You want to value Movement Speed above anything else! It will make sure that you have a fast leveling. Next goes the main attribute. It is your source of damage and other beneficial stuff. Only after those two you look at Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, and Vitality. As your last attribute during the fast leveling, you want to value Cooldown reduction.

During your travels, you may encounter the Puzzle Ring and the Bovine Bardiche items. Don’t even try to Salvage them! Puzzle Ring is a portal to The Vault, and Bovine Bardiche is a portal to the Cow Level! All you need to do, if you want them to work that way, is Transmute them in the Kanai’s Cube. The Vault is a source of incredible wealth. Before going there, don’t forget to use any Gold Find increase that you have! On the other hand, the Cow Level is a source of many items. Usually, you go out of the realm with a pair of Legendaries.

The last thing I want to mention in this part of the article is helmet socket. To speed up the process of leveling, even more, you want to find a helmet with socket and insert Ruby into it. Ruby will grant you additional experience percentage.

A small paragraph about weapon approach

You would like to value two-handed weapons over one-handers. They are better during the fast leveling. At level 1 you want to grab the weapon of your mercenary. Mostly, you will get your weapon upgrades from Crafting. Sometimes you may get a good drop, but it will be replaced by the craft in the next few levels. Another rule about the two-handed weapons is that you want to have the slowest weapon!

Here are the levels at which it is best to refer to crafting new weapons:

15*/16 > 19 *21 > 23 > 27 > *29 > 32 > *33 > *37 > 38 > *41 > *44 > *50 > *54 > 55 > 57 > 58 > *61

The levels marked with * are the best levels for weapon crafting and weapon upgrade.

The fast leveling process

“Okay, guys! It is Time to level some Barbs”. Set the game difficulty to Master. The first 4 levels you will achieve by killing Zoltan Kulle and Maghda. After that, you want to drop the difficulty down to Hard. You will stay on Hard until level 63. Once you hit level 4, proceed to the Halls of Agony level 3 and stay there until you hit level 7. On level 7 you would like to check merchants for rings. Fields of Misery is an area you would like to farm from level 7 to level 11. Starting with level 11 you want to go Rifting if you are playing with friend(s). If not, you want to farm areas with high mob density, do Bounties, and sometimes do Rifts to not get bored to death. The Action Combat system doesn’t work in Rifts, but believe me, you would like to go there from time to time; to refresh your feelings and not feel like a robot.

So, you are Rifting with friends, or do Bounties and farm areas with a companion, until level 63 hits. Before we go ahead to level 63 there is one thing I need to tell you. At level 42, you would like to craft a level 60 weapon. You might get a roll with -18 level requirement. Even if you won’t, the weapon can be re-rolled with the help from Mystic. If the crafted weapon has two secondary stats and one of them is Crowd Control reduction, you have an increased chance to roll a reduced level requirement. This trick is worth trying for a few times. But don’t spend too much time and gold doing it. A few tries are ok. If you don’t get the desired result in a few tries, move on and don’t waste time and gold!

At level 63, you would like to switch to the Master difficulty. You will remain on that difficulty until you reach level 70. On level 61 you really want to craft a new weapon, as it will add insane damage. You can also try the trick describe earlier, about the level requirement reduction. If you have enough resources, you can craft level 70 weapons before level 70 hits; and you might roll the level reduction stat, or re-roll it!

So, this is it! This a skeleton of the fast leveling process. Now, I’ll finish this section with a few friendly tips that will make your play through even more comfortable and faster!

Friendly tips!

If you are going to play with friends, you are going to do a lot of Rifts. And if you are going to do a lot of Rifts, you would like to save a powerful shrine and use it before killing Rift Boss.

As soon as you complete Rift, speak with Orek to turn it in! You can continue farming experience and killing mobs in the Rift, but this way you won’t have to wait the 30-second delay until the Rift is closed.

Don’t forget to use the AoE spells to crush nearby destructible objects, to get the movements speed boost (this works for solo playthrough).

Don’t forget to check for new amulets and rings each time you craft a new weapon.

Once you find the Puzzle Ring item don’t equip it. It will run you out of Reusable Parts as Goblin will collect all the Normal items! If you happen to equip the ring, you can find tons of Normal items in Battlefields of Eternity, in Act 5.

This one is the last one and it is about solo playthrough. You would like to travel with Cormac, the Templar. And the best build for fast play through is this one: Heal (level 15), Loyalty (level 30), Charge (level 45), and Inspire (level 60).

The Season Journey reward!

This section has nothing to do with fast leveling, but I decided to include it since it will greatly ease your Diablo 3 life. As a part of this Season’s feature comes the Season Journey Set. Each class has its own Set as a reward. For me, it was Firebird's Finery, as I played Wizard. To receive the Season Journey Set you don’t need to complete all achievements in Season Journey! In fact, you only need to complete three. The first one is already completed if you have reached level 70! As soon as you do, you will receive a mail with two set pieces. If you want to get other four pieces, you need to kill Zoltun Kulle on the Torment II difficulty, or higher, and reach level 20 in Solo Greater Rifts. The first and second actions will award you with two pieces of Set each. If they won’t be mailed immediately, just restart the game session.

Unless you have better items or approach, I strongly suggest you complete achievements and receive the Set reward. It will make your itemization curve softer, and the achievements are easy to complete. Even if you don’t have enough gear to have smooth runs on the Torment II difficulty, you can still beat Zoltun. He is a rather easy boss. The Greater Rift goal is also not that hard to reach. In the current patch, the difficulty of the Solo and 2, 3 men Greater Rifts is reduced. Don’t forget to take a follower with you, as an extra fire power and utility. Please note: you need to reach level 20 in the Solo Rift progression, the multiplayer progression won’t cut.

My Season 5 experience as Wizard

Well, it was a blast! At the beginning, I had a little slow start. Once I've unlocked Disintegrate, I felt how strong Wizard is at fast leveling. You just obliterate everything with the spell. I used the slowest two-hander, so I didn't have any problems with the Arcane Power consumption. All other spells on my bar where to speed up the leveling process and add damage. As the game goes on, you uncover more and more options. They offer more damage and mobility. I don't know if it is me, the class, or this Season, but I felt like Wizard is one of the easiest class to level up. Of course, I'm talking about the solo play. Maybe it is only my impression but Disintegrate just kills everything very fast. You don't have to worry about your hit-points, as they never drop down! The mobs just die before they can reach you!



Okay! That is enough! Enough of my impressions! I write this part not only to share my impressions, but also to share some useful tips and suggestions that will speed up your leveling process as the Wizard class!

General info and tips

So, before we go ahead to level per level recommendations, I want you to know general stuff that will be useful no matter what level you are! The general approach to fast leveling with Wizard is that you have the main damage dealing source and other spells. All other spell bar slots will be used to either increase your overall damage or to give more mobility. If you are going to play solo, try keeping one of the AoE spells on your bar, apart from Disintegrate; to keep up the movement speed boost from object destruction. For example, I find Electrocute (with the Chain Lightning rune, the level 10 rune) to be very effective at the task! It doesn't waste your Arcane Power. Also, you don't have to channel it. You just use it on destructible objects and it jumps on its own.

Now that we are done with general info, let's proceed to the Wizard tips.

You would like to make sure that you have a weapon with Intelligence. This is a critical topic for two-handed weapons, especially in the late game, as the Stat adds a lot of damage. Also, you would like to have a socket for additional damage increase.

As soon as you unlock Disintegrate, swap it with your previous damage dealing source. It is one of the best spells for fast leveling!

Spam your Teleport each time it is off cooldown! Also, you want to use it, to jump over an impassable terrain. This will accelerate your run a bit.

Once you acquire the Storm Armor spell, don't bother finishing off a few damaged mobs. The Storm Armor will do it for you!

Once you unlock the Disintegrate spell, swap the Power Hungry passive skill for Illusionist. It will also boost your run bit a bit.

If for any reason you decide to use a one-handed weapon (two-handed weapons are better for leveling), you can cut the Arcane Power consumption by many utility effects granted by your support spells. For example, Storm Armor with the Power of the Storm rune will be incredibly effective.

List of level by level spell choices that I consider to be the best for leveling

This section provides a lot of info. I need to structure it somehow. I'll list abilities by the levels and by the spell bar slot. Let's start with left-click spells. You will begin with the default Magic Missile spell. Swap it with the Shock Pulse spell once you reach level 3. On level 9, you would like to add the Explosive Bolts rune to the spell. At level 18, swap your current rune with the Fire Bolts rune. Once you hit level 23, use the Electrocute spell with the Chain Lightning rune. The spell will be useful to kill creates and another destructible environment. If required, you can use the left-click spell slot for other utility or mobility spell. Next changes are optional. You can use the Black Hole spell in this slot once you hit level 61. Also, if you do, you would like to add the Supermassive rune on level 62. That is it for the left-click spell slot!

The right-click spell slot. Starting with level 2, you will have the Ray of Frost spell. Swap the spell with Arcane Orb once you hit level 5. On level 9, you want to swap the Arcane Orb spell with Wave of Force. Disintegrate will be the spell you want to start using on level 21. Disintegrate is one of the best spells in the game for leveling, so you don’t want to swap it for anything else later. Just add the first rune once it is available. It will double the width of the spell. Optionally, you can play around with other runes. Once you hit level 33, move the Disintegrate spell to the left-click slot and add Storm Armor with the Reactive Armor rune. On level 37, change the rune of spell to Thunderstorm. Lastly, use the Scramble rune once you reach level 48. It will grant you the 25% movement speed boost each time you are hit.

The first slot. At level 4, you will receive the Frost Nova spell as a default. You would like to add the Shatter rune at level 12. Once you hit level 22, swap Frost Nova with the Teleport spell. Add the Wormhole rune at level 31 to Teleport. After that, you don’t really want to change anything in the slot. Teleport is a good mobility spell.

The second spell slot. At starting levels, you will be given the Diamond Skin spell. At level 17 you would like to place the Strom Armor spell in this slot. If you swap Storm Armor with the left-click spell, you can use this slot as a left-click spell holder.

The third bar. At level 22, place the Familiar spell in the slot. Later on, level 30, add the Sparkflint rune. In the late game, you can replace the rune with Cannoneer if you won’t one-shot enemies using Disintegrate.

The last, fourth spell bar. You want to place the Magic Weapon spell on level 20 here. Then on level 27, you would like to add the Electrify Weapon rune. Later in the game, at level 35, swap the current rune with a new one, Force Weapon.

Passive skills. At level 10, you would like to equip the Power Hungry passive skill. It will grant free Waves of Force for each picked Health Globe. Glass Cannon is a passive skill you want to add to your kit at level 20. The third passive skill, Astral Presence, will end any Arcane Power consumption problems if they existed. Once you start using the Disintegrate spell, swap the Power Hungry passive skill with Illusionist. Disintegrate doesn’t really benefit from Power Hungry while Illusionist will speed up your runs! Well, this is it! This was a set of spells I used last few weeks when leveled my Wizard.

Conclusions

At the end of the article, I want to wish you fast leveling and a ton of Legendaries. Of course, this Season is not as exciting as the previous one. However, there are a lot of interesting stuff. Sure, you don’t have a content that can be compared to Kanai’s Cube, but there are enough features to keep you interested.

The new Action Combat system makes the solo play a rather interesting experience. You feel less bored when you need to keep up your kill streak. Apart from bringing more interest to the leveling process and progression in general, the system is also good in particular, as it makes leveling process more exciting, interactive, and faster.

As always, the Season Journey tab will keep you busy. The developers have introduced a new reward in this Season. Apart from receiving usual rewards that migrated from previous Season, you can receive the Class Set as a reward. I think this is a good addition to the reward system. It adds more sense to the Seasonal Journey, and I think it has smoothed progression curve really well.