Short and Sweet Guide to Season 5

This guide is intended to be a condensed version (for you last minute guys or the lazy readers) of everything you need to start the new season strong. Going over Pre-Season preparations, leveling 1-70, Gearing up, Augmenting, and my thoughts on the 4-man meta we will see early in the season. Like I said this is meant to be short if you are looking for a full super in depth guide I highly suggest checking out Drahque's Ultimate Guide



Pre-Season Preparations

Here are some things you will want to do before the season starts to make the first night smoother and save a bit of time.

Know what class you are going to play.

Know who you are going to play with.

Know what leveling strategy you are going to use.

Make a 1-70 cheatsheet or find someone elses. The cheatsheet should include every time you change skills. Listing the level you take the skill, and what key/skill it is replacing. You may also want to include an extra notes column for key objectives you want to do at certain levels.

Here is an example of my Demon Hunter cheatsheet



Leveling 1-70

1-70 and Pre-Season Preparation Video Guide

There are a handful of strategies you can use to level 1-70. I will be covering a strategy where you do a boss or cursed chest bounty early, clear Halls of Agony level 3 (HoA3), and move onto rifting. Other strategies include targeting only cursed chest bounties and repeating them, targeting high density floors such as HoA3 and repeating it, or full clearing bounties.

Level 1: Take your followers(Templar,Enchantress,Scoundrel) weapons. Clear a cursed chest or boss bounty. For resplendent chest or diabolic cache.

Levels 4-20: Clear Halls of Agony level 3 until you hit a dead end and then reset the game.

Level 7: Buy rings from Fence Merchants

Level 12: Buy amulets from Fence Merchants

Level 20: Kill Skeleton King in Campaign for Leoric's Crown drop. Make sure your entire party is at least lvl 20.

Level 23: Do an act bounty. It can be done before 23 but make sure you open the cache at lvl 23. If cain's or born's plan drop from the cache craft them.

Levels 23-70: Rifts! There is no reason to full clear since rifts are free to open so make sure to close the rift after killing the Rift Guardian. You should be on a difficulty where you 2-3 shot white mobs. If you are overkilling them raise the difficulty and if they take 5-6 shots lower the difficulty.

Level 45: Craft a level 60 weapon and look for reduced level requirement. It is easiest to re-roll for this stat if you KEEP a secondary Crowd Control and roll the other secondary to reduced level requirement.

Level 61: Craft a level 70 weapon and look for reduced level requirement. Use the same re-rolling strategy as above. This will take some deaths breaths to do so make sure you have a couple before trying to make the weapon.



Level 70 Gearing

Fast Gearing Video Guide

The fastest way to start farming is to pick up your free set from the season journey as fast as possible. You do not need to complete all of the chapters or even be on the chapter the objective is in just do these objectives.

1. Hit level 70! (Impossible to forget to do, but it gives the first 2 set pieces).
2. Kill Zoltun Kulle on Torment 2.
3. Complete a Greater Rift tier 20 solo.

Each objective mails a Haedrig's gift to you and each gift gives 2 peices of the set. These can be saved for other characters but if you are trying to start farming as fast as possible open them on your first character as soon as you receive them to help complete the next objectives. Once you finished the three objectives turn the torment up to a comfortable farming difficulty. Even if this isn't the set you want to use, it will be the fastest way to start farming for the set and other gear you actually want.



Augmenting Items

Augmenting and Empowered Rifts Video Guide

How Augmenting Works

There is a new Kanai's Cube recipe that allows you to augment your gear this patch. This recipe takes 3 of the same max level regular gems(Emerald, Topaz, Ruby, or Amethyst), an ancient item, and a legendary gem of minimum rank 30 for weapons, 40 for jewelry or 50 for armor. Once transmuted the 4 gems are consumed and for each level of the legendary gem applies 5 stat of Dex, Int, Str, or Vit according to the regular gems used.

Strategy for Augmenting

This is a very strong recipe and means you will want to farm legendary gems. Here is the strategy I would recommend for farming these gems. You will need 12-13 initially depending on if you use an offhand or not. I recommend picking a gem you wont confuse with the ones you don't want to augment so get 12-13 of something like Gem of Ease. Just make sure the gem you pick does not have a cap. Then work on getting those 12-13 gems to around 50-60 and once you have ancient gear you are comfortable farming in, augment the gems into your gear. This gear will help you farm higher greater rifts and faster torment rifts/bounties through out the season. Now get a second set of gems (or a set for each class you intend to push with) then spend the season leveling up these gems as high as possible. Save any gear upgrades in your stash. You dont want to waste gems augmenting every small upgrade you find (This is up to your discretion of course if you find an upgrade you feel will improve your farming significantly augment it and start using it). Once its the last 1-2 weeks of the season this is when you will want to augment your pushing gear.

Empowered Rifts

Keep in mind we also have empowered rifts this season. You can pay gold to empower a greater rift giving you one extra chance to upgrade your gem if you pass the greater rift. So running a boon of the hoarder while farming torment to pay for empowered rifts may help squeeze in some extra gem levels.





Predictions for Early Season 4-Man Meta

Theorycrafting Early Season 4-Man Meta Video

Tier List of the Classes I think are most likely to be in the "Best" 4-Man meta
Top Tier: Barbarian
Mid Tier: Demon Hunter, Wizard, and Witch Doctor
Low Tier: Crusader
Bottom Tier: Monk

The Tier list is based on my early impression of what each class can bring to the group. Barbarians are still going to be great supports with Ignore Pain buff and the ability to Group up mobs just 2 of many reasons they are great supports. Demon Hunters offer the very high single target damage with the new Shadows set. Wizards offer very high AoE damage with Delseres and other new and updated items. Witch Doctors can provide high DPS and while bringing big damage buffs to the group. Crusader have damage and supporting options with invokers and rolands but they are slightly behind what other classes can bring to support and or deal damage. Same goes for monks they can still offer damage or support to the group but seems to be the lowest in comparision to other classes. However this season a lot of the sets have been brought up to par with eachother meaning for a while atleast we will see a lot of different group compositions that can do well including compositions that have monks and crusaders in them.

Here are a just a few of many 4-man compositions that I think will be competitive this season.

1. Support Barb, Single Target DH, AoE Wizard, Hybrid WD
2. Support Barb, Single Target DH, AoE Wizard, Hybrid Crusader
3. Support Crusader, Single Target DH, AoE Wizard, Hybrid WD
4. Support Barb, DPS WD, AoE Wizard, Support WD

Thanks for reading everyone and that is about as short as I could make the guide while still explaining important points. Less than half the length of the guide I made last season so for me it is short. Good luck in Season 5 everyone! ;)

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