Is there a "Sweet Spot" in season start progression?

General Discussion
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I’ve been playing for a few years and enjoy starting a new season each time. I’ve had a question for a long time that, hopefully, far more experienced and savvy players here can shed light on for me and others.

The start of a season goal is to get to level 70 as fast as possible. There are lots of different ways to do this and I’m not interested in specifics like those.

My question revolves around a simple overriding bit of advice. Play as fast as you can, get lots of points, rinse and repeat. The problem in question is how do you recognize the right level to play at to do this? Here’s an example in NR speed runs. If I play at a particular level I can complete it, get all the level rewards, but it takes me 12 minutes (not very efficient). However, if I lower the level I can power through in 4 minutes, less rewards, but 3 runs for the same 12 minutes. Unfortunately, the initial 1 - 70 run doesn’t give you a chance to pick except for the difficulty levels.

Like others I’ve read advice that doing it right can get it done within a few hours instead of a few days. Those that can would probably have a “Sweet Spot” at how fast they kill monsters versus how many experience points they are trying to get.

So. . .
What is a good speed (time) to shoot for when doing advancing levels? Except for the first 20 levels, which usually go pretty fast even at Master or T1, how long (minutes) should be reasonable to gain each level? If it slows down significantly, lowering the difficulty level to gain faster time should lead to a “Sweet Spot” of how fast I can kill monsters while maintaining a decent point progression.

I”ve search these forums and the Internet for relevant information with no success. The well known T-Level progression chart doesn’t really give this type of information unless I’m missing something.

What do you think?

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Now that the Altar is present, massacres in high density areas is faster than Neph Rifts.
There is still a sweet spot between how high you can go and still maintain the kill streaks.
That would vary by Class and RNG dependent for drops.

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Top players are doing the 1-70 solo in well under 45 minutes. For us mere mortals, between 1-2 hours should be where you want to target. Personally, I hit around 60-90 minutes for 1-70.

As Yessquire said, Altar with massacre bonus is the way to go, normal rifts are outdated.

For the massacre streaks:
If you are taking 10-20 hits to kill things, you are too high a level.
If you are 1 shotting everything, you are too low a level.
Focus on maps that give you the longest streaks with easy monsters (I use temple of the first born and ruins of corvus.
A streak of 15-20 monsters might only give you 1 bar of xp, while a streak of 200-400 can give you several levels, even at 50s and 60s, so try for long streaks.

This is roughly my time frame and how I do it (far from optimal, but gets me there in less than 1.5 hours):

Levels 1-18 usually takes me 30 min since I get the Challenge Rift cache and walk to the cube to get my 1-18.

Unlock the node on Altar that changes the level to equip all items at 1. Craft a level 70 weapon and whatever level 70 gear you have mats for. Do massacre bonus’s on the above 2 maps and get to 70. Takes 30-50 minutes depending on how good you are at stringing big massacres.

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So, the thing here is, rifts were never good the moment Massacre Bonuses were introduced, regardless of the Altar. All the Altar did was amplify their deficiencies.

The thing about rifts vs your normal Massacre Bonuses, is that in a rift, all of the enemies on that level are snapshotted to your level upon entry. That is, if you enter at Level 10, they’ll still be Level 10, regardless if you’re Level 10 or Level 60. And this is where the problem arises.

Because as you gain levels, you get fewer XP per enemy, until about 5-7 levels away, where you’re getting less than 1 XP per kill. That’s less of an issue when you’re Level 5, and only need 6600 experience to Level 6, vs Level 67, and need 55 million XP. And this is where people got hurt in the PTR, as well as the altar now. Because the gear allows you to play on super high difficulties, and you’ll gain those 5 levels in no time flat. (Remember that gear you have also has +XP, so you might really be gaining a few hundred XP per kill, even though the monsters only give you 1 XP).

Outside of rifts though, monsters scale to your level upon spawn (even in a zone, just moving a few screens away will spawn new enemies).

Add to this that Massacre Bonuses take into account the difficulty level (PC here. It’s completely different on console, and I’m not addressing those issues), and up to 80% of your XP will come via the bonus itself rather than the kill experience. Rifts also don’t have Massacre Bonuses, so you’re missing a key component there.

The reason why people ran rifts, even prior to the altar, was that it was easy, and you had friends to play with. But group play outside of rifts was always inefficient compared to solo play, thus most people didn’t notice a difference, because it’s nearly impossible to get a Massacre Bonus going as a group without extreme effort.

For the basic leveling, Alexismad gave pretty good advice. You don’t want to be one shotting, but at the same time, you don’t want to be taking your time killing things. For Massacre Bonuses, my sweet spot is about 3-4 hits per enemy. Enough that you have leeway to the next mob, just in case there’s dead space in between.

What is a good time to shoot for? That depends on your class, whether you’re leveling with or without the cache, etc. I personally feel all those leveling guides you see online give unrealistic times, not to mention they have a lot of bad advice.

The only thing I can say is avoid rifts like the plague. If you’re running rifts to level up, you’re looking at 2 hours minimum.

If you’re using the Cache, about 1 level every minute is fairly decent. If you’re not using the Cache, at no point should you be taking more than 4-5 minutes per level, and that’s usually during your 60s.

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Not really. To some it is. Especially those who are extremely competitive. But you can play in any tempo you like.
What is maybe more important, to casual players at least, is what you do after level 70 when you begin to build your character and want it strong and “efficient”. For example you wanna use legendary gems that work in your favor. On your seasonal hero you have legacy of dreams that gives no damage because you have set bonuses. Simplicity’s Strength may not be the best gem either. :+1:

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I think the one thing with massacre bonuses that put some people off is it takes a bit of practice. And if you do it badly it can become damn tedious, I remember the first 2-3 seasons I did it I would go do rifts just for some variation.

I also saw a video years ago (can’t remember by who) that suggested rift leveling or at least doing only rifts for the last 10-20 levels because then you have a better chance of actually having good items at 70 vs the near nakedness of massacres so it slows down leveling but speeds up the parts after that. But I don’t know if that is really true.

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(One little note I forgot to mention. Massacre Bonuses, as we know them, were introduced in Patch 2.4, which was Season 5.)

It is true that you don’t find much gear. Prior to the Altar, I averaged about 1 legendary per 1-70 run.

The major issue I feel though is that it really comes down to the streamers. Up until Season 18, they were suggesting either Halls of Agony Blades or Rifts. and most people just didn’t like the monotony of Halls. But many of the top leveling strategies have been known for multiple seasons earlier.

That’s one thing I learned the hard way. It’s not just good enough to have a working strategy, even with proof. There was this person on reddit, who since Season 12, had been proselytizing Temple of the Firstborn, but few ever listened, and his threads barely ever got more than 5 upvotes. The sad reality is, if major streamers don’t promote it, no one listens.

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Thank you one and all. Much of what you’ve suggested has been known to me for some time, but this helps fine tune and focus my efforts for the future.

I generally play solo and do 1 - 70 in about 3 - 5 hours depending on how slow I am in trying to use the best of my gear. I do massacre bonuses, but try to do bounties, too, to get the good legendaries in Acts 1 - 3, training books, and Legendary Crafting Materials. This season, it wasn’t until I was at T6 before I even got my first RoRG and Illusory Boots even after doing about 5 full sets of bounties. I see that was a waste for me this season with no control over what I’m gaining versus my time expenditure.

From what you’ve explained, it would be better to focus on massacre bonuses and pure leveling at a good pace as suggested rather than trying to do it all at the same time. With the Alter this is more efficient as well.

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So, a few things here.

If you’re after an efficient start, I wouldn’t necessarily run pure leveling.

Getting Act 1 done on T6 while low level can be useful, because you have a shot of getting a RoRG. (Playing T4 or below, I wouldn’t even bother with it.) The rest, I’d save for Level 67. Playing on Hard difficulty, you should be able to hit 70 with the rest of the bounties. Don’t collect the bounties though until you’re Level 70, and then you can knock out the bounties (Chapter III) as well as only needing 1 more Gem Recipe (Chapter IV). For the last recipe, if you have 2 million gold, that recipe counts as 4 Gem Crafting recipes. (It’s a trick some people will use for an efficient start.)

Some people like to run a rift early on, so they don’t need to unlock GR20, though depending upon the class, I’m not really a fan of that. I try to minimize rifting as much as possible.

Mind you, doing the above, you won’t hit 70 as fast, but you’ll get Haedrig’s Gift a little bit faster. Sometimes long-term goals aren’t the fastest out of the gate.

In terms of time, 3-5 hours is about average pace for most people leveling without a cache. I realize there’s dead time in there, but if that were me, I’d probably level up as a Necro, start doing the chapter stuff, and then switch over to your real character.

I also don’t advocate for immediately starting to go after the Cube. Save that for a little later in level when you have some movement abilities. You’re wasting time and a great leveling spot.

Also, I’ll use Visions if I’m <40, but I avoid Visions if I’m >40. They’re a time sink. Useful for getting a Rift Key, but then I’ll get out to level traditionally.

Now, my approach and goal, and I’m not saying this is for you, is to have Haedrig’s Gift complete for my real class by the 3-hour mark (assuming no cache). With a Cache, about 2 hours.

If you want, I still have some remaining spots for starting a new character and can put together an actual leveling demonstration 1-Haedrig, with or without a Cache, of the class of your choice, so you can get a better idea of how I’d approach it. I.e. Fresh character, so no ambiguity like leveling demonstrations you’ll see on YouTube which often exceed the materials they’d have in a real run. They’re helpful in giving you an idea of how to play, but often their demonstration of Level 1 to GR70 in 3 hours for a practice run will be Level 1 to GR70 in 6 hours come the real season.

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